Growing up, I was told that the story of America is one about the individual. As our national motto says, E Pluribus Unum - out of many, one. It is a place that has grown and benefited from a “melting pot” of various cultures. It is somewhere anyone can come, regardless of how strangely they may appear or act, and challenge the established order when its problems have been revealed. It may not have stuck to this reputation with perfection throughout its history, but I still believe this idea of individual flourishing to be the American spirit. So, of course, feminism is naturally appealing to me. The idea that one’s gender, which a person has no control over, should determine how society perceives them and what roles are available to them, seems baffling to me.
Taking Finlayson’s definition, I will consider “feminism” as follows: “Feminism has two basic components. First, it recognizes or posits a fact: the fact of patriarchy. Second, it opposes the state of affairs represented by that fact” (Finlayson 6). The “patriarchy” is a system that is designed specifically to benefit men and oppress women. This does not mean that each individual man is prosperous or that each individual woman faces intense hardship. However, there are significant enough trends in the population to reasonably conclude that gender does have a significant impact on the quality of life. I also agree with the normative component that gender shouldn’t have such a significant impact on the quality of life, so I am a feminist by this definition.
To make my case, I will address each half of Finlayson’s explanation of feminism. Later, I will explain why a patriarchy, if it exists, should be opposed on moral grounds. Before that, however, I will use empirical evidence to show how, even in the modern day, there is indeed a patriarchy in the United States (I will focus on the U.S. since this is where I live and where I was raised). We know, for example, that there is a wage gap between men and women. Some say that this is untrue after accounting for things like parenting and career choices, but the data says otherwise. One study by Meara, Pastore, and Webster estimated the gender pay gap in the U.S. using several different matching estimators. They found that using these estimators “provide a stronger basis for controlling for heterogeneity. In a sense, they provide more reassurance that the ‘unexplained’ gender pay gap is in fact not explained by observable characteristics such as part-time working or parenthood” (Meara, Pastore and Webster). That is, even when accounting for factors that critics might introduce when talking about the subject, a gender pay gap still exists – about 15% between October 2017 to March 2018. Another article by Sky Ariella from Zippia, a website that helps people make career decisions, gives statistics about corporate workplaces. According to her, “Women represent 58.4% of the U.S. workforce as of September 2022 but only held 35% of senior leadership positions” (Ariella). Proportionally, women are much less prevalent than men as Fortune 500 CEOs, doctors, lawyers, top management positions, and politicians. If such a great disparity was present in only one or two industries, perhaps we should keep our minds open to the possibility that it was an accident – a coincidence of thousands of individual choices serving social scientists a red herring. However, the fact that such overwhelming gender disparities exist in all these powerful positions simultaneously is unnerving to say the least. Technically, it could all be coincidental, but the more likely explanation is that society has been structured to make it more difficult for women to end up in these high-status, impactful roles.
Economics is my bread and butter, but women face unequal social expectations as well. Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian writer, eloquently draws out the differences in the social upbringing between boys and girls: “We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak, a hard man…. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller” (Adichie 26-27). There are, of course, individual boys who grow up to be humble and comfortable with vulnerability, and there are girls who grow up to be assertive and brutally honest. Unfortunately, the expectations based on gender are still prevalent enough that they lead to both men and women who feel they have to hide their true selves. In extreme cases, this leads to tragic outcomes. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1999, “Male offending [of violent crime] equals about 1 violent offender for every 9 males age 10 or older, a per capita rate 6 times that of women” (Greenfeld and Snell 1). Pamela Aronson, a sociologist from Michigan State University, interviewed dozens of women about their views on feminism. In one part of the interview, she asked specifically about gender discrimination and found that “although only a small proportion of the interviewees felt that they had experienced blatant gender discrimination, most of the women had known it in minor ways and expressed some concern about it in the future” (Aronson 912). Due to the arbitrary association between “women” and “vulnerability”, and between “men” and “stoic”, we have created a society in which men do not know how to properly address their emotions and ask for help. We have also raised generations of women who are uncomfortable saying no to men. Again, these are not universal rules, but they are general trends supported by the data. The result is that men release their frustration in violent ways while women become the primary victims of crimes such as domestic abuse, sexual assault, and rape. Social expectations may be arbitrary, but they have real implications.
By now, I hope that I have sufficiently demonstrated the existence of the patriarchy. As we have seen, men tend to occupy high positions of power while women are statistically vulnerable to domestic and sexual abuse. However, this only covers one half of Finlayson’s definition of feminism. The second half is an opposition to the patriarchy, so I will take a moment to explain why I disapprove of it. It may seem odd to think that this is a case that needs to be made, but a scarily high number of people still honestly believe that men and women should dominate different spheres of life – typically dividing the work so that men have most of the power in politics, legislation, medicine, business, and public life.
One tactic I find useful in determining the fairness of a situation is John Rawls’ veil of ignorance. It goes roughly as follows: imagine you are given the job to design a new society. You get to determine who gets what resources and how much; you say who does what kind of work; you choose the rights and duties assigned to each citizen and the punishment for breaking the law. Once you are satisfied with your design, you will enter the new society you have crafted. There is only one catch: you don’t know whose position you will have once you enter. You don’t know if you will be rich or poor, man or woman, healthy or sick, or ignorant or intelligent. Your background and identity will be random, and you will be subject to the rules that you have drafted behind your “veil of ignorance”. Once you enter, there is no turning back. You will be stuck in your position with the laws you have dictated. How would you design such a society?
Rawls thought that our ignorance about our position in society would ensure that our biases wouldn’t cause us to mistreat any group too harshly since, once we entered, we may find ourselves in the unprivileged group. The result would be a more fair, just, and equitable society that treats everyone with basic respect. It is the same rationale as when a mother tells one child to cut the cake but gives the second child the right to choose the first piece. As a result, the first child will try much harder to cut the cake into two equal sizes. One analysis of Rawls’ thought experiment elaborates that “Two primary principles supplement Rawls’ veil of ignorance: the liberty principle and the difference principle. According to the liberty principle, the social contract should try to ensure that everyone enjoys the maximum liberty possible without intruding upon the freedom of others. According to the difference principle, the social contract should guarantee everyone an equal opportunity to prosper” (McCombs School of Business). These principles seem intuitive; if you were behind the veil of ignorance, and you knew that there is a chance that you could end up in the group with the fewest rights or opportunities, then the rational, self-interested individual would design a society where everyone has equal rights. This would maximize your own chances of being able to live a happy, fulfilling life.
Applying this to our modern society, the only moral conclusion from a Rawlsian point of view is to strongly oppose the patriarchy. If I were to be placed behind a veil of ignorance and asked to enter America without knowing what my gender would be, then of course I would take some extra time to ensure that the system was more equitable. This issue would be especially pressing considering that more than half of the U.S. population are women! If I decided to enter society as is, then it would actually be more likely that the patriarchy would oppress rather than benefit me. It would seem foolish to take that chance.
Given the two components, it makes sense to call myself a feminist as Finlayson describes. I both recognize that the patriarchy exists and oppose it on philosophical grounds. I know that women make less money than men for similar work, even after accounting for factors such as parenthood and career choices. I know that women occupy far fewer positions of power than men. I know that men commit far more crime and that women are the predominant victims of sexual assault and gender discrimination, likely due to the socialization of boys and girls from a young age. I know that the Rawlsian position on such a system is crystal clear; it should be dismantled immediately. There is no way around it. I am a feminist. It’s the only rational conclusion.
Works Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists . Anchor Books, 2015.
Ariella, Sky. "25 Women in Leadership Statistics [2023]: Facts on the Gender Gap in Corporate and Political Leadership." Zippia (2022).
Aronson, Pamela. "Feminists or "Postfeminists"?: Young Women's Attitudes toward Feminism and Gender Relations." Gender and Society (2003): 903-922.
Finlayson, Lorna. An Introduction to Feminism. Cambridge University Press , 2016.
Greenfeld, Lawrence A. and Tracy L. Snell. "Women Offenders." 1999.
McCombs School of Business. Veil of Ignorance. 2023. 25 January 2023.
Meara, Katie, Francesco Pastore and Allan Webster. "The gender pay gap in the USA: a matching study." Journal of Population Economics (2020): 271-305.
No comments:
Post a Comment