In chapter 6, Okin presents four major arguments against the public/private dichotomy. First he argues that power is of importance to family. The occurrences of both domestic and personal life are greatly influenced by power. Secondly, the state keeps interfering with family life, by for instance imposing regulations that deter women from divorcing or living separately from their husbands. Political decisions define and affect the existence of a domestic sphere. She goes on to argue that it’s definite that private life provides a platform for humans to socialize and develop their gender. The fourth argument is that the nature of our gender structured families’ results in division of labor; which ultimately acts as a barrier for women both practically and psychologically to excel in other spheres of life.
The family can be viewed as a political institution. This is because the existing differences between men and women result from the division of labor present in families. Women and girls are more oriented towards motherhood and nurturing whereas men and boys are more oriented towards attaining a public status in the society .
The family is unjust not only to women but also to children. In chapter 8, Okin provides recommendations on how to make a family a more just institution. One of the recommendations is working towards the elimination of women and children vulnerability by having a future that is not gender based. Where men and women alike should be able to access paid or unpaid labor as well as both productive and unproductive work. Providing high quality and affordable day care services to children is one of the recommendations towards ensuring a more just society towards women and children. This way, women will not have to abandon working in order to take care of children. She also recommends that from birth up to one year of a child’s life, employees both male and female should be granted flexible working hours and also be permitted to work at part time until the baby attains seven years.
One of the policies that can be adopted is establishing affordable day care services where children can be taken care of as both parents engage in productive work. Another policy that can be enacted is compelling big organizations/ companies to establish high quality day care services within their premises for infants until they attain the school going age. This way the parents who are employees of these organizations will record high productivity since they will not need to waste time to go check on their babies at a distant day care center.
In my opinion, the policy that allows parents to work for flexible hours and on part time basis until the child attains the age of seven years is a little exaggerated. This is going to impact heavily on the success of the organization since the worker’s productivity will decline. The organizations will suffer greatly if its staff has many women who are married and planning to start families. This duration should be reduced to until the child attains the age of three or four years .
There is a clear intersection between racial and class with gender inequality. While class inequality highlights the differences in privileges among individuals with regard to access to economic resources. For instance, while feminists discuss issues of gender discrimination, they rarely talk about economic issues that plague the lower classes . The struggle within low class women is massive within the US society, and feminists have to consider these class issues genuinely if there is to be achieved real progress in equality . Issues of class and gender are widened by the widening pay gap . In my opinion, the issue of gender inequality cannot be successfully addressed by generalizing all women. Differences in class, race and socioeconomic status have to be critically put into consideration in order to effectively tackle the issue of gender inequality and other forms of inequality.
References
Flanagan, C. (2004, March). How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement. Retrieved from The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/03/how-serfdom-saved-the-women-s-movement/302892/
Geier, K. (2014, June 11). Does Feminism Have a Class Problem? Retrieved from The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/article/does-feminism-have-class-problem/
MILLER, C. C. (2016, January 15). How to Bridge That Stubborn Pay Gap. Retrieved from The New York Times: The Upshot: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/upshot/how-to-bridge-that-stubborn-pay-gap.html?_r=0&mtrref=undefined&gwh=2CD5A1AC44D48749FFB8D69CAB44E8E3&gwt=pay
Okin, S. M. (1989). Justice,gender and family. Basic Books.
