ABSTRACT
Of all struggles for equality, the one that has perhaps met with the most success is the struggle for equality between men and women. Of course, sexual inequality remains acute in many non-Western countries, and women and men remain unequal in the West too: women continue to earn, on average, less than men; women continue to do a disproportionate share of childcare and housework; and women are still the victims of sexual violence. But it is striking how much in a mere generation or two social attitudes have changed. Whereas my mother grew up assuming her destiny was solely to be a wife and mother, my daughter assumes that any walk of life is open to her. Of course, the dominant beliefs of a generation are not necessarily accurate guides to the reality of social forces. My mother became a high-ranking civil servant later in life and thus turned out to have more options than she once supposed, whereas my optimistic daughter will undoubtedly discover her opportunities are more constrained than she realised. Nonetheless it is now a commonplace belief that men and women are more or less equal in ability and equally entitled to pursue opportunities in the public and private domains, a belief that would have been thought radical not long ago. And this belief is expressed in real moves towards equality: women’s higher participation in employment, and in high-earning and high-status positions; more gender parity in housework and childcare; and women’s greater self-determination in the experience of sexual relations and in matters of reproduction. There is, however, a paradox. If the feminist movement has made the greatest strides in the pursuit of equality, it must also be said that recent feminist theory has been suspicious of the concept’s value. Feminists have argued that the ideal of equality, by occluding sexual difference, has ended up repressing femininity and disempowering women, rather than producing a society where both masculinity and femininity can flourish. In this chapter, I consider the problem of equality and wellbeing in light of the debate about sexual difference. I argue that the seemingly intractable questions of gender need not be solved in order for us to make progress on equality. If we instead focus on human flourishing, we can illuminate the obstacles to equality posed by gender and sex, thereby opening up an inclusive egalitarianism that seeks justice for all.
