Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- 70 Facts, general (in OP argument and as part of justiication)
- 71 Fair equality of opportunity
- 72 Fairness, principle of
- 73 Faith
- 74 Family
- 75 Feminism
- 76 Formal justice
- 77 The four-stage sequence
- 78 Freedom
- 79 Freedom of speech
- 80 Freeman, Samuel
- 81 Fundamental ideas (in justice as fairness)
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
75 - Feminism
from F
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- 70 Facts, general (in OP argument and as part of justiication)
- 71 Fair equality of opportunity
- 72 Fairness, principle of
- 73 Faith
- 74 Family
- 75 Feminism
- 76 Formal justice
- 77 The four-stage sequence
- 78 Freedom
- 79 Freedom of speech
- 80 Freeman, Samuel
- 81 Fundamental ideas (in justice as fairness)
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Rawls was personally a feminist, and his theory of justice, justice as fairness, belongs to the category of liberal feminisms. (See Nussbaum 2003; Baehr 2004.) Understanding feminism as both the conviction that women are equal to men in value and entitled to all the rights and privileges of men, and also as the active effort to transform social reality to match that conviction, Rawls unequivocally embraced feminism. He educated and supported the professional careers of women philosophers on a scale that is both unprecedented and so far unsurpassed. Just by his teaching and mentoring alone, he did more to equalize the playing ield for women in philosophy than anyone else. But more important is the way he transformed social contract theory from its sexually tone-deaf and conservative history. (See Pateman 1988.) His introduction of a “veil of ignorance” that deprived parties to the social contract of knowledge of their gender quite self-consciously forced the theory to treat women as equal citizens.
Rawls was surprised by the backlash from some feminists contending thatjustice as fairness perpetuated women’s subequal status, writing:
I have thought that J. S. Mill’s landmark The Subjection of Women (1869) ...made clear that a decent liberal conception of justice (including what I called justice as fairness) implied equal justice for women as well as men. Admittedly, A Theory of Justice should have been more explicit about this, but that was a fault of mine and not of political liberalism itself. (CP 595 n.58)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon , pp. 284 - 287Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014