Equality/difference — the feminist debate

A debate emerged within feminism about whether its political goal was gender equality or whether women’s differences, from men and each

other, needed to be valued. Although feminists can be grouped into those with equality or difference stances, this tends to oversimplify the way such ideas have been used within feminism. Often individual feminists might at different times employ both equality and difference arguments. For example, if campaigning for equal pay then their argument might be that women can do a job the same as a man and should be paid the same. However, when discussing maternity leave there may be a need to draw attention to women as different from men because of their ability to bear children. Claims that the workforce should allow for and value this difference might be politically appropriate (see Bacchi, 1990).

Arguably, however, those who consistently focus on equality are likely to be liberal feminists, while an attention to women’s difference from men is typically part of a radical stance. Equality feminists are usually interested in reform within the present system. If the goal is equality of opportunity to compete for hierarchically distributed resources then there is likely to be little attention given to fostering equality for all women and radical social change is not contemplated (Evans, 1995: 15). In contrast, radicals are highly critical of present social systems in which women, and all associated with them, are devalued because of their difference from men. Men are seen as the standard, the norm against which women are measured and usually found lacking. But if women are different, of what does that differ­ence consist? I will discuss elsewhere (especially in Chapters 2 and 5) debates about whether there is an essence common to all women, which distinguishes them from men. Claiming that women are different can fall into biological essentialism whereby bodies are supposed to determine ways of thinking and being. However, when feminists accentuate difference they rarely propose that anatomy is destiny. In most cases, while recognizing that female bodies may provide experiences (such as menstruation) that male bodies do not, the emphasis is usually on the way that these bodily (and other) experiences have been constructed within patriarchy. For example, a focus on women’s generally smaller and lighter bodies might be seen not as ‘natural’ but as brought about by centuries of male domination in which women are typically allocated and expected to eat less food. The smallness of women may partly be passed on genetically but will be

reinforced by sociocultural eating practices. Difference theorists might also question whether heaviness and largeness should be seen as superior, espe­cially when the maintenance of such physiques and their power over the small might be used to continue to justify men’s larger share of food resources. The problem with difference then is not difference itself, but the fact that under patriarchy women’s supposed difference has been con­structed as inferior. In order to bring about radical political change, it is argued that the entire patriarchal system needs to be overthrown. Competitiveness, aggression, individualism and other ‘masculine’ values are reinforced if women merely campaign for equality on men’s terms. Rather, values associated with women, such as care, should be celebrated and encouraged in all people.

When difference is thought of as difference from men, this tends to universalize ‘women’ and remove them from specific historical and cul­tural contexts. Though the radical implications of celebrating ‘womanly’ virtues are seductive, the virtues recommended may be historically and culturally specific. What is ‘womanly’ in one culture or time may be ‘manly’ in another, as discussed in Chapter 2. The typical emphasis on care as a key womanly virtue in modern Western society can also be highly problematic given that this ‘virtue’ has been central to women’s oppression and possibly produced by that oppression (Evans, 1995: 19). This does not mean it is bad that many women believe in caring for others and possibly devote themselves to doing so. It means that women are often compelled into taking on caring duties because other options are closed to them and because the pressure for them to do so is immense. Certainly within contemporary Western societies men benefit consider­ably from not having the expectation or the work of caring placed on them. So both a focus on equality and a focus on difference have their problems, but consideration of both has been crucial within feminism.

Equality and difference strands have existed throughout the feminist political movement and certainly in Western second-wave feminism, involved trying to understand differences between women. I do not accept that in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a cosy sisterhood focused on changing the world for women, which was later broken up by naughty black, lesbian, working class and ‘other’ feminists who unhelpfully accentuated different identities and priorities among women (Holmes, 2004). Feminism has always been a debate, one overly dominated by white Western feminists, but one in which feminists of ‘different’ colours, sexual orientations, classes, abilities and so on have always participated. These identities often overlapped (if you were a black, working class lesbian for example) and did not automatically produce a particular approach to feminism, though they may lead women to prioritize different issues. And women from different backgrounds often shared common political approaches. What emerged from these debates was that the connection between inequalities and identity was by no

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means clear and this prompted many feminists, and other scholars, to take a turn towards culture.