ABSTRACT
Feminist legal theory has been primarily reactive, responding to the development of legal racial equality theory. Instead of equality, Elizabeth Wolgast, suggests seeking justice, claiming special rights for women based on their special needs. If a law, practice, or policy contributes to the subordination of women or their domination by men, it violates equality. If it empowers women or contributes to the breakdown of male domination, it enhances equality. Asymmetrical equality theorists have usually been taken to mean that male institutions should take account of women’s differences by accommodating those differences. The various models of equality arise out of common feminist goals and enterprises: trying to imagine what a sexually equal society would look like, given that none of us has ever seen one; and trying to figure out ways of getting there, given that the obstacles to sexual equality are so many and so strong.
