ABSTRACT
Until very recently, feminism has always been ethically naturalist, arguing from facts to values, as befits the belief system of a liberation movement. Facts: in most respects women are similar to men, and in those respects should be treated similarly, other things being equal. Where there are no ontological grounds for doing so, different treatment constitutes mistreatment.1 For example, women’s intellects and reproductive systems are functionally separable, as are men’s, so banning women from higher education in the nineteenth century on the grounds that too much brainwork would bring about the shrivelling of breasts and wombs was unjust (Sayers 1982). Facts: in some respects women are different from men, and similar treatment disadvantages them. Values: other things being equal, in those respects women should be treated differently in appropriate ways. For example, unlike men’s, women’s reproduction necessarily involves for a period of time a close physical contact with another being, a relationship whose flourishing is partly incompatible with capitalist conditions of work. Over the life cycle, ‘equal’ treatment on the labour market disadvantages women, so equity requires various forms of ‘positive action’ and ‘positive discrimination’, or a reworking of the relationship between waged work and childcare.2 The details of all of this are highly contested, for example, between Marxist feminists and ecofeminists, and between different strands within each of these and other approaches, but the structure of the argument remains the same.
