Rumblings On An Old Fault Line In The Struggle For Women’s Rights

One of the oldest, and most interesting, conflicts among supporters of civil rights is the struggle between feminists who sought “protective legislation” for women (limiting hours, working conditions, etc., for women) and feminists who sought gender-blind equality. A nice, succinct summary of this conflict can be found here, ironically, at a library at the University of Michigan:

When the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution was proposed in 1923, it created a rift among suffragists. Women who had fought for protective labor legislation feared that the ERA would undo their efforts to protect women in the workplace, while feminists believed the amendment was necessary to bring about equality for women in American society. The opposition to the amendment by women who otherwise supported women’s rights persisted through mid-century, as is illustrated in the records of organizations such as the National Consumers League. In the 1960s and 1970s the women’s liberation movement began to produce new views of the ERA and renewed support for the amendment.

Alas, this paragraph is now dated. The equal rights feminists of NOW, etc., who by this and virtually all other accounts had won this debate and banished the “protective legislation” feminists to a quaint footnote in histories of feminism, have now (or NOW) abandoned their victory, backtracked, picked up the tattered principles of their vanquished former foes, and are now giving full-throated, often shrill, voice to the notion that women, poor little shrinking violets, must have special privileges to protect them from competition on equal terms with men.

Indeed, in Michigan it appears that the leaders of the fight to preserve special preferences for minorities and women have all but forgotten minorities, and the shibboleth of “diversity” that is supposed to justify giving them special privileges in admission and hiring, and turned all their energies to predicting that the sky will fall on women if preferential treatment is barred. (I have discussed this phenomenon quite often, such as here, here, and here.)

But wait a minute. Lest I be accused of failing to practice what I preach, let me hasten to point out that in abandoning the gender-blind egalitarian principle that led to their triumph over the “protective legislation” feminists — also known as “difference” feminists, in a familiar twist, because they thought women were not simply “workers with breasts,” as the Marxists were fond of saying, but were purer than men — the gender-blind equality feminists were not unique, or “different.” They simply emulated the abandonment of the principle of race-blind equality and the adoption of pleas for special preferences that characterized the larger civil rights movement.

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  1. actus June 22, 2006 at 5:48 pm | | Reply

    “also known as “difference” feminists, in a familiar twist, because they thought women were not simply “workers with breasts,” as the Marxists were fond of saying, but were purer than men”

    which feminists think women are purer than men?

  2. Dom June 22, 2006 at 10:26 pm | | Reply

    “which feminists think women are purer than men?”

    It’s easy to find examples. Here is one, which I offer as a joke. From Sexism and God-Talk:

    “Romanticism comes close to reversing the traditional patriarchal correlation of imago dei and fallen humanity with spiritual maleness and carnal femaleness. Instead it is the female who represents, in a purer and less ambiguous way, the original goodness of humanity as imago dei. This does not mean that men do not also possess this good human nature originally. But because they have to enter the sphere of power, competition, and sin, the good human nature becomes obscured in men. Men, as makers of history, take on the nature of historical humanity characterized by force and domination. Women, as those forbidden to enter the sphere of force and domination, retain more of the original purity and goodness of human nature. Women, shielded from history, are less fallen than men. They are more capable of altruistic, loving, self-giving life, less prone to the sins of egoism that are a sinful but necessary part of historical existence.”

  3. actus June 23, 2006 at 10:40 am | | Reply

    “Here is one, which I offer as a joke. ”

    Oh. A christian feminist. No surprise they’re still concerned with being better than others.

  4. Federal Dog June 25, 2006 at 7:24 am | | Reply

    “Oh. A christian feminist. No surprise they’re still concerned with being better than others.”

    Irony, anyone?

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