Are Feminists Right to Claim that "The Personal is Political"?
“The Personal is Political” became a feminist slogan during the 1960s and 1970s. In its most extreme form this concept included a complete overlap of the personal and political realms, or, that is to say, that no distinction could be made between them at all. The relationship between personal circumstances and public institutions is more complex than can be captured in the traditional public-private divide that they argue is infused in liberal political theory. While feminist writers vary on what they conceive to be the relationship between the two and to what extent a public private divide can be a helpful concept, it can be said that the personal political divide is at the heart of feminist theory. “The dichotomy between the public and the private is ultimately, what the feminist movement is about.” (Pateman) This essay will first examine the nature of the public-private divide as the idea is understood in liberal theory. It will then explore feminists’ arguments that the concept obscures gender inequalities, and why that flaw leads to the continued oppression of women in our society. Finally it will examine some feminist conclusions.
Hanna Pitkin argues that we traditionally differentiate the public and private spheres in any of three ways. The first is the amount of access or attention given to an issue. “Private” problems are generally those we keep hidden, or expose only to a very limited number of people, often problems relating to our bodies. The second distinction relates to the impact of an issue. A problem often is thought “public” when it affects a sufficiently large number of people. The third is the dimension of control. Public matters are ones that are appropriate for government intervention. This third concept is most explicitly analogous to how the divide is understood in liberal theory. It can be seen in Aristotle’s division of justice in which men participate in political justice in the public sphere, and women participate only in “household justice” or the proper care and ordering of the domestic sphere. The dichotomy is restated and reflected in more modern liberal theories in the idea that the governments work stops at the front door of the home.
Liberalism holds that “so long as the public does not interfere autonomous
individuals interact freely and equally.” (MacKinnon) The hands-off liberal attitude towards the “private sphere” comes from a concern for personal autonomy. It is supposed to protect against government tyranny and allow for freedoms of personal expression, religious practices, and other areas of life that are deemed inappropriate for public interference. Indeed, it seems the public private dichotomy is an essential feature of political liberalism. But even so, why is this issue important for feminism?
First, Public situations have private consequences, and especially so in the case of women. Feminists argue that the public sphere can never stop at the front door of the home. “Personal circumstances are structured by public factors, by laws about rape and abortion, by the status of ‘wife,’ by policies on childcare and the allocation of welfare benefits and the sexual division of labor in the home and workplace. ‘Personal’ problems thus can be solved only through political means and political action.” (Pateman) The government creates, or at least helps to secure, the social circumstances that determine our private lives, and it does so actively and intentionally. This is because the idea of a public private dichotomy is misguided in an important way. Social structures like the family are not a separate entity for which the state has no concern. These domestic institutions are at the very heart of our civil society. The debate currently raging in the United States concerning the legality of homosexual unions and the “protection of the institution of marriage” is a good example of unabashed state interference in the domestic realm.
Next, private situations have public consequences. A major objection of feminism to the public-private dichotomy is that it obscures gender inequalities in the private sphere, especially those present in deeply entrenched social institutions like the nuclear family. Susan Okin asks how “theories of justice that are obstensibly about people in general neglect women, gender, and all the inequalities between the sexes?” Liberal theories, she argues, do this in two ways: first, by hiding the gender structured family, and second, by using hollow gender neutral language.
Okin argues that any political theory that presupposes (as Rawls’ does) the existence of the nuclear family, as it is currently experienced, and the merit of that domestic arrangement will necessarily discriminate against women. When one looks inside the concept of the family we find enormous inequalities, especially of labor. It is conceived to be the natural place of the woman to raise the children, prepare the meals, serve as a moral steward and maintain domestic order. It seems strange that these “private” inequalities are somehow less problematic for proponents of justice than political inequalities, especially if we acknowledge their practical consequences in the public sphere. Women have far less time for paid work in this system, often leaving them financially dependent on their husbands. Additionally women have less time (and therefore less power) to participate in politics.
The gender neutral language of political theorists is merely superficial, and in that way harmful. Liberals might argue that they are advocating certain freedoms that pertain to “people in general” and not only men. This gender neutrality ignores the fact that people in general do not exist. There are only men and women, who are necessarily differentiated by irreducible biological differences, and that these differences have real consequences for the distribution of social roles. Unless the inequality of these social roles is specifically addressed it will remain. This argument leads us to Okin’s thesis. “Until there is justice within the family, women will not be able to gain equality in politics, at work, or in any other sphere.”
A discussion of power, it seems, would inform our examination. The liberal public-private dichotomy makes some important assumptions about power. In the public realm individuals are subjected to the power of the government. In the private realm then, they are free, not subjected to any power other than that they exercise on themselves. We have seen, in our discussion of the family, that this is not the case. In the private sphere women are subjects, in ways entrenched by the family, to their husbands. But it is also helpful to consider the important ways in which women are constantly subjected to the power exercised by society itself over them by virtue of norms and standards created in a patriarchal system according to the demands of men. In short, men, who “properly inhabit and rule within both [public and private] spheres,” have set up society according to their wants, and women then play according to those rules. (Pateman) In this way “society is that curiously hybrid realm where private interests assume public significance.” (Pitkin)
Power is being exercised upon women all the time, in both the private and public spheres. Catherine MacKinnon argues that the political structure is set up not to ensure equality to all, but to ensure that the power structure of men over women remains intact in both. The liberal emphasis on keeping the public out of the private is an essential tool to this affect.
In the US Supreme Court decision in Row v Wade the court justified allowing women to receive abortions because that was deemed a private area unfit for government intervention. MacKinnon argues that the case was set up to allow women to avoid the biological consequences of intercourse, but as women are still subservient to their husbands, this merely “denied women one of the reasons they used to have to legitimize refusing sex.” The only difference that Roe v. Wade made for women was whether decisions about their bodies were made by “a man of The Man,” and that it was simply keeping “some men out of the bedrooms of other men.” Privacy rights are of no use to women who have no privacy to lose or guarantee. The absence of government in the private realm merely eliminates a woman’s ability to appeal to the government for protection from a certain kind of discrimination. The First Amendment protects a “sphere of social power so sexism.”
Different Feminist authors reach varying conclusions, but most share some important strands. Among the most important is the need for a change in the domestic order of things. If we cannot have a just social structure until we have a just basic social unit, we need to look inside that unit and make some changes. “If women are to participate fully, as equals, in social life, men have to share equally in childrearing and other domestic tasks. While women are identified with this ‘private’ work their public status is always undermined.” (Pateman) It follows, then, that the public-private dichotomy cannot remain in a just society (or at least not an excessively strict one). A more appropriate concept of ‘citizenship’ might be adopted in which leading a proper civic life included sharing duties in the domestic sphere. Hanna Pitkin eloquently advocates a vision of a new public life in which we recognize the social forces that exercise power over individuals at every level of their lives, and act to take control of them. This requires shrugging off the old bounds of ‘personal’ and ‘political’ that have confused the discourse. I conclude by quoting her at length:
“We cannot even begin to direct the drift of social forces unless we see those forces truly and deliberate about them in our public forums. Insofar as the polis citizen did not really see the slaves and women around him. Did not count them as persons like himself, he did not know himself or his community well, and he was not just. Our public life is an empty form unless it actively engages in the unplanned drift and the private social power that shapes people’s lives … It is no use banishing the body or the social question from public life; we do not rid ourselves of their power in that way … What we need here is not separation but linkage. It is the connection that matters, the transformation of social conditions into political issues.”
Hanna Pitkin argues that we traditionally differentiate the public and private spheres in any of three ways. The first is the amount of access or attention given to an issue. “Private” problems are generally those we keep hidden, or expose only to a very limited number of people, often problems relating to our bodies. The second distinction relates to the impact of an issue. A problem often is thought “public” when it affects a sufficiently large number of people. The third is the dimension of control. Public matters are ones that are appropriate for government intervention. This third concept is most explicitly analogous to how the divide is understood in liberal theory. It can be seen in Aristotle’s division of justice in which men participate in political justice in the public sphere, and women participate only in “household justice” or the proper care and ordering of the domestic sphere. The dichotomy is restated and reflected in more modern liberal theories in the idea that the governments work stops at the front door of the home.
Liberalism holds that “so long as the public does not interfere autonomous
individuals interact freely and equally.” (MacKinnon) The hands-off liberal attitude towards the “private sphere” comes from a concern for personal autonomy. It is supposed to protect against government tyranny and allow for freedoms of personal expression, religious practices, and other areas of life that are deemed inappropriate for public interference. Indeed, it seems the public private dichotomy is an essential feature of political liberalism. But even so, why is this issue important for feminism?
First, Public situations have private consequences, and especially so in the case of women. Feminists argue that the public sphere can never stop at the front door of the home. “Personal circumstances are structured by public factors, by laws about rape and abortion, by the status of ‘wife,’ by policies on childcare and the allocation of welfare benefits and the sexual division of labor in the home and workplace. ‘Personal’ problems thus can be solved only through political means and political action.” (Pateman) The government creates, or at least helps to secure, the social circumstances that determine our private lives, and it does so actively and intentionally. This is because the idea of a public private dichotomy is misguided in an important way. Social structures like the family are not a separate entity for which the state has no concern. These domestic institutions are at the very heart of our civil society. The debate currently raging in the United States concerning the legality of homosexual unions and the “protection of the institution of marriage” is a good example of unabashed state interference in the domestic realm.
Next, private situations have public consequences. A major objection of feminism to the public-private dichotomy is that it obscures gender inequalities in the private sphere, especially those present in deeply entrenched social institutions like the nuclear family. Susan Okin asks how “theories of justice that are obstensibly about people in general neglect women, gender, and all the inequalities between the sexes?” Liberal theories, she argues, do this in two ways: first, by hiding the gender structured family, and second, by using hollow gender neutral language.
Okin argues that any political theory that presupposes (as Rawls’ does) the existence of the nuclear family, as it is currently experienced, and the merit of that domestic arrangement will necessarily discriminate against women. When one looks inside the concept of the family we find enormous inequalities, especially of labor. It is conceived to be the natural place of the woman to raise the children, prepare the meals, serve as a moral steward and maintain domestic order. It seems strange that these “private” inequalities are somehow less problematic for proponents of justice than political inequalities, especially if we acknowledge their practical consequences in the public sphere. Women have far less time for paid work in this system, often leaving them financially dependent on their husbands. Additionally women have less time (and therefore less power) to participate in politics.
The gender neutral language of political theorists is merely superficial, and in that way harmful. Liberals might argue that they are advocating certain freedoms that pertain to “people in general” and not only men. This gender neutrality ignores the fact that people in general do not exist. There are only men and women, who are necessarily differentiated by irreducible biological differences, and that these differences have real consequences for the distribution of social roles. Unless the inequality of these social roles is specifically addressed it will remain. This argument leads us to Okin’s thesis. “Until there is justice within the family, women will not be able to gain equality in politics, at work, or in any other sphere.”
A discussion of power, it seems, would inform our examination. The liberal public-private dichotomy makes some important assumptions about power. In the public realm individuals are subjected to the power of the government. In the private realm then, they are free, not subjected to any power other than that they exercise on themselves. We have seen, in our discussion of the family, that this is not the case. In the private sphere women are subjects, in ways entrenched by the family, to their husbands. But it is also helpful to consider the important ways in which women are constantly subjected to the power exercised by society itself over them by virtue of norms and standards created in a patriarchal system according to the demands of men. In short, men, who “properly inhabit and rule within both [public and private] spheres,” have set up society according to their wants, and women then play according to those rules. (Pateman) In this way “society is that curiously hybrid realm where private interests assume public significance.” (Pitkin)
Power is being exercised upon women all the time, in both the private and public spheres. Catherine MacKinnon argues that the political structure is set up not to ensure equality to all, but to ensure that the power structure of men over women remains intact in both. The liberal emphasis on keeping the public out of the private is an essential tool to this affect.
In the US Supreme Court decision in Row v Wade the court justified allowing women to receive abortions because that was deemed a private area unfit for government intervention. MacKinnon argues that the case was set up to allow women to avoid the biological consequences of intercourse, but as women are still subservient to their husbands, this merely “denied women one of the reasons they used to have to legitimize refusing sex.” The only difference that Roe v. Wade made for women was whether decisions about their bodies were made by “a man of The Man,” and that it was simply keeping “some men out of the bedrooms of other men.” Privacy rights are of no use to women who have no privacy to lose or guarantee. The absence of government in the private realm merely eliminates a woman’s ability to appeal to the government for protection from a certain kind of discrimination. The First Amendment protects a “sphere of social power so sexism.”
Different Feminist authors reach varying conclusions, but most share some important strands. Among the most important is the need for a change in the domestic order of things. If we cannot have a just social structure until we have a just basic social unit, we need to look inside that unit and make some changes. “If women are to participate fully, as equals, in social life, men have to share equally in childrearing and other domestic tasks. While women are identified with this ‘private’ work their public status is always undermined.” (Pateman) It follows, then, that the public-private dichotomy cannot remain in a just society (or at least not an excessively strict one). A more appropriate concept of ‘citizenship’ might be adopted in which leading a proper civic life included sharing duties in the domestic sphere. Hanna Pitkin eloquently advocates a vision of a new public life in which we recognize the social forces that exercise power over individuals at every level of their lives, and act to take control of them. This requires shrugging off the old bounds of ‘personal’ and ‘political’ that have confused the discourse. I conclude by quoting her at length:
“We cannot even begin to direct the drift of social forces unless we see those forces truly and deliberate about them in our public forums. Insofar as the polis citizen did not really see the slaves and women around him. Did not count them as persons like himself, he did not know himself or his community well, and he was not just. Our public life is an empty form unless it actively engages in the unplanned drift and the private social power that shapes people’s lives … It is no use banishing the body or the social question from public life; we do not rid ourselves of their power in that way … What we need here is not separation but linkage. It is the connection that matters, the transformation of social conditions into political issues.”
posted by John Powell at 4:00 PM
