Deconstructing Gender [1989]

Mid-century feminism, now often referred to somewhat derisively as assim-ilationism, focused on providing opportunities to women in realms traditionally preserved for men. In the 1980s two phenomena have shifted feminists' attention from assimilationists' focus on how individual women are like men to a focus on gender differences, on how women as a group differ from men as a group. The first is the feminization of poverty, which dramatizes the chronic and increasing economic vulnerability of women. Feminists now realize that the assimilationists' traditional focus on gender-neutrality may have rendered women more vulnerable to certain gender-related disabilities that have important economic consequences. The second phenomenon that plays a central role in the current feminist imagination is that of career women "choosing" to abandon or subordinate their careers so they can spend time with their small children. The approach of deconstructing gender requires women to give up their claims to special virtue.