Social Justice and the Gendered Division of Labour

The ‘Capability Approach’ is a framework that offers us a multidimensional account of well-being which focuses on what people can do and who they can be, such as the real opportunities they have to enjoy high-quality education, hold a job, have supporting and warm social relationships, care for their relatives and friends, enjoy good health, be mobile, and so forth. This framework is increasingly used by scholars working on the gender dimensions of well-being, social justice and the design of social policies (see Agarwal, Humphries and Robeyns 2005, Benería 2008, Lewis and Giuliari 2005, Nussbaum 2000, Picchio 2003a, Robeyns 2003, 2007a, Unterhalter 2003, 2007). It also informs several of the chapters that appear elsewhere in this volume. In this chapter, I will discuss the usefulness of the Capability Approach for one key topic within gender studies and feminist advocacy: the gendered division of labour. For feminists, it is generally obvious that there are still many injustices against women, especially that the traditional gendered division of labour, or its ‘updated’ version – with the wife holding a part-time job whilst being primarily responsible for the household, the husband holding a full-time job whilst ‘helping out’ his wife in the home – is unjust to women. ¹ The term ‘gendered division of labour’ is used here to refer to the way men and women divide all the paid and unpaid work within their households. ² Feminist philosophers, economists, sociologists and other scholars all share the conviction that the traditional gendered division of labour is unjust, and often argue that it is one of the core mechanisms, perhaps even the single most important causal mechanism, of patriarchy and the persistence of gender inequality. However, to non-feminist political philosophers or analytical political theorists who specialize in analysing claims of social justice, this is not evident at all. ³ These theorists typically demand arguments which can answer all possible objections against the belief that the gendered division of labour is unjust. They consider such arguments lacking in the literature because those who are concerned with the gendered division of labour (that is, feminists) find it such an obvious truth that they do not feel the need to spell it out in great depth.