ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the feminist critique of privacy doctrine, developed in the context of the abortion issue, and the feminist critique of equality doctrine, developed in the context of assessing legal responses to oppression in employment. It highlights the parallels between the two critiques. Feminist critiques of privacy and equality coincide with this judicial retreat and may in part be motivated by it. The chapter argues that despite the defects in privacy as currently constituted, the doctrine is not beyond redemption. Feminists should work to alter the doctrine's emphasis on the historic separation between state and home to a new emphasis on autonomy and personhood. The chapter recognizes that feminist commentators have identified genuine risks posed by continued appeals to equality. It addresses the premise that underlies much of the feminist critiques of both privacy and equality: that feminist should have a unified legal approach to address all social subordination of women.
