PAPER: FEMINIST AND AGENCY

FEMINIST AND AGENCY

Reference

TRACY ISAACS (2002) Feminism and Agency, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 32:sup1, 129-154, DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2002.10717585

I am going to understand feminist agency as women's ability to be effective agents against their own oppression. Pp 129

The paradox of feminist agency arises because feminist assumptions about women's socialization seem to entail that women's agency is compromised by sexist oppression. In particular, women's agency appears to be diminished in ways that interfere with their capacity for feminist action, that is, action against sexist oppression. Pp 129

Patriarchy subordinates women in two basic ways, thereby creating conditions of unjust inequality. The first is very literal: a patriarchal society offers women fewer opportunities than it offers men. In particular, women do not share equally in positions of power. The second way is more subtle: in our patriarchal society, we are subject to feminine socialization.3 This socialization encourages us to be passive, dependent, maternal and nurturing, concerned about others, compromising, unambitious, less competitive, disproportionately concerned about our physical attractiveness to men. In essence, it encourages us to accept a subordinate place in society, and indeed, hardly to recognize it as subordinate.  Pp 131

With this understanding of agency in hand, we can see that a patriarchal social structure impedes women's agency in two ways, and these mirror the ways in which it subordinates. First, it poses literal barriers. Women's opportunities are more restricted than men's, so women's range of action is compromised. Second, feminine socialization shapes women in ways that make them more likely to be dependent, not in control of significant parts of their lives, often coerced, at the mercy of social forces, often primarily concerned with the welfare of others, and typically in relation. Thus, given mainstream conceptions of moral agency, women's agency under patriarchy is compromised.  Pp 132

Feminist agency, that is, agency that would be effective against women's oppression, requires that we be active participants against our own subordination. The "properly" socialized woman will lack the ability to take such action to the extent that she is more concerned with others than herself, lacking control over her life, and dependent.

CONCLUSION

While reconceptions of the agent as a self-in-relation take us some distance towards addressing the issue of women's putative inferiority as moral agents, they do not really address the issue of how we can be effective in addressing our own oppression. My conception of the self-in-relation has a different emphasis from those with which most feminist ethicists will be familiar. In my view, the relevant relation is that to other women. Understanding ourselves in this way will achieve two goals. First, it will enable us to recognize patterns of experience because we'll be able to see our lives in the context of the lives of other women. Second, it will create opportunities for us to engage in effective agency against our circumstances of oppression because we can achieve more if we act together than if we act as individuals.