Reconstructing Sexual Equality [1987]

Feminist legal theory has been primarily reactive, responding to the development of legal racial equality theory The form of response, however, has varied. One response has been to attempt to equate legal treatment of sex with that of race and deny that there are in fact any significant natural differences between women and men; in other words, to consider the two sexes symmetrically located with regard to any issue, norm, or rule. Feminists theorists frequently take the symmetrical approach to sexual equality, not as an ideal, but as the only way to avoid returning to separate spheres ideology. Asymmetrical approaches to sexual equality take the position that difference should not be ignored or eradicated. The phallocentricity of equality is most apparent in the extraordinary difficulty the legal system has had dealing with the fact that women conceive and bear children.