ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the new legal rights introduced to benefit women and some of the alleged moral rights used to justify demands for social reform by the women's rights movement. Feminists, sometimes influenced by Marxism, frequently distinguish between formal and real equality. Some feminists explain that no right could possibly be adequate to remedy the unjust treatment of women. The women's movement has traditionally struggled for equal rights; its goal has been for women to enjoy the same rights as those that men enjoy. Both feminists and their critics disagree among themselves about whether justice requires special rights as well as equal rights. The civil rights movement and the women's rights movement began by struggling for equal rights; their goal was the enjoyment of the same rights that white males already enjoyed. Many nonlegal institutions must be radically modified and our ways of thinking must be changed fundamentally before women can be fully liberated.
