Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor 0198813074, 9780198813071

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor Gina Schouten

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Gina Schouten 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964548 ISBN 978–0–19–881307–1 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

For Jeff with love

Acknowledgments

This project has developed over the course of many years, and I have accumulated many debts along the way. It was born as my doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it is to the people I learned from there that I have most to thank for whatever is good about this book. The philosophical community at Wisconsin was an embarrassment of riches while I was there. For helpful instruction and conversations on this project, I would like especially to thank Claudia Card, Harry Brighouse, Dan Hausman, Robert Streiffer, Paul Kelleher, Russ Shafer-Landau, Paula Gottlieb, Jeff Behrends, Eric Stencil, Dan Schneider, Stewart Eskew, Shanna Slank, Hayley Clatterbuck, Joshua DiPaolo, Tara DiPaolo, Brynn Welch, Danielle Wylie, Michael Roche, Casey Helgeson, John Basl, Matthew Kopec, David O’ Brien, Ben Schwan, Patty Winspur, and Lori Grant. I will always be proud and grateful to have been a Badger philosopher. After leaving Wisconsin, I had the privilege of spending three years learning from and thinking with some wonderful colleagues at Illinois State University. I am grateful to those colleagues, and especially to David Sanson for being so supportive and invested a senior colleague and for helpful conversations about this project in particular. Most recently, I have been fortunate to receive thoughtful and very helpful feedback on the entire manuscript from my colleagues Christine Korsgaard and Tommie Shelby, and on significant parts of it from Bernhard Nickel, Tim Scanlon, and Lucas Stanczyk. During my final year working on the manuscript, I was thrilled to take part in three workshops during which many wonderful philosophers gave generously of their time to read the entire manuscript and discuss it with me. I am grateful to the participants at the manuscript workshop at Louvain University, especially Eszter Kollar, Vincent Aubert, Danielle Zwarthoed, Francois Boucher, and Axel Gosseries. Thanks to those who participated in the workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, especially Harry Brighouse, David O’Brien, Adam Pham, Emily Fletcher, Robert Streiffer, Marcos Picchio, Emma Prendergast, Lindsey Schwartz, Grace Gecewizc, Liz Fansler, and Berit Thorson. David O’Brien and Adam Pham provided written feedback on the entire draft, raising challenges that I hadn’t considered and that prompted serious

Acknowledgments

revisions at crucial points in the argument. Grappling with the challenges David and Adam posed made my work during the final months more difficult but also far more rewarding, and their feedback certainly improved the final product. Finally, thanks to participants of the manuscript workshop at the Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics at Georgia State University, and especially to Andrew Altman, Christie Hartley, Lori Watson, Amy Baehr, Seana Shiffrin, Clare Chambers, William Edmundson, Andrew I. Cohen, Eddy Nahmias, Suzie Love, and Katie Kirkland. The generosity of all the readers at these workshops has made the book far better than it otherwise would have been, and I thank them for their time, their criticism, and their insights. I have presented ideas that developed into this book at many conferences and workshops over the past decade. My debts to participants at those events are too many to name, but certain people stand out either because they were commentators or because they provided written feedback after the event. Thanks to Juliana Bidadanure, Debra Satz, Rob Reich, Artemis Seaford, Cynthia Stark, Andrew Williams, David Estlund, Peter Vallentyne, and Peter Vanderschraaf. Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press for referee reports that were both challenging and encouraging. Thanks to Dominic Byatt for his interest in my book and for all his editorial work to make it better. Christie Hartley and Lori Watson have been wonderful friends and mentors to me. Reading their work as a graduate student, I found it so compelling and important that naturally, I also found in it plenty that needed correcting. Disagreeing with them in print has turned out to be among my very best career moves, because it prompted them to invite me into their philosophical orbit, which is a wonderful place to be: intellectually stimulating, humane, and fun. Apart from their general support and encouragement, I am grateful for the time they have spent over the years reading drafts and providing comments, and for their genuine interest in helping me to make my work better. Thanks to David Concepción, my first philosophy teacher, who, when I was a freshman at Ball State University, first put it into my head that I might one day be a philosophy teacher myself. I can’t remember whether he ever raised the possibility explicitly, but he showed me what an empowering and supportive place a philosophy classroom can be, which made me want to live in that place and help to create it for others. My debt to Harry Brighouse extends far beyond the profound influence he had on my thinking during grad school. It extends far beyond the kindness and generosity he showed me as an advisor to a student too much in need of reassurance. It even extends beyond the countless hours he has spent supporting me since I left Wisconsin: reading my work and talking with me about it, providing advice (and yes, still reassurance), inviting me to conferences, viii

Acknowledgments

Skyping with my students, and helping me to become a more effective teacher. Mostly, I’m grateful to Harry for being a friend who knows me both as a philosopher and as a person, and who thinks always about how to do his job in light of the fact that his students are both. From Harry I am learning how to set priorities with integrity; how to be a more humane teacher, researcher, and colleague; and how to find philosophically rich terrain in issues that I care about as a non-philosopher, too. I have had the immense privilege of teaching and learning from many brilliant students at the University of Wisconsin, Illinois State, and Harvard. Talking with them about issues of gender justice has prompted new insights, and it has enabled me to work toward clearer articulations of central problems and of my own attempted solutions. I had the good fortune to hire two such brilliant students, Priten Shah and Olenka Jain, to help with indexing and editing, and to read my work and the work I was engaging with and discuss it with me. Thanks to Priten and Olenka for all their careful and diligent work, and, most importantly of all, for doing philosophy with me and making my work better as a result. My first and greatest dose of unearned good fortune was the family I grew up in. I’m sure all six of us would characterize our family culture differently, but in my mind, two of the clearest and most explicit convictions were these: There are no free lunches; you must work hard. And: You should find what makes you happy; you should do what you love. These messages aren’t inconsistent with one another, but it nonetheless strikes me as remarkable that I was able to learn a bit of the wisdom of hardship without ever having to experience it, and that I simultaneously had the great privilege of believing that I could choose what to work hard at. My parents’ encouragement to work hard doing what I love has been the touchstone of my life. I’m not sure they anticipated that it would lead me into a job that seems not really to be a job, but they have never faltered in their support, or in their conviction that I was worthy of it. I work hard at a “job” that brings me great joy every day, and for that I have my very first teachers to thank. Frank screamed his tiny way into my life six months before my deadline for this book, really just begging me to blame all its deficiencies on him. But the truth is that he may well have made it better by being such a better use of the time I would otherwise have spent obsessing over it. Whatever his effect on the quality of this book, I am certain that it’s Frank I have to thank for making those final days of writing it the very sweetest of my life. Of all my rich opportunities to travel to discuss my work with wonderful colleagues, and of all my good fortune in having wonderful colleagues in my home institutions to learn from, my very best trips are always my journeys home. For that, I have Jeff to thank. My most exciting, challenging, and rewarding philosophical conversations have always been the ones that ix

Acknowledgments

happen on our walks home from work, or in our kitchen while we make dinner. Those conversations and his brilliant feedback from tirelessly reading my work are reason enough to dedicate this book to him. My reason is less about his talents and generosity as a philosopher, though those are considerable. My reason is more about his goodness as a person and a partner. Thanks for making this possible, Jeff, and thanks for making it fun. Some of the arguments in this book draw on material from previously published papers. This is indicated in footnotes at the beginning of the relevant chapters. I am grateful to anonymous reviewers for their feedback on those papers, and to the publishers for allowing me to draw on them here.

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Introduction

In a diverse liberal democratic society, citizens will reasonably disagree about what justice demands. In an unjust society that aspires to become just, they will be unequally burdened by the political reforms necessary for that pursuit. This disagreement and unequal burdening seem to matter morally. They seem to bear on the steps such a society may permissibly take to bring about change. This book considers the moral constraints on political intervention to bring about change, given that citizens reasonably disagree about what constitutes change for the better, and given that they will be unequally burdened by the political steps we take to pursue it. I work out and defend a view about those constraints that is drawn from the fundamental commitments of a theory known as political liberalism. I examine those constraints by applying them to a particular aspect of the unjust status quo: the gendered division of labor. This is a book, then, about political liberalism, about the gendered division of labor, and, mostly, about a question that lies at their intersection: May we take political action to eradicate the gendered division of labor without violating the constraints on intrusive political action that a liberal democratic society ought to respect? Plenty of reasonable citizens think the gendered division of labor is perfectly just, and plenty more will be burdened by political interventions to erode it. Moreover, many of those burdened are not among those whom critics of the gendered division of labor regard as beneficiaries of the putative injustice under the status quo. Because some victims of the alleged injustice will bear disproportionate costs as we work politically toward remedying it, those costs cannot be dismissed as mere removal of unjust privilege. May we nonetheless pursue that controversial social end by exercising our shared power as democratic citizens through political intervention? I argue that we may, and that within that affirmative answer there are lessons to be learned about the gendered division of labor and about the theory that I use to assess it. This introductory chapter provides orientation—for the initiated and uninitiated alike—that will set the stage for what is to come. This is a work Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0009

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

of applied political philosophy, in which I hope to engage with and contribute to conversations among three constituencies: those interested in the theory (and in the application of it to gender inequality mostly or only insofar as that application sheds light on the theory); those interested in the application (and in the theory mostly or only insofar as it helps to answer questions or motivate reform in the area of application); and those who, like me, are interested in some combination of the theory, the application, the lessons about each that we can glean by engaging philosophically with the other, and the practical political questions we can answer well only by engaging philosophically with both.

0.1 The Gendered Division of Labor The gendered division of labor may at first seem an old-fashioned target of philosophical theorizing. Full-time homemaking has never been an option for many black women or for poor women, who have long worked outside the home, too often under very poor conditions and desperately wishing they had more time to spend with their children.1 Even among the white and middleclass women who have had the option to enact a “traditional” gendered division of labor, full-time homemaking has become far from the norm. This is due in part to changing circumstances. Many women have newly entered the paid labor force as declining real wages leave even fewer families able to survive on a single income. And as the percentage of children living with a single mother has increased in recent decades, still more women have gone to work out of economic necessity. In many other cases, women have gone to work because they have wanted to. Need and desire are not, of course, mutually exclusive. But even as many women have long worked for pay and many more have joined them in recent decades, equal sharing between women and men of unpaid caregiving work remains a long way off, both when we look at trends within households and when we look at caregiving performed by women and men more broadly. While men are, on average, doing more unpaid caregiving than they used to do, they still specialize heavily in paid labor, and their modestly increased share of caregiving is far outpaced by women’s increased involvement in paid work. Women are doing the vast majority of unpaid domestic work and a substantial share of breadwinning as well. Meanwhile, we’ll see, caregiving responsibilities have grown more time- and laborintensive, with increasingly high standards for adequate parental care of 1

2

See Davis 1983; hooks 2014; Collins 2008.

Introduction

children and a growing number of adults caring for young children and aging parents as well. Women’s lion’s share of caregiving is not equally distributed across groups of women, nor are the resources and support necessary to make it manageable. Class, race, and immigration status serve to disproportionality burden some women so that others may more easily navigate their caregiving responsibilities. Wealthy and middle-class women—most often, white women—are often able to outsource their caregiving responsibilities to poor women and women of color. Women’s disproportionate share of caregiving generates not only inequalities between women and men, then, but inequalities too between differently situated women. It is tempting to think that this all comes down to a problem with men: Men are intransigent, and they have been able to enforce their preference to do less than half of the caregiving and domestic work because they retain a larger share of bargaining power in most heterosexual domestic partnerships. Although this story has some truth in it, we will see that, as an explanation of the gendered division of labor’s persistence, it is far too simple. Many men now coming of age in liberal democracies support their partners’ work aspirations and want, for themselves, a larger role in caregiving. But social institutions are still designed around the breadwinner/homemaker ideal; they have not evolved to accommodate the reality of dual-earner households. Jobs are still structured as if workers have “someone else at home” to take care of domestic and caregiving work that demanding jobs leave little time for. Employers want—and feel entitled to—employees who can offer a kind of devotion to paid labor that is inconsistent with concurrently having serious caregiving responsibilities. This expectation that employees will heavily prioritize the demands of paid labor pervades not only elite careers but most decent full-time jobs. Jobs so structured do not suit those who do not have that someone else at home and who cannot afford to outsource the important work that that someone else might have done. Still less do they suit those who also are that someone else at home. As things stand, our institutional arrangements still largely hold families to devise their own solutions for balancing growing caregiving demands and growing demands of full-time paid labor. No adequate public support mechanism has arisen to facilitate shared solutions to the common problem of juggling work and family in an era of dual breadwinning. In the United States, part-time work isn’t a manageable option for most families, single- or twoparent, because healthcare and other essential social goods remain effectively tied to full-time employment. Meanwhile, caregiving is woefully undersupported, whether by way of subsidies for substitute care or by way of paid leave. A private market has arisen for outsourcing domestic and caregiving labor, but absent subsidy and thoughtful regulation, this is an adequate solution 3

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

only for the few and renders vulnerable the many who perform caregiving for (too little) pay. In short, domestic cooperation is still negotiated within a structure of social institutions built for specializers. The new normal in families’ strategies for managing that negotiation is a sort of partial compliance with those institutions. In this new normal of specialization-lite, men specialize in paid labor; their having a job is taken for granted and prioritized. Women act as earnercaregivers whose paid work is subordinated when the demands of work encroach upon caregiving responsibilities or, if the family cannot afford to subordinate either paid job, who must take on the bulk of the caregiving work on top of demanding work outside the home. In either case, the fact that women, on average, continue to perform the bulk of caregiving work makes it difficult for them to compete—or even to cope—on equal footing in paid labor. In myriad ways, women are disadvantaged in labor market competitions relative to men. But workplace obstacles aren’t the only noteworthy consequences of specialization-lite. The most vulnerable women are those whose connection to paid labor is tenuous, or who are outside the formal labor market altogether. Tenuous connection to labor markets leaves many women financially dependent upon partners, which in turn leaves those women susceptible to abuse. Meanwhile, their greater commitment to caregiving can render them unwilling to exit abusive relationships, because they are unwilling to subject dependents to the financial vulnerability and disruption that exiting would entail. While the gendered division of labor is hardly a new target of political theorizing, then, its timeliness has not expired. On the contrary, we will see that the modern-day gendered division of labor is deeply entrenched and that political remedies are needed if we are to bring about further significant erosion of it. Neither is the gendered division of labor a parochial topic of philosophical interest. I count myself among the feminists who regard the “traditional” family and its gendered division of labor as a linchpin of gender injustice. For me, this doesn’t mean that the domestic gendered division of labor is the worst or most objectionable aspect of gender injustice, or the aspect most urgently in need of remediation. Rather, it means that the gendered division of labor plays a crucial role in sustaining much else that is unjust about gender. The model of breadwinner/homemaker specialization within heterosexual marriages is the normalized picture of a proper cooperative domestic arrangement, despite the fact that plenty of people have long lived out alternative arrangements. Reforming social institutions and social norms so that they no longer take that picture for granted is a task we should undertake not only for women and men in heterosexual partnerships who want better options for sharing in caregiving and income-earning. We will see that much of what 4

Introduction

sustains the gendered division of labor is an institutionalized assumption that, on its face, is not gendered: the assumption that one partner will specialize in paid labor and one partner will support the family’s labor market participation by specializing in unpaid caregiving and other domestic work. Gender norms certainly influence families’ negotiation of the specialization assumption, and in turn, their compliance with it both explains and helps to sustain its institutional entrenchment. But the breadwinner/homemaker specialization assumption itself constrains same- and opposite-sex couples.2 Moreover, the normalized picture of domestic cooperation that the interventions I consider in this book aim to overturn imposes costs that extend far beyond the families who want to deviate from it only by avoiding (gendered) work specialization. If the institutionalized presumption of breadwinner/ homemaker specialization is out of sync with the many two-adult families whose members do not want to specialize, it is still more ill-suited to the families that deviate from the breadwinner/homemaker norm more completely still. In many single-parent families and in families with parents in the military, parents in prison or with felony convictions, ill or injured parents, or parents with disabilities, specialization often is not an option. In these cases, the institutionalized assumption that workers have “someone else at home” can be devastating. Women (or men) who do all of their family’s caregiving and breadwinning are at a profound disadvantage in labor markets that presume workers to be supported by caregiver-specialist partners. The breadwinner/homemaker specialization assumption is out of sync, too, with the families in which domestic and wage-earning cooperation occurs within extended kin or friendship networks. In short: Social institutions like labor markets are costly and difficult to navigate by those whose lives do not comply with the norms that order them, and plenty of lives are out of step with the norm of breadwinner/homemaker specialization. The gendered division of labor also plays a role in sustaining other social injustices that can impose harms across the population. These harms can befall even those who prefer to specialize in accordance with the norm. As already alluded to, women who specialize in caregiving and have partners who specialize in breadwinning are often non-reciprocally reliant on those partners for their material security. As a result, they have less bargaining power within domestic partnerships and are more materially vulnerable should those partnerships be dissolved. The gendered division of labor also enables and perpetuates the coding of certain kinds of work as feminine, and the consequent undervaluing of those kinds of work. In these ways, it plausibly plays a crucial role in sustaining the prevalence of female poverty: In helping

2

Even in same-sex couples, specialization can be gendered. See Goldberg 2013.

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

to sustain the devaluation of traditionally female work, the gendered division of labor also sustains the economic precarity of low-income professional caregivers whose work is devalued in part because it is associated with femininity,3 and it does so whether or not those caregivers themselves participate at home in a gendered division of labor. Moreover, the gendered division of labor imposes high costs on the many men who want to but are unable to perform as their family’s breadwinning specialist, and who—because of norms associating men with breadwinning—experience that inability as a failure to do right by their families. I regard the gendered division of labor as a linchpin of gender injustice, then, because its harms extend beyond those who grudgingly and partially comply with the presumption of specialization. It also harms many who do not or could not themselves participate in gendered work specialization. This book is not a work of empirical scholarship, and I will not make these causal connections precise. But we will encounter plenty of data that render them plausible. The point for now is to note that, although this is a book about policy that undertakes to influence the choices of those involved in gendered (or would-be gendered, if not for the policy) cooperative domestic relationships, the aim of the policy is by no means exclusively or even primarily to benefit those individuals in particular; indeed, the policies I endorse will impose substantial costs on many such individuals. Individually-rational gendered choices made in cooperative domestic units sustain harms that extend far beyond those units. Policy that undertakes to change those choices, by changing the circumstances that make them individually rational, has the potential to ease those harms. Insofar as this is a book about the gendered division of labor, it is a book about the social mechanisms that make gendered specialization normative, which impose even on those who do not practice gendered labor specialization.

0.2 Liberal Legitimacy Although deeply entrenched, the status quo of specialization-lite is not inevitable. Certain social policies could usher in a new normal of equal sharing within cooperative domestic partnerships. I believe that eroding the gendered division of labor is essential for bringing about a more gender just society. But in a liberal, democratic society, this is not the end of the story, because plenty of reasonable people disagree with me. Some disagree with the judgment that 3 No doubt racism also plays a role, through the association of professional domestic services and caregiving with the immigrant women and women of color who disproportionally fill those rolls. See Davis 1983, 94–5.

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Introduction

a more gender equal society would be a more just society. They may deny that the consequences I just canvassed are harms, or grant that they are harms but deny that those harms constitute injustices. Others may agree with my vision of a more gender just society, but dislike the policy agenda I will endorse to bring it about. They may judge that those policies carry too high a cost, either in terms of their actual price tag or in terms of transition costs they impose as we deviate from a status quo to which many have grown accustomed. Before considering the normative importance of this disagreement, it’s worth getting a sense of how profound it will be. Notice that outdated job structures and the lack of caregiver support are not all that obstruct the way forward for gender equality. We’ll see that increasingly egalitarian attitudes in the abstract obscure the fact that we are still surprisingly traditional where the rubber hits the road, particularly when it comes to the care of children and the question of who should step back from work, even if fewer of us think that anyone need step out of work. The choices individuals make about how to arrange their domestic lives and the norms that influence those choices— and that are sustained by them—play a crucial role in sustaining gender inequality. To tackle both norms and institutional design, interventions must offer support for caregiving and work to influence the choices individuals make about how to use that support. To begin to see what I mean, consider a recent study using Danish administrative data from 1980 to 2013. We will return to this study in Chapter 1 as we canvass empirical evidence about the gendered division of labor; what is relevant now is that the study sheds light on gender inequality in a country that offers generous caregiver support policies. During the thirty-year period studied, generous job-protected paid parental leave was provided so that parents could care for their children at home during the early months. Once children turned six months or one year old (depending on the policy year in question), parents had access to high-quality and heavily-subsidized options for purchasing care outside the home. Even so, significant gender inequality persists.4 The study found that the inequality in earnings and other economic outcomes that persists in Denmark today between women and men “is all about children.”5 Having children impacts women’s labor market pursuits, including their labor force participation, hours worked, and occupational rank, sector, and firm: Women, more than men, “favor family amenities over pecuniary rewards,” and suffer an earnings penalty as a result.6 In harness with plenty of other evidence that we’ll consult, this suggests that run-of-the-mill family support policy will not meaningfully erode the gendered division of labor and will not reduce gender inequality in earnings

4

Kleven et al. 2018, 1.

5

Kleven et al. 2018, 32.

6

Kleven et al. 2018, 2.

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

or other outcomes. In fact, such policies risk positively strengthening the gendered division of labor: Family support and workplace flexibility are far likelier to be taken up by women than by men, and take-up of such offerings is negatively priced in the labor market. Thus, merely providing caregiver support will not promote gender equality and might further entrench gender inequality by enabling women to specialize even more in caregiving and enabling their partners to specialize more in paid work. To offset this effect, policies must include some lever by way of which to encourage take-up of the provision by men: something like so-called “daddy quotas” or “daddy months,” a portion of leave that is available only to fathers.7 The policies I consider in this book include such inducements. They don’t just provide support; they undertake to influence the choices individuals make about how to use it. They do this in different ways, but from their shared aim, we can see that the policies will be highly divisive: The policies in question aim not (only) to promote a more family-friendly society but to promote a more gender egalitarian society. I think that this goal is worth pursuing, that the considerable costs of pursuing it are worth bearing, and that the payoff justifies the intrusiveness of attempting to influence the choices people make about how to arrange their lives. But there is no shortage of disagreement on these matters. What is the significance of this disagreement? It does not change the facts about justice. Perhaps in light of persistent and reasonable disagreement about what justice demands, I should temper my confidence that my own judgments are correct. But the fact that disagreement abounds over whether the gendered division of labor is unjust does not mean that it is not unjust. Disagreement bears more directly on a different normative concept: legitimacy. Legitimacy concerns the constraints we must abide by as we seek collective political solutions to our shared social problems, given that we will disagree, reasonably, both about what constitutes a problem and about what costs we should be willing to incur to fix it. We aspire to live in a society regulated by the values of liberalism: a society that limits political intrusion into the lives of citizens and allows considerable space for those citizens to act on their own conceptions of the good life, regulated by values that they authentically endorse. For cooperation to be possible in such a society, we must find some way of dealing with the disagreements that will inevitably arise: disagreements about what values are worthy of allegiance both for individuals and for the collective, and further disagreements about how those first disagreements are fairly to be resolved. We also aspire to live in a society regulated by democratic values. In a democratic society, the state’s

7

8

See Bertrand 2018.

Introduction

authority derives from its claim to be acting on the will of the people, and political interventions are regarded as exercises of our collective democratic power. A liberal democracy seeks to exercise the collective power of citizens only in ways that respect the authority of each individual to live out a life of her own choosing. Liberal democratic legitimacy concerns the conditions under which exercises of political power live up to this aspiration. The question of this book is this: Is it legitimate for the state to enact social policies aimed at eroding the gendered division of labor? As we will see, such social policies effectively subsidize non-gender-specializing lifestyles at a cost to those who prefer a traditional gendered division of labor, either intrinsically or otherwise, for example because past choices now make that the most appealing option. A great deal of the disagreement concerning the worthiness of the goal and the costs worth bearing to achieve it is precisely the sort of disagreement that liberalism is committed to accommodating: reasonable disagreement about what kinds of lives are valuable and what kinds of goals we should pursue as a society. Interventions to promote gender equality by subsidizing equal sharing of caregiving between partners bring us closer to social ends that I endorse, but further from social ends that many of my opponents endorse. Such interventions make it relatively easier for me to pursue my values, but at a cost: Others will find it more difficult, relative to the status quo and relative to other feasible arrangements, to pursue theirs. Subsidies for substitute caregiving, for example, deplete the finite stock of social resources available for pursuing other social goods. They also make it costlier for individuals to pursue more traditional gendered domestic arrangements: in the short run, by conditioning family support provision on gender egalitarian uptake; in the long run, by eroding gender norms and thereby, for example, diminishing the pool of female partners willing to shoulder so much of the caregiving or male partners willing to forego the intimacy with their children that a greater share would afford. And we must keep in mind that the question is not whether greater social support for caregiving is a legitimate social aim to which we may legitimately devote social resources; nor is it whether supporting caregiving is a legitimate aim even if pursuing it happens to make traditional gendered arrangements more difficult to sustain. Policy options for supporting caregiving are diverse. They range from options that make it relatively attractive for fathers to perform caregiving to those that, against the status quo social norm landscape, will effectively work to enable mothers to do so. Only on the former end of this spectrum of policy options will our interventions effectively erode the gendered division of labor. This is not to say that caregiver support policies have nothing valuable to offer unless they promote gender egalitarian caregiving. Shortening the work week or providing publicly funded, community-based childcare centers would 9

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

do tremendous good all on their own, with no gender egalitarian strings attached: These steps could alleviate the hardships of single parents and poor or working-class parents, who struggle to do the best for their children under very unfavorable circumstances, and they could benefit children by giving them more (and more relaxed) time with their parents and by extending and diversifying their networks of caregivers.8 We should want better family support policies for these reasons and for many more. I focus on gender egalitarian aims of such policies not because I think promoting gender egalitarianism is the most important thing that family support policies can do, but because I think it is the most controversial among the things that such policies should do. Because family support policies plausibly will not achieve gender egalitarianism unless they include design features to bring it about, a justification for caregiver support policies that accomplish everything we should want from them must include a justification for gender egalitarianism as a social aim in its own right. Moreover, we want a defense of gender egalitarian interventions that is robust across different policy contexts and sets of social circumstances, variation in which affects which interventions will bring about the aim of gender egalitarianism. It is crucial, then, to justify gender egalitarianism as a policy aim, and not only to justify whatever means happen to be sufficient to realize it in our circumstances, as instrumental to some less controversial social aim. The question, then, is whether we may enact policy—including caregiver support policy—that aims in its design and implementation to encourage gender egalitarian domestic arrangements. As we will see, all political interventions promote some ends and frustrate others, and few, if any, will frustrate only ends that we all agree to be worthless. Clearly, some political interventions are legitimate despite frustrating ends that citizens reasonably choose to pursue. A liberal democracy may legitimately impose taxes to finance a basic education for all children, and it may legitimately make that education compulsory, even if some do not endorse that end, and even if publicly funded education makes it difficult for some citizens to pursue their projects—for example, parents who prefer that their children not be subject to compulsory education. Other political interventions are illegitimate in part because of the costs they impose on citizens whose projects are frustrated: A liberal democracy may not legitimately enforce a compulsory religion, even if by so doing it could promote certain social ends. The distance between these two cases may seem large, but we will see that the line is difficult to draw with precision and the case of gender egalitarian social policy is a particularly fraught one.

8

10

See, for example, hooks 2014, 143–6.

Introduction

My project in this book is to argue that interventions aimed at eroding the gendered division of labor by subsidizing gender equal take-up of paid and caregiving labor are legitimate exercises of political power. Questions of legitimacy are questions of political philosophy, and philosophical accounts of legitimacy aim to provide principled answers to those questions. There are different ways of drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate exercises of political power, even within liberal political theory. My defense shall proceed by showing that the interventions are legitimate even taking on board the legitimacy constraints imposed by a particularly restrictive political framework, which imposes stringent requirements for the kinds of reasons that may permissibly be invoked to justify exercises of political power. At the heart of this politically liberal framework of legitimacy lies a commitment to state neutrality: to the idea that the state should act in an even-handed way toward all citizens by remaining neutral among the different values they may affirm and the different ways of life they may seek to live out. The neutrality constraint on liberal legitimacy holds that the legitimacy of a particular intervention depends on that intervention being justifiable by way of reasons that are neutral among different conceptions of value: reasons that do not depend for their acceptance on any particular views about what is good for an individual or for society, apart from the views implied by values we share as free and equal citizens. Neutrality is meant to systematize the requirements of mutual civic respect. In a liberal democracy, we manifest mutual respect, even across a wide diversity of reasonable ways of life, by authorizing political intervention only when we can fully justify that intervention on the basis of reasons that can be recognized as such by all parties, even from within their many different conceptions of the good. Given the vast diversity of conceptions of the good held by citizens in a pluralist democracy, the neutrality constraint appears conservative indeed. It looks like it will be difficult to justify progressive political interventions without running afoul of that constraint. Most relevantly for our purposes, it looks like it will be difficult to justify gender egalitarian political interventions. Those interventions appear to rely for their justification on feminist values favoring gender equality. While I affirm those values, they are clearly at odds with the values endorsed by many other reasonable citizens, and with those citizens’ conceptions of the good life and the good society. My burden is to argue that, despite appearances to the contrary, progressive gender egalitarian political interventions can be compliant with the neutrality constraint. Because the legitimacy of a political intervention depends on the reasons that can be offered in its favor—and, in particular, on whether a set of neutral reasons can suffice to justify it—meeting this burden requires developing an argument for gender egalitarian interventions that proceeds by way of only neutral reasons. The reasons I invoke will not be extrinsic to the interventions 11

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

themselves; I will not defend gender egalitarianism as instrumental for accomplishing some less controversial political goal. Rather, I defend gender egalitarianism itself as a legitimate aim of political intervention, and I defend the interventions in question on precisely the grounds that they promote that aim. Political interventions aimed at bringing about a more equal sharing of paid and unpaid work within families are legitimate. The theoretical import of the project is independent of any policy context. I aim to clarify the notion of liberal neutrality that is worth aspiring to realize, challenge a picture of liberal theory according to which justice issues demands but legitimacy only imposes constraints, and expose the genuine progressive potential of a theory of legitimacy that is often regarded as particularly constraining. I take these to be important contributions to liberal political thought. What of the practical relevance of the project? How far does that extend? The project has broad practical relevance across liberal democratic political contexts. Even in countries that aspire to provide generous gender egalitarian family support and to regulate labor markets to accommodate gender equal work allocations within families, we might wonder: In virtue of what are those provisions justified? They may have won legislative victory, but are they legitimate? And if so, how robust is their legitimacy against social change— for example, the erosion of public support? Moreover, my argument will imply that further progressive gender egalitarian reform is called for even in countries whose institutional design already aspires to accommodate gender egalitarianism. Recall the insight about caregiver support gleaned from the Danish study: Equally generous support might look very different depending on whether it is designed to encourage people to have more children; or simply to support caregivers; or to support caregivers in ways that accommodate equal sharing between partners; or finally, to support caregivers in ways that encourage more men to perform caregiving and thus that erode the gendered division of labor. Establishing the legitimacy of gender egalitarianism as a policy aim in its own right will have implications even for countries with generous supports for caregiving, and those implications will be robust across differences in policy context that give rise to further differences in the type of policy that we can expect to further the aim in question. Additionally, this book is practically relevant across policy contexts because much of it is given to evaluating strategies for justifying gender egalitarian interventions that are not compliant with the neutrality constraint on liberal legitimacy. The critical components of the book all play a role in setting the stage for the positive argument I give, but they are practically relevant all on their own. None depends on any particular policy context, and so the strategies for justifying gender egalitarian interventions that I argue against are strategies I take to be off limits within any policy context that aims to abide by liberal neutrality. 12

Introduction

Much of my positive argument is developed as a conditional: I argue that if certain circumstances obtain, then gender egalitarian political interventions are not only compliant with the neutrality constraint; they are positively called for by the normative commitments that undergird that very constraint. Not only is a neutral justification of gender egalitarian interventions available; the most basic theoretical commitments of liberal legitimacy demand such interventions under the relevant circumstances. I build this case by examining the most fundamental liberal commitments that justify imposing the neutrality constraint in the first place and showing that those commitments can be used to build a positive case in favor of gender egalitarian political interventions. At the end of Chapter 7, I focus on the United States as a case study of sorts. I argue that the circumstances in question actually obtain in the United States. In that context, then, it is politically illegitimate to abstain from enacting the gender egalitarian interventions in question. I think the argument for gender egalitarian interventions applies far more broadly, and will suggest as much. But making the case definitively I leave for another day. Although the neutrality constraint belongs to the politically liberal family of liberal theories, this book isn’t written only for already committed political liberals. Part of the project is to present the commitments of political liberalism in their best light. The neutrality constraint is a demanding and controversial standard of liberal legitimacy. But once clarified, the constraint is more appealing than it is taken by its critics to be, and part of my project is to show why. If successful, my defense of a particular understanding of the neutrality constraint will have implications beyond gender egalitarian social policy: It will establish that the constraint is less conservative than its defenders and its detractors have typically taken it to be, and it will illustrate how the commitments that undergird that constraint can, under certain circumstances, demand the very kinds of progressive policies that we might have thought neutrality ruled out. Still, plenty of readers will reject the neutrality constraint. I nonetheless use neutrality as my standard of legitimacy for the purpose of evaluating gender egalitarian interventions for two reasons: First, because it is so demanding, it sets a daunting argumentative burden that, if met, generates a very strong general defense of the legitimacy of the interventions in question. If the interventions can be shown to abide by political liberalism’s neutrality constraint, they will likely abide by the requirements of liberal legitimacy more permissively construed. Second, I use neutrality as a standard for legitimacy because the best way to persuade opponents to agree with you is to offer reasons that they actually find persuasive. I said that this book is not intended only for political liberals. Neither is it written only for feminists. The burden that neutrality imposes is to justify exercises of political power using reasons that can be recognized as 13

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

such even by those with whom we are otherwise in profound disagreement, and I undertake to demonstrate the legitimacy of gender egalitarian interventions by offering just such reasons. Whether or not the neutral justification I give is, as political liberalism holds, necessary to show the legitimacy of those interventions, it should be more effective than in-camp arguments at persuading those who oppose such interventions. If my neutral defense of progressive policies to promote gender egalitarianism is successful, it will show that those policies can be compliant with a very demanding principle of liberal legitimacy, and it will offer the kind of defense of those policies that we might effectively offer even to those with whom feminists are otherwise in deep disagreement over matters of gender justice. I confess that I did not begin this project as a committed political liberal wondering non-committally about gender egalitarianism. I came as a committed gender egalitarian, who found political liberalism’s aspiration for mutual respect by way of justificatory neutrality provisionally appealing, and who thought it would be worth thinking carefully about whether progressive feminist political interventions could, after all, be made compliant with justificatory neutrality. This framing brings with it a high argumentative hurdle: Can these interventions be justified even without recourse to the comprehensive feminist values that underlie most critiques of the gendered division of labor? If so, I thought, the interventions would rest on much firmer footing. Over the course of this project, however, I have become increasingly convinced that neutrality’s appeal is genuine—not least because I have become increasingly convinced that it can approve more progressive interventions, feminist and otherwise, than political liberals and their opponents have tended to think. More importantly, I find the politically liberal assessment of these interventions appealing because it is based on what seem to me to be the right kinds of considerations: values that really can be shared by all reasonable citizens in a liberal democracy. This makes our calls for interventions to promote gender justice compliant with the most demanding plausible conception of mutual civic respect. More importantly, by so doing, it equips us to say to our opponents: “By the lights of these considerations that you yourself ought to endorse, these interventions are called for as a requirement for legitimacy.” The considerations don’t exhaust the reasons I have as a feminist for wanting a more gender egalitarian society. But plausibly, they exhaust the considerations I am entitled to invoke to justify imposing it on others. The project, in a slogan, is to identify a set of shared premises and to reason from them to a surprising (given the premises we began with) conclusion: that we should enact progressive social policies to promote equal sharing among domestic partners of caregiving and labor market work. If the argument works, its success points to still further conclusions: conclusions about the political 14

Introduction

status of the social policies in question, given the restrictions imposed on the premises used to support them; conclusions about those premises themselves, given that some of them will seem initially inadmissible within the politically liberal framework; and conclusions about that framework, given that the policies I endorse seem initially to be unsupportable from within it.

0.3 On Terminology I use “gender egalitarian” to refer to a social ideal whereby any differences in social roles between males and females concerning work are not determined or reinforced by social norms or social institutions that promote gendered allocations of work. Gender egalitarian social policy is policy that aims to bring us closer to the gender egalitarian social ideal. And gender egalitarian domestic arrangements are those wherein partners do not specialize in caregiving or labor market work according to gender. Crucially, I do not assume, nor do I believe, that every domestic arrangement must be gender egalitarian in order for the social ideal of gender egalitarianism to be realized. Certain individuals may continue to specialize in certain kinds of tasks, but in a fully gender egalitarian society, these choices will no longer be reinforced by social norms about gender or by institutional design that makes equal sharing difficult. I also leave open the possibility that the social ideal of gender egalitarianism is consistent with some difference in the average amount of unpaid domestic work performed by women and men in aggregate. This might occur, for example, if some natural difference exists between sexes that influences nurturing behavior, or if sex differences make it relatively easier for females to raise children on their own. I am not committing to either possibility obtaining. The point is that gender egalitarianism does not entail that no sex difference in caregiving behavior exists. Except when I refer to particular domestic arrangements among particular individuals, “gender egalitarian” refers to the norms and institutional arrangements that influence families’ allocations of work, rather than to the allocations themselves. I use “gendered division of labor” to refer to the norms and institutional arrangements that influence individuals’ labor allocations under the status quo. And so gender egalitarian interventions are those that aim to erode the gendered division of labor by reforming the norms that obstruct gender egalitarianism as a social ideal and by reforming the social institutions that reciprocally reinforce and are reinforced by those norms, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that any remaining sex-based patterns in labor allocations are not due to social norms or institutional design that take gendered specialization for granted. A crucial aspect of the burden of justifying gender egalitarian interventions, then, is this: The interventions aim ultimately to 15

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

promote gender egalitarianism as a social ideal, which needn’t entail that every particular domestic arrangement is gender egalitarian. But, the particular forces that sustain the gendered division of labor—social norms sustained by individuals’ behavior and gendered institutions sustained by individuals’ compliance with them—make it such that to promote gender egalitarianism as a social ideal, we need to change the behavior of many individuals, inducing them to make their domestic labor allocations more egalitarian. Gender manifests and perpetuates injustice in domains outside of labor, and my focus on the domestic gendered division of labor is not meant to imply that no other domains of gender injustice merit attention, or even that no other labor-related gender injustices merit attention. Many privileged families outsource large portions of caregiving and domestic labor, and the growing market in domestic work is deeply implicated in persistent gender and global injustice.9 This injustice connects in important ways with the injustices of the gendered division of labor that I focus on here. As I said, I think that the gendered division of labor is a linchpin of gender injustice, and I think that the social policies I consider in this book would help to alleviate both kinds of injustice and many others beyond. But making that case regarding the private market in substitute caregiving is a task for another book. As will become clear over the course of this book, general principles of distributive justice that are perfectly permissible within political liberalism—and indeed implied by its most basic commitments—condemn much that is unjust about the private market in caregiving. Additionally, the politically liberal case I give for remediation of the gendered division of unpaid domestic work and caregiving implies still further grounds on which to call for reform of market-based caregiving and domestic work. But I focus here on the gendered division of labor in the home, both because I think it sustains gender injustice more broadly, and because, as we will see, it is a particularly difficult case for political liberalism. When I use the term “feminist” and its variants, I am referring to a set of partially comprehensive value commitments that support gender egalitarianism as a social ideal, but that encompass far more than that. The feminist values relevant here are by no means exhaustive of feminist commitments generally. One way of understanding the central question of the book is this: In order to justify promoting gender egalitarianism as a social ideal, must we

9 That market relies on the devaluation of traditionally feminine work and on the willingness of an extremely vulnerable group of people, mostly women, to work for very low wages, unprotected by standards of professional training and compensation. Reliance upon this labor source reinforces global inequalities, and it weakens coalitions in support of political solutions to the gendered division of labor, thus harming disadvantaged women who cannot afford to pursue private solutions to the challenge of balancing paid work and caregiving. See Hassim 2009.

16

Introduction

invoke feminist values that political liberalism rules out as illegitimate bases on which to justify social policy? Or is a neutral justification available? But we should note, too, that the value commitments in question are only presumptively feminist. The justifications for intervention that I identify as off limits won’t be accepted by all feminists as genuinely feminist justifications, and the interventions themselves are controversial among feminists as well.10 What I mean to take off the table by working within the politically liberal framework are considerations that derive from any particular value commitments not based on the shared interests we have as free and equal citizens in a pluralistic democracy. Because my interest is in what sorts of arguments can be accepted as genuinely political, I can largely sidestep disputes among feminists about which among candidate feminist commitments we should ultimately embrace as feminists. I use terms like “cooperative domestic unit” to refer to relatively durable cooperative domestic partnerships (or partnerships whose members intend for them to be relatively durable) in which the cooperation includes some sharing of the paid and unpaid work done to support the unit and its members. The policies I consider in this book primarily target decisions made within twoadult partnerships with caregiving responsibilities, but I do not take those families to exemplify all families or ideal families; nor do I think such families are the default arrangement around which public policy generally should be structured. The policies I consider focus on those family forms because, as the families that most closely comply with the breadwinner/homemaker specialization presumption, they remain essential to sustaining that presumption, which in turn works to the detriment of all families that deviate from it. The policies I consider target the work-allocation choices of cooperating partners so as to erode the norms sustaining the breadwinner/homemaker presumption—so as to challenge the notion that the traditional gendered family is the ideal family. The gendered division of labor is ubiquitous. It is implicated in the coding of professional work as masculine or feminine and manifests in contexts far beyond the confines of domestic cooperation. I focus on the division of domestic—and primarily caregiving—labor within families because I think it is a linchpin for the entire apparatus. To dismantle the apparatus, we must remove the linchpin. And I am convinced that removing the linchpin requires changing the behavior of those whose compliance with the norms enables the perpetuation of those norms. This requires changing the costs and benefits of domestic gendered specialization, so that more families choose not to comply with the presumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization.

10

See, for example, Cudd 2004.

17

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

0.4 Outline of Chapters The book unfolds as follows: Chapter 1 sets the stage. I begin with a review of the empirical literature showing that the gendered division of labor is alive and well, that it continues to disadvantage women in labor market competitions, and that it harms women, men, and children in other ways as well. I then set out the menu of gender egalitarian political interventions that would, if implemented, help to erode the gendered division of labor and make society more gender egalitarian. Finally, I begin the work, to be continued throughout the book, of clarifying the ideal of mutual respect upon which the theoretical apparatus of political liberalism and its neutrality constraint on liberal legitimacy are built. My review of the empirical literature will be cursory. It is meant to motivate and provide context for questions of political philosophy, but is not exhaustive of the dimensions of gender inequality—much less inequality generally— worthy of study. The aggregate data I use to characterize the gendered division of labor obscure important points of intersection between gender and other socially salient categories like race and class. The gender revolution has been uneven—for example, middle-class jobs have gender desegregated at a much faster pace than have working-class jobs.11 These differences warrant careful study that they do not receive in this book. The book is meant to overcome a philosophical hurdle to implementing a set of interventions to solve a social problem. The philosophical hurdle is that many in our democratic community do not recognize the problem as a problem, and even among those who do, not all agree that it is sufficiently urgent to justify the costs that the solutions present. The social problem I want to identify is largely sustained by the accumulation of choices made in the types of families I give data about, though the harms extend far beyond those families. Even if I am right that the hurdle can be surmounted, we should of course not infer that the social problem is the most urgent social problem; certainly I do not regard it as such. I think the strategy I execute in overcoming the hurdle can be applied to other social problems as well. Still, if the interventions I consider forfeit progress toward more urgent social ends, that is worth noting. In introducing the interventions, then, Chapter 1 acknowledges one potential tradeoff. Chapter 2 draws out the apparent tension between the neutrality constraint and the progressive feminist agenda by considering some tempting “workarounds” that might seem to dispel that tension. Showing why these attempts are unsuccessful both clears the way for a more promising reconciliation and 11 England 2010. For more on intersectional dimensions of the gender revolution and discussion of some helpful empirical work on the topic, see Bianchi and Milkie 2010; Ferree 2010.

18

Introduction

allows for a more nuanced understanding of the neutrality constraint itself. First, we might be tempted to dispel the tension by arguing that those who oppose gender egalitarianism are unreasonable and thus fall outside the justificatory community that political liberalism is committed to respecting. Second, we might try to overcome the presumption in favor of deferring to choices to comply with gender norms by arguing that those choices are nonvoluntary, and so need not be deferred to by liberal political institutions. A final tempting workaround is to argue that the gendered division of labor violates basic liberties, and so can be politically remediated on those grounds, even if the means of remediation are controversial. I consider each of these possibilities and show why they are not promising fixes. Chapter 3 considers what I take to be the prevailing strategy for defending gender egalitarian political interventions compliant with the neutrality constraint. Those pursuing this strategy argue that the gendered division of labor constitutes or causes unjust distributions that can be recognized as such without violating neutrality. This strategy is appealing because of its apparent promise of justifying gender egalitarian policies without making any judgments as to the relative value of gender egalitarian and gender inegalitarian lifestyles. By locating the problem in the downstream distributional consequences of a certain set of choices, we avoid making value judgments about the choices themselves, and thus avoid running afoul of the neutrality constraint. I argue that, despite its appeal, this strategy is inadequate. Chapter 4 begins the work of defending my own approach to justifying gender egalitarian interventions. I respond to the view that the interventions are categorically illegitimate because they aim to influence choices individuals make within their families. To do so, I evaluate the restriction of justice to political institutions. The traditional liberal view holds that institutions and structural features of society are the primary subject matter of justice, and that principles of justice apply to individuals’ behavior only derivatively. Critics of this view maintain that it too narrowly construes the purview of justice, and that principles of justice can also apply directly to the behaviors of individuals. The traditional view appears to condemn gender egalitarian interventions as illegitimate on their face. To the contrary, I argue that while some version of the traditional view is defensible, such a version will not categorically classify gender egalitarian interventions as illegitimate. While justice is restricted in scope, the restriction is consistent with the possibility of legitimate interventions within the family. The argument developed in Chapter 4 will highlight the role of citizenship in questions of liberal neutrality: Political legitimacy is a matter of what exercises of political power citizens would accept, where citizenship is characterized in a particular way. In Chapter 5, I consider the work of Christie Hartley and Lori Watson. Hartley and Watson argue that political liberalism’s commitment to 19

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

protecting citizenship imposes substantive feminist requirements on the just liberal state. I agree with Hartley and Watson that the liberal concept of citizenship is key to justifying gender egalitarian political interventions. But I argue that their approach is limited: Their arguments establish only that a hierarchical gendered division of labor undermines citizenship. This limitation is problematic for two reasons: First, the gendered division of labor is not entirely hierarchical, and objectionable harms inhere in its non-hierarchical components. Second, the policy initiatives licensed by a hierarchical diagnosis of the gendered division of labor risk exacerbating the objectionable harms that inhere in the non-hierarchical features of the gendered division of labor. Hartley and Watson’s argument offers a partial reconciliation of liberalism and gender egalitarianism, but without a fuller reconciliation, the policies it points toward could further entrench the injustice of the gendered division of labor. In Chapter 6, I elucidate the notion of citizenship that rightly informs the neutrality constraint. Such a notion of citizenship also rightly informs the criterion of reciprocity, which I argue is the positive corollary to the neutrality constraint: On the basis of citizenship interests, neutrality limits legitimate political intervention; on the basis of citizenship interests, reciprocity positively demands certain political interventions. This generates a framework within which to justify certain progressive political interventions consistent with liberal neutrality: Based on political liberalism’s conception of citizenship, we can attribute to citizens certain fundamental interests. When those interests are jeopardized, and when they can be protected without jeopardizing other stronger interests of citizenship, exercises of political power to protect the interests in question are interventions whose omission is unacceptable from the perspective of citizenship—they are interventions that the criterion of reciprocity demands. The main goal in this chapter is to defend a key premise in the overall argument: The exercise of comprehensive autonomy can be politically valuable—that is, valuable by the lights of citizenship interests—and so the value of that exercise can under certain circumstances be invoked as part of a neutral justification for political intervention. This claim contradicts the received wisdom about political liberalism, and defending it involves arguing that political liberalism can recognize the political value of comprehensive autonomy without abandoning the central commitments that distinguish political liberalism from more comprehensive versions of liberalism. (I defer exploring the implications of this autonomy premise for the gendered division of labor until Chapter 7, but it is worth saying in advance that the argument is not a simple inference from the political value of autonomy to the value of gender egalitarianism. Indeed, one can fully autonomously choose to comply with traditional gender roles.) 20

Introduction

Chapter 7 completes the argument by showing that the criterion of reciprocity positively calls for gender egalitarian political interventions. I argue, on the basis of citizenship interests, that any just politically liberal society must ensure for all citizens the “genuinely available opportunity” to live out a gender egalitarian lifestyle. If persistent gender norms and social institutions built upon the assumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization foreclose the genuine availability of such lifestyles, then citizenship interests justify political interventions to remove the obstacles to gender egalitarianism and preserve it as a genuinely available lifestyle choice. Because the criterion of reciprocity defines legitimacy in terms of citizenship interests, the requirements of legitimacy not only allow for the interventions; in the relevant set of circumstances, those requirements demand the interventions. Mine is a stability argument, drawing on the value-laden notion of stability for the right reasons. I argue that a society (characterized by the protections for autonomy defended in Chapter 6) cannot retain the reasoned allegiance of citizens stably over time if the institutions of that society are structured on the basis of an assumption that one’s sex will dictate the kind of work that one will do. The argument does not tell against specialization generally. Specialization is an efficient way to coordinate complex work, and it can be perfectly unproblematic from the perspective of justice. But citizens have a reasonable complaint, based in citizenship interests, against a society whose basic institutions reflect the presumption that biology is destiny with respect to sex and work. The institutionalized presumption that sex will heavily influence the work that one does is an affront to the political value of autonomy, even though individual citizens could fully autonomously choose to comply with that presumption, and even though the individuals working within the institutions that reflect that presumption may not endorse it. Part of the burden of making this case is showing that, even within political liberalism, an asymmetry exists between gender egalitarianism and gender inegalitarianism. Egalitarianism merits protections that inegalitarianism does not, even though both are reasonable lifestyle choices. Although this appears to violate the neutrality constraint, my argument shows why it does not. At last, I apply the conditional argument. I argue that the circumstances demanding special protection for gender egalitarianism obtain in the United States today. Gender norms and institutions do foreclose the genuine availability of gender egalitarian lifestyles, and despite often being facially gender neutral, they do so on the basis of the institutionalized presumption that one’s sex will determine one’s work. I conclude that gender egalitarian interventions are a legitimate and obligatory step to making our society more just, and I conclude that in any society marked by entrenched gender norms and social institutions that take those norms for granted, gender egalitarian political 21

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

interventions are not only legitimate; they are a requirement of legitimacy, in that the just politically liberal state cannot legitimately decline to enact them. By the end of this book, I hope to have offered a compelling philosophical defense of gender egalitarianism as a policy aim and of pursuing that aim by way of caregiving support policies that are explicitly crafted to incentivize gender-unorthodox uses of that support. Despite reasonable disagreement over both the worthiness of gender egalitarianism as a goal of social policy and the costs worth bearing to get there, progressive political remedies to the gendered division of labor are justifiable by and compliant with stringent liberal constraints on legitimate exercises of political power. I hope, too, to have made a broader point about those stringent liberal constraints themselves: Far from being demanding in the sense of implausibly restrictive, the principled constraints on legitimacy that political liberalism imposes are demanding in the sense that in an unjust society, they rule a lot in as reform that is positively required by the balance of fundamental interests that we share. This demandingness makes political liberalism more plausible rather than less, and it is achieved without abandoning what is distinctively political about political liberalism. We can see that political liberalism’s extension is plausible and principled by consulting the verdict that—I argue—it renders in the case of gender egalitarianism and by thinking through the implications that the premises used to support that verdict might have in other domains. And we can see that political liberalism remains political despite this demandingness by working to get more precise about just what those premises are. Because my goal is as much to make this broader point about political liberalism as to reconcile it with gender egalitarianism in particular, I want not only to show that political liberalism demands gender egalitarian interventions; I want to elucidate the particular grounds on which it issues that verdict. That way, we can better consider how far the argument extends and how it remains a political argument, fully consistent with maintaining civic respect among citizens who reject the personal value of gender equality or the political value of gender egalitarianism as a social end. The book proceeds sequentially, with the final chapters building upon—and being motivated by—premises defended earlier. Because I am after a certain level of precision about what politically is wrong with the gendered division of labor, and because my positive diagnosis is supported by observations made about ultimately unsatisfactory but seemingly simpler diagnoses, the positive argument is delayed until the last two chapters, when all the necessary premises are ready at hand. Readers who prefer not to be kept in suspense can, of course, begin with Chapters 6 and 7; they may wonder, though, why I understand the argumentative burden of liberalism as I do, or why I don’t go in for a simpler approach to meeting that burden. 22

Introduction

This is not a work of exegesis, and I will not offer an interpretation of any particular theorist’s development of political liberalism. Rather, I draw on the most fundamental motivating commitments of political liberalism to argue for a particular conclusion, and I draw on the capacity of those commitments to support that conclusion to argue for a further conclusion about the commitments themselves. What I take from political liberalism, at bottom, is its commitment to political justification by way of premises that can be shared among all reasonable citizens, and its commitment to an animating political conception of free and equal citizenship that gives content to that justificatory ideal. Still, I draw on Rawlsian political liberalism in executing my argument and elucidating the demands of political liberalism with which I claim my argument complies. I unpack and explain those aspects of the Rawlsian machinery that are relevant to our question as they become relevant. Those happy to leap with me into a use of Rawlsian theoretical resources to address the guiding question of this book can skip the next and final section of this Introduction, in which I try to motivate my selective, adapted use of Rawlsian resources for those who worry that the project is not faithful enough to Rawls’s own use of those resources.

0.5 A Note for the Rawlsians Rawlsian political liberalism is commonly understood as an exercise in ideal theory.12 The task is to show that a just and stable liberal democratic society is possible despite profound and reasonable disagreement among citizens about what constitutes a good life—that a society can be well-ordered stably over time by a liberal political conception of justice. I deploy the bedrock normative commitments of Rawlsian political liberalism to a subtly different end. I explore them as principles constraining exercises of political power in an unjust society, where those exercises would, if legitimate, bring us closer to the range of reasonable political conceptions of justice. In addressing this question, we must contend as ever with reasonable disagreement about the good; but to that we now add reasonable disagreement about the right. On my way to explaining what I mean, let me briefly unpack the standard Rawlsian politically liberal architecture as I understand it. We begin with the idea of a political conception of justice, which is freestanding in the sense that it does not presuppose the truth of any controversial comprehensive moral, philosophical, or religious views about what gives life meaning or value. 12 But see Freeman 2007, 324–5, 379–80. I thank Christie Hartley and Lori Watson for persuading me to include a section making explicit my use of Rawlsian political liberalism for a project in non-ideal theory.

23

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

Once such a freestanding conception of justice is on hand, we check to see if it can regulate society stably over time, and for the right reasons: if it can be endorsed by diverse citizens on moral grounds, and not merely for strategic reasons. The freestanding conception of justice passes this stability test only if it is congruent with each reasonable citizen’s own conception of the good. If each citizen can reasonably endorse the conception of justice—of the right—as congruent with her own conception of the good, then we say that that conception can be the subject of an overlapping consensus: It can be affirmed by diverse citizens, each for her own reasons, from within her own conception of the good.13 Because each citizen can affirm the political conception of justice despite affirming divergent and irreconcilable conceptions of the good, the political conception of justice can stably regulate society over time.14 My question is about how we legitimately may progress from our unjust status quo to a society stably well ordered by some permissible political conception of justice. What recourse do we have to political solutions to the problem of making society more just? What are the principled constraints we face when we wield our shared democratic power to that end? An immediate complication is that we must in this context respect reasonable disagreement over the good and disagreement over which of the reasonable political conceptions of justice we ought to aim for. It might seem at first glance that political liberalism offers little help here. I hope this book makes some progress toward justifying a more optimistic view. My strategy, roughly, is to begin with the most fundamental normative commitment of liberalism: the ideal of society as a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens. It is this bedrock liberal commitment on which the rest of the edifice is built, and this bedrock commitment that determines which are the reasonable conceptions of justice in the first place. I take this commitment to constrain the space of reasonable disagreement about both the right and the good. It does so in one obvious way: The project I am engaged in is one internal to liberalism; I do not try to justify this fundamental normative commitment itself. The relevant disagreement about the right, then, is constrained to disagreement among those who accept the ideal of society as a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens, but who disagree about what that ideal demands. My project is to identify demands that this ideal does not wear on its face, that nonetheless work to constrain the space of the right to a set of reasonable

13 But see chapter 6 of Quong 2011. Quong argues that the appropriate subject of the overlapping consensus is what I refer to here as the bedrock values of liberalism, rather than the reasonable political conception of justice. I find Quong’s argument compelling, but I need not commit to it here. 14 Another requirement for stability concerns whether citizens will reliably acquire a sense of justice. That element does not play a role in the argument of this book.

24

Introduction

political conceptions of justice, which form the range of social arrangements that we can legitimately aim to bring about. The ideal of society as a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens gives content to the criterion of reciprocity; it justifies imposing that criterion even in non-ideal circumstances; and through that criterion it constrains the ways in which we may use political power to reform an unjust society because it determines which social ends are mutually justifiable and thus legitimately pursued. Absent a political conception of justice to draw on, the mutually justifiable social ends just are the ones that are supportable on the basis of the political values embedded in that ideal. And because the ideal constrains the space of reasonable political conceptions of justice, it also determines which social ends legitimacy demands that we pursue: We may not omit to pursue ends that any reasonable political conception of justice is constrained to pursue—for example, protections for basic liberties essential to free and equal citizenship. The criterion of reciprocity, deployed in my project, specifies that we may pursue only mutually justifiable social ends, and that we may pursue those ends using only mutually justifiable means. The fundamental values on which the Rawlsian edifice rests impose that requirement and generate a set of interests that citizens can be taken to share. Those interests in turn generate reasons that can legitimately be offered even to those with whom we disagree about the good and the right, because recognizing that these fundamental interests are reason-giving is definitive of reasonable views about both the good and the right. With respect to the latter, it sets the limits on what counts as a reasonable conception of justice that we can aspire to bring about. As we will see, these shared interests also effectively set the extension of the basic structure of society to which principles of a political conception of justice legitimately apply. Plausibly, though this is less crucial for my argument, they also determine what counts as a constitutional essential or matter of basic justice and thereby settle the scope of public reason. Public reason might refer to the exchange of sharable reasons among actual citizens in a society ordered by a political conception of justice, or it might refer to those shareable reasons themselves. Because the context for my legitimacy question is a society not well ordered by a political conception of justice, the concept of public reason plays little role in my argument. In my context, no particular political conception of justice figures among the shared commitments that citizens may permissibly invoke, and so in addressing my legitimacy question we must limit ourselves to an even thinner set of reasons: those derived from the bedrock commitment of political liberalism, which, I’ve said, constrain what can count as a reasonable political conception of justice in the first place. I call these political reasons. Political reasons are public reasons, but they do not exhaust the public 25

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

reasons we have in a society ordered by a political conception of justice. I focus on what political reasons support, rather than on the social practice of reasoning from them. That is not to say the latter is unimportant, and I return to the practice of deliberating together from political reasons briefly in Chapter 6 and again in the Conclusion. The Rawlsian concept of overlapping consensus might be thought of as coming into the picture only after we have a freestanding political conception of justice to work with; but we do begin the project of non-ideal political liberalism by assuming a thin set of shared values—namely, as rehearsed above, those implied by the bedrock commitment of the project itself. Stability, too, might be thought to be a concept that we deploy only once we have a political conception of justice on hand. But the final stage of my case for the legitimacy of gender egalitarian interventions is a stability argument. The argument, in these terms, shall be that among those political conceptions of justice that otherwise count as reasonable—among those compliant with the bedrock commitments of political liberalism—none can be stable if, under the relevant circumstances, it allows the genuine accessibility of gender egalitarian lifestyles to be foreclosed. A basic structure that allows that access to be foreclosed cannot be congruent with reasonable conceptions of the good that reasonable citizens will affirm. Using political liberalism to address a question of political legitimacy in non-ideal circumstances may seem unmotivated. On the contrary, the basic normative commitments of political liberalism are highly plausible in this context. Given reasonable disagreement over which conception of the right we should aim for, and given that the means we deploy to get there will impose unequal costs on citizens in terms of their ability to pursue their own conceptions of the good, what political means may we permissibly deploy? I want to shed light on this question by working out a detailed answer in one particular domain, in one particular—and widely instantiated—kind of non-ideal circumstances. In using political liberalism’s commitment to justificatory reciprocity to that end, I certainly do not assume that the entire Rawlsian edifice applies straightforwardly just as in the ideal context. But at a general level of description, the same constraint that political liberalism would impose on us in ideal circumstances plausibly applies as we work to bring those circumstances about: Both our aim and our means must be mutually justifiable. Though our starting values set parameters on the range of reasonable conceptions of justice at which we might aim, there will be reasonable disagreement among citizens as to which of these we should aspire to bring about; this in addition to profound reasonable disagreement about the good. In non-ideal circumstances, I submit, it is independently plausible that legitimacy demands that we proceed only in ways that are consistent with maintaining justificatory community among citizens who endorse the basic 26

Introduction

project of finding fair terms of social cooperation among free and equal citizens, but who are otherwise deeply divided. What this commitment demands in particular cases must be worked out from the bedrock values themselves. Rather than deploying the Rawlsian edifice wholesale, then, we must use the structures that comprise it thoughtfully and selectively where they apply to our question. The value commitments that motivate the machinery, it seems to me, clearly do apply. We might think that justificatory reciprocity is too demanding a criterion of legitimacy for non-ideal circumstances because it has a problematic built-in status quo bias. In ideal theory, we can invoke the reasons stemming from our shared conception of justice, but in non-ideal circumstances, we have no such shared conception. Justificatory reciprocity might seem implausibly status quo deferent in non-ideal circumstances, then, because it permits too few reasons on the basis of which we can legitimately justify political action to bring about change. To the contrary, a central upshot of this book is that the reasons generated by the bedrock commitments of political liberalism can themselves justify progressive political action to bring about change—that those reasons can in fact favor intervention so strongly as to render it a requirement of legitimacy. We do restrict ourselves to reasons that are sharable among us, which reasons are thinner absent a shared conception of justice. But those reasons are enough, and the case for restricting ourselves to them is strong. As we move forward toward a more just society, we have both practical and moral cause to want to move forward together. We might worry about status quo bias for a different reason: If political action requires mutual justifiability among reasonable citizens, and if citizens have been socialized under the status quo, those citizens’ preferences and predilections are likely to favor the status quo in certain ways that make progress away from it less likely to be mutually justifiable among them. This worry misunderstands the sort of mutual justifiability that the ideal of reciprocity aims to maintain. As we will see, the actual preferences of actual citizens matter: The bedrock values of liberalism entail a strong shared interest in collective ends-setting and a strong shared interest in individual endssetting. This justifies both preserving a space within which actual citizens can deliberate together about how to move toward a more just society and ensuring that our so moving is consistent with each citizen enjoying adequate space within which to pursue her own conception of the good. But in both cases, we have reason to preserve that space not because actual citizens want it, but because the normative characterization of the political person implied by the bedrock values entails that preserving it figures prominently among the interests that we share. Political liberalism is status quo biased in the sense that the actual preferences of actual citizens acting within the spaces wherein those preferences are sovereign will be responsive to the status quo; but that status 27

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

quo bias is tempered by the fact that it is our shared interests as set forth by the bedrock values of liberalism that both shape that space and generate the positive reasons that under some circumstances weigh against deferring to it. In short: It is not the actual preferences of citizens that determine what is mutually justifiable, but the interests implied by our shared moral status as citizens in a (non-ideal) liberal society. Those interests in turn generate some presumptive deference to the actual preferences of actual citizens, but they also constrain the scope of that presumptive deference and determine the strength of the presumption, and they generate the shared interests that can weigh against it. This is the case in nonideal circumstances as well as in a society well ordered by a political conception of justice. Because in non-ideal circumstances the preferences of actual citizens are not molded by a political conception of justice, the appropriate deference to those preferences can be an impediment to progress toward justice. But if those preferences are reasonable, then the impediment seems well motivated, assuming we are presumptively motivated, at the outset, to move forward together on mutually justifiable terms. We might have thought that, in unjust circumstances, we simply don’t have the luxury of moving forward together. But my argument suggests that, once we have in place the right conception of what moving forward together means, imposing the relevant constraints is consistent with pursuing justice aggressively. A second central upshot of this book is that the shared reasons that justify progress on the basis of the fundamental values of liberalism can be robust enough to justify significant political action to bring about change even when the countervailing preferences of actual citizens tell against it. For these reasons, we should not assume at the outset that political liberalism as non-ideal theory is objectionably status quo biased. Strategically speaking, we have very good cause to observe a legitimacy standard of justificatory reciprocity even in non-ideal circumstances, to articulate the case for particular policies to promote justice in terms of shared interests, and to publicly articulate the case for regarding those interests as shared even though some do not endorse them. It is at least initially plausible that we also have good moral cause, in a liberal democratic state, to proceed toward justice by way of shared reasons. In the absence of a shared conception of justice, those reasons may seem too thin. But they are thick enough to specify a range of reasonable conceptions of justice, to determine the scope of the basic structure to which the principles of such a conception apply, to determine the scope of public reason within a society well ordered by such a conception, and to do much more theoretical work in political liberalism as well. We will see that they are thick enough, too, to support a theory of legitimate progress toward justice in non-ideal circumstances that is principled and conservative about ensuring that we proceed only in ways that are consistent with mutual respect among 28

Introduction

reasonable citizens, but that is also plausible and progressive in the extension of what it permits. For those who remain unconvinced, there is still more to say: The arguments of this book could be repackaged so that they fit more comfortably within the Rawlsian project of ideal theory political liberalism. One central implication of my main argument is that a society cannot be stably well ordered by a political conception of justice so long as it permits social norms and institutional design systematically to impose significant costs on gender egalitarian sharing of caregiving and unpaid labor, where those costs are sustained in a certain sort of way. Indeed, it is precisely by exploring the requirements that a political conception of justice must meet that we both discern the (range of the) ideal we are aiming to realize in the non-ideal packaging of the project and the constraints on the steps we may take to get there. A lot remains to be unpacked in the implication of my argument just expressed, and a lot of argument is needed to show it to be plausible. All that I defer until later. The point is just that the argument of this book could be given as an argument in ideal theory, for an extension and elaboration on the way that Rawls thinks about the positive requirements for any acceptable political conception of justice. Finally, and relatedly, it seems to me that the line between ideal and nonideal theory is less bright than it is typically taken to be. A central premise in my argument for gender egalitarian political interventions will be that informal social norms can be part of the primary subject matter of justice. Problematic norms, plausibly, can arise even within a society (once) well ordered by a reasonable political conception of justice. For example, behavior that is the numerical norm for long enough can become normative, and even if the behavior itself is unobjectionable at the bar of shared citizenship interests, the normativity of it can be objectionable by the lights of just those interests. I have said that on my view, some work specialization by sex may obtain in a fully gender just society. But should that specialization reach the level at which it becomes normative, it might become objectionable by the lights of the argument I defend in this book. That is, it might be susceptible to legitimate political remediation, even if the norm sustaining it arises within a wellordered society. Because we are not in such a society, I prefer to pitch my argument as a response to the non-ideal question: How may we exercise our shared power to influence one another’s lives through politics, and in service of which ends may we do so, as we attempt to move from the status quo toward a society well ordered by one within the range of reasonable political conceptions of justice? In arguing that gender egalitarianism figures among the permissible ends and gender egalitarian interventions among the permissible means, I invoke the bedrock values that set the range of reasonable political conceptions of justice. 29

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

But we might just as well ask: Once in a society well ordered by a political conception of justice, how may we legitimately address deviations brought about by the justice-salient effects of individuals making decisions and pursuing their own conceptions of the good over time? Because in restoring justice, we may bring about compliance with a different reasonable conception of justice than the one we started with and then deviated from, and because in addressing this question in the abstract, we don’t know which reasonable conception we can invoke, we might attempt to address this question too using only the bedrock values that any reasonable conception must respect. Whether this latter is a question of ideal or non-ideal theory seems largely a terminological matter, but presumably it is a question that political liberalism even on its standard interpretation should be able to answer, since it is one that arises within a society well ordered by a reasonable political conception of justice. Those readers unwilling to explore the possibility of addressing a question of legitimacy in non-ideal circumstances using the bedrock commitments of political liberalism might consider whether the argument developed in this book could helpfully be adapted for thinking about how legitimately to correct for “drift” from full justice—drift that seems inevitable once we acknowledge that social norms influenced by individual citizens’ behavior are themselves part of what justice judges.15

15

30

Thanks to Amy Baehr for helpful discussion on this point.

1 A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

Like several other feminists, I regard the domestic gendered division of labor as “the core” or “the linchpin” of gender injustice.1 This book defends the political legitimacy of gender-egalitarian interventions, or political policies aimed at eroding that gendered division of labor. I argue for the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions by offering a justification for those interventions that complies with certain principled constraints on the kind of reasons we can permissibly invoke to justify exercises of political power in a liberal democratic society. To build the most powerful case, I impose a particularly demanding version of the constraints: those associated with the liberal framework known as political liberalism. Because political liberalism imposes especially rigorous justificatory constraints on governmental intervention, many have taken that framework to rule out gender-egalitarian interventions as illegitimate. My argument will show that, contrary to appearances, remedying the gendered division of labor is a legitimate aim of governmental intervention, even by the lights of political liberalism. More strongly, it will show that, under certain circumstances, political liberalism demands interventions to undermine the gendered division of labor. Because of political liberalism’s stringent legitimacy constraints, this constitutes a strong case in favor of the political legitimacy of gender-egalitarian intervention, whether we embrace that framework or not. In this chapter, I do three things: First, I canvass recent empirical data on the gendered division of labor, using that data to update foundational theoretical contributions to the scholarship on the gendered division of labor and show that much of what we can learn from early theoretical work remains relevant 1 Gheaus 2012, 18; Okin 1989a, 6, 14, 170, respectively. See also Beauvoir 2011; Hochschild 1997; Exdell 1994; Pateman 1980. For worries about the linchpin thesis (which I think my reasons for affirming it avoid), see J. Cohen 1992. For clarification of terms like “gendered division of labor” and “gender egalitarianism,” see Section 0.3.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0001

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

today. Second, I describe three policy interventions that have been proposed as remedies to the gendered division of labor and present evidence that those interventions could be effective. Finally, I use those policy interventions to explore the legitimacy challenge that gender-egalitarian interventions face, beginning to elucidate the apparent tension between political liberalism and gender egalitarianism. The main task is to situate and motivate the project: to show that the gendered division of labor is alive and well despite women’s increased presence in the paid workforce over recent decades; that the gendered division of labor systematically harms women, men, and children; and that political interventions can effectively bring about progress toward gender egalitarianism. Of course, whether those interventions are legitimate by the lights of political liberalism will depend on whether any aspects of the harms just mentioned can permissibly be invoked as reasons in favor of remediation. The project of the book is to show that they can—that we should all find the gendered division of labor objectionable, whether or not we are initially inclined to regard it as such. But in this motivating chapter, I work only at an intuitive level, because I first want to establish that those of us concerned with gender justice have cause to undertake the theoretical work in the first place—that we should be motivated to ask the legitimacy question that this book takes up. Determining the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions is no mere intellectual exercise. Because the gendered division of labor persists, because it remains (intuitively, for now) harmful, and because interventions can be effective, those interventions must be regarded as live options for social policy. Whether or not they are ultimately justified depends on whether they can be shown to constitute legitimate exercises of coercive political power.2

1.1 The “Stalled” Revolution Women continue to perform the vast majority of the unpaid labor necessary for maintaining the home and caring for the family.3 This inequality persists in both urban and rural areas, in both developed and developing societies, and regardless of structural features of the family.4 A number of scholars 2 The interventions proceed by way of incentives and subsidies rather than force. Accordingly, on some ways of understanding “coercion,” the term does not apply. I do regard the interventions as coercive, and this categorization will be explored and defended in Chapter 4. For now, nothing hangs on it; take it as a terminological stipulation. 3 Artis and Pavalko 2003; Coltrane 2000; Dempsey 2002; Erickson 2005; Fuwa 2004; Fuwa and Cohen 2007; Gershuny 2000; Knudsen and Wærness 2008; Lincoln 2008; Mannino and Deutsch 2007; Pinto and Coltrane 2009. 4 Davis 2010.

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A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

have suggested that, absent political interventions, further narrowing of this inequality will not be forthcoming anytime soon.5 According to the 2017 American Time Use Survey, women spend over twice as much time as men do preparing food and doing household cleaning.6 And while housework is gendered even for single people, the housework load of women increases and that of men decreases with cohabitation and marriage.7 In the United States, married or cohabitating women perform roughly twothirds of all routine household tasks.8 One study found that, in an average week, married American women perform 13.2 hours of routine household labor compared with 6.6 hours performed by their male spouses.9 In Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries generally, employed fathers spend less than one-fourth as much time as their female partners on routine housework.10 In addition to the disparity in the amounts of housework women and men actually do, there is a disparity in the mental and emotional energy women and men devote to household maintenance: Apart from performing most of it, women are in charge of the planning, management, and organizational aspects of housework, as both women and men continue to treat domestic work as primarily the responsibility of women.11 Women regularly assume a managerial role, while men’s performance of housework is thought of as optional—as “pitching in” or “helping out.”12 Even when families pay others to perform domestic work for them, women continue to take responsibility for monitoring and supervising the work done—and women are vastly disproportionally the ones being paid to do the work.13 Unpaid childcare—like unpaid routine domestic work generally—remains unequally distributed according to gender. On average, employed fathers in OECD countries spend less than half as much time caring for children as do their employed female partners, and mothers’ time spent with children has not decreased despite their working hours having gone up dramatically.14

5

6 Bianchi et al. 2000; Cunningham 2007. American Time Use Survey 2018. Batalova and Cohen 2002; Baxter et al. 2008; Geist and Cohen 2011; Mason and Goulden 2002. 8 Breen 2005; Claffey and Mickelson 2009; Estes et al. 2007; Gershuny 2000; Greenstein 2000; 2009; Hook 2006; Knudsen and Wærness 2008. 9 Fuwa and Cohen 2007. 10 Gornick and Meyers 2003. The OECD is an organization of democratic countries with market economies, formed with the intention of stimulating economic progress and world trade. 11 Mannino and Deutsch 2007. 12 Blain 1994; Coltrane 1997; 2000; Gunter and Gunter 1990; Hawkins et al. 1994; Mannino and Deutsch 2007; Mederer 1993; West and Fenstermaker 1993. 13 Coltrane 2000. 14 Bianchi 2000; Coltrane 2009; Macdonald 2009; Zippel 2009. We have seen a reduction in women’s time spent on non-caregiving domestic labor. See American Time Use Survey 2011; 2016; 2018. This is likely due to women lowering their housekeeping standards in order to accommodate paid work and the increasing time demands of parenting. 7

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

Again using data from the 2017 American Time Use Survey, the U.S. Department of Labor found that on an average day in households with children under age six, women spent about one hour providing physical care for children, while men spent about twenty-five minutes.15 And as with housework, women report a higher sense of responsibility for and management of childcare.16 Because of their greater responsibility for the caregiving and domestic labor, women spend considerably less time than men do on leisure activities and exercising.17 The presence of children has implications for the performance of noncaregiving-related domestic labor as well. One study found an increase of six extra hours of housework (excluding childcare) per week among women after the birth of a first child, but no increase among men.18 Transitions into both marriage and parenthood have long been known to trigger a larger increase in women’s domestic labor than in men’s and a shift toward a less egalitarian sharing of family work generally.19, 20 Most studies of time spent on caring and domestic labor do not include housework or childcare performed as a secondary activity—for example, doing laundry while watching television, or supervising children while having coffee with friends. But studies that do register domestic work as a secondary activity consistently find greater gender gaps than those that do not.21 Women are much likelier to combine childcare with leisure or exercise, thus calling into question the recuperative value of women’s leisure time relative to men’s.22 Trend lines paint a picture of a stalled gender revolution.23 The steady progress toward more gender-egalitarian attitudes that characterized most of the three decades leading up to the twenty-first century began to decline in the mid-1990s.24 Attitudes about who should perform unpaid caregiving labor have proven far more entrenched than attitudes about women’s ability to perform paid work outside the home.25 Growth in married mothers’ labor force participation has declined, as has growth in entry into previously maledominated fields.26 Meanwhile, recent years have witnessed an uptick of women choosing to downshift or exit paid work in favor of full-time motherhood, in what’s been termed the “opt-out revolution.”27 Despite earning a 15

16 American Time Use Survey 2016; 2018. Poortman and Van der Lippe 2009. American Time Use Survey 2011; 2016; 2018; Bianchi and Milkie 2010. 18 Baxter et al. 2008. 19 American Time Use Survey 2016; 2018; Blair and Lichter 1991; Cowan and Cowan 1992; South and Spitze 1994. 20 Cowan and Cowan 1992; Craig and Mullan 2010; Johnson and Huston 1998; MacDermid et al. 1990; Shelton 1992. 21 22 Craig 2007; Craig and Mullan 2010. American Time Use Survey 2011; 2016; 2018. 23 24 Cotter et al. 2011; England 2010. But see also Sullivan et al. 2018. Cotter et al. 2011. 25 Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010. 26 Bianchi and Milkie 2010; Cotter et al. 2004; Goldin 2006. 27 Belkin 2003; Cotter et al. 2011. 17

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A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

majority of post-baccalaureate degrees, women remain underrepresented in high-skilled professions, both at entry levels and increasingly as they age.28 Only gains in women’s educational attainment have stayed strong, and only to an extent; while women’s rates of college entry and completion remain high, integration by field of study has stopped.29 By some measures, progress toward equality has not only slowed; it has stopped completely or even reversed.30 Compared with the 2010 data, the 2015 and 2017 American Time Use Surveys show virtually no difference in men’s average hours per day spent on housework or household management, or on time spent caring for and helping household members and household children. (Indeed, we see small decreases on some of these measures.) Neither has women’s time spent on hoursehold activities or childcare decreased. Meanwhile, men’s time spent on work and work-related activities increased, while women’s decreased.31 The differences are slight, but cumulatively help paint a picture of a stalled revolution. Why should we care that the revolution has stalled? Workplace consequences are perhaps the most oft-cited effects of women’s greater share of caregiving work. Just as the gendered division of labor persists across national contexts, so too does gender inequality in earnings and wage rates.32 Recent research suggests that nearly all of the remaining observed gender inequality in workplace outcomes is due to gender difference in caring for children. That is, child penalties, or “the percentage by which women fall behind men due to children,” are “gradually taking over as the key driver of gender inequality.”33 A study in Denmark found that women’s and men’s labor market outcomes develop in parallel until after the birth of a first child, at which point outcomes diverge sharply and do not reconverge.34 A recent U.S. Census Bureau report found that the gendered earning gap between spouses doubles during the period beginning two years before the birth of a first child and ending a year after.35 A Swedish study found that female executives in their forties were about half as likely as male executives to be CEOs and about one-third less likely to be high earners. Rather than differences in skills or education—the females in the study appear to have been better qualified on average than the males—the researchers found that slow career progression during the five years after the first childbirth explains most

28

29 Antecol et al. 2016. Buchmann and DiPrete 2006. See also Cotter et al. 2011. This despite what some studies appear to show as a slight rebound around 2000. See Cotter et al. 2011. 31 American Time Use Survey 2011; 2016; 2018. 32 This inequality “continues to be substantial in all countries and the process of convergence has slowed down.” Kleven et al. 2018, 1. 33 34 35 Kleven et al. 2018, 1, 3. Kleven et al. 2018. Chung et al. 2017. 30

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

of the disparity. During those years, the female executives worked shorter hours than their male counterparts and spent more time away from work.36 Particularly for college-educated women, parenthood imposes a career penalty: While the gender gap in pay is relatively narrow right when collegeeducated women and men begin their careers, it widens most sharply in the years during which women have children. Unmarried women who remain childless continue to earn close to what men earn with similar qualifications in similar professions. Married women without children fall in between, still earning less than men in part because they are likelier to give up job opportunities to either move or not move, deferring to the demands of their husband’s job.37 Between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, the gender pay gap for college graduates widens by fifty-five percentage points, while the gap for those without college degrees widens by twenty-eight points.38 In both cases, the extent to which parenthood explains unequal labor market outcomes between women and men has grown over time: The study from Denmark found that the share of gender inequality caused by the arrival of children—and the attendant gender divergence in labor force participation; hours worked; and sector, occupation, and firm choices—increased from about 40 percent in 1980 to about 80 percent in 2013.39 But to my mind, the strongest reasons to care about the gendered division of labor don’t concern the earnings or career trajectories of professional women and men. To my mind, what should most motivate us to theorize the gendered division of labor is its role in sustaining a broader set of disadvantages: those that result from our general devaluation of caregiving work, which gendered specialization and specialization-lite effectively perpetuate. Those of us in heterosexual cooperative domestic partnerships still largely comply with social norms and social institutions that presume breadwinner/homemaker specialization, whether we endorse that presumption or not. Plausibly, our compliance enables the continued devaluation of caregiving, because it amounts to an acceptance that caregiving is private work which society collectively has no interest in supporting. Plausibly, our compliance helps to sustain an economic system that subjects low-income women and women outside the labor market to disproportionate material precarity, because they are associated with work that we hardly recognize as such.40 Plausibly, too, it enables the labor market conditions that so disadvantage single parents, because it helps to sustain a system in which workers are presumed to have “someone else at home” to take care of domestic 36

Keloharju et al. 2017. See also Bertrand et al. 2010. 38 Barth et al. 2017; Goldin et al. 2017. Barth et al. 2017. 39 Kleven et al. 2018. See also Angelov et al. 2015. 40 See Holmstrom 1981 on how the family helps to sustain the exploitation of women wage workers. 37

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A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

and caregiving responsibilities. This presumption is disadvantageous to dual-earner families, but it is far more disadvantageous to single parents. And it is disadvantageous too to the involuntarily unemployed men on whom unemployment might not take such a high toll were it not for the social norms that associate their worth with their breadwinning specialization.41 More generally, the presumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization is bad for traditionally structured families whose members no longer want to specialize; but it is far worse for families that do not align with the traditional, heteronormative paradigm that the presumption reflects. Genderegalitarian interventions, we’ll see, target decisions made within families that do align with the paradigm, because it is those families’ compliance with the presumption that enables it to persist. I have canvassed the data on unequal employment outcomes here because those outcomes are easily measured and so data are available. But I do not think those inequalities are our strongest reason to undertake the project of theorizing the gendered division of labor and what we might legitimately do to erode it. Our strongest reason concerns the disadvantages that accrue to those whose work and caregiving lives most deviate from the gendered specialization presumption, and those whose devalued professional caregiving and domestic work enables others to manage that presumption. Susan Moller Okin argues in her seminal book Justice, Gender, and the Family that women’s share of unpaid caregiving work is not only unequal; it is unfair. To make her case, she traces the ways in which social mechanisms like early gender socialization and unequal bargaining power within domestic partnerships reinforce gendered choices that systematically leave women vulnerable. First, she argues, women are made vulnerable by their preparation for adulthood. They are socialized to expect that if they have children, they will have primary responsibility for caregiving. This expectation subsequently leads them to prepare for work and life trajectories that are less esteemed and less well remunerated than those anticipated by boys. The expectation begins with gendered socialization in upbringing and is reinforced by media influences and other cultural and educational messages.42 For example, teachers and guidance counselors might consciously or unconsciously tout flexible jobs to girls and young women. This might occur in a straightforwardly gendered way: Young women are presumed to be headed toward caregiving specialization and so are encouraged to prepare for jobs that can accommodate caregiving responsibilities. But it might also occur more circuitously: Girls exhibit characteristics like patience and nurturance that make them seem well suited for certain kinds of jobs. Those happen to be the ones that are heavily 41 42

See Inanc 2018. For examples of how the media reinforces gender norms, see Chambers 2008, 125.

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

dominated by women and that have developed to accommodate caregiving responsibilities. But the jobs have evolved to be flexible—and have become associated with norms of patience and nurturance and, importantly, to be less well remunerated and less esteemed—in part because we associate them with femininity; and girls disproportionally exhibit the relevant characteristics in part because we socialize them to do so. Unequal preparation results in many more women than men choosing jobs that accommodate the needs of a primary caregiver: the need to suspend and resume work for periods of time to care for dependents; to limit hours spent away from children when they aren’t in school; to be available to children at a moment’s notice should they become sick; even the need to provide elder and sick care that might foreseeably arise, for example, to care for ill or aging parents or in-laws. Our labor markets are set up such that jobs that accommodate these needs—jobs in fields like nursing, teaching, sales, hospitality, and administrative services—tend to be low-paying, low-prestige positions with little room for growth and advancement. Young men, on the other hand, tend to make early preparation choices without the worry that their work will need to be conducive to primary caregiving. For example, we see many more men than women in prestigious professional positions that reward long hours with high pay and advancement opportunities. According to Okin, the gendered nature of job preparation has offset women’s tremendous educational advances relative to men, such that women continue to earn less despite being equally well educated.43 We’ve just seen that, even now that women have overtaken men on measures of educational attainment, men continue vastly to outnumber women in the very positions for which women are increasingly better credentialed. Workingclass jobs are gendered as well, with the less contingent, better remunerated, and less flexible being dominated by men. Consciously or not, girls and young women are prepared differently for adulthood than are boys and young men, and this affects the jobs they enter and the aspirations they develop. Because traditionally feminine jobs are less esteemed and less well remunerated, this amounts to enlisting women into a system of asymmetric vulnerability relative to men. So women in our society are made vulnerable, Okin argues, by their gendered preparation for adulthood. With cohabitation and motherhood, this vulnerability deepens. In part because of their gendered preparation for adulthood, women do not enter heterosexual partnerships on equal footing with their male partners. For example, “answers to questions such as whose work life and work needs take priority, and how the unpaid work of the family will

43

38

Okin 1989a, 144.

A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

be allocated . . . are likely to be strongly influenced by the differences in earning power between husbands and wives.”44 As women prioritize unpaid labor to free their partners to devote themselves to paid labor, those women forego opportunities to develop their own earning potential and labor marketability. This trend persists even among dual-earning partners. We have seen that, still today, full-time working women continue to do a larger share of the unpaid domestic work than their partners, and men’s jobs continue to be prioritized when someone must step back for caregiving. These social mechanisms continue the cycle of asymmetric vulnerability. The decline in women’s labor marketability over the course of their marriage, both in absolute terms and relative to their partners, need not result from overtly sexist attitudes. Because of the design of social institutions, some degree of specialization will often be in the clear best interest of the domestic unit. For example, the vast majority of part-time work opportunities are low paying and low status, with few prospects for advancement and no benefits; as such, equal sharing of paid labor between partners cannot come by way of both partners working part time. Specialization seems inevitable, and because of gendered preparation, gendered specialization becomes the default. Specialization grows over time as labor inequalities within the home and workplace powerfully reinforce and perpetuate one another. For these reasons, the asymmetric vulnerability reaches its height in the many cases of marriages that end in divorce—and, we might add, non-marital partnerships that are subsequently dissolved. Because women are asymmetrically materially reliant on breadwinning partners during their partnerships, and because they forego opportunities to invest in their own job market prospects, they are asymmetrically materially vulnerable, and all too often they are absolutely vulnerable, when those partnerships end. The fact that they often retain custody of children can exacerbate their material vulnerability. And this to say nothing of the asymmetric vulnerability between women and men generally once we consider mothers who never had cooperating domestic partners, but who must cooperate and negotiate with men on unequal footing in pursuits outside of the home. A great deal has changed in the nearly three decades since Okin’s book was published. Men are doing more caregiving, and more women are working outside the home, whether by choice or out of economic necessity. Meanwhile, attitudes about the appropriate roles of women and men in the workplace have trended in the direction of egalitarianism.45 And yet, as we’ve seen, women continue to be disadvantaged by their performance of a larger share of

44 45

Okin 1989a, 146. Coltrane 2000; 2009; Cunningham 2007; Sullivan and Gershuny 2001.

39

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

domestic work in ways that have changed remarkably little,46 and the consequences of the gendered division of labor continue to extend far beyond those who participate in gendered partnerships. To gain a better understanding of the role of labor markets in sustaining the gendered division of labor, we turn to another book published in the same year as Okin’s: Arlie Hochschild’s The Second Shift. Hochschild explores the growing demands of full-time employment, especially among high-paid and high-status workers.47 She argues that, because of demanding workplaces and the time binds they generate, full-time employment is largely incompatible with serious caregiving commitments. The workload of many full-time jobs still presumes that employees either do not have domestic responsibilities or have someone else at home to see to them. As the massive influx of women into paid work has far outpaced men’s increased assumption of domestic responsibilities, women continue to be that “someone else” who shoulders the major responsibility for domestic work.48 Women with caregiving responsibilities might opt to maintain serious labor market attachment while shouldering the bulk of caregiving work. If they do, they will be competing at work for status and advancement against men who do far less caregiving, and who often have the background support of a caregiving specialist partner. Apart from competing on unequal terms for workplace advancement, these women will face the time-poverty consequences of combining paid employment with their “second shift” of caregiving at home: less leisure time and higher levels of stress. The alternative is to surrender to specialization or specialization-lite, prioritizing caregiving, while maintaining, at most, a peripheral commitment to paid work. This option leaves women less time-poor, but at a cost in terms of the financial independence that would have come with serious commitments to paid labor and, assuming good work is available, the enjoyments that would have come from working outside the home. Their families may also suffer a cost, as economic conditions make it increasingly difficult for families to live on one income, or even one and a half.49 Until men take on a greater share of caregiving work, Hochschild argues, women will face stark tradeoffs between caregiving and paid work.

46 For a review of the literature published between 1989 and 1999, see Coltrane 2000. For reviews of the literature published between 2000 and 2010, see Bianchi and Milkie 2010; Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010. 47 Hochschild and Machung 1989, xxv. 48 For more on how the gendered family and gendered specialization-lite benefit capitalism generally, see Holmstrom 1981; hooks 2014. 49 According to Hochschild, at the time of her writing, a two-income family brought in about what one worker had earned previously, when pay was based on union wages and manufacturing was valued work. See Hochschild and Machung 1989, xxiv–xxv.

40

A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

But increasing demands of full-time employment make it difficult for breadwinning men to significantly increase their contribution to the work of maintaining the home and family. The time bind for men may be different and less severe than it is for women, but it is real all the same. Both women and men experience higher levels of stress and enjoy less leisure time and less unstructured time with their families. Hochschild refers to this as the “speedup” in work and family life, and argues that, although it affects both women and men, it is women who are increasingly expected to juggle serious commitments to paid work with the major responsibility of performing or orchestrating the work that needs to be done to care for the home and family. It is worth emphasizing: Even if women and men spent roughly equal total amounts of time working when both paid and unpaid work are counted together, women’s vastly larger share of caregiving matters. First, as we have already seen, it impedes further progress toward women’s equality in the workplace.50 The domestic workload women shoulder limits their job prospects as women suffer penalties in pay, promotion, and workplace evaluation when they partner and become parents.51 Unequal job prospects between genders intersect with other social injustices; for example, while the gendered earning gap is smaller between earners without college degrees, the motherhood penalty is most harmful to women at the bottom of the income distribution.52 Gender inequality in paid and caregiving work also matters because many women, men, and children would enjoy a higher level of wellbeing if paid and unpaid work were more equally shared between women and men.53 Most straightforwardly, when one is not overburdened by it, caregiving work is rewarding, and many men would be better off in virtue of doing more of it.54 Many more would be better off were their inability to perform as their family’s breadwinner specialist not experienced as a loss of their only—or their only estimable—means of contributing.55 The unequal distribution of housework and childcare also hinders the attainment of various beneficial family outcomes,56 and it serves as one of the greatest sources of conflict

50 See also Antecol et al. 2016; Lothaller et al. 2009; Poeschl 2008. See Gittell 2009 for an argument that women’s role as the family caregiver explains the fact that women continue to earn less than men. See Ross-Smith and Chesterman 2009 for an argument that the gendered division of domestic labor explains the limited occupational choices that women face. 51 And evidently most men enjoy a work premium upon becoming parents. Benard and Correll 2010; Budig and Hodges 2010; Hodges and Budig 2010; Kmec et al. 2013; Raley et al. 2012. 52 Budig and Hodges 2010; Cooke and Hook 2018. 53 I do not know whether gender egalitarianism would enhance the wellbeing of women and men on average holding fixed our current attitudes and preferences, or whether it would enhance our wellbeing only after gender norms surrounding work are removed. See Brighouse and Wright 2009. 54 55 56 Brighouse and Wright 2009. See Inanc 2018. Breen 2005.

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

between partners.57 Conversely, studies indicate that an egalitarian sharing of housework has positive effects on women’s and men’s emotional health and marital satisfaction.58 One plausible explanation for this is that parenting behaviors have not caught up with increasingly egalitarian attitudes about how parenting should be distributed. One study, which found a strong consensus that parenting should be shared equally, also found that most respondents believe their actual distribution of labor is unequal: Both fathers and mothers reported that fathers were less than ideally involved in caregiving and more than ideally involved in breadwinning.59 Because perceptions of unfairness have been linked to a variety of negative personal and marital outcomes, reducing discrepancies between actual and ideal parenting distributions could enhance both parents’ wellbeing.60 Finally, more equal sharing could enhance children’s wellbeing by reducing family stress. And because gender attitudes and behaviors appear to be passed from generation to generation, all the reasons that equal sharing is good for parents suggest too that it is good for their children, by way of making it likelier that those children will enjoy the benefits of equal sharing should they themselves later become parents.61 As already noted, gender egalitarianism would also be to the benefit of many unfairly disadvantaged women and men who don’t themselves participate in gender specialization. For example, women’s greater share of unpaid caregiving perpetuates the association of women with caregiving generally, and the devaluation of caregiving even when it is done for a living. Women’s vastly larger share of caregiving in the aggregate also reinforces discriminatory practices, such as statistical discrimination, wherein employers (consciously or unconsciously) use aggregate group characteristics to make inferences about the likely behavior of (prospective) employees about whom they know relatively little else. The gender gap in pay widens over the life course, largely because women actually do prioritize caregiving more than men do, but in part too because statistical discrimination impedes their prospects whether or not they do. For employers with limited knowledge about job candidates or about employees vying for a promotion, the statistical reality that women are far likelier than men to have caregiving responsibilities that draw them intermittently or permanently away from paid work can be a salient consideration.62 In this way, the gendered division of labor can

57

Kluwer 1998; Kluwer et al. 1996; 2000. Coltrane 2000; Hawkins and Roberts 1992; Milkie et al. 2002; Mintz and Mahalik 1996; Rasmussen et al. 1996. 59 60 Milkie et al. 2002. Greenstein 1996; Milkie et al. 2002. 61 Cunningham 2001; Kleven et al. 2018; McGinn et al. 2018; Sumontha et al. 2017. 62 Correll et al. 2007; Glass 2004. 58

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A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

limit the job prospects of unpartnered women or partnered women who don’t specialize in caregiving. The mere fact that parent-aged women are likelier than parent-aged men to take leave or occupational breaks in order to care for children has consequences: Women are less likely to advance in their jobs, and they continue to earn less whether or not they do take time out for caregiving.63 Though it takes a different form than when Okin and Hochschild first wrote about it, the gendered division of labor persists. It has negative consequences across the population, but it is especially bad for women, whose greater share of caregiving work leaves them time-poor and disadvantaged in the world of paid work. Later, as I develop my politically liberal case for remediation, we will look more closely at the social mechanisms sustaining the gendered division of labor. For now, suffice it to say that they remain much as Okin and Hochschild described: Women and men arrange their lives and make decisions about sharing caregiving and income-earning against a backdrop of workplaces that remain designed for breadwinning specialists supported by homemaking specialists, and without the kind of social support for caregiving that we might expect in a society of dual-breadwinning families. Meanwhile, gender norms influence the ways in which individuals navigate these constraints: Women and men must overcome not only their early gendered socialization and habituation if they are to pursue gender-egalitarian sharing; they must also overcome social cues that reinforce that socialization, and household economic considerations that interact with it to favor gendered specialization. It is no surprise, then, that so many cooperating partners find it difficult to resist gendered specialization, even if they are ideologically committed to doing just that.64 In light of these realities, many of those seeking political solutions to gender inequality focus on substitute childcare provisions and “family-friendly” workplace reform as the way to jumpstart the stalled gender revolution.

1.2 Gender-Egalitarian Policy Interventions Certain policy initiatives could bring about a more equal sharing of paid and caregiving labor. The policies I consider are based on the idea that gender inequality is perpetuated by social structures that have “failed to respond to changing social and economic realities.”65 Labor markets still work on the assumption that workers are supported by partners who are either not

63

Coltrane 2009; Zippel 2009.

64

England 2010.

65

Zippel 2009, 4.

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Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

employed outside the home or employed in a much less demanding capacity than the family wage-earning specialist. The caregiving-specialist partner is implicitly assumed to be available to care for the home and family, thereby freeing up the primary worker to prioritize paid labor and absolving society of the need to coordinate shared, public mechanisms for caregiving or caregiver support. The most promising policy solutions aim to reform workplaces to get rid of the institutionalized assumption that workers are supported by caregiver specialists and shore up social supports for caregivers so that dual-earner families can manage caregiving demands without resorting to labor specialization. But importantly, we’ll see that effective reform requires both support provisions to make social institutions more family friendly and policy inducements to encourage families to behave in more gender-egalitarian ways in using those provisions. Policy proposals vary, and to be successful, any intervention must be sensitive to the social, political, and economic context in which it is to be implemented. The circumstances matter, and other reforms may be needed so that the interventions considered here can accomplish their aims. For example, women who lack non-demeaning work opportunities have little to gain from inducements to stay attached to paid labor. The policies I endorse plausibly could help to raise the quality and increase the number of jobs needing to be filled, by requiring the kind of provisions that make good jobs good, by limiting the time employers can demand of any particular employee, and by lowering the fixed costs of hiring additional employees. But these policies clearly are not sufficient to ensure good work for all who want it. Backgrounding those complicating factors, certain key initiatives have received support by theorists interested in promoting gender equality in caregiving and paid work allocations. These interventions, it is argued, will lessen gendered specialization in the short run by enabling and encouraging more egalitarian choices, and they will promote the gender-egalitarian social ideal over time as more egalitarian behavior in the short term gradually erodes the social norms perpetuating the gendered division of labor. The near-term incentives to resist gendered specialization are thus in service of the long-term social transformation: The interventions ultimately aim to erode the norms and reform the institutions that sustain the gendered division of labor, and they accomplish this in part by incentivizing non-compliance with those norms and institutional arrangements here and now. The gender-egalitarian policy agenda includes family leave initiatives, subsidies for substitute caregiving, and work time regulation. After discussing each of these items on the gender-egalitarian policy agenda, I will survey evidence suggesting that carefully composed packages of these interventions could help promote a more gender-egalitarian future. 44

A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

1.2.1 Family Leave Initiatives Family leave policies would fund—and require employers to allow—paid time off with job protection after childbirth or adoption.66 As with all the political policies discussed here, the details matter. The duration of leave must be calibrated to avoid setting parents back at work. Very long subsidized leave risks parents falling behind their peers in terms of job marketability and can disincentivize the hiring of parents or those deemed likely to become parents. To further avoid generating such disincentives, the policies must be designed to limit the added costs to employers of hiring parents relative to non-parents; for example, any employer contributions to the funding of caregiving leaves should not be indexed to the share of employees in the firm who take leave.67 Leave should be flexible to promote continued labor-market attachment among caregivers. For example, parents should be able to take their benefit on a full- or part-time basis, all at once or incrementally over several years.68 Other things equal, pay replacement rates should be high, because low wage replacement rates discourage leave-taking among higher earners. Because men still out-earn women, low replacement rates will reinforce household economic considerations favoring women taking leave. High wage replacement rates lessen the foregone income costs of leave-taking by the higher earner. Plausibly, the best family leave policies for promoting gender egalitarianism would be flexible, relatively short, and generous, with pay replacement up to full earnings subject to some earning cap.69 Advocates of paid family leave provisions as a tool for promoting gender egalitarianism generally propose that restrictions or incentives be attached to encourage fathers to take leave.70 For example, leave may be allocated to mothers and fathers separately, on a non-transferable basis, rather than being allocated to the household as a unit. If leave is allocated to the household as a unit, then one member can take the full amount, and social norms and household economic incentives will generally favor women taking the bulk of it. But if leave is allocated to parents individually, this generates an incentive effect, referred to by some as a “daddy quota”: Each parent’s leave, if not taken up by that parent, is forfeited.71 Or, leave may be allocated to household units, but requirements may be imposed so that some portion of

66 For defenses and endorsements of different versions of family leave policies, see Brighouse and Wright 2009; Coltrane 2009; Crittenden 2002; Folbre 2009; Gheaus and Robeyns 2011; Heymann 2000; Hochschild and Machung 1989; Kenworthy 2009; Morgan 2009; Zippel 2009. Some theorists have expressed doubts that leave policies can be designed in ways that will be politically feasible and avoid further entrenching gender inequality. See Bergmann 1998; 2009; Deven and Moss 2002; Hook 2006; Morgan 2009. 67 68 69 70 Zippel 2009. Zippel 2009. Zippel 2009. But see McDonald 2009. 71 See, for example, Bertrand 2018; Kenworthy 2009; Zippel 2009.

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leave is given only on the condition that parents share it equally.72 Consider a policy that allocates three months to each parent of a newly born or adopted child, but each parents’ second and third months are conditional on their partner taking his own corresponding month of leave. Such a policy plausibly will induce more men to take leave, and in so doing, help erode norms against male leave-taking, promote parental comfort and attachment to children among both leave-takers, promote labor market attachment among women, and, plausibly, promote gender-egalitarian behavior in future generations.73

1.2.2 Subsidized Substitute Caregiving Subsidized substitute caregiving initiatives could promote gender egalitarianism by easing the work–family tradeoffs that caregivers face.74 Publicly supported substitute caregiving could take the form of child-based entitlements provided at the national level that enable parents to choose from among a variety of high-quality substitute caregiving arrangements that match parents’ working hours.75 But subsidized caregiving aimed at promoting gender egalitarianism should support high-quality substitute care for other dependents as well.76 Adult care is gendered just as childcare is,77 and with trends toward a larger aging population spending more years needing assistance, elder care will play an increasingly large role in sustaining the gendered division of labor. Even those without young children or dependent parents can have intermittent caregiving responsibilities within kin and friendship networks, and the burden on women of meeting these responsibilities could be eased with subsidies for or provision of quality substitute care. Like caregiving leave, substitute caregiving subsidies risk further entrenching the gendered division of labor if they are not designed carefully to avoid that consequence. It is easy to stoke fears of men taking leave while children are in subsidized full-time substitute care, so that what were intended to be complementary policies for promoting a manageable work–caregiving balance instead conjoin to subsidize men’s work advancement or, more cynically still, their recreation. Public benefits always carry a risk of abuse, but careful policy design can minimize this. Still, even setting aside worries about 72 Bergmann 2009; Brighouse and Wright 2009. But see Gheaus and Robeyns 2011 for concerns about this approach, and a suggestion that manipulating defaults might be a preferable way to encourage men to take leave. 73 Cunningham 2001; McGinn et al. 2018. 74 For defenses and endorsements of different versions of substitute caregiving policies, see Bergmann 2009; Crittenden 2002; Folbre 2009; Hartmann and Lovell 2009; Heymann 2000; Hochschild and Machung 1989; hooks 2014; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Zippel 2009. 75 Zippel 2009. For concerns that non-parental childcare within the first year may be detrimental to child wellbeing, see Kenworthy 2009. 76 See Folbre 2009; Hartmann and Lovell 2009. 77 See, for example Unpaid Eldercare in the United States: 2013–2014 Survey 2014.

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A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

intentional misuse, we might worry that substitute caregiving will take the place of men’s contributions. Men may be less likely to take caregiving leave if they have access to subsidized substitute care. But certain provisions can make it less likely that non-parental childcare will take the place of men’s contributions: for example, high wage replacement rates for leave-taking, staggering the timing of leave and substitute childcare eligibility, facilitated networking through fathers’ groups, and making leave-taking provisions for co-parents conditional on equal participation.78 Subsidizing and regulating substitute caregiving also has the potential to improve the working conditions of professional caregivers, themselves disproportionally women. Most obviously, the provisions outlined here would also be available to professional caregivers; indeed, one reason we need political solutions for supporting caregiving is that progress by way of labor market competition for employees will be uneven, with the most vulnerable workers going unsupported. These policies will also increase the amount of regulated caregiving work available, in both in-home settings and center-based settings. These policies will not solve every work-related injustice and they will not fix all that is wrong with the working conditions of professional caregivers. Indeed, careless implementation risks exacerbating those wrongs. We clearly need to enact other workplace reforms beyond those to promote gender egalitarianism, including regulation and standards of professionalization to protect professional caregivers. But done thoughtfully and in concert with protections for professional caregivers, subsidizing substitute caregiving can improve rather than worsen the conditions of professional caregivers.

1.2.3 Work Time Regulation Work time regulations would limit the length of the work day and week, thereby enabling workers to reallocate time from paid labor to domestic and caregiving work.79 Work time regulation policies that grant rights to a minimum number of paid days off have been endorsed for gender-egalitarian purposes, as have policies that increase the supply and quality of reducedand part-time work opportunities and that encourage pay and benefits for part-time work to be proportional to those received by full-time workers.80

78

See Coltrane 2009. See also Gilman 1992; 1998. For defenses and endorsements of different versions of work time regulation policies, see Bergmann 2009; Coltrane 2009; Crittenden 2002; Hartmann and Lovell 2009; Heymann 2000; Hochschild and Machung 1989; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Kenworthy 2009; Zippel 2009. But note Coltrane’s reservations about increasing the availability and quality of part-time work as a gender-equalizing measure. 80 Hartmann and Lovell 2009; Kenworthy 2009; Zippel 2009. 79

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In the United States, healthcare and security in retirement remain significantly attached to full-time work. This makes it difficult for families to establish a gender-egalitarian domestic arrangement by holding down two complementary part-time jobs; they rely on the full-time job of at least one adult for the family’s healthcare and much of their savings and insurance. Work time regulation could change this by raising the status, security, and remuneration of part-time work; it could also help by limiting the time commitment demanded of full-time employees and by increasing employers’ need for additional hiring. Like the other policy initiatives, work time regulation carries some risk of further entrenching the gendered division of labor if it is not implemented carefully. Improving the conditions of part-time work might encourage many women who would otherwise work full time to cut back. On the other hand, improving the pay and status of part-time work could draw more men into part-time work who would otherwise work full time. This is particularly likely when work time regulation is implemented as one component of genderegalitarian policy that also includes mechanisms to incentivize men’s caregiving and women’s labor force attachment.

1.2.4 Other Policy Possibilities Still other proposals have been offered for eroding the gendered division of labor, and many of these have great appeal. Elizabeth Brake argues for “minimal marriage,” or state recognition of a broader array of forms of adult caregiving network. Among other considerations that feature more prominently in her argument, Brake argues that by extending the justifiable set of marriage benefits to polyamorists, polygamists, friendship networks, and other adult care networks, we can change the gendered aspirations people develop that lead to traditional gender role performance in domestic cooperation.81 In his work on equal opportunity, Joseph Fishkin argues that gender inequality in the workplace can best be tackled by undermining employers’ incentives to demand more work of existing employees by reducing fixed peremployee costs while raising the relative marginal costs of paying existing employees to work additional hours. Apart from work time regulation, this might involve detaching health benefits from employment and lowering the number of weekly hours after which overtime pay is required, thereby undermining employers’ reasons for demanding the kind of commitment to paid labor that makes it so difficult for caregivers to compete and for workers to spend ample time on caregiving.82 81

48

Brake 2005; 2012.

82

Fishkin 2014, 229; Selmi 2000.

A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

In focusing on work time regulation, family leave initiatives, and subsidized substitute caregiving provision, my goal is not to provide an exhaustive list, but rather to illustrate the kind of strategy I have in mind. What unifies the various possibilities I want to consider is their aim: to erode the gendered division of labor by inducing more families to choose gender-egalitarian arrangements in the short term, thus eroding the social norms and reforming the gendered institutions that sustain the gendered division of labor in the long run. Although I will generally have in mind these three examples when I refer to “gender-egalitarian interventions,” and while I will present evidence of effectiveness with respect to those interventions in particular, I am open to a wide range of promising strategies for accomplishing the aim in question, and I assume that the most promising strategy will vary depending on social context. We have plenty of reason to support caregiving and to reform labor markets, and much of the gender-egalitarian policy agenda could do a great deal to ease injustices that are not principally about gender. But we want to know whether those reforms can be justified on the grounds that they promote gender egalitarianism, and thus whether the particular design features that will enable them effectively to promote gender egalitarianism are justified, even if those design features impose additional costs that must be weighted in political calculations. In surveying the policies’ effectiveness, then, the relevant measure is their potential to change behavior and eventually change social norms in a way that furthers the social aim of gender egalitarianism. I want to demonstrate the practical relevance of my inquiry—to show that we have a fair bit of evidence that policies could be designed to promote gender egalitarianism effectively, and so investigating the legitimacy of doing so is no mere intellectual exercise.

1.2.5 Will Gender-Egalitarian Interventions Work? A growing body of evidence provides good reason for optimism that carefully composed packages of work time regulations, family leave initiatives, and subsidized substitute caregiving provisions could effectively make our societies more gender egalitarian.83 Plenty of evidence establishes that such policies influence the behavior of those to whom they are available. For example, studies of leave policy in European countries have found that leave can increase women’s employment rates.84 Whether such policies change behavior in ways that promote gender egalitarianism is a matter of policy design. 83 See, for example, Bianchi et al. 2000; Ciscel et al. 2000; Estes et al. 2007; Kenworthy 2009; Sayer 2005. 84 Misra et al. 2011; Stearns 2016.

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For example, some kinds of leave policy might decrease the gender gap in labor force participation, but increase the gap in earnings, as more women stay in the workforce but on a more flexible track that allows for caregiving.85 In the few policy contexts that have introduced dedicated, non-transferrable leave allowances for fathers, such policies seem to have had the intended effect: Fathers take more leave around the birth of their child, and they remain more involved in childcare and housework thereafter.86 Other studies have found that men who use family support policies such as parental leave do a larger share of routine housework than those who do not use such policies, and their wives do a smaller share of housework and have more labor force attachment and higher rates of working full time.87 And paternal childcare due to leave-taking persists long after the leave is taken.88 Men’s leave-taking also appears to erode the social stigma against leave-taking, which makes women’s leave-taking less disruptive to their jobs.89 At least in some professions, gender-egalitarian interventions can erode the wage penalty associated with leave-taking.90 Other evidence suggests that limitations on standard employee working time can increase men’s performance of unpaid domestic labor,91 and that measures aimed at improving the quality and availability of part-time work can increase men’s participation in it.92 Still other studies have found that publicly funded childcare and flexible scheduling enable women to perform more paid labor and less domestic labor.93 In short, the data show that efforts to increase men’s performance of housework and caregiving and women’s labor market attachment can be successful.94 While countries differ in the extent of their political support for gender egalitarianism, even the most progressive have not managed fully to erode the gendered division of labor. Questions regarding the legitimacy of political interventions to further that goal remain practically relevant across these contexts. This is true both because we want to know of effective interventions already deployed that they are legitimate, and because we want to know how progressively gender egalitarian we can be as we seek to make further progress.

85

Blau and Kahn 2013. Nepomnyaschy and Waldfogel 2007; Tanaka and Waldfogel 2007. 87 88 89 Estes et al. 2007. See also Patnaik 2018. Schober 2014. Dahl et al. 2014. 90 Goldin and Katz 2011. See also Goldin 2014. 91 Gornick and Meyers 2003. See also Hook 2006; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Mutari and Figart 2001. 92 Zippel 2009. 93 Fuwa and Cohen 2007; Hook 2006; Iversen and Rosenbluth 2006. But see Kitterød and Pettersen 2006; Windebank 2001. 94 Coltrane 2009; Gornick and Meyers 2009. 86

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A Stalled Revolution and the Gender-Egalitarian Policy Agenda

All in all, we have good reason to believe that policy interventions can effectively lead partners to distribute work more equally.95 No policy will bring about a gender-egalitarian society immediately upon implementation. The relationships among policy, attitudes and beliefs, and behavior are complex and multidirectional. But social policy can affect choices individuals make about how to distribute work within the family by “influencing the terms of bargaining, the benefits of specialization, and the ease or difficulty of adhering to gender norms.”96 By implementing interventions in cohesive packages that are responsive to the particular circumstances at hand, we can bring about a more gender-egalitarian distribution of labor overall.

1.2.6 Policy Tradeoffs In the Introduction, I foreshadowed the need to manage tradeoffs. Even as they constitute promising approaches to eroding the gendered division of labor and, I think, could work to ease other injustices as well, the interventions I consider here may divert social resources from policies that would address those other injustices more efficiently. For example, an unconditional basic income would plausibly benefit the very least advantaged citizens— disproportionally, women—by rendering them more financially secure and alleviating their dependence on domestic partners or employers.97 But basic income plausibly would set back progress toward gender egalitarianism by lessening women’s attachment to paid labor: By lessening workers’ need for income from paid labor, it would free them up to do more caregiving; and without any inducement for men to be the ones to exchange paid work for increased caregiving, basic income would effectively subsidize women in making that exchange.98 As we have seen, against the status quo background of gender norms, policies that enable workers to redirect time and energy toward caregiving will be taken up disproportionally by women unless those policies are carefully designed to avoid that consequence. Moreover, policies that provide long-term support for caregivers to withdraw from or lessen paid labor attachment, as opposed to short-term support for direct caregiving 95 To be sure, some empirical findings tell against the efficacy of social policy in this regard. But it has been argued that these less optimistic results are most likely due to the fact that the equalizing effects of social policies have been offset by simultaneous social change pushing in the opposite direction. For example, increases in pressure and competitiveness in the workplace are likely to have worked against efforts to increase men’s participation in domestic labor (Crompton et al. 2005; Lewis and Smithson 2007). This suggests that gender-egalitarian interventions have the potential to be even more effective than these early results demonstrate. 96 Hook 2006, 642. 97 On the benefits of basic income for women, see Baker 2008; Elgarte 2008; Pateman 2004; Robeyns 2000; 2001; Zelleke 2008. 98 On the risk of basic income further entrenching gender norms sustaining the gendered division of labor, see Bergmann 2004; Gheaus 2008; Robeyns 2000; 2001.

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combined with longer-term support to finance substitute caregiving, will only increase the gender-inegalitarian consequences of the gender disparity in uptake.99 Basic income is plausibly among those policies that further entrench gender inequality, then, because it will enable more women to withdraw or step back from paid labor to perform caregiving. More women specializing in caregiving at the expense of paid labor will fuel processes like statistical discrimination and reinforce norms associating women with caregiving. On the other hand, the caregiver support regimes I have considered here encourage women’s attachment to labor markets, thereby undermining norms that associate women with caregiving. These gender-egalitarian policies would benefit women across the social class spectrum, because the phenomenon the policies aim to erode—the gendered division of labor—sustains gender injustices across the population.100 Though two-parent, gender role-conforming families are no longer the statistical norm, the behavior of individuals in those types of families—and the fact that social institutions take that behavior and those families to be the norm—plausibly sustains a general devaluation of caregiving work. Our erasing that labor when it’s done in the home is tied up with our devaluing it when it’s done for pay.101 Moreover, we saw earlier that the motherhood penalty hits hardest women at the bottom of the wage distribution.102 If labor market reform can dismantle the gendered division of labor, then, it could benefit women across the income distribution, and even those outside of the formal labor market altogether. Plausibly, though, other uses of social energies and resources could do more, more efficiently, to benefit the very vulnerable women whose connection to the paid labor market is sporadic or non-existent. Suppose the following is an accurate projection of the effects of different social policy focuses: Caregiver support that encourages caregivers’ labor market participation is more effective for promoting gender egalitarianism, while unconditional caregiver support, like basic income, is more effective for promoting economic equality but frustrates (or at least doesn’t serve) ends of gender egalitarianism. In that case, our circumstances would make it impossible to optimize progress toward both goals through a single policy agenda. Recall that the particular policies I defend are meant largely to illustrate the kinds of policies that could be justified as means to pursuing the aim of gender egalitarianism, were the aim itself legitimately pursued. This book is not an endorsement of those policies in particular as all-things-considered desirable in all circumstances whatsoever. What I argue for is the policy aim, as

99 100 101

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See, for example, Bertrand 2018. See also Fraser 1994. See, for example, Okin 1989a, 173 on the feminization of poverty. 102 See Fraser 1994; Holmstrom 1981. Budig and Hodges 2010; Cooke and Hook 2018.

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a legitimate exercise of coercive political power—the legitimacy of justifying any policy by appealing to it. I focus on this policy package in particular because social scientists find it promising, because it incorporates crucial elements that they regard as necessary for making any policy effective in promoting gender egalitarianism, and because, as we will see in Section 1.3, those necessary elements also account for the difficulty of justifying the policy agenda compliant with the constraints of liberal legitimacy. Whether the policies are ultimately desirable all-things-considered will depend on considerations that this book does not address, including strategic political considerations and the full battery of policy tradeoffs. Still, my use of that particular policy agenda to illustrate policies by way of which we may legitimately pursue gender egalitarianism illustrates how progressive we can be in our effort to realize that aim. But here a mundane point should be emphasized: The need to manage tradeoffs is not unique to the particular aim or the particular interventions I defend. As with any policy package, ours will have to be weighed against other considerations with which it might be in tension, if for no other reason than that social resources are scarce, and so it imposes opportunity costs in terms of progress toward other ends. It would be surprising indeed if there were many social policy economies of scale in the strong sense that we lack here: single policy agendas that optimize progress toward multiple social goals. We should not be surprised, then, to learn that the optimal path to gender egalitarianism diverges from the most direct path to egalitarian distributive aims. I’m not convinced that a non-means-tested unconditional basic income is the best means of promoting economic justice, but suppose it is. To argue that we should pursue one of these social goals, one need not argue for its pursuit to the exclusion of a distinct social goal. Actual policy-makers will often need to set priorities in light of both moral calculations and practical considerations like resource availability and the strength of political coalitions. Discerning the weight of moral calculations on their own is an important project. Plausibly, some elements of gender justice are morally more urgent than some elements of distributive justice, and some elements of distributive justice are morally more urgent than some elements of gender justice. I think, for example, that easing the economic vulnerabilities of the least advantaged is, in a society where the least advantaged are as deplorably badly off as they are in many liberal societies today, clearly morally more urgent than shattering glass ceilings. Where gender injustice and profound economic injustice overlap, we plausibly have a morally more urgent demand still. As we will see, the strategy I pursue for defending gender egalitarianism as a social aim equips us, along the way, to account for the legitimacy of progressive policies to ease economic injustice as well. The aims are not independent of one another, either in theory or in practice. But we would be expecting too much to hope 53

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that the optimal policies to realize them would converge. Multiple social injustices call for redress. Recognizing this is consistent with focusing on one in particular. And arguing that we have cause—indeed, imperative—to address that one in particular is consistent with acknowledging that the others are morally urgent indeed.

1.3 Political Intervention and the Question of Legitimacy The policies I focus on share a common aim: to promote gender egalitarianism. In the Introduction, I clarified that I will use the term “gender egalitarianism” to refer to a social ideal whereby any differences in social roles between males and females concerning work are not determined or reinforced by social norms or social institutions that promote gendered allocations of work. Gender-egalitarian social policy is policy that aims to bring us closer to the gender-egalitarian ideal. Gender-egalitarian domestic arrangements are those wherein partners do not specialize according to gender. I clarified that I do not assume, nor do I believe, that every domestic arrangement must be gender egalitarian in order for the social ideal of gender egalitarianism to be realized. Certain individuals may continue to specialize in certain kinds of tasks, but in a fully gender-egalitarian society, these choices will no longer be reinforced by social norms about gender or by institutional design that makes equal sharing difficult. I also left open the possibility that the social ideal of gender egalitarianism is consistent with aggregate differences by sex in caregiving behavior. The ideal refers to the norms and institutional arrangements that influence families’ allocations of work. I use “gendered division of labor” to refer to the norms and institutional arrangements that influence individuals’ labor allocations under the status quo. Gender-egalitarian interventions, then, are those that aim to erode the gendered division of labor by reforming the norms that obstruct gender egalitarianism as a social ideal and by reforming the social institutions that reciprocally reinforce and are reinforced by those norms, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that any remaining sex-based patterns in labor allocations are not due to social norms or institutional design that takes those norms for granted. Although gender egalitarianism as a social ideal does not entail that every domestic arrangement must avoid labor specialization, changing norms does require changing behavior. In order to promote gender egalitarianism, we need enough individuals to make their domestic labor allocations egalitarian that specialization stops being normative and that institutions stop taking it for granted. In the short run, then, gender-egalitarian social policies aim to prompt behavior change among both women and men: to increase take-up of caregiving labor among men and labor market attachment among women. 54

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This they accomplish by manipulating the structural incentives associated with women’s specialization in domestic work and men’s specialization in paid work, changing the burdens and payoffs of various labor allocation alternatives to make egalitarian choices cheaper and inegalitarian choices costlier. In the long run, the interventions work by normalizing equal sharing in order to weaken and eventually remove the social norms that perpetuate gender specialization in paid and unpaid labor. While the immediate manipulation of behavior by way of changing incentives and the long-term modification of behavior by way of changing norms are clearly different objectives, they are profoundly interdependent. By changing behavior, we can erode norms. By normalizing men’s performance of caregiving work and women’s strong labor market attachment, we can interrupt the socialization processes whereby gender-inegalitarian attitudes, aptitudes, and behaviors are maintained and reinforced. We can also generate demand for further reform of social institutions to make them more accommodating of dual-earning, dualcaregiving families, which will further normalize equal sharing and further erode the norms that challenge it. Beyond favorable prospects for efficacy, these interventions need another kind of justification. Questions of legitimacy arise because reasonable citizens disagree about what makes for a good life or a just society, and because a fundamental commitment of liberalism is to limit political intrusion into the lives of citizens so as to allow considerable space for them to act on their own answers to those questions, consistent with others doing the same. Legitimacy concerns the constraints we must abide by when we use our collective political power to enact change in society, given that exercises of our political power influence lives and constrain choices in ways that many will find unwelcome, toward social ends that many will not endorse, and given that their pursuit of their reasonable values matters equally with our pursuit of ours. I believe that a more gender-egalitarian society would be a more just society, and a better society in other ways as well. But lots of people disagree with these judgments. And the interventions in question are not mere invitations for individuals to change their behavior. They are intrusive exercises of political power that will apply both to those who welcome them and to those who do not. In a democracy, such exercises of political power are morally authoritative in virtue of the state’s claim to be acting on the authority of the citizens it represents, and a liberal democracy seeks to exercise the collective power of citizens only in ways that preserve mutual respect among them. Do genderegalitarian social policies violate the ideal of mutual civic respect by promoting a way of life that some citizens value at a cost to others? In Chapter 2, I begin to unpack the theoretical apparatus of political liberalism, which builds upon this foundational ideal of mutual respect a principled set of 55

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criteria for liberal legitimacy. Those criteria enable us to adjudicate, in a principled way, the conditions under which we may legitimately promote a way of life that some citizens value at a cost to others. But before diving into the theory of political liberalism and liberal legitimacy, it is worth first probing the apparent tension between gender egalitarianism and mutual respect at an intuitive level. It will help to elaborate on just how the interventions promote a way of life that some citizens value at a cost to those who don’t, and relative to what baseline costs and benefits ought to be measured. When we think of the interventions as changes to social institutions like labor markets and childcare regimes, it is easy to underappreciate the extent to which and the ways in which they constitute intrusions. Their purpose is to change institutions, yes, but they also explicitly undertake to change the choices particular families make about how to arrange their cooperative domestic relationships. The project of this book, remember, is not merely to defend family-friendly policy as consistent with mutual respect across a wide diversity of ways of life that value a wide diversity of family forms. Rather, the burden is to show that a particular regime designed explicitly to promote gender egalitarianism is so consistent. And to be effective, such a regime must include some inducements to encourage particular ways of making use of the support provided. It must subsidize gender-egalitarian uptake. Far from always working to expand options, effective policies will sometimes subsidize egalitarianism precisely by restricting options or imposing costs on certain options. Among the lifestyle options that gender-egalitarian interventions restrict are many that reasonable citizens would otherwise choose to pursue. This can be seen most clearly in the case of caregiving leaves. By implementing “daddy quotas” or conditioning leave on equal participation by both partners, we would impose a burden on the many families who prefer for one partner to specialize in caregiving. In this, the gender-egalitarian social ideal that these policies aim to promote is distinct from both the universal breadwinner model and the caregiver parity model described by Nancy Fraser.103 Like the universal breadwinner model, the gender-egalitarian ideal I defend aims to promote gender justice by promoting women’s employment. But unlike that model, it does not denigrate caregiving work, and therefore avoids, for example, entrenching the inferior pay and status of professional caregiving. In addition to promoting women’s employment, it promotes caregiving among men and elevates the status of caregiving so that its status is commensurate with its true worth. Like the caregiver parity model, on the other hand, gender egalitarianism as

103

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Fraser 1994.

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I understand it elevates the status of caregiving to be on a par with paid labor. But unlike that model, it also undertakes to break the association of women with caregiving so that social institutions no longer assume entitlement to employees unencumbered by caregiving demands, and so that caregiving is no longer associated with femininity. In avoiding both of these pitfalls, gender egalitarianism can be likened to Fraser’s “third alternative,” which “values female-associated practices enough to ask men to do them, too.”104 This third alternative, gender-egalitarian ideal features both women and men significantly integrating caregiving and paid work. And it features a social system—including labor markets—hospitable to that integration, without gender coding of the different activities that comprise it. But suppose my read on the available evidence is wrong. Suppose simple family support policy, with no mechanism to promote caregiving among men and labor market attachment among women, would suffice not only to support caregivers but also to erode the norms steering women into caregiving specialization and men away from it. It would suffice to bring about the third alternative ideal. And suppose that the simple family support policies that would suffice (we’re supposing) to realize gender egalitarianism could be justified on other grounds consistent with the constraints on liberal legitimacy. Even in that case, we should still want to know whether gender egalitarianism can constitute a legitimate policy aim and a legitimate justification for the policy in its own right. Because so much depends on what reasons for intervention are consistent with the ideal of mutual respect, we should want to know all the reasons available to us to invoke, even in lucky cases of one policy adequately promoting multiple legitimate aims. And, even setting aside these practical considerations, we should want to know whether gender egalitarianism can constitute a legitimate social aim, legitimately pursued by the kinds of progressive interventions I consider, for the purposes of better understanding the ideal and the demands of mutual respect. So simply assume, if you’re not convinced, that against a backdrop of inequality, promoting gender egalitarianism requires structuring caregiver support so that it comes with incentives for men to take up caregiving and for women to remain attached to paid labor. Gender-egalitarian interventions cannot be defended, then, on the grounds that they only expand options. They do expand some options, but they restrict others, and they apparently differentiate on the basis of a judgment that those expanded are worthier of support. Moreover, we need not take the status quo as the relevant baseline in order to regard gender-egalitarian interventions as subsidies. These policies also

104

Fraser 1994, 610–11.

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subsidize equal sharing relative to politically more feasible and administratively more straightforward interventions in the neighborhood: for example, leave allocated to family units to distribute in whatever way their adult members choose. To bring about a social scheme that is hospitable to equal participation in caregiving and paid work in the long run, we must change behavior in the short run. Gender-egalitarian family leave initiatives effectively subsidize equal sharing of paid and caregiving work, so that equal sharing becomes less costly than maintaining a gendered division of labor and so is more often taken up. Other items on the gender-egalitarian policy agenda—work time regulation, for example—are not manifestly subsidies for gender egalitarianism. But my aim is to defend a policy package that includes work time regulation as well as other more overtly gender-egalitarian interventions. The package constitutes a subsidy and must be defended as such, so long as any of its members do. Still, some will resist construing the items on the gender-egalitarian policy agenda as subsidies. Under the status quo, gender-non-specialization is significantly costlier than gender specialization. As such, certain regulations might be thought necessary simply to equalize the costs by lowering the costs of the currently costlier option. Relative to a baseline of equal costliness, these regulations might be thought not to subsidize but merely to remove obstacles. But equal costliness is not an appropriate baseline by comparison with which to judge whether an intervention constitutes a subsidy, because there is no moral or political presumption in favor of making different lifestyle options equally costly. If some feasible arrangement of social institutions equalized the costliness of every reasonable lifestyle choice, and if genderegalitarian interventions brought us nearer to that arrangement, the interventions might be regarded not as subsidies but as mere removal of obstacles, facing correspondingly diminished burdens of legitimacy. But social institutions invariably influence the relative costliness of lifestyle choices, and no feasible default exists wherein all reasonable choices are equally costly. Nor, if such a default did exist, would we necessarily want to bring it about. We often make certain choices less costly than alternatives for very good reasons. Taken as a whole, the gender-egalitarian policy agenda aims to make genderegalitarian sharing not equally costly to but less costly than enacting a traditional gendered division of labor. Indeed, the very efficacy of the agenda depends upon it making equal sharing less costly than specialization, because eroding gender norms requires incentivizing non-compliance with those norms. Not only is the idea of making all permissible lifestyle choices equally costly infeasible, then; it is not in keeping with the gender-egalitarian social policy aim I endorse, which requires, against a backdrop of deeply entrenched gender norms, that we make gender egalitarianism more attractive than alternatives. 58

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A final consideration tells against equal costliness as a baseline ideal. Under the status quo, the gendered division of labor is sustained by choices individuals make about how to allocate paid and unpaid work within cooperative domestic relationships. These choices are due largely to social norms and social structures whose design takes breadwinner/homemaker specialization for granted, but those norms and structures have managed to survive because individuals’ deviation from breadwinner/homemaker specialization has been ambivalent. In short: The gendered division of labor persists because individuals choose, in sufficient numbers, to make gender a salient consideration in determining how to share paid and caregiving labor. In due course I will argue that, within the framework of political liberalism, those choices to comply with gender norms must, under normal circumstances, be regarded as voluntary. This has implications not only for the legitimacy of interfering with those choices; it also has implications for the legitimacy of interfering with the social institutions built upon the aggregation of those choices. The very mechanisms that make equal sharing so difficult to achieve are due, in large part, to society-wide trends in the choices made by individuals: Enough families have had one partner specialize in breadwinning that jobs could be structured for breadwinning specialists. Enough families have had one partner specialize in caregiving, even if not to the exclusion of paid work, that few structures have developed to aid families in outsourcing some of the labor of caregiving, or in externalizing some of its costs, or in protecting those to whom that labor gets outsourced. Institutional design, in these cases, is responsive to the aggregate of choices that individuals make, and it persists because we remain largely compliant in working within ill-fitting institutions and finding private solutions to the hardships this generates. Because the status quo is maintained by choices individuals make about what packages of paid and unpaid labor to take on, and because liberalism is committed to respecting those choices, the status quo seems to deserve some degree of deference. Equal costliness might be an appealing alternative baseline for comparing alternative policy arrangements, but we have seen that we cannot feasibly make every lifestyle choice equally costly, nor, if we could, should we want to. A status quo baseline is also relevant when we consider how best to construe the costs imposed on those who do not welcome genderegalitarian interventions. Because individuals and families make choices about how to arrange their lives with the status quo cost-benefit distribution in mind, and because those choices have long-term consequences and generate path dependencies, revising that cost-benefit distribution imposes transition costs, even on those who would welcome the change in the abstract, or under other circumstances. 59

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Doing so is often justified despite those costs, of course, and we may be tempted to discount the costs entirely in our case, on the grounds that costs imposed on beneficiaries of injustice by transitioning away from that injustice need not weigh in our considerations of mutual respect. But how to regard the status quo as unjust without invoking partisan feminist considerations is precisely the argumentative burden we confront.105 Moreover, even assuming we have a mutually justifiable case for regarding the gendered division of labor as unjust, many who would bear the costs of transitioning away from the status quo are not beneficiaries of gender injustice under the status quo, and so it is not so simple to discount the costs imposed on them as irrelevant. In probing the tension between liberalism and gender-egalitarian social policy, then, it is worth pausing to consider what these costs are. First, gender-egalitarian policy imposes opportunity costs. Even if their long-term aim is merely to expand opportunities for gender-egalitarian domestic arrangements, gender-egalitarian interventions use social resources to expand those opportunities. Work time regulation uses social resources to monitor and enforce workplace compliance; it costs social resources, too, in terms of the social revenue that would have been generated by taxing the benefits of any foregone productivity. Caregiver support policy uses social resources to subsidize substitute caregiving, and family leave policy uses social resources to support leave-taking. Even within the domain of workfamily policy, we have seen, other ends besides gender egalitarianism might be pursued. In each case, those social resources could have been put toward other ends that would have been relatively favorable to those with other values or other visions of a just society. Apart from opportunity costs, gender-egalitarian interventions raise the costs of maintaining a traditional gendered division of labor in ways that mirror the high costliness of deviating from it under the status quo. Under the status quo, part of what makes gender-egalitarian sharing so costly is that to achieve it, families must violate gender norms. The prevailing norms dictate that, when the demands of home and the demands of work conflict, women should specialize in caregiving, even if not to the complete exclusion of paid labor, and men should specialize in paid labor. Families must work within institutions whose design remains predicated on the breadwinner/homemaker specialization model of domestic cooperation. Presumed specialization enables employers to enforce expectations that ideal employees are breadwinning specialists, and that they will therefore be largely free of caregiving 105 I do not claim that all feminists would endorse the interventions under consideration, or even that they would endorse gender egalitarianism, as I construe it, as a social aim. I do take it that the most straightforward (but partisan) justification for those interventions and that aim would invoke plausibly presumptively feminist values. See the remarks in Section 0.3 for more on my use of the term “feminist.”

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obligations. In the long run, gender-egalitarian interventions undertake to erode those norms and to reform institutions so that they no longer take specialization for granted. But in so doing, the interventions will reverse the relative cost considerations: With institutional design no longer taking specialization for granted, the costs of specialization increase. As institutional design comes instead to favor equal sharing, the costs of specialization mount still more. Meanwhile, as individuals increasingly choose gender egalitarianism, the social costs that used to favor specialization—all the costs of violating norms—will begin to tilt against specialization. Here again, we might be inclined to discount these costs as irrelevant. If the costs are incurred only by those who are ideologically resistant to gender egalitarianism, and if gendered inegalitarianism is unjust, then we needn’t feel too bad for those reluctant to give up an unjust system. But remember: The challenge of working within political liberalism is precisely to maintain justificatory community among those who are ideologically at odds—to justify our call for social reform using reasons that derive from values that we all share. We will soon see more clearly what kinds of reasons those could be. The point for now is that these costs cannot yet be discarded as irrelevant, because they fuel the very opposition that must be overcome by way of shared reasoning. Moreover, even by the lights of the gender-egalitarian diagnosis of the injustice in question, many of those who stand to incur these costs are not among those who benefit by the injustice of the status quo. They are not ideologically committed to gender inegalitarianism, but they have chosen specialization because existing social incentives favor it, and they cannot now change course without incurring the transition costs alluded to above. These costs might fuel opposition to gender-egalitarian social policy even among proponents of gender egalitarianism. In Chapter 2, we will consider the relevance of that opposition through a more theoretical lens. For now, we are working still at an intuitive level: Gender-egalitarian interventions will impose costs on many citizens across our political community. None of the interventions I defend in this book aims to make it impossible to maintain a traditional gendered division of labor. As we will see, I take it as a requirement on any plausible justification of gender-egalitarian interventions that it not imply that all particular gender-inegalitarian domestic arrangements are unjust or regrettable. Were the interventions I endorse to accomplish the aim of eroding traditional gender norms and reforming institutions to genuinely accommodate equal sharing of paid and caregiving work, some gender-inegalitarian domestic arrangements plausibly would remain; even so, the justification for subsidizing gender-egalitarian use of family support should expire. In the meantime, gender-egalitarian interventions impose costs, even apart from the opportunity costs of foregone progress toward other social ends that resources needed to promote gender egalitarianism 61

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could have purchased instead. And these should register as costs in our assessment, even by the lights of committed feminists. Those who favor gender-egalitarian interventions may understandably be tempted to discount the justificatory burden that those interventions face by arguing that they are not subsidies; that they do not incentivize; that they merely remove obstacles. But the justificatory burden gender-egalitarian interventions face cannot be evaded by a simple maneuver of categorization. A justification is needed whether we frame gender-egalitarian interventions as merely removing obstacles to particular lifestyle choices or as subsidizing those choices. Gender-egalitarian interventions undertake to change the behavior of individuals in the here and now: to increase their likelihood of sharing paid and caregiving work more equally. They make it easier for some to pursue their reasonable lifestyle preferences, but at a cost to others. Proponents of these interventions must meet the justificatory burden of showing that they are legitimate: that we can regard the new arrangement of relative costs as more just than the old, and thereby move to supplant the old with the new, even though many in our diverse justificatory community reasonably prefer the status quo or some other feasible arrangement and reasonably disagree about what justice requires. Moreover, the degree to which we must positively incentivize equal sharing of caregiving, rather than merely providing caregiving support for individuals to take up as they wish, will depend on the resiliency of the status quo and on the circumstances at hand: on how strongly entrenched are the norms that make it true that leave provided on equal terms will be taken up disproportionally by women. What will matter when we turn to questions of legitimacy, then, is not only the means but the ends: Is it legitimate for the state to enact leave policies with the aim of promoting gender egalitarianism? Using the language of “subsidies” and “incentives” keeps the justificatory burden squarely on the table. Mutual civic respect demands that we arrange political institutions—and through those institutions, intrude into one another’s lives—only in ways that we can fully justify on the basis of reasons that all reasonable citizens can recognize as such, no matter what their conception of the good. The project of this book is to show that gender egalitarianism is a legitimate aim of governmental intervention. Before trying to reconcile liberal legitimacy with progressive gender-egalitarian social aims, however, it’s important to understand the depth of the tension. In Chapter 2, I clarify the theoretical framework from within which I assess the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions and the demanding criterion of mutual civic respect that framework imposes. We will begin to see why many feminists have found that framework fundamentally at odds with their moral and political commitments.

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2 The Challenge of Liberal Legitimacy

Liberalism and feminism have a long and storied history, with advocates of feminist political interventions sometimes articulating their arguments from within the liberal framework and sometimes railing against it. When John Rawls famously distinguished his liberal theory of justice as a political liberalism, the tension between feminism and liberalism reached a new height. Susan Moller Okin charged that “the distinction between comprehensive and political liberalism that [Rawls] introduces in Political Liberalism severely diminishes the capacity of his theory of justice to answer feminist criticism.”1 This chapter begins by clarifying the basic theoretical commitments of political liberalism, the constraint on legitimate exercises of political power it imposes, and why that constraint appears to render political liberalism inhospitable to the progressive feminist agenda. I then consider some “easy fixes” that are likely to tempt a reader who is motivated to dispel the apparent tension between feminism and political liberalism. Showing why these attempts are unsuccessful both clears the way for consideration of more promising solutions and allows for a more nuanced understanding of liberal legitimacy itself.

2.1 Political Liberalism and Political Legitimacy What is political liberalism, and why does it impose such stringent constraints on legitimate political intervention? We have seen that a fundamental 1 Okin 2003, 1538. See also Okin 1994, 25: “Central aspects of Political Liberalism render the problem of applying the principles of justice to the family and the gender structure of society more intractable than they were in Theory.” For other arguments that political liberalism cannot accommodate gender-egalitarian interventions, see Chambers 2008; Exdell 1994; Hirshman 1994; Yuracko 1995; 2003. My project is not meant as an exegesis of Rawlsian political liberalism, but I do follow the Rawlsian articulation of political liberalism most closely. See Rawls 1993. See also Ackerman 1994; 2009; Larmore 1987; 1990; 1996; 2008; Moon 1993; Quong 2011. Some defend a “convergence” version of political liberalism that is importantly distinct from “consensus” versions. See Gaus 2010; 2016; Vallier 2011. I will not engage with this distinction, but those familiar with it will recognize my political liberalism as a consensus view.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0002

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

aspiration of liberalism is to limit political intrusion into the lives of citizens to allow them considerable scope to act on their own conceptions of the good life, regulated by values that they themselves authentically endorse. But there are different ways in which this aspiration may be understood, and still more approaches to realizing it. One way to distinguish among liberalisms is to think of them as falling along a spectrum ranging from the relatively comprehensive to the relatively political. To varying degrees, comprehensive liberalisms take for granted the actual value of liberal ways of life: ways of life in which citizens exercise and value their capacity autonomously to reflect on and revise their conceptions of the good, and in which their standing as equal citizens is a salient aspect of their identity not only in their political lives but in their lives outside of politics as well. To varying degrees, comprehensive liberalisms permit these substantive values of liberalism to play a role in justifying coercive political interventions and the design of social institutions.2 Social institutions can be designed to prepare and encourage citizens to live substantively liberal lives, and to facilitate their pursuit of substantively liberal values. For example, schools might prioritize education for autonomy so that children are able autonomously to endorse or defect from the ways of life into which they were born, and tax exemptions might be reserved for faith groups that affirm the substantive equality of women and men. In contrast, political liberalisms aim to be freestanding of any particular comprehensive conception of the good life—including a comprehensive liberal conception.3 To varying degrees, political liberalisms require that we eschew substantive liberal values in justifying political interventions or the design of social institutions. While comprehensive liberals can countenance coercive intervention justified on the grounds that, for example, moral autonomy makes people’s lives go better, political liberals rule out such notions about what is good for people as inadmissible for justifying coercive political intervention. For political liberals, justice is a restricted political ideal, the full realization of which must be fully compatible with citizens affirming and practicing non-liberal conceptions of the good. Though liberal values like autonomy and equality play a role within political liberalism, the scope of these values is restricted. All liberalisms aim to respect the rights of citizens to affirm illiberal values in their own lives. Political liberalism understands this aspiration of mutual respect as requiring that we refrain from intruding into 2 Representative proponents of comprehensive liberalism include John Stuart Mill (1978) and Joseph Raz (1986). 3 Rawls defines comprehensive conceptions of the good as “conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is thought to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole.” See Rawls 1993, 13.

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the lives of citizens when we cannot justify doing so except by invoking comprehensive values that some among us reasonably reject. In short: Political liberalism aims for mutual respect by way of preserving a justificatory community among those who espouse both liberal and illiberal values—by restricting legitimizing reasons for political action to those that are acceptable to citizens across deep ideological difference.4 Political liberalism does not aim to be more accommodating than comprehensive liberalism only to illiberal ways of life. In a free society, citizens will reasonably disagree about matters of personal value—about what kinds of lives are good lives and what kinds of values are worth espousing. They will also reasonably disagree about matters of political value—about what kinds of societies are just, and about the conditions under which the state may restrict our personal pursuits for the good of public values. These disagreements arise not only between those who celebrate liberalism and those who eschew liberal values like moral autonomy and equal moral standing in all domains of life. They arise, too, among liberals; for example, liberal feminists might disagree with more conservative liberals about whether gender equality is an end we may use public revenues to pursue. Given this reasonable disagreement, a state that acts to promote and preserve justice inevitably will be promoting a disputed conception of justice and inevitably will make it costlier for some to live out their values than for others to do so. Rawls’s move from comprehensive to political liberalism was motivated by a concern to accommodate this deep and intractable, yet reasonable, pluralism.5 Citizens living under free institutions in a democratic society will come to affirm different and irreconcilable conceptions of the good. The project of political liberalism is to uncover “the fair terms of social cooperation between citizens characterized as free and equal yet divided by profound doctrinal conflict”6—reasonable disagreement over moral, philosophical, and religious matters. Political liberalism seeks to accomplish this by finding principles for the regulation of the basic institutions of society that can command the support of persons as free and equal citizens within a cooperative social scheme, regardless of the often irreconcilable conceptions of the good those citizens affirm. The design of political institutions must be justifiable on the basis of reasons that do not themselves depend on a particular value system, but that

4 Thomas Nagel puts the point this way: “The task of discovering the conditions of legitimacy is traditionally conceived as that of finding a way to justify a political system to everyone who is required to live under it” (1991, 33). Rawls says: “The basic structure and its public policies are to be justifiable to all citizens” (1993, 224). Says Charles Larmore: “To respect another person as an end is to insist that coercive or political principles be as justifiable to that person as they are to us” (1990, 349). 5 6 See Weithman 2013. Rawls 1993, xxv.

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are recognizable as reasons from within any reasonable value system. Such reasons must invoke values that all reasonable citizens can recognize as such. Moreover, as we’ll see, “reasonable” must be defined rather inclusively.7 The very point of political liberalism, after all, is to determine principles for the stable regulation of a liberal democratic society characterized by profound disagreement about what constitutes a good life; we cannot, then, simply rule out disfavored conceptions of the good as unreasonable. Effectively, a value system must be counted as reasonable so long as it respects the political freedom and equality of all citizens and is compatible with the various justificatory burdens citizens face as citizens in a society marked by reasonable pluralism. If reasonable pluralism is inevitable, what reasons could all reasonable citizens actually share? What values could all citizens recognize as such? Importantly, the question is not: What values do we all actually affirm? Rather, we ask: What values are shareable among us, given the political status as citizens that we all have in common? Shareable values include those that derive from the liberal political project of finding fair terms of social cooperation for a liberal democratic society in which free and equal citizens make divergent and irreconcilable judgments about matters of personal and political value. Shared interests are those implied by our common status as citizens engaged in such a cooperative scheme. The idea of political liberalism, then, is neither to begin with no value commitments at all nor to admit into political justification only those value commitments that all actual individuals actually endorse. Rather, we begin with the ideal of society as a fair system of social cooperation among citizens construed as free and equal, and with the values that that ideal entails. This starting point is fundamentally liberal, as is the justificatory constraint that political liberalism derives from it. And yet a society that abides by that constraint gives due respect to citizens who reject liberalism as a comprehensive view about what makes for a good life. It gives them due respect by securing their interest in exercising their equality and freedom to reject the values of liberalism in their own lives, and by requiring that any exercise of political power that constrains their pursuit of their own values be justifiable on terms that they themselves can accept in their capacity as free and equal political citizens. Here’s a rough and ready way to think about it: We share an interest in fairly regulating our cooperative scheme on terms consistent with our freedom and equality, including our freedom to reject the values of liberalism as guiding ideals for our own lives. To preserve justificatory community across ideological difference—to arrange our interdependence in ways that are mutually 7 In Rawls’s own words, his account of reasonableness is “deliberately loose” (Rawls 1993, 59, 196).

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justifiable to a wide array of citizens, comprehensively liberal and illiberal alike—we insist that political justification proceed by way of reasons derived from this fundamental interest, and any further interests it implies. We will unpack these ideas further over the course of the book, but already we can begin to see why Rawls’s move from comprehensive to political liberalism was thought by many feminists to be a move in the wrong direction. Because feminism is itself a family of comprehensive conceptions of the good,8 feminist values are inadmissible, and reasons derived from those values cannot legitimately be used to justify political intervention. Apart from placing feminist values out of bounds as tools for justifying political intervention, political liberalism appears positively to rule out gender-egalitarian interventions. We can see this by examining the neutrality constraint, which codifies political liberalism’s commitment to preserving mutual civic respect by way of mutual justifiability. The neutrality constraint dictates that “political decisions must be, so far as possible, independent of any particular conception of the good life or what gives value to life.”9 To ensure that the state acts even-handedly toward citizens, this constraint requires that it remain neutral among the different values citizens may affirm, and among the different ways of life they may seek to live out. The legitimacy of a particular intervention depends, then, on that intervention being justifiable by way of reasons that do not depend for their acceptance on any particular conception of the good for an individual or for society—reasons that are neutral among different such conceptions. At a glance, gender-egalitarian interventions seem obviously non-neutral. They will be opposed by many citizens who oppose all but the most minimal governmental intrusions in general,10 and by many others who value strict adherence to traditional gender roles. Indeed, in introducing the genderegalitarian policy agenda in Chapter 1, I explicitly construed it as a subsidy. It seems non-neutral because it expends social resources on family support policy rather than some other social end, then, and it seems non-neutral because it aims to promote gender egalitarianism which, against a backdrop of inegalitarianism, requires positive incentives for men to take up caregiving and for women to retain paid labor attachment. But political liberalism’s apparent proscription of gender-egalitarian interventions is more nuanced than this first pass gives it credit for. All exercises of political power will have non-neutral consequences: They will have the effect of 8 More accurately, it is a family of partially comprehensive conceptions of the good. It does not claim to encompass all values. See Rawls 1993, 13. 9 Dworkin 1978, 127. 10 I stipulate that the small government proponents I refer to are reasonable. For example, they condone whatever welfare state activity is necessary to protect basic liberties in the most minimal way consistent with reasonableness. (Plausibly, this is not very minimal. See Freeman 2007, 402.)

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making some reasonable lifestyles easier to enact, while making others costlier or more difficult. Political liberals have long recognized that they cannot impose a standard of neutrality that forbids all political interventions that happen to impede or promote certain ways of life.11 Inevitably, political institutions influence the values of those living under them. What matters for mutual respect is that we be able to justify political interventions using reasons that are neutral among conceptions of the good. This notion of neutrality—justificatory neutrality—prohibits the state from acting on the basis of reasons that assume the truth of some particular comprehensive conception of the good. For example, the state cannot justify promoting monogamous families—offering tax incentives for married couples, say—by invoking the relative choice-worthiness of monogamous lifestyles over alternatives. If those are the only grounds on which such policies could be justified, then the policies are illegitimate. Indeed, the policies are legitimate only if there is sufficient justification for enacting them that does not invoke any partisan values like the relative value of monogamous over non-monogamous lifestyles. Over the coming chapters, we’ll further explore the sorts of interventions that political liberalism straightforwardly can license on the basis of shared values, as a way into developing an argument that it can license genderegalitarian interventions on the basis of shared values as well. But the legitimacy of one sort of intervention becomes relevant already in this chapter: Securing certain basic liberties, like freedom of conscience and freedom of affiliation, is a fundamental commitment of liberalism, and political interventions necessary to protect those liberties are justified on the basis of shared interests admissible as reasons-generating within political liberalism. Political protections for these basic liberties can be justified using only reasons that all reasonable citizens can accept, insofar as they accept the project of liberalism, because we all have an interest in having assurance that we will enjoy certain prerogatives to pursue our most cherished values, whatever those (reasonable) values happen to be. For example, the fundamentalist who rejects liberal values has no less of an interest in protections for his freedom of conscience or freedom of affiliation than anyone else. More remains to unpack here, and soon we will do the unpacking. For now, just take it for granted: Protections for certain basic liberties are paradigmatic among coercive political interventions that political liberalism can license as legitimate. This means that the

11 See, for example, Brake 2012; Costa 2004; De Wijze 1999. As Rawls puts it, “it is surely impossible for the basic structure of a just constitutional regime not to have important effects and influences as to which comprehensive doctrines endure and gain adherents over time; and it is futile to try to counteract these effects and influences . . . We must accept the facts of commonsense political sociology” (1993, 193. See also 192–5).

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state can expend scarce resources to protect basic political liberties, even if doing so has the non-neutral consequence of, for example, encouraging political activism. The state can protect basic liberties, despite the non-neutral consequences of those protections, because those protections have a neutral justification. This clarification seems not to rescue gender-egalitarian interventions, however. Perhaps some neutral justification is available for some kinds of family support policies; still, as we saw in Chapter 1, legitimacy demands a justification for gender egalitarianism as a policy aim. We could design family leave policies in many different ways. What neutral reasons suffice to justify designing them to promote gender egalitarianism? This burden of justification is twofold: First, what neutral reasons justify gender egalitarianism as a public expenditure? What justifies this expenditure of public resources, and this imposition of opportunity costs? We can readily imagine these questions being asked by those who favor minimal governmental intrusion, by those who object to interference with labor market contracts, or by those who don’t disapprove of gender egalitarianism as a social end but simply prioritize other social ends above it. Second, what neutral reasons justify gender egalitarianism as a public expenditure? What justifies the manipulation of costs and benefits to serve the interests of gender egalitarians at the cost of frustrating the interests of gender traditionalists? These latter questions might be posed by gender traditionalists or just those who favor deferring to the status quo costbenefit structure. To both sets of questions, the value of (a certain sort of) gender equality seems the obvious answer. We might also point toward the importance of nurturing relationships between fathers and their children, or to the importance of all individuals performing socially valued work outside the home, or to the goodness of avoiding gendered socialization. And yet these are highly partisan values—paradigmatically non-neutral and thus off limits for justifying political intervention. If mutual respect requires that we intervene only when we can offer shareable reasons to justify our intervention, genderegalitarian interventions seem to violate that ideal. Ultimately, I will argue that gender egalitarianism can be a legitimate aim of social policy. But defending that conclusion takes some work. The task is to build a positive argument in favor of gender-egalitarian political interventions that complies with the neutrality constraint: an argument that invokes as premises only reasons that all reasonable citizens can recognize as such. In the remainder of this chapter, I consider—and reject—three kinds of argument that might be thought to do the trick. Examining the problems with these strategies can help to clarify the neutrality constraint and generate useful insights for a more promising reconciliation of political liberalism and gender egalitarianism. 69

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2.2 A Case Study We first need to clarify the kind of gender egalitarianism that liberal neutrality apparently rules out as an illegitimate aim of social policy. To do this, let’s consider the kinds of gender-equalizing interventions that liberal neutrality easily can license. We saw above that all citizens share an interest in the state enacting political protections for certain basic liberties. These include rights to bodily integrity and freedom of movement. Subject to concurrent protection for similar rights of others, protections for these basic liberties are straightforwardly compliant with neutrality, because they secure essential interests shared by all citizens. Political liberalism therefore has no problem licensing intervention when gendered domestic arrangements violate family members’ basic liberties. For example, the state can legally prohibit domestic abuse without running afoul of the neutrality constraint, and it can legitimately intervene to enforce domestic abuse prohibitions. The state can proscribe non-consensual (on the part of adults12) domestic arrangements, such as forced marriages. The challenging cases, then, are those that do not involve a rights violation. In the vast majority of households stuck in the stalled revolution, no rights appear to be violated—in fact, taken in isolation, many cases of caregiver/ breadwinner specialization seem completely benign. And yet, collectively, such cases powerfully reinforce gendered social norms and enable social institutions like labor markets to continue taking specialization for granted. What many find suspect about gender-egalitarian interventions is precisely this: They undertake to enact sweeping social change by exerting pressure on the choices made within families where nothing untoward seems to be happening. It is this class of apparently benign enactments of gender specialization that perpetuates the gendered division of labor, and this class of enactments that the policy agenda set forth in Chapter 1 aims to change. A hypothetical case can exemplify these apparently benign domestic partnerships. Consider Karen: As a child, Karen was prepared well if unwittingly for caregiving. Both she and her older brother were encouraged to aspire to find good and secure work, but in subtle and important ways, their respective preparations for adulthood diverged. She played with dolls; her brother played with Legos. Nobody told them they had to play with those toys in particular, and sometimes Karen joined her brother in building. Karen’s mom identified as a feminist, and insisted that her daughter never be discouraged from playing with “boy toys.” (She was less concerned that Karen’s brother feel welcome to play with dolls, though he sometimes did.) Mostly, the kids played with 12 Children’s early participation in families is always non-voluntary. This will be discussed in more detail below.

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their own toys, and when occasions for gift-giving came along, they usually received—with enthusiasm—gender-typical gifts. In fourth grade, Karen’s teacher was Ms. Carter, the same teacher her brother had had two years before. Over the course of those years, Ms. Carter had gotten to know Karen’s family well. After Karen passed into fifth grade, Ms. Carter asked if Karen might like to earn some money by looking after Ms. Carter’s one-year-old daughter while Mr. and Ms. Carter packed up their apartment in preparation to move into a house. Karen nervously agreed, and ended up loving it. Babysitting made her feel grown up. Over the years, she became the Carters’ regular babysitter, looking after all three of their kids and getting to know them well. Years later, long after Karen had stopped babysitting, the youngest kid still colored pictures to send to her. Karen’s parents saw how much Karen enjoyed babysitting, and encouraged her to take a CPR class at the YMCA. They also mentioned it to some of their friends, and over the years, Karen got a smattering of other requests for her services. But her interest in expanding her babysitting client base declined in high school, when Karen got a job at a grocery store and also became involved in sports. She loved playing sports. She could see how much her parents enjoyed watching her passion grow. Her mom came to all of her soccer matches, and her dad came too when he could get away from work. Her parents affectionately referred to her as a “tomboy,” often noting with a twinkle that she helped out with yardwork more than her brother. Karen’s mother worked nights as a nurse. When she arrived at Karen’s soccer matches after a night of work, she looked exhausted. But she was always smiling, as though going without sleep was a tiny price to pay to be there cheering Karen on. Karen loved it that her mom was a nurse. When Karen and her brother were kids, staying home sick from school was a treat. Since their mom worked nights, she was always available at home during the day to take care of them. Karen’s mom was a fantastic caregiver, and Karen and her brother both felt that most acutely when they were sick. Their every need was anticipated. Little surprise treats kept their spirits up, and they spent hours watching favorite movies that the other sibling would have vetoed for a family movie night. Karen’s mom even devised an ingenious homemade call-button mechanism: a tambourine for her “patients” to shake if they needed anything when she was out of the room. Karen’s dad worked hard during the day, but normally found enough energy when he got home to play with Karen and her brother or, when they were older, to talk with them, help with homework, pick them up from their after-school jobs, or attend their sporting events. He often had to take time off work to attend those events, and often couldn’t commit in advance that he’d be there. Karen and her brother knew that, if he wasn’t there, it wasn’t for lack of trying. And, while Karen’s mom took care of most of the day-to-day 71

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interactions with the school, her father always made a point of being there for special events like the annual school play or choir performance. Karen’s best friend’s dad worked such long hours that Karen barely knew him, despite spending a lot of time in the family’s home. Most of Karen’s friends’ moms worked too, but Karen knew them well anyway. She had several friends who lived only with their mothers, but none who lived full time with only a father. All of these observations made Karen appreciate that her dad was around a lot. She knew their mom appreciated how much he helped out, too. Karen’s guidance counselor encouraged her to pursue a job “working with people”—one where she would be able to use her interpersonal skills and penchant for helping others. When Karen told her parents she hoped to become a nurse, they were thrilled. Her mother had some reservations—she knew how physically and emotionally demanding nursing could be. But both parents could see how well nursing would suit Karen’s temperament. They touted its flexibility, and remarked on how well nursing had worked in their own family: Karen’s mom had been able to help with the family breadwinning and pursue her own work ambitions, all without giving up time with her children. “And there will always be need for good nurses,” Karen’s mother said. After she graduated with honors from her nursing program, Karen met and married Dave, who worked in information technology for an accounting firm. Karen and Dave both enjoyed their work and supported one another in it. But in various small ways, they prioritized Dave’s job; for example, they avoided tax season and Dave’s other busy times at work when planning vacations, even though that twice meant Karen being away from work during important continuing education seminars. For the most part, Karen didn’t mind. She loved her work but knew she could care perfectly well for her patients without advancing quickly through the ranks. Dave seemed to care much more about professional advancement. He also made more money and enjoyed less latitude and understanding when things came up, and the working hours of his job were more rigid than were Karen’s. It just seemed fair that his job should come first. Dave’s work was less flexible, and when they both had time off they preferred to spend it on recreation, so Karen tried to get a lot of the household chores done during Dave’s working hours. During the early years of their marriage, she built a close relationship with each of Dave’s parents, and they often remarked that they heard from her more often than they heard from their own son. When Karen and Dave had their first child, Karen took time off work to stay home with him during the first year. Karen loved her job and didn’t want to give it up, so she returned to work part time after that first year at home. After the birth of their second child, she again took a year away from work. This time, Karen and Dave reasoned that there was little financial incentive for 72

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Karen to hurry back to work; the cost of childcare for two children would seriously diminish her take-home income if she did. Dave encouraged her to go back to work if she wanted that, but given the costs of daycare, the earnings opportunity costs of staying home were low. If she had any desire to spend those early days with the boys rather than paying someone else to do it, Dave emphasized, the family would manage to afford for her to stay at home. Karen did have very fond memories of her own long childhood days at home with her mother. And Karen could afford the luxury of really investing in those important early years with her sons, without making herself exhausted: Unlike her own mother, Karen wouldn’t have to work a nightshift to make ends meet. Dave made just enough that the family could get by without a second paycheck. When the kids started school, Karen went back to work. By now, it was a foregone conclusion that Karen would be the one to take time off to care for the boys when they were sick. But if Karen and Dave had stopped to deliberate about who should be the caregiving specialist, they would have decided in favor of Karen anyway. Her absence from work was much less costly to the family in terms of income, particularly because, not wanting to overcommit to work responsibilities that would make it difficult to be a fully attentive mother, she had already foregone some crucial opportunities for advancement. Over the years, Karen struggled to balance her paid work with her responsibilities to her family, prioritizing her family when home and work responsibilities came into unavoidable conflict. Sometimes she resented not being able to invest more fully in the work she had once loved so much, and seeing others advance while she did not. But she had to admit that she found her job less gratifying than she once had. Meanwhile, Dave devoted himself more and more enthusiastically to his work, in part because he still did find it gratifying and in part because his income was so important to the family. Karen became remarkably efficient at juggling lots of responsibilities. Dave never refused when Karen delegated tasks to him, but he also was careful not to intrude into her domain of authority. She kept the family’s schedules managed so well, and his participation often seemed somehow to generate more work for her than it spared her. Karen’s skills both as a nurse and as a family-life orchestrator became more valuable still as Dave’s father’s health began to decline. Dave’s stepmother was healthy, but was grateful for Karen’s frequent assistance, and for the peace of mind of knowing that Karen would be able to lend a hand in the future, should things become even more difficult for her to manage alone. Karen and Dave aren’t meant to represent all domestic partnerships. No single case could be meaningfully representative. Families are diverse, as are the strategies people deploy for collaborating on the work necessary to 73

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sustain them. Trends along lines of class, race, and family structure can be illuminating,13 but within even finely tailored social categories, families will vary hugely along any number of dimensions relevant to the sharing of paid and caregiving labor. Plenty of women have more gender-traditional upbringings than Karen did, and plenty have more gender-transgressive upbringings. Many have far less stable family lives than Karen did, and in many cases, the instability is due at least in part to controversy over how the work of raising a family is to be distributed. Even among those raised by two parents who remained married to one another, Karen’s upbringing is noteworthy in that she and her brother were largely sheltered from any marital discord that might have arisen between her parents.14 Still, features of Karen and Dave’s partnership do exemplify important trends in the data canvassed in Chapter 1. The case also draws our attention to trends in gendered socialization. While girls’ socialization increasingly transgresses traditional lines of gender, boys’ socialization remains more traditional.15 Toys like blocks are increasingly marketed to girls, while dolls still are hardly ever marketed to boys. Girls are encouraged to be “tomboys,” or at least indulged when they do, while boys exhibiting stereotypically feminine traits are likelier to suffer social sanctions. Young women are encouraged to pursue jobs of their own—even elite careers—and many, like Karen, defer marriage and motherhood until their jobs are underway. But when caregiving responsibilities do come along, it is still the woman who often expects, and is expected, to deprioritize work in favor of family. We have seen the cumulative consequences of these trends for women’s labor market competitiveness and other outcomes. More than exemplifying modern enactments of the gendered division of labor, Karen and Dave are meant to illustrate the apparent innocence of the domestic choices that gender-egalitarian interventions target. The gendered division of labor is sustained by choices made within families just like Karen’s—choices that cumulatively serve to perpetuate gendered norms and enable workplaces to expect breadwinner-specialist employees. Families like Karen’s are the ones that gender-egalitarian interventions target, because these are the families whose paid and caregiving labor allocations are malleable and likely to change in response to manipulating institutional incentives. They are also the families that, by changing their labor allocations in the near term, could collectively transform social norms and catalyze institutional change. 13

See, for example, Lareau 2003. See Gerson 2010 for real-life accounts of how parents’ struggles to share paid work and caregiving influence their children’s own strategies for managing that challenge. I will explore Gerson’s findings in Chapter 7. 15 England 2010. 14

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And yet, nothing about Karen and Dave’s arrangement seems to call for redress. Their choices look perfectly innocent. Certainly nothing about their domestic arrangement appears to violate anyone’s basic liberties. These are the hard cases for feminist political liberals. What neutral justification can we provide for political interventions that explicitly aim to change domestic labor allocation choices in families like Karen and Dave’s? How might we develop a politically liberal argument in favor of subsidies for gender egalitarianism when the gender-inegalitarian households these interventions target are apparently so benign?

2.3 Reinterpreting Reasonableness One strategy for reconciling political liberalism with gender-egalitarian social policy is to tweak the normative commitments of political liberalism that apparently make it such a conservative political framework. In Okin’s critique of political liberalism, she argues for more stringent standards on the kinds of lifestyles whose practitioners must be included within the justificatory community, and correspondingly on the kinds of conceptions of the good that must be accommodated when justifying political intervention.16 The neutrality constraint specifies that, to be legitimate, political interventions must be justifiable by way of reasons that can be recognized as such from within all reasonable conceptions of the good. The more inclusive the notion of reasonable, the more divergent are the conceptions of the good that we must accommodate and the more restrictive the criterion of neutrality becomes. Perhaps, despite appearances, genderinegalitarian conceptions of the good are rightly classified as unreasonable, and so we needn’t regard those who hold them as part of the justificatory community. From Rawls’s explanation of what constitutes a “reasonable” conception of the good, it is clear that the designation is intended to be quite capacious. He asserts that, with a few exceptions, “all the main historical religions . . . may be seen as reasonable comprehensive doctrines.”17 This commits him to

16 See Okin 1987; 1989b; 1994; 2003; 2005. Okin elsewhere says that she does not fit neatly into either the political or the comprehensive category of liberalism, but occupies “a position in between.” See Okin 1999, 129. See also Brake 2004. Brake suggests extending “the category of the unreasonable to include beliefs without sufficient evidence [including] most forms of revealed religion, atheism, and beliefs about essential natures of particular races, men, or women” (2004, 305). Brake’s strategy is to exclude sexist and gender-inegalitarian comprehensive doctrines on the grounds that those doctrines are epistemically objectionable in a way that demonstrates a lack of respect for humanity. 17 Rawls 1993, 170.

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accepting highly gender-inegalitarian doctrines as reasonable.18 Some religious doctrines, for example, take gender roles to be both natural and essential to the proper functioning of the family.19 And indeed, Rawls explicitly includes gender-inegalitarian conceptions of the good among those meriting the designation “reasonable.”20 Rawls describes reasonable conceptions of the good as conceptions that reasonable citizens affirm.21 Reasonable citizenship, in turn, includes a willingness to propose and abide by mutually justifiable terms of cooperation, and acceptance of the fact of reasonable pluralism in a democratic society.22 Roughly, then, a conception of the good must be regarded as reasonable so long as it respects the political freedom and equality of all citizens, the fact of reasonable pluralism, and the justificatory burdens that free and equal citizenship entails under circumstances of reasonable pluralism. Racist conceptions of the good that deny the basic rights of racial minorities to vote or hold office are unreasonable because they deny the political equality of those minorities. Similarly, sexist doctrines that deny women’s political rights are unreasonable. Political liberalism can exclude those who hold such racist or sexist doctrines from the justificatory community, in the sense that coercive political interventions can be legitimate despite being unacceptable from their perspective. But the gendered division of labor is not sustained by sexists who would deny women protection for their basic liberties—indeed, we have long recognized that we need not abstain from protecting women’s basic liberties on the basis of sexist opposition to such protections. Rather, the gendered division of labor is sustained by families just like Karen and Dave’s, and by choices within those families to comply with gender norms and existing institutional incentives because of the costs of deviating from them.23 Here a clarification is needed. Families like Karen and Dave’s are among the primary targets of gender-egalitarian policy, but they need not be its primary opposition. We might think this distinction matters, because we might think we need to justify policy only to those citizens it affects. If those whose inegalitarian arrangements sustain the gendered division of labor are not committed sexists, but are, like Karen and Dave, simply responding to the 18 Okin discusses ways that orthodox strains of major world religions still “discriminate against women and reinforce their subordination within religious practices, and within and outside the family.” See Okin 2003, 1556. See also Okin 1994, 31; 2005, 242. 19 John Exdell discusses the tension between contemporary feminists and religious fundamentalists (conservative religious adherents who “justify their moral and political views by appealing to divine commandments revealed in a sacred text”) with regard to their views on family roles (Exdell 1994, 444). See also Luker 1985, 161. 20 21 22 Rawls 1993, 196. Rawls 1993, 36. See Rawls 1993, 54. 23 See, for examples, Goldin 2014; Goldin and Katz 2015; Kleven et al. 2018. Kleven et al. show that unequal labor market outcomes are driven by women more than men favoring familyfriendly amenities and flexibility over pecuniary rewards. For a review of supporting evidence, see Bertrand 2018.

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socialization and incentive structure of the status quo, then perhaps those whom a modified incentive structure would affect simply are not among those who would oppose the modifications. We might think, in other words, that unreasonableness is simply beside the point, because we need only justify our interventions to those they affect and, insofar as those they affect are primarily those like Karen and Dave, no opposition will be forthcoming. This line of thinking is mistaken in two ways: first, in regarding the justificatory community as including only those who are directly targeted by a particular policy; second, in thinking that so long as the policy primarily targets those whose behavior will be responsive to incentives—and thus those who are not ideological sexists—no opposition will be forthcoming. The second mistake will be addressed below in considering the range of citizens who might oppose gender-egalitarian interventions and noticing that that range includes many non-sexists who, despite being susceptible to changing their behavior in response to the incentives in question, will nonetheless oppose those incentives. For now, let’s consider the first mistake. The problem here lies partly in failing to notice that those affected by a policy include far more than those whose behavior it targets. All tax-paying citizens are affected by social policy that’s funded through tax appropriation. More generally, citizens are affected whether they foot the bill or not, because social policy imposes opportunity costs in terms of foregone progress toward other ends we might have pursued instead. But there’s a more fundamental point to make: In a democratic society, the state enacts policy in the name of citizens, on the basis of whose consent the state is authorized to act. We will see in due course just what authorizing force consent carries, and under what circumstances. For now the point is simple: It is a mistake to think that the justificatory community for any particular intervention consists only in those whose behavior it targets; the justificatory community includes all those on whose authority the state acts. To determine whether opposition to gender-egalitarian policy can be discounted as unreasonable, then, we must ask whether all those within the full justificatory community who oppose such policy can be disregarded as unreasonable, just as those sexists who oppose protections for women’s basic liberties can be disregarded as unreasonable. To answer this question, we need to consider just who the opponents of such legislation might be—and to notice that they certainly need not deny women’s basic political equality. First consider the opposition of gender traditionalists who value traditional domestic gender roles. Such a stance is fully consistent with respecting women as political equals. Those convinced that women are naturally better suited to or more inclined to enjoy caregiving needn’t deny women’s basic political equality. Others may oppose gender-egalitarian interventions not because they endorse traditional gender roles but because of views about the role of 77

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the state in influencing the family. Such opponents need not be sexist; indeed, they may be feminists. Neither religious fundamentalists nor those who object to intervention on “small-government” grounds are the equivalent of the racists or sexists who deny a group’s political equality. Some might deny women’s substantive equality with men, but they certainly needn’t fail to respect women as political equals. Value systems that oppose gender-egalitarian social policy can clearly count as reasonable by political liberalism’s standard. But should they? Perhaps, as Okin argues, the justificatory community should be narrower than political liberals have taken it to be. Respect for political equality is the criterion of reasonableness Rawls employs, but is that too permissive? This strategy of reinterpreting reasonableness must be resisted. For one thing, giving up on the capacious notion of reasonableness amounts to giving up on the goal of political liberalism altogether. The goal, recall, is to find terms for social cooperation suitable for a profoundly diverse society: terms of cooperation that protect fundamental liberal political values, including the right of individuals to live their own lives by the lights of substantively illiberal values. The constraint of justificatory neutrality is crucial for realizing that goal. We manifest mutual respect across profound diversity by abiding by a robust constraint of mutual justifiability for coercive political intervention. To restrict the justificatory community to include only those who already celebrate liberal values like the substantive equality of women and men, or who value substantive equality more than tradition when equality and tradition are in tension, is to achieve neutrality too cheaply. Those value systems that deny individuals’ equal basic liberties can be excluded on the basis of fundamental liberal commitments that animate political liberalism in the first place: If basic liberties weren’t protected, citizens couldn’t be secure in pursuing their own conceptions of the good, be they liberal or illiberal. But the exclusion of value systems that celebrate traditional gender roles in the home is not supportable by any fundamental commitments of liberalism. The reasonableness of doctrines that deny women’s substantive equality but respect their basic liberties seems implied by the very idea of mutual respect across deep diversity, the guiding normative commitment of political liberalism.24 Notice, too, that even if those who deny the substantive equality of women were unreasonable, this would not suffice to exclude all those opposed to gender-egalitarian interventions from the justificatory community. Indeed, plenty of feminists might oppose the interventions in question. Before we see why, remember that we are primarily concerned here with the question not of whether any citizens will oppose the interventions in question, but of

24

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See Nussbaum 2000a.

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whether their opposition is relevant to the question of mutual justifiability in the first place—whether opponents can be disregarded as unreasonable. If all opposition is unreasonable, then the fact that the interventions can be justified only by way of reasons that these opponents reject does not undermine the legitimacy of the interventions. Neutrality requires that interventions be justified using only reasons that are acceptable from within all reasonable conceptions of the good. Just like protections for basic liberties are no less legitimate in virtue of frustrating the values of sexists and racists, gender-egalitarian interventions would be no less legitimate if the values they frustrate are unreasonable. The aim of reinterpreting reasonableness is to show that gender-egalitarian interventions can be neutrally justified because any conceptions of the good from within which they are unacceptable will be unreasonable. The question, then, is whether citizens who affirm women’s political equality but oppose gender-egalitarian interventions are necessarily unreasonable for so doing. We ask who might oppose such interventions, apart from the clearly unreasonable sexists, only to get at the deeper question: On the basis of what value commitments do they oppose the interventions, and are those unreasonable value commitments that we may therefore disregard? Consider a generous national policy to implement a universal entitlement to parental leave that meets the criteria for gender-egalitarian leave policy described in Chapter 1: It offers high wage-replacement rates up to some earnings cap, so that higher earners—disproportionally men—are not discouraged from leavetaking due to worries about foregone earnings. For co-parents, the policy allocates leave individually to each parent so that one parent’s share can be taken only by that parent—not by his partner. Six months of leave are available to each partner, but after three unconditional non-transferrable months, each additional month is available only on the condition that the co-parent take a month of his leave. Plenty of citizens, including those committed to gender egalitarianism, will oppose the policy just described. Why? We’ve seen that the interventions may be opposed by non-sexist gender traditionalists who respect the right of others to pursue gender-egalitarian arrangements but who oppose the use of public resources to subsidize them. They may be opposed by those who oppose political subsidies generally, or by those who oppose political subsidies aimed at influencing domestic behavior in particular. They may also be opposed by those who want gender egalitarianism to be a more viable option, but who under the relevant circumstances find the costs of subsidizing it too high. Those in this last group might be worried about the opportunity costs of pursuing gender egalitarianism—the different social projects we might have pursued instead—or about the transition costs of moving to a more gender-egalitarian society by way of intrusive social policy. 79

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Karen and Dave might oppose gender-egalitarian interventions for these reasons, even though neither endorses their gendered division of labor on principle. In fact, they might oppose the interventions even if both endorse feminist values and prefer a more gender-equal sharing, as many women and men now do. Why might those who prefer a more accessible option of gender equality nonetheless oppose the political interventions necessary to bring it about? Transition costs and path dependencies are one important part of the explanation: Based on past specialization decisions, both Karen’s and Dave’s personal interests might now best be served by caregiver supports that don’t conditionalize part of the provision on equal sharing among partners. This might be true even if in principle and under other circumstances they’d both welcome the nudges that gender-egalitarian caregiver support imposes. To pull off the strategy of reinterpreting reasonableness to justify genderegalitarian interventions, these are the opponents whose conceptions of the good would need to be regarded as unreasonable. But it is implausible to regard all gender traditionalists as unreasonable and thus outside the justificatory community,25 and it is more implausible still to regard as unreasonable those who merely subordinate gender egalitarianism to other social or personal aims. Opponents of gender-egalitarian social policy may be mistaken, but they should not on that basis be excluded from the justificatory community. Reinterpreting reasonableness does not constitute a promising politically liberal strategy for justifying gender-egalitarian political interventions. The proposed reinterpretation violates an essential feature of political liberalism and so cannot be justified from within that framework. The proposed reinterpretation would also dispense with an appealing feature of political liberalism: its commitment to finding mutually justifiable terms of social cooperation for a broadly diverse justificatory community. Two upshots of this discussion bear emphasis: First, because the gendered division of labor is sustained not by the fervent commitment of devoted gender traditionalists but by responses to existing social incentives among those who do not necessarily celebrate traditional gender roles, interventions to erode the gendered division of labor will be difficult to justify by finding fault with traditional gendered attitudes. But, second, intervention will also be difficult to justify on the grounds that those who are merely responding to incentives won’t mind if the incentives are changed. Those who make gendered choices only because they are responding to existing incentives may nonetheless strongly and reasonably oppose changing those incentives; and those directly targeted by the incentive changes are not the only members of the political community to whom justification is owed.

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On the exclusion of the unreasonable from the justificatory community, see Quong 2011.

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2.4 Voluntariness Challenged A different kind of strategy for generating a neutrality-abiding argument for gender-egalitarian political interventions questions the voluntariness of individuals’ compliance with gendered labor specialization. In chapter one, I argued that we need some positive case to justify manipulating the costs and benefits of labor market specialization, because the status quo is maintained by individuals’ choices. But the liberal presumption in favor of leaving individuals free to live as they choose presumes that the choices they make are voluntary. Rawls says: To try to minimize gendered division of labor means, in political liberalism, to try to reach a social condition in which the remaining division of labor is voluntary. This allows in principle that considerable gendered division of labor may persist. It is only involuntary division of labor that is to be reduced to zero.26

Are the choices of so many to comply with norms favoring gendered specialization really voluntary? The case of a woman forced to endure an unwelcome domestic situation is quite obviously non-voluntary. In the apparently benign cases, on the other hand, the interactions within the family seem to be fully voluntary. Of course, children’s involvement in families cannot be said to be voluntary even in the best of cases, and I will have more to say about this presently. But both Karen and Dave seem to be participating in their domestic partnership voluntarily, and both seem to be enacting a gendered division of labor voluntarily. Nonetheless, some theorists have argued that important elements of nonvoluntariness exist even in the apparently benign enactments of gender inegalitarianism.27 We might consider, then, whether political liberalism can license genderegalitarian interventions on the basis of this allegedly pervasive non-voluntariness. After all, if the apparently benign cases have the feature that opens the door to intervention in the non-benign cases—the feature of being non-voluntary—then intervention can presumably be defended on the same grounds. I certainly agree that the apparent voluntariness of gender-inegalitarian family arrangements can be merely apparent. If Karen was socialized to perceive gendered allocations of work as natural and inevitable, or if she saw no feasible alternatives being enacted successfully by those around her, then her participation in the gendered division of labor now may be non-voluntary in some important sense of voluntariness. As feminists have long urged, we must take seriously the social construction of gender.28 But this is not a promising strategy for developing a politically liberal response to the gendered division 26

Rawls 1993, 472. Cudd 2004; Gheaus 2012; Hartley and Watson 2009; Kernohan 1998; MacKinnon 1989; Nussbaum; 2000a; 2003; Okin 2003; Williams 1989. See also Walker 1995. For an argument that liberals must respect even adaptive preferences, see Levey 2005. For a reply, see Brake 2012, 202–5. 28 For a recent discussion of the importance of social construction, see Chambers 2008. 27

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of labor, because any standard of voluntariness robust enough to classify the apparently benign cases as non-voluntary will be too robust to be permissible within political liberalism; and any standard of voluntariness weak enough to be permissible within political liberalism will be too weak to classify the apparently benign cases as non-voluntary. Suppose we wanted to show that Karen’s choice to prioritize caregiving is non-voluntary and thus susceptible to political intervention. To do this, we would need a notion of voluntariness according to which agents’ behavior can be non-voluntary even if those agents strongly affirm their actions as voluntary and intimately identify with their choices. And we would need a notion of voluntariness according to which the mechanisms leading to gender-inegalitarian behavior in cases like Karen’s constitute voluntarinessundermining mechanisms. What are the mechanisms leading to gender-inegalitarian choices that, even in the apparently benign cases where conspicuous force and coercion are absent, might be thought to undermine voluntariness? One plausible candidate is gender socialization; another is the high cost of alternatives to gender specialization. Both, plausibly, apply to Karen. As I described it, Karen’s socialization came about by way of preference-shaping childhood and adolescent experiences, but other mechanisms likely reinforced it: media influences, for example.29 Karen’s experiences as an adult would likely have reinforced it still further: for example, the differential responses men and women get for exhibiting similar behaviors in similar circumstances. While few would have questioned Dave’s choice to prioritize paid work over caregiving, Karen would likely have experienced real or perceived judgment for such a choice. She might have been regarded as cold or status-obsessed. With regard to the costliness of alternatives, the data canvassed in Chapter 1 suggest that Karen’s situation is not atypical: It is very difficult to achieve a gender-egalitarian arrangement, in part because of social norms and in part because institutions have evolved to suit the needs of the “traditional” family model, with a breadwinning specialist and a caregiving specialist, which makes individual deviation from that model costly. Given this socially embedded assumption of domestic labor specialization, Karen would have faced high costs were she to combine caregiving with a continued serious commitment to her paid work. Socialization and costly alternatives may well render behavior nonvoluntary in some important sense. Individuals do not control the social forces that shape their early development or many of the costs that attach to the options they face. On some important notion of voluntariness, then, we may be bound to recognize gendered allocations of work as non-voluntary in

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For examples, see Chambers 2008, 125.

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many if not all of the apparently benign cases. But the goal here is not to develop a metaphysical account of free choice. Rather, the goal is to determine whether some suitable notion of voluntariness can serve to license genderegalitarian political intervention within political liberalism. The relevant question, then, is whether a notion of voluntariness that counts socialization and costly alternatives as voluntariness-undermining mechanisms is suitable to remove the presumption against political intervention, when those choices would otherwise call for political deference. I submit that no notion of voluntariness robust enough to count these processes as voluntariness-underminers can play such a role within political liberalism. Notice, first, that classifying socialization and costly alternatives as voluntariness-underminers in the context of political legitimacy is counterintuitive, even setting aside the particularities of political liberalism. Such a classification would impugn as non-voluntary many of the choices that we rightly take to be beyond the appropriate scope of state censure. For example, it would classify as non-voluntary the choice to remain affiliated with a particular religion, if that choice results from the fact that one was raised to accept that religion as true—if it results, that is, from early socialization over which one had no control. It would also classify that choice as non-voluntary if it results from a careful calculation that defecting from the spiritual tradition of one’s community would, given one’s disposition and other interests, impose social costs that one is not prepared to bear. Both sorts of choice may indeed be non-voluntary by the lights of the deep metaphysical sense of voluntariness. But intuitively, we do not think that means the choices need not be respected, as genuine choices, from a political perspective.30 A standard of voluntariness that says otherwise would dissolve the principled case against state interference in the practice of otherwise permissible religious conceptions of the good. In any case, within the framework of political liberalism, we must reject the notion that socialization and costly alternatives are voluntarinessunderminers, because that notion will also impugn as non-voluntary many choices that political liberalism must accept as voluntary. In fact, such a deep notion of voluntariness would classify as non-voluntary the very choices that flow from our conceptions of the good, because those conceptions are themselves profoundly shaped by preference-molding childhood experiences, and in many cases, we opt against defection from our received ways of life precisely because of the social costs we would incur by defecting. But political liberalism 30 See Nussbaum 1999b, in which she argues that, because of the voluntary nature of religious commitment, society should respect adult citizens’ preferences to join or remain affiliated with religious groups—even those that exclude women from important functions—so long as those citizens’ liberties are protected and they enjoy equal opportunity afforded by their education as children.

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must accept agents’ conceptions of the good—in the normal range of cases—as voluntary.31 It is because citizens’ conceptions of the good are recognized as generally voluntary that citizens’ assent can ground legitimate political intervention through democratic processes, and it is for that same reason that citizens can be held to internalize the costs of their choices in the standard range of cases. Moreover, we intuitively regard the choices that flow from our conceptions of the good as among the most voluntary of which we are capable. A deep metaphysical notion of voluntariness that impugns most or all of our choices as non-voluntary cannot adjudicate choices within a politically liberal theory of liberal legitimacy. Such a standard would render intuitively implausible verdicts, and verdicts contrary to the most basic tenets of political liberalism. Of course, socialization may influence our choices and preferences in relevantly different kinds of ways, and relevantly different types of costs might lead us to deviate from what we might choose in more favorable circumstances. Some of these influences and costs might be objectionable in such a way as to erode the liberal presumption of deference to choice. But then, it is not the mere fact that we have not chosen free of such influences that erodes the presumption; it is something objectionable about what influences us or about what we are influenced to choose. We cannot, then, diagnose the gendered division of labor as unjust because it is unchosen. If we are to take seriously the social construction of our preferences and the malleability of preferences in light of circumstances, then we must acknowledge the ubiquity of non-voluntariness of the sort we have in mind when considering the apparently benign cases. The injustice, then, will need to be diagnosed independently of this non-voluntariness—independently, that is, of the mere fact of non-voluntariness. We might think that voluntary choices are those that flow from our conceptions of the good, while non-voluntary choices are those that are responsive to external influences like socialization and the social costs that contingently attach to alternatives. My point here has been twofold: First, plenty of traditional, gender-inegalitarian choices flow from the choosers’ conceptions of the good (insofar as any choices they make do), and those conceptions of the good are not necessarily unreasonable. But, second, this way of carving off the voluntarily from the non-voluntary simply will not do. Conceptions of the good cannot be just about the values we would espouse and the choices we would make to pursue those values under the conditions most favorable to their pursuit, or under some (probably impossible, depending on the values) scenario wherein no tradeoffs were required.

31

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See Rawls on the priority of the right over the good (Rawls 1993, 174, 180, 187).

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Conceptions of the good include the very value orderings that ideally inform the choices we make given the tradeoffs we face. Of course, those values won’t always settle the matter. The point is that we cannot say that a choice is voluntary only when it flows only from our values as they would be setting aside all external contingencies, and non-voluntary only when it is responsive only to external contingencies; such a categorization leaves indeterminate virtually every choice we make. We are socially embedded such that external contingencies always play a role, and the way we navigate them is, we hope, informed by our values. That those values are themselves informed by external contingencies might in some sense mean that no choice is voluntary, but to regard that sense of voluntariness as the one relevant to calculations of political legitimacy is to abandon liberalism altogether. A notion of voluntariness suitable for political liberalism must be permissive enough to classify conceptions of good as voluntary in the standard cases of citizens sincerely and reasonably endorsing those conceptions. Thus, it must be permissive enough to allow for behavior to be deemed voluntary even when the behavior results from socialization processes or costly alternatives. But then, on any sufficiently permissive notion of voluntariness, we seem to lose our case for classifying gender-role-specializing choices as non-voluntary in the apparently benign cases, since the same social mechanisms are at work. This doesn’t mean that all choices that flow from those conceptions are unobjectionable or off limits to political influence. Rather, it means that their being externally influenced does not itself license that influence. To the extent that we invoke a notion of voluntariness weak enough to erode the presumption of deference to individual choice within the framework of political liberalism, we cannot classify the apparently benign cases of gender inegalitarianism as non-voluntary. To the extent that we invoke a notion of voluntariness robust enough to classify the apparently benign cases as nonvoluntary, that notion will be inadmissible for this purpose within the framework of political liberalism. Still, concerns of voluntariness remain relevant, and considering the case of children can help us to see how: Children engage in all sorts of behavior within their families non-voluntarily, and have their deepest values, beliefs, and conceptions of the good shaped by forces over which they have no real control. This non-voluntariness does not justify state intervention. The state should not, for example, make it illegal for parents to coerce children into eating their vegetables or to force their thirteen year olds to stay home nonvoluntarily on an occasional Friday night. Provided that the non-voluntariness involved in raising children does not also pose a serious risk of harm to those children, it does not suffice to ground state intervention. Of course, we have much different and stronger reasons for protecting freedom of association among adults than among children; we certainly 85

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shouldn’t arrange political institutions to tolerate adult family members being forced to stay home or to eat vegetables. Still, we can use this insight about children to help explain our intuition that, while overt force or coercion is politically actionable, deep metaphysical non-voluntariness is insufficient to justify intervention even in the case of adults. Just as harm is relevant to the justification of intervention in the case of children, so too does harm play a role in the case of adults. Consider two women: Both affirm traditional gendered conceptions of the good that were acquired in such a way as to render the women’s affirmation of them non-voluntary on some deep metaphysical notion of voluntariness. Both affirm their own gendered labor-specializing domestic partnerships as aligning with their values. But whereas one woman derives great satisfaction from her caregiving specialization and enjoys the support and sincere gratitude of her family, the other acutely experiences the vulnerabilities that accompany that role. What strikes us as most objectionable is not what the two cases have in common—that both women’s situations are in some sense non-voluntary.32 Rather, we are disturbed by the detail that makes the second case distinct— that one woman is harmed by her arrangement.33 Of course, it may be that both women are harmed, and it may be that in both cases, some form of governmental intervention is justified. I leave these questions open for the time being. The three points I want to emphasize now are these: First, even if it is relevant in some sense, deep metaphysical non-voluntariness does not suffice to justify intervention, so establishing the non-voluntariness of gender-compliant choices would not suffice to justify gender-egalitarian policy. On a robust enough notion of voluntariness, cases of non-voluntariness will abound. As such, we will still need a justification for intervention, for why we must address this non-voluntariness when non-voluntary behavior is ubiquitous. Second, deep metaphysical non-voluntariness seems insufficient even for the lesser task of eroding the presumption against interference, insofar as that presumption applies to choices that flow to some significant degree from our conceptions of the good. And finally, harm plays an important role in our intuitive all-things-considered judgments about whether intervention is called for. These points suggest that a successful strategy for developing a politically liberal argument in favor of gender-egalitarian social policy must begin with an investigation into the harm that the gendered division of labor causes.

32 To ensure that the two women’s situations are equally non-voluntary, we can specify that the two women would face the same obstacles were they now to exit their relationships. 33 On the relevance of harm or disadvantage in this context, see Chambers 2008; Cudd 2006. In Chapter 3, I consider some appealing distributional ways of construing the harm or disadvantage in question.

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Indeed, not only is non-voluntariness not sufficient to license interventions in any particular case; we will see in due course that it is not necessary: Suppose, if only for the sake of argument, that some women like Karen make gendernorm-compliant choices not because of socialization or costly alternatives but because of robustly voluntary choice based on first-best preferences. Still, such women would be legitimately subject to the manipulation of incentives that structural gender-egalitarian interventions impose. The legitimacy of such interventions will not, on my account, depend on them affecting only citizens whose choices are in some sense non-voluntary. Voluntariness will matter to diagnosing the harm that licenses intervention, but to license the particular burdens imposed by those interventions on particular individuals, it is neither necessary nor sufficient that we be able to diagnose those individuals’ status quo choices as non-voluntary. What licenses intervention is something objectionable about the way Karen and Dave are socialized and about the particular costs that influence their choices to specialize—not the mere fact that they are influenced. And political interventions that aim to reform the influences are legitimate even if they impose costs on those not so influenced. The harm invoked will have to be fully explainable in terms of political values if it is to ground a promising strategy for political liberals. And some notion of voluntariness will have a role to play in diagnosing that harm: While I have argued that choices due in part to costly alternatives cannot on that basis be regarded as (politically) non-voluntary, it nonetheless would be (politically) better that our choices not be constrained by the particular costs in question. In the case of gender specialization, a politically relevant harm results from the high costs that attend gender-egalitarian choices, even if liberal political theory must regard gender-inegalitarian choices made in light of those costs as fully voluntary. Or so, in due course, I will argue. This is not the only harm, but it is one that we should not lose sight of, provided that it can successfully be shown to be a political harm.

2.5 Basic Liberties Revisited To ground a politically liberal argument for gender-egalitarian political interventions on the harms that gender specialization causes, the harms invoked must be “political harms”: those that can be fully cashed out in terms of political values. The neutrality constraint rules out as illegitimate any interventions that can be justified only by invoking a particular value system or the judgments that system renders about what is good or bad for someone. We cannot argue for the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions by invoking the good of substantive equality within one’s intimate relationships, or the harm of substantive inequality. That good and that harm can be 87

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understood only if we invoke a conception of the good that affirms comprehensive feminist values, which is off limits within the confines of political liberalism. If the harms of gender specialization cannot fully be explained in terms of political values—if they are not political harms—then they cannot be invoked to justify gender-egalitarian interventions. The harm of having one’s basic liberties violated is straightforwardly explainable solely in terms of political values: Protections for basic liberties are necessary for political equality and for effective participation in the political life of society. If gendered divisions of labor constitute violations of family members’ basic liberties, then we have grounds for intervention within political liberalism. A physically abusive spouse clearly violates his partner’s right to physical security and, on that basis, protective political intervention is consistent with the neutrality constraint. The difficult cases for political liberalism are the cases in which there is (apparently) no infringement of basic liberties, and therefore (apparently) no grounds for intervention. Karen and Dave exemplify these apparently benign cases. Each partner fully respects the other’s physical boundaries; each enjoys a degree of privacy within the relationship; and neither dictates the other’s political involvement or religious affiliations. Still, one might argue that an infringement of basic liberties does occur, even in the apparently benign cases.34 The basic liberties strategy alleges that the protection of basic liberties requires far more than political liberals have thought. Despite appearances to the contrary, Karen’s (or Dave’s, or Karen and Dave’s) basic liberties are being violated. Gender-egalitarian political interventions are justified in order to secure those liberties. This strategy is unpromising. First, it is simply intuitively implausible that either Karen’s or Dave’s rights are being violated. Their rights to physical security and freedom from assault are intact; and there appears to be no infringement of the right to vote, hold public office, speak out on political issues, or practice a religion of their choosing or none at all. Perhaps Karen is sufficiently burdened by the caregiving demands she faces that running for public office is not a viable possibility for her. So may Dave be too burdened by his breadwinning to run for public office. But surely, protecting a citizen’s right to hold public office does not require ensuring that their schedules allow for effective campaigning. The same can be said for the other basic liberties. For example, protecting a citizen’s freedom of conscience cannot require ensuring that she be available to attend church services. Where, then, is the alleged rights violation? Second, the strategy is unsupported. Perhaps Karen’s participation in activities like voting, running for office, and speaking out publicly about important

34

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See Okin 1989a, 103.

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issues is made less likely or less frequent by her domestic labor allocation in a way that Dave’s is not. Plausibly, gender specialization leaves Karen with less free time for these activities than she would have with a more genderegalitarian labor allocation, and a basic liberties strategist might argue that Karen’s basic liberties are violated by virtue of gender specialization rendering her less likely to exercise them. Alternatively, a basic liberties strategist might point to the physical insecurity that women often experience in intimate domestic relationships, or to their financial vulnerability when such relationships end, and argue that Karen’s basic liberties are violated because gender specialization renders her more likely to suffer rights violations in the future. Understood this way, the basic liberties strategy relies on either of two premises: that reducing the probability of some agent exercising a right itself constitutes a violation of that right, or that enhancing an agent’s susceptibility to future rights violations itself constitutes a rights violation. The problem is that both of these premises are false. A rights violation must involve more than simply rendering someone less likely to exercise a right, and it must involve more than making it likelier that the right will be violated at some future time. Examples that illustrate this point come readily to mind. A parent may raise his child to be cynical about the efficacy of political participation, thereby making that child less likely to vote and run for office as an adult. Perhaps this is bad parenting, but it hardly constitutes a violation of the child’s rights. I might encourage my friend to leave her home to come with me to a party, thereby making it more likely that she will be assaulted. But I have not thereby violated her right to physical security. Classifying these cases as rights violations makes rights violations far too common and far too innocent. Notice, too, that the case against classifying these as rights violations does not depend on the assumption that a rights violation must be perpetrated by an individual rights violator. A state that holds free and fair elections for its highest offices every two years no more violates its citizens’ political liberties than does a state that holds free and fair elections annually, even if holding more frequent elections increases the likelihood that citizens will vote. We can recognize that the behaviors protected by our basic liberties are crucially important—and that pervasive gender specialization impacts those behaviors—without diagnosing individual enactments of gender specialization as rights violations. If gender specialization renders Karen more susceptible to future rights violations or less likely to exercise her rights now, and if these consequences are widespread and systematic, that may call for political intervention. But the actionable harm is not the mere influence on future rights violations or current rights exercises. We have seen examples of social policies—the timing of elections, for example—that have these effects but evidently do not call for institutional reform. 89

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Clearly, the activities our basic liberties protect are politically important, and this may have implications for how we should deal with gender specialization. We may rightly be concerned if social institutions render it especially likely that members of certain social groups will suffer future violations of their basic liberties. Accordingly, we may be able to make a politically liberal case for intervention on the grounds that women are harmed by social institutions that systematically discourage them from fully exercising their basic liberties, or that systematically make future violations of those liberties likelier. We might consider doing this, for example, on the basis of some relational egalitarian account of justice by the lights of which these harms constitute objectionable inequalities of civic status or standing or respect. I will consider this possibility in Chapter 5. For now, I simply note that these claims are importantly distinct from the allegation that violations of basic liberties are occurring in the apparently benign cases exemplified by Karen and Dave. The distinctness corresponds to a difference in the kinds of interventions that our concern to protect basic liberties justifies. If a spouse actually violates his partner’s basic right to physical security, this violation calls for a direct intervention into the family to protect the victim. Rights violations call for targeted responses, and yet such a response would clearly be inappropriate in the case of Karen and Dave. Certainly we would not countenance bringing criminal charges against Dave. If some feature of the gender-specialization case calls for reform due to considerations of basic liberties, this points toward structural reform rather than the targeted interventions justified by rights violations themselves. The voluntariness strategy and the basic liberties strategy both identify a violation that justifies political intervention in the cases for which political liberalism clearly authorizes intervention. Both then allege that, despite appearances to the contrary, that same violation occurs in the apparently benign cases. Both locate the problem in particular enactments of gender specialization, rather than in the norms and institutions within which individuals make labor-allocation decisions—the norms and institutions that sustain pervasive gender specialization (and that are, in turn, sustained by it). Indeed, some particular enactments are objectionable precisely because they constitute rights violations or violate political requirements of voluntariness, and there are no doubt more such cases than get prosecuted. But political liberalism has no theoretical trouble finding such arrangements objectionable and licensing interventions to protect the victims. The social circumstances that make gender egalitarianism so difficult to achieve in particular cases, however, are not sustained by these egregious cases. Most domestic arrangements that sustain the gendered division of labor cannot be regarded as rights violations or as instances of political non-voluntariness.

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We can glean important lessons from the shortcomings of these strategies: We want to diagnose the harm of the gendered division of labor in such a way as to ground structural interventions of the type discussed in Chapter 1: interventions like family leave policies, substitute care provision, and work time regulation. Such a diagnosis won’t find fault with particular enactments of gender inegalitarianism but will point instead to features of the social environment within which families make choices about how to allocate work. The apparently benign cases that sustain large-scale gender specialization don’t constitute rights violations; nor are they non-voluntary according to any standard of voluntariness we can invoke within political liberalism. In order to have any hope of grounding a positive argument for gender-egalitarian political interventions, then, we must take a broader view: Gender specialization as it plays out in apparently benign cases like Karen and Dave’s is objectionable because of the social norms and institutions that sustain it. A strategy that diagnoses the political harm in these terms will thereby point toward interventions that modify the structural features of society against which individual families make decisions about how to allocate work. In considering the apparently benign cases, we must redirect our focus away from features that render particular arrangements liable to censure, and toward diagnoses that call for these structural interventions. This broader perspective accords with our intuitive understanding of what the gendered division of labor is and how it should be addressed. In a fully just society marked by genuinely open options regarding how to manage commitments to caregiving and paid labor, particular instances of gender specialization need involve no injustice. The injustice lies in the conditions that make it so difficult to enact gender-egalitarian alternatives, and in the disadvantages that accrue both to those who comply with the status quo and to those who try to resist it. While neither rights violations nor nonvoluntariness constitutes the harm of gender inegalitarianism in the apparently benign cases, considerations of basic liberties and voluntariness can point toward important aspects of this harm. We should bear these lessons in mind as we turn, in Chapter 3, to a structural approach to justifying genderegalitarian interventions.

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3 The Mal-Distribution Strategy

Proponents of gender-egalitarian political interventions must meet the justificatory burden of showing that those interventions constitute legitimate exercises of coercive political power.1 The interventions use public resources to manipulate the costs and benefits that attach to various lifestyle options, making some reasonable lifestyles costlier and others cheaper than they are under a status quo that is sustained by politically voluntary choices of individuals. To supplant the status quo with a new arrangement, then, we must show that we can regard the new arrangement as more just or otherwise better than the old, and better by a wide enough margin to justify the public expenditure, without failing to maintain civic respect toward the many citizens in our diverse justificatory community who reasonably prefer the status quo, or who think it more just in this regard, or who simply think that reforming it is not a sufficiently weighty social goal to justify the expenditures reform would require. As we have seen, meeting that burden within the context of political liberalism requires justificatory neutrality. Political power is legitimate only when its exercise can be justified on the basis of reasons that are shareable among citizens. In order for reasons that support political intervention to be shareable among citizens, those reasons must be neutral among the conceptions of the good that citizens may reasonably embrace. Interventions aimed at influencing families’ allocations of work appear to be ruled out by this neutrality constraint, because many citizens consciously enact and even celebrate traditionally gendered domestic arrangements, and many who do not celebrate such arrangements nonetheless think gender egalitarianism is not a social goal that justifies the kind of state appropriation and intrusion that furthering it would require.2 Social policies that aim to induce

1 This chapter contains significantly revised versions of arguments first made in my article “Is the Gendered Division of Labor a Problem of Distribution?” (Schouten 2016). 2 And, I have argued, not all are unreasonable in holding these commitments.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0003

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gender-egalitarian choices appear to be suspect, then, unless we can muster some neutrality-abiding reasons in their favor. Proponents of intervention who accept the neutrality constraint have devised elegant arguments to justify those interventions and claimed that these arguments abide by the neutrality constraint. If these arguments are sound, and if they rely only on premises that can be neutrally affirmed, then gender-egalitarian interventions would be legitimate exercises of political power, despite initial appearances to the contrary. In Chapter 2, I considered three strategies for defending gender-egalitarian political interventions while abiding by the constraints of political liberalism, and I argued that each misses the mark. In this chapter, I consider a fourth approach, which I take to be the prevailing strategy for defending gender-egalitarian political interventions within the constraints imposed by political liberalism. According to this strategy, the gendered division of labor constitutes or causes unjust distributions of goods, and gender-egalitarian interventions can be legitimate means of remedying those unjust distributions. This strategy is appealing because of its apparent promise of justifying gender-egalitarian policies without making any judgments as to the relative intrinsic value of gender-specializing and gender-non-specializing lifestyles. By locating the harm of the gendered division of labor in the downstream distributional consequences of gender specialization, we might think we can avoid judging the choices themselves, and thus avoid violating the neutrality constraint. Indeed, precisely by focusing on the consequences of genderspecializing choices rather than on the choices themselves, we can avoid a major problem for the strategies considered in Chapter 2: Those strategies located the problem in particular enactments of gender specialization. They thus either could not extend to the most crucial set of cases for sustaining the gendered division of labor—those apparently benign cases exemplified by Karen and Dave; or, if their proponents insist that they do extend to the apparently benign cases, they implausibly imply that all gender-specializing labor allocations themselves constitute such injustices as rights violations or instances of political non-voluntariness. A strategy that locates the injustice of the gendered division of labor elsewhere than in particular labor allocations can avoid this problem. In its most plausible formulations, the distributional approach I consider in this chapter promises to do just that: For all the distributional approach need say, any particular gendered domestic labor arrangement may be above reproach. What is unjust are the downstream distributional inequalities gendered specialization sustains when it obtains throughout society broadly. And unlike the approaches considered in Chapter 2, this distributional strategy diagnoses the harm of the gendered division of labor in such a way as to ground structural reforms: Gender specialization as it plays out in apparently 93

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benign cases like Karen’s and Dave’s is objectionable because of the unjust distributions it sustains, and these injustices call for structural interventions— not just isolated protections for victims of rights violations. Unjust disadvantages accrue both to those who comply with the status quo and to those who try to resist it, and a distributional approach seems alert to these disadvantages. It comes as no surprise, then, that this distributional approach is the prevailing strategy, among liberal feminists, for explaining the actionable injustice in the gendered division of labor. Those who execute what I call the “mal-distribution strategy” offer a distributional diagnosis of the injustice of the gendered division of labor, argue that the unjustly distributed good is one we can recognize as valuable without invoking any particular comprehensive conception of the good, and defend gender-egalitarian interventions as necessary to remedy the unjust distribution.3 The project of this chapter is to argue that, despite its appeal, the maldistribution strategy is inadequate. The strategy runs into two problems: First, it does not seem to comply with the neutrality constraint in the way that its proponents have claimed. I won’t argue definitively that it is impossible for a mal-distribution strategy to constitute a neutral defense of genderegalitarian interventions; rather, I lay out what I take to be powerful reasons for pessimism. Second, whether or not it can be made compliant with neutrality, the injustice of the gendered division of labor is not best diagnosed as distributional. The gendered division of labor is not essentially a problem of distribution; the mal-distribution strategy therefore fundamentally misdiagnoses the injustice.

3.1 The Mal-Distribution Strategy: A Preliminary Assessment Susan Moller Okin explains the putative injustice of the gendered division of labor in a way that nicely illustrates the mal-distribution strategy: “When we look seriously at the distribution between husbands and wives of such critical social goods as work (paid and unpaid), power, prestige, self-esteem, opportunities for self-development, and both physical and economic security, we find socially constructed inequalities between them, right down the list”.4 The gendered division of labor obviously involves distributions: Women do less socially remunerated labor outside the home than do men, and men do less caregiving labor than do women. As a first pass, we might say that those who endorse gender-egalitarian political interventions on the basis of the 3 4

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mal-distribution strategy argue that the gendered division of labor is objectionable because it causes individuals to have an unfairly small or inadequate share of something. Of course, not every unequal distribution is objectionable.5 There may be goods the distribution of which is not susceptible to considerations of justice; holders of goods among whom certain distributional concerns are suspended; and types of inequalities that are not unjust. On the face of it, neither paid nor caregiving work appears to be a plausible candidate for the mal-distributed good. Because unequal distributions are objectionable only when they are distributions of something valuable, types of work can serve as mal-distributed goods only if the distribution renders the holdings of one group less valuable than the holdings of another. Because neither paid nor caregiving work appears, as a category, to be intrinsically more valuable, imbalances in the proportions in which they figure into men’s and women’s total workloads do not themselves seem to render one group’s holdings less valuable.6 Nor, if we consider paid and caregiving work as among the burdens of social cooperation, does one appear to be intrinsically more disvaluable. But focusing on instrumental value, imbalances in proportions of paid work and caregiving work do render one group’s holdings less valuable: On average, women have less income and wealth then men do, largely because they perform a disproportionately large share of unpaid caregiving and a disproportionally small share of paid work outside of the home. Because they go in for unequally remunerated social roles, women and men end up with unequal shares of income and wealth and all that goes along with them: power and prestige, among others. Such aggregate inequalities arise too between occupants of plenty of other different social roles: for example, between retail managers on the one hand and struggling artists on the other. But the gendered division of labor seems relevantly different along an important dimension: In the case of the gendered division of labor but not (let’s assume) in the choice between retail management and art-making, we are socialized along lines of gender to perform the roles in question. For our purposes, however, this difference cannot yet make the difference: We have just seen that this socialization cannot categorically be regarded as objectionable, because (among other reasons) we are pervasively socialized, all the way down to our conceptions of the good and the values that guide our choices when we face tradeoffs between income on 5 For ease of exposition, I will follow Okin in referring to the distributive ideal as one of equality. Nothing hangs on this simplification, and other distributional principles could be substituted without lessening the force of my challenges to the distributive paradigm. 6 Perhaps caregiving work is more intrinsically rewarding than paid work, but this imbalance would indicate that men, as a group, enjoy a less valuable share, because they have less involvement in the care of loved ones. This diagnosis of the gendered division of labor implies no claims of justice on behalf of women, who are supposed to be the parties most straightforwardly harmed by it.

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the one hand, and on the other, the chance to do work we find more rewarding under our circumstances—whether it be caregiving or art-making. Setting aside the gender disparity in who goes in for it, we might argue simply that caregiving is unfairly badly socially rewarded. Such an argument would demand no rectification on behalf of women as such,7 but would demand that we socialize some of the costs of caregiving, which would disproportionally benefit women. But supporting an argument for socializing the costs of caregiving requires more than simply noting that caregiving is less well rewarded than other social roles. We must develop a politically liberal argument either that all positions should provide equal amounts of income and wealth, or that caregiving in particular should be more highly socially rewarded than it is under the status quo. In fact, I think we should socialize more of the costs of caregiving, as my policy agenda demonstrates, and I think that some of our reasons for doing so stem from problematic features of the gender socialization that sustains the gendered division of labor. The diagnosis of gender injustice I will defend entails both that caregiving work is unfairly badly socially rewarded, and that part of what explains why its being badly rewarded is unjust concerns the social forces that sustain its being gendered. But shorn of the resources of the non-voluntariness strategy already dispensed with, the mal-distribution strategy looks to be of little help in establishing these conclusions. The mere fact that income is unequally distributed between caregivers and wage-earners is not enough to establish that the inequality is unjust;8 nor does it suffice to add the fact that socialization heavily influences the choices women and men make between these roles, as socialization doesn’t undermine the political voluntariness of the choices. None of this is to deny that the gendered division of labor causes unjust inequalities. The question is what role their being gendered plays in explaining why they are unjust. In Chapter 4, I will consider the question of distribution more generally. One upshot will be that political liberalism and the neutrality constraint permit and in fact entail a fairly robustly egalitarian requirement of distributive justice, which would demand progressive redistribution relative to the status quo. For now, take that upshot for granted: Politically liberal distributive justice demands a more distributively egalitarian society than the one we currently inhabit; particularly straightforwardly, it demands the elimination of poverty. Because poverty and disadvantage 7 This is not to say that it wouldn’t be a feminist argument. Feminists qua feminists have very good reason to care about justice for caregivers—women figure disproportionally among caregivers, for starters—even if the injustice would remain were the disadvantage spread more equitably between women and men. 8 The mere fact of status inequalities may go further. I defer discussion of status inequalities until Chapter 5.

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are gendered, promoting distributive justice will disproportionally benefit women. But by the lights of principles of distributive justice, the benefit in question is not owed in virtue of their being women, and it is not more urgently owed to women than it is owed to equally disadvantaged men. The living and working conditions of many poor and working-class women are an urgent problem of justice. So too are the living and working conditions of similarly disadvantaged men. Disparities in numbers of women versus men who are very unfairly badly off certainly merit attention, but not because any one woman’s distributive justice claims matter more than a similarly badly off man in virtue of there being more women than men. Suppose that general (demanding, in my view) principles of egalitarian distributive justice are realized, but that women still earn less than men because they continue to enter into (fairly, by stipulation, but) less wellremunerated social roles. Suppose, for example, that the Rawlsian difference principle captures a demand of distributive justice within a political conception of justice: that social and economic inequalities must “be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society”.9 And suppose that women constitute the least advantaged group, even as the difference principle is fully realized: Society is arranged so that that least advantaged group is better off than the least advantaged group would be under any other arrangement. Would their being on average worse off than men remain unjust, if the inequality is otherwise compliant with principles of distributive justice? My contention shall be that the inequality is not unjust, though something in what causes it is. And fixing the inequality would not repair that injustice in what brings it about. The inequality should alert us to an injustice, but it doesn’t constitute that injustice. Apart from the general demands of egalitarian justice, then, the mal-distribution strategy does not help us to diagnose the injustice of the gendered division of labor. A clarification is needed here, because depending on how we understand general principles of distributive justice and what we take them to include, one objectionable source of material distributive inequality between women and men might survive the full realization of distributive justice: Workplace discrimination helps to explain why women disproportionally end up in unpaid caregiving roles or in less well-paid roles within labor markets, and such discrimination would be unjust even if the resultant inequalities were otherwise compliant with principles of distributive justice.10 For this reason, any adequate principles of distributive justice must be supplemented with—if 9

Rawls 2001, 42–3. Correspondingly, men may face discrimination in social circles that support caregiving. Although the case is less straightforward when discrimination occurs in informal networks of voluntary affiliation, the argument I develop in Chapter 4 will suggest that such discrimination is not ruled out on principle as a target of political reform. 10

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they don’t themselves include—an anti-discrimination or equal opportunity requirement. Anti-discrimination or equal opportunity principles are meant to regulate access precisely to unequally well-rewarded positions, and some version of such a principle will have a place within a politically liberal theory of distributive justice.11 But the challenge for the politically liberal proponent of gender-egalitarian interventions is not met merely by showing that we may legitimately intervene to discourage discrimination. To reconcile political liberalism with gender egalitarianism as a social aim, we must show that we may legitimately intervene to discourage gender-inegalitarian choices even when those choices are not due to discrimination. In assessing the mal-distribution strategy, then, we should maintain our focus on the apparently benign cases: Assume that Karen’s choice to prioritize caregiving and Dave’s to prioritize paid labor were not influenced by the kind of discrimination that would be targeted by a robust and fully enforced regime of anti-discrimination legislation. As we have seen, the currently most significant cause of labor market disparity is not discrimination but divergent choices: Women disproportionally choose to prioritize caregiving, and men disproportionally choose to prioritize paid work.12 Apart from stipulating away discrimination, I have asked us to suppose that general (demanding, in my view) principles of egalitarian distributive justice are realized. Plausibly, women still earn less than men do because women continue to enter into less well-remunerated social roles. We might easily imagine that these are private caregiving roles that are fairly socially supported but that involve (possibly marginal) tradeoffs in terms of foregone earnings one could have received by working longer hours and using more subsidized childcare (provided by fairly remunerated caregivers). This is where, plausibly, aggregate inequalities between women and men will remain even once general egalitarian principles of distributive justice are realized, assuming that distributive justice leaves space for tradeoffs between income and time with one’s dependents. In any case, for this chapter, let us focus on inequalities that are not due to discrimination and that are compliant with whatever general requirements of distributive justice political liberalism imposes. This last assumption imposes a quite strong idealization, and I should be clear about my reasons for asking us to make it. I think that, when feminists

11 If we go in for the Rawlsian principles, fair equality of opportunity figures among the principles of distributive justice themselves. The point is that even if we eschew Rawlsian fair equality of opportunity, some principle of anti-discrimination must accompany whatever egalitarian, prioritarian, or sufficientarian principle we embrace instead—and, as I’ll argue in Chapter 4, something in the neighborhood of these roughly egalitarian principles is demanded by political liberalism itself. See Arneson 1999; Clayton 2001. 12 See Bertrand 2018; Kleven et al. 2018.

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think of the gendered division of labor as gender unjust, we mean something more than simply what is already implied by principles of distributive justice, which principles themselves have nothing to do with gender: We mean more than that women are disproportionally badly off by the lights of general principles of distributive justice and so would be disproportionally benefitted by their realization. Or, at least, I think we should mean more than that. I want to know what that something is, and so I ask us to think of the aggregate inequalities between women and men that would survive compliance with general distributive justice. The idealization isn’t absolutely necessary for running the argument. We might (as I do) stipulate full compliance with general principles of distributive justice but suppose that some distributive inequality between genders persists, and ask of that inequality whether it is distributively unjust. Or, we might ask of existing unjust distributive inequality whether it is unjust in virtue of being gendered. I find the former to be rhetorically more straightforward, and so opt for the idealization. What matters is this: Distributive injustices aren’t unjust due to their being gendered, and unjust gendered distributive inequalities aren’t unjust due to their being distributive inequalities. So: Assuming full compliance with general principles of distributive justice, I argue in this chapter that any remaining gendered inequalities are not unjust as inequalities. Some such inequalities may be eroded once we remedy the social circumstances that—I argue in later chapters—are unjust. But it is not in virtue of the inequality that the circumstances are unjust. Moreover, removing remaining inequalities will not remove the injustice of the gendered division of labor, because the social circumstances that are unjust can survive the removal of the inequalities. Even if caregiving were publicly remunerated to such a degree that no distributive inequality persisted between caregivers and breadwinners, or between women and men, we should not regard the injustice of the gendered division of labor as thereby eliminated. The balance of this chapter, then, is given to arguing that the maldistribution strategy is unsatisfactory for two main reasons: First, within the range of inequalities approved by general principles of distributive justice, the downstream distributional consequences of the gendered division of labor are not themselves unjust, at least by the lights of political liberalism, though something in what causes them may be unjust. Indeed, my argument in Section 3.2 suggests that even general principles of distributive justice may be less responsive to gender inequalities than mal-distribution strategists have taken them to be. It is not only that gender inequalities are not unjust as inequalities beyond what general principles of distributive justice demand; even those general principles themselves do not register some of the inequalities that mal-distribution strategists have invoked, at least not compliant with the neutrality constraint. Second, in cases where there is injustice in what 99

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causes the downstream distributional consequences of the gendered division of labor, remedying the downstream distributional consequences will not remedy that injustice.13

3.2 Is the Mal-Distribution Strategy Neutral? The fact that surviving inequalities are not unjust as inequalities is true at least within the framework of political liberalism’s neutrality constraint. Consider one seemingly important inequality that could attend a gendered division of labor sustained by only the apparently benign enactments of gender inegalitarianism: Women’s greater share of caregiving work combined with their involvement in paid labor renders their overall workloads larger, and as a result they enjoy less leisure time than men.14 This inequality would constitute an injustice only if leisure time is a good the distribution of which, taken in isolation, is susceptible to considerations of justice. This possibility for justifying gender-egalitarian interventions further elucidates the tension between those interventions and the liberal commitment to neutrality. Because individuals may reasonably disagree about the relative value of work and leisure—and indeed, of paid and caregiving work—inequalities in kinds or amounts of work cannot straightforwardly be identified as objectionable distributions without violating the constraint of neutrality. These inequalities do not generate reasons for remediation that are shareable among reasonable citizens, because reasonable citizens can reject the presumption that different compositions of work and leisure are unequally valuable. We can refine our understanding of the mal-distribution strategy to account for this nuance: Those who pursue this approach argue for gender-egalitarian interventions on the grounds that the gendered division of labor is objectionable because it causes individuals to have an unfairly small or inadequate share of something, which is registered as a distributive injustice on a neutrally affirmable conception of distributive justice. A different way of putting this may help to clarify: To abide by the neutrality constraint, the reasons offered by the maldistribution strategist to justify intervention must be political: They must invoke only values that can be discerned without recourse to particular comprehensive conceptions of the good. Neutrality dictates that the state cannot legitimately intervene with the aim of promoting a controversial conception of what is good for someone or to prevent harm as defined by such a conception’s notion of what is bad for 13 This second claim is given preliminary defense in this chapter and argued for more definitively in Chapter 5. 14 American Time Use Survey 2011; 2018.

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someone. The state cannot, for example, intervene to encourage an atheist to embrace the tenets of Protestantism on the grounds that doing so can prevent her eternal damnation. That harm cannot be cashed out using only political values; it requires that we invoke a particular comprehensive value system, which not all citizens can be expected to affirm. Similarly, if some distribution of goods is to ground governmental policies aimed at changing what goes on within families, then those goods must be politically valuable: affirmable from within any reasonable value system. While some package of goods that includes leisure time may be so affirmable,15 a preference for leisure over work within the package is not. Still, the mal-distribution strategy has been pursued widely by those writing about gender justice, and many of its proponents take great care to abide by the constraint of neutrality.16 For example, some theorists argue for genderegalitarian interventions on the grounds that the gendered division of labor results in an objectionable distribution of positive health outcomes, with women’s inferior share owing to their performance of such a comparatively large share of caregiving labor.17 This justification for gender-egalitarian political interventions appears to bypass substantive value considerations and rely only on values that all citizens can recognize as such, like the value of positive health outcomes that are allegedly desirable regardless of one’s conception of the good. If positive health outcomes are indeed a good that can be affirmed without violating neutrality, then we could invoke that good to build a case for interventions that compensate caregivers for health deficits, or that arrange paid and unpaid labor environments so that the deficits do not arise in the first place. More generally, if the gendered division of labor causes an 15 For example, leisure time plausibly figures among Rawlsian social primary goods. See Rawls 2001, 179. 16 S. A. Lloyd, Amy Baehr, Ingrid Robeyns, Anca Gheaus, and Martha Nussbaum have all pursued mal-distribution strategies for justifying gender-egalitarian political interventions of some sort. Lloyd and Baehr argue that their conceptions of the goods of justice can be grounded in public reason and can therefore form part of a legitimately neutral conception of justice. Lloyd defends a principle calling for rough equality in citizens’ share of certain publicly recognized values, including liberty, equality, fairness, reciprocity, stability, security, opportunity, and public health (Lloyd 1998). Baehr interprets Lloyd’s criterion of sexual equality as “a robust principle of antidiscrimination” and defends it as a legitimate component of a political conception of justice on the grounds that individuals behind the veil of ignorance would endorse it (Baehr 2008). Robeyns argues for a conception of gender justice that counts socially caused inequalities in men’s and women’s capability sets as unjust (Robeyns 2007). Gheaus argues for a conception of gender justice that counts society as unjust so long as central components of good lives are unequally costly to women and men (Gheaus 2012). Martha Nussbaum understands the harm of gender inegalitarianism as a mal-distribution of human capabilities (including life; bodily health and integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; control over one’s environment; and affiliation). Because a conception of the person as exercising various human capabilities is one that “corresponds to human experience,” Nussbaum argues that “there is good reason to think that it can command a political consensus in a pluralistic society” and therefore “form the core of a political conception that is a form of political liberalism” (Nussbaum 2000a, 56). 17 Baehr 2008; Lloyd 1998.

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unfair distribution of a good that can be recognized as such regardless of one’s comprehensive conception of the good, then that good might serve as a basis on which to build a neutral justification for gender-egalitarian political interventions. Many mal-distribution strategists are careful to argue that the goods they allege to be unfairly distributed are goods the value of which can be affirmed without violating the constraint of neutrality. In this section, I argue that we should be skeptical of such assurances. I argue, further, that even if we find a neutrally affirmable good, we should remain skeptical about the maldistribution strategy. Identifying a political good does not suffice to show that the mal-distribution strategy can be executed fully without violating neutrality. The strategy, remember, is to show that the gendered division of labor is objectionable because it causes individuals to have an unfairly small or inadequate share of something that is registered as a distributive injustice on a neutrally affirmable conception of distributive justice. Showing that the allegedly mal-distributed good can be registered as valuable is only one step toward showing that any particular distribution of that good can be registered as unjust on such a conception, and the other neutrality-based barriers to the enactment of this strategy are still more difficult to surmount. Still, the political value of the good in question is a good place to start. Trouble arises even here. While general goods like positive health outcomes may indeed be affirmed from within any conception of the good, this does not yet establish that the particular health outcomes of which the gendered division of labor causes unequal distributions are so affirmable. It may be that the particular health outcomes of which women enjoy a less favorable share are outcomes the value of which cannot be affirmed from within all reasonable conceptions of the good, even though health generally can be so affirmed. Consider, as an illustration, the pain and medical problems associated with gestation and childbirth. These are a health deficit that some reasonable citizens would not recognize as such, or as even presumptively relevant to justice. This may constitute no problem for the mal-distribution strategy if inequalities in the particular health outcomes result in an inequality in the political good of positive health outcomes generally. But it may be that other differences between women and men have the consequence of rendering women healthier than men, thereby offsetting the health costs that women suffer and preempting the purported claim to redistribution. This may be the case, for example, if women’s greater longevity counterbalances whatever health deficits they face in other domains. If the particular goods of which women enjoy a less favorable share cannot be neutrally affirmed, and if any health deficits caused by the gendered division of labor are outweighed by other differences such that women are not sub-equally healthy all-things-considered, then the 102

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mal-distribution strategy will not have established that a legitimately politically actionable distributional unfairness exists.18 To justify political remediation, it does not suffice to show that good health generally is a politically valuable good and that some particular health outcomes are unequally distributed. We must establish that some particular health outcomes are politically valuable and unequally distributed between women and men, or that the general good of positive health is, all-things-considered, unequally distributed between women and men. To the best of my knowledge, neither of these cases has been made. Assume that this burden can be met. A second hurdle confronts the maldistribution strategy: In order to pursue it successfully, we must establish not only that the goods allegedly unfairly distributed are neutral; we also must show that the value of the distributional paradigm can be affirmed from within any reasonable conception of the good. If we think that women’s share of the relevant goods is objectionable because it is sub-equal, for example, then we must establish the value of equality without violating the constraint of neutrality.19 I will argue in Chapter 4 that a fairly demanding egalitarian distributional paradigm can form part of a neutral conception of justice. But I am less optimistic that a neutral good falls within the jurisdiction of a neutral distributive principle in such a way that the principle actually registers the purported mal-distribution of the gendered division of labor. To illustrate the difficulty, consider another good purportedly ill-distributed on account of the gendered division of labor: opportunities for meaningful lives.20 Assume that the value of equal opportunity can be affirmed neutrally, and can thus legitimately be invoked to justify social policies within a political conception of justice. Nevertheless, that conception may not register the particular ways in which (on average) men’s opportunities differ from women’s. It is implausible to think that one’s opportunity set is always more valuable insofar as she has numerically more opportunities available to her; the relevant inequality, therefore, must be qualitative: The mal-distribution strategist must show that women’s opportunity sets are, on average, less valuable than men’s opportunity sets. And the metric we deploy in assessing

18 Another problem lurks here. See Hartley and Watson 2010 for an argument that the goods invoked by mal-distribution strategists are not goods whose value is established by the commitments of political liberalism as such, but are, at best, goods recognizable as such from within some political conceptions of justice. If Hartley and Watson are right, then the legitimacy of the interventions will depend on the outcomes of political processes rather than on straightforward considerations of political legitimacy. 19 Baehr 2008; Lloyd 1998. Nussbaum seems to assume that some fairly egalitarian distributional paradigm can be defended on political grounds. See Nussbaum 2000a. Gheaus grounds her theory of gender justice in “a robust understanding of equality, according to which it is . . . unjust for some people to be worse off than others on account of their sex.” See Gheaus 2012, 12. 20 Baehr 2008; Watson and Hartley 2018; Lloyd 1998; Okin 1989a.

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the relative value of opportunity sets must itself be comprehensible in terms of political values. What metric could render the verdict that women’s opportunity sets are sub-equally valuable without running afoul of neutrality? It is plausible that women enjoy fewer opportunities, on average, for leisure or for satisfaction and achievement in the world of paid work or in politics. But that difference renders their opportunity sets less valuable all-things-considered only if the value lost due to their relatively small share of these opportunities isn’t outweighed by the value gained from the opportunities of which women enjoy a more favorable share: opportunities to care for dependents, for example, and to form the bonds of intimacy that caregiving work enables. Without arguing that enactments of these opportunities are unequally valuable—which the neutrality constraint rules out—I do not see how we can show that the opportunities are unequally valuable, or that the differences render overall opportunity sets unequally valuable. Even if some are tempted to maintain that caregiving is less personally valuable than accomplishments in politics or paid labor, they should still grant that the neutrality constraint rules out that judgment as a permissible basis for political intervention. To be sure, women lack certain opportunities to arrange their lives according to their own judgments regarding the choice-worthiness of the activities available. Women’s opportunity sets are presumably less valuable insofar as social norms and institutions reduce their opportunity to combine caregiving and paid labor, to prioritize paid work to the exclusion of caregiving, or to prioritize leisure over other pursuits. I think these constraints are unfair. But because they do not constitute mal-distributions, the mal-distribution strategy cannot diagnose their unfairness. The constraints are not mal-distributions for the simple reason that men face corresponding constraints on their opportunities to arrange their lives as they choose. Just as women are constrained in prioritizing paid work over caregiving, men are constrained in prioritizing caregiving over paid work, and both are constrained in combining those pursuits. Unlike problems of scarcity, problems of distribution arise among parties— some have too little of something, while others’ share is unfairly large. If the constraints on women’s opportunities were a mal-distribution, there would be some identifiable group whose members face too few constraints while women face too many. Both women and men are unfairly constrained by the gendered division of labor, and so the distribution of constraints between them cannot help us to diagnose the unfairness of the gendered division of labor. This is not to say that we shouldn’t be especially concerned about the constraints women face. It is to say, rather, that the mal-distribution strategy does not explain why we should be. Nor can we regard the gendered division of labor as a mal-distribution of opportunities (to live according to one’s own judgments and values) that 104

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arises between those who prefer gender egalitarianism and those who prefer gender inegalitarianism. As we have seen, political institutions inevitably influence the values of those living under them. As Rawls puts it, it is surely impossible for the basic structure of a just constitutional regime not to have important effects and influences as to which comprehensive doctrines endure and gain adherents over time; and it is futile to try to counteract these effects and influences . . . We must accept the facts of commonsense political sociology.21

No state can be neutral in the sense of preserving all reasonable conceptions of the good as equally accessible and equally costly; thus, we cannot rest the case for gender-egalitarian interventions on the mere fact that gender-egalitarian lifestyles, wherein partners engage fully in both paid work and caregiving, are costlier than gender-specializing lifestyles under the status quo. We must offer some neutral reason to make gender-egalitarian lifestyles less costly. The unequal costliness does not itself constitute such a reason, as different choice-worthy lifestyles will, inevitably, be unequally costly. Another hurdle awaits us. Under some circumstances, inequalities arising from individuals’ own voluntary choices—even inequalities in their holdings of neutrally affirmable goods—must be taken to be approved by considerations of distributive justice. In Chapter 2, we addressed the sensible point that a great deal of our gendered behavior is plausibly not voluntary. If families choose to comply with the gendered division of labor because of internalized gender norms or because institutional constraints render more egalitarian alternatives very costly, their compliance may more appropriately be attributed to background conditions than to genuine choice. Nonetheless, within a political conception of justice, neither internalized social norms nor the high costs of alternatives can categorically excuse individuals from bearing the costs of their choices. Just as our conceptions of the good guide the choices and tradeoffs we make in such areas as religious affiliation, our choices to specialize or not to specialize in caregiving and paid labor stem from values and commitments that presumptively merit political deference. These are choices that social institutions ought to regard as voluntary, and choices the costs of which we are presumptively expected to internalize, even when the choices stem from deeply embedded social norms or reflect second-best preferences. Few of our choices would survive if the liberal presumption of deference applied only to choices aligning with our first-best preferences. Insofar as gender-norm-compliant labor-allocation choices are attributable to background conditions in the same way as our religious commitments often are,

21

Rawls 1993, 193.

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we cannot categorically excuse individuals from the responsibility to bear the costs of those choices.22 I have said that the kind of non-voluntariness that applies to gender-normcompliant choices cannot categorically excuse individuals from bearing the costs of those choices. Other reasons may tell in favor of making genderegalitarian choices less costly. For example, such choices might presently be attributable in large part to unfairness in the institutional environment that constrains individual choices. I will argue that the constraints are unfair. But unless the justificatory burdens set forth above can be met, that unfairness will need to be diagnosed independently of the mal-distributions to which it gives rise; and it cannot be derived straightforwardly from the claim that the costliness of gender egalitarianism renders gender-norm-compliant choices non-voluntary. In the apparently benign cases exemplified by Karen and Dave, gender specialization cannot be classified as politically non-voluntary. In arguing that women should be compensated for the mal-distributions resulting from the gendered division of labor, then, the mal-distribution strategist must overcome a presumption in favor of holding individuals responsible for their voluntary choices. To be sure, some of the harms of the gendered division of labor are borne by those who do not themselves choose to comply with the gendered division of labor.23 But not all are, and this burden must be faced by mal-distribution strategists who favor comprehensive, structural solutions to the gendered division of labor like work time regulation, family leave provisions, and social support for caregiving. We have seen that inequalities in neutrally affirmable goods—such as income and wealth—arise between women and men, and that inequalities in those same goods arise between caregivers and wage-earners. These inequalities may be unjust. But the fact that the inequalities can be measured in neutrally affirmable goods—social primary goods, for example—does not suffice to establish that they are. And we have seen that some injustice might infect the social mechanisms that influence the choices women and men make as they navigate these unequal social rewards. But the mere fact of being influenced does not erode the liberal presumption in favor of regarding the choices as voluntary. The neutrality based complications canvassed in this section do not undermine the mal-distribution strategy, but they do paint a rather daunting picture of the burden it must meet: The mal-distribution strategist will have to argue

22

For a related argument, see Miller 2009. Consider, for example, a single woman who is statistically discriminated against as a woman, though she has no more caregiving responsibilities than the single men with whom she is competing for the job. 23

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that the goods to be redistributed are politically valuable, that the distributional paradigm invoked is politically valuable, and that the goods and the distributional paradigm can be operationalized together in such a way as to register the mal-distributions of the gendered division of labor. Further, she must argue that structural remedies are called for despite the fact that the gendered division of labor is sustained, in large part, by decisions that a political conception of justice must classify as voluntary. Schematic descriptions of alleged political values like health and opportunities make the maldistribution strategy seem a promising way forward for those of us who seek to justify gender-egalitarian social policies. I worry that, upon closer scrutiny, much of the promise is illusory.

3.3 Is the Gendered Division of Labor a Problem of Distribution? Daunting argumentative burdens have been met before, and gender egalitarians could continue to develop the mal-distribution strategy in hopes of surmounting the hurdles I have drawn attention to. But a deeper, conceptual problem lurks, which is independent of the neutrality constraint imposed by political liberalism: It is implausible in the first place to analyze the harms of the gendered division of labor in distributional terms. To be sure, the problem sounds distributional. Women perform a comparatively larger share of unpaid domestic work and a smaller share of socially remunerated work outside the home, and many women and men would be better off if their time were allocated differently. Unequal distributions of labor can also give rise to further unequal distributions, such as the wellknown gendered pay gap. The moral problem with these inequalities may be difficult to articulate within the justificatory constraints considered above, but set those constraints aside. In this section, I try to elucidate a deeper problem for the mal-distribution strategy: While certain unequal distributions might trigger moral concern because they illuminate a wrong to which social institutions should respond, those distributions do not constitute that wrong. What is wrong with the gendered division of labor is not primarily a problem of distribution. We can see that unequal distributions are not themselves what is morally objectionable about the gendered division of labor by considering the institutional response that would be called for if they were. An objectionable distribution can, in principle, be remedied by way of redistribution. If the gendered division of labor were a problem of distribution, there would be no principled problem with addressing the injustice through mechanisms of compensation. Consider again the variant of the mal-distribution strategy that diagnoses the harm of the gendered division 107

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of labor as an unfair distribution of positive health outcomes between women and men. We might opt to confront this unfair distribution by way of the kinds of structural interventions that gender egalitarians have lately argued for: interventions like work time regulation, family leave provisions, and social supports for caregiving. If the gendered division of labor is a cause of poor health among women, then strategies to equalize household labor allocations would plausibly also enhance women’s health outcomes. Alternatively, we might opt to target the diagnosed distributional injustice more directly by investing resources to enhance women’s health outcomes. If the distribution of health outcomes were the injustice of the gendered division of labor, then in principle, the comprehensive structural policy would be no better than the targeted policy. This is a problematic consequence. The policy that specifically targets women’s health outcomes is an insufficient response to the gendered division of labor. Begin with the intuitive case. The policy will do little, if anything, to change the fact that women and men are systematically socialized to have gendered preferences and aspirations and to allocate work in their domestic partnerships according to gender. And it will do little, if anything, to change the fact that social institutions like labor markets assume and reinforce gendered choices about work. Notice, too, that the problem persists whether we think of the more targeted distributional policy as one that compensates women for health deficits after they arise, or one that arranges institutions to prevent the deficits from ever arising, for example by subsidizing wellness courses designed to ameliorate the health costs of caregiving. Nor is the problem the practical one of finding the right distribuenda. Rather, the problem is that redistributing holdings of goods among women and men does not require tackling the norms or reforming the institutions that sustain the gendered division of labor. Simply improving women’s health, or enhancing their share of some other good or combination of goods, will do little to undermine the gendered division of labor. The mal-distribution strategist might respond to this challenge in either of two ways. First, she might argue that we have good reasons to opt for comprehensive remedies like work time regulation, family leave provisions, and social supports for caregiving, even if the real injustice resides in the mal-distribution and could thus be treated more directly. She might point out that policies need not always tackle social problems at their source. We sometimes treat symptoms, though the root cause is where the real problem resides. And we sometimes endeavor to remove the root cause of a problem, though the cause is not itself objectionable. In the spirit of this latter set of possibilities, the mal-distribution strategist might argue that we should adopt the more comprehensive approach to the gendered division of labor, even if the injustice—and thus the grounds for intervention—resides in the mal-distribution it causes. 108

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The problem with this response is that it provides no principled case for preferring the comprehensive approach. Our diagnoses of social problems should provide (defeasible) principled reasons to address the problems themselves. According to the diagnosis of the gendered division of labor at the heart of the mal-distribution strategy, the injustice resides in its downstream distributional consequences. Those consequences can be remedied without dismantling the gendered division of labor itself. If the distributional consequences are not what is ultimately objectionable about the gendered division of labor, then the mal-distribution strategist’s diagnosis offers no principled case for tackling what is ultimately objectionable. It is the wrong diagnosis, and the mal-distribution strategy that relies on it is therefore liable to issue misguided prescriptions for how to remedy gender injustice. Furthermore, given the extreme difficulty of undermining the entrenched social norms sustaining the gendered division of labor, and the relative ease of redistributing the goods that are taken to be distributed unfairly on account of the gendered division of labor, it is hard to see even what practical considerations could plausibly be mustered in favor of the comprehensive policy. Thus, the case for comprehensive policies appears to rest on the possibility of diagnosing norms and institutions that sustain the gendered division of labor as themselves morally objectionable. The mal-distribution strategy offers no resources for doing so. A second line of response is open to the mal-distribution strategist. She might reject my appeal to intuition, arguing that I have too quickly dismissed as inadequate the more targeted distributional policies approved by that strategy. Even if redistribution cannot solve all the problems with the gendered division of labor, improving women’s shares of certain valuable political goods would make some progress toward mitigating the harms that it inflicts. I do not think we should be satisfied with this response. When we intervene to remedy a mal-distribution, we do not only compensate those with suboptimal shares. We finance that benefit by redistributing away from those with super-optimal shares. To be sure, goods like positive health outcomes need not always be a zero-sum game, and some social policies presumably would enhance health outcomes across the population. But generally, a gain to one group is purchased at least partially at a cost to another group, even if that cost is only an opportunity cost, as when compensatory resources might otherwise have been directed to the benefit of the advantaged group. In the case of the gendered division of labor, we might assume that women would be the compensated group, and men the advantaged group. If so, a distributional diagnosis suggests that we remedy the injustice by benefiting women, and it suggests that we are permitted to do so even at a cost to men. In fact, a distributional diagnosis suggests something even stronger: that benefitting women at a cost to men is costless by the lights of distributive justice. Just as 109

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it is nothing to regret from the perspective of justice that benefitting the unfairly badly off must be financed by taxing the unfairly well off, it would be nothing to regret that benefitting women comes at some cost to men. But the harms of the gendered division of labor do not accrue uniquely to women; as we have seen, the evidence suggests that men and children are also made worse off.24 We could constrain our policies so that we compensate for health deficits only when we can enhance health outcomes across the population.25 But on a distributional diagnosis of the injustice, we have no principled reason to impose that constraint. The distributional diagnosis implies that there are some individuals on whom, at least in principle, we may justifiably impose a cost in order to finance a benefit to some others. And it implies that doing so is perfectly benign from the perspective of distributive justice: not that it’s a cost we should tolerate to remove a more serious injustice; from the perspective of justice, it is no cost at all. Because women and men are harmed by the gendered division of labor, this implication of the distributive diagnosis is implausible. Health outcomes are only one purportedly political good, and gender egalitarians have executed mal-distribution strategies that invoke others. But it is far from obvious that any of the candidate goods could be redistributed from men to women—or among any set of the relevant parties—in a way that would remedy the harms that befall one group without imposing unfairly on another group. Consider another prima facie plausible candidate for the unjustly distributed good: valuable opportunities for good or meaningful lives. The problem for a mal-distribution strategy that takes opportunities as the good to be redistributed is that insofar as we regard women’s opportunity sets as compromised by the gendered division of labor, we must regard men’s as compromised too. Just as many women would have benefited from increased paid labor opportunities, many men would be better off if they had opportunities to develop the kinds of intimacy with their children, spouses, and aging parents that caregiving labor enables. It is no solution to the problem, then, to constrain men’s opportunities (or to divert resources that might otherwise be spent enhancing them) so that women’s opportunity sets may be improved. This point must be nuanced, because general distributive justice might contingently call for us to enhance women’s opportunity sets even at a cost to men, or to improve women’s shares of some other distributable goods at a cost to men. In our distributively unjust society, women are disproportionally 24 Barnett and Shen 1997; Breen 2005; Coltrane 2009; Correll et al. 2007; Glass 2004; Kluwer 1998; Kluwer et al. 1996; 2000; Milkie et al. 2002; Poortman and Van der Lippe 2009; Zippel 2009. 25 One might think we could settle for a weaker constraint, permitting us to compensate only when doing so does not harm anyone else. But this constraint is too weak, given the opportunity costs to one group when resources are used to benefit another group.

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badly off and men disproportionally well off, and so men disproportionally figure among those on whom we can impose a cost—costlessly from the perspective of distributive justice—to improve the lot of those who are unfairly badly off. But it is in virtue of their being unfairly advantaged, not in virtue of their being men, that justice approves imposing the cost, and imposing it on men is no more justifiable, from the perspective of general distributive justice, than imposing it on a similarly advantaged woman. Remember, we want to know what role an inequality’s being gendered plays in its being unjust, and to more clearly focus on this question, I have asked us to imagine that general principles of distributive justice are realized. If some aggregate inequalities between women and men survive the full realization of general distributive justice, it is a mistake to think that justice approves—and regards as costless—the financing of a benefit to women at a cost to men. Similarly, in our distributively unjust society, the costs men bear under a just redistributional scheme are justly borne in virtue of those men being unfairly advantaged, not in virtue of their being men. Perhaps there is some good whose distribution is affected by the gendered division of labor and whose redistribution would remedy its harms. But when we consider the most plausible candidate goods, it seems that redistribution does not offer a satisfactory remedy. The harms of the gendered division of labor do not uniquely befall members of some identifiable social group that we can benefit at a cost to other groups. On any plausible redistributional scheme, many of those who would bear the costs of the benefit are themselves made worse off by the gendered division of labor. And even if we did redistribute to the point of perfect aggregate equality among genders, we shouldn’t think that we had thereby solved the injustice of the gendered division of labor. What is unjust about the gendered division of labor is not, in the first place, its distributional consequences. Many of those consequences are unjust independently of their relation to gender norms, and adequate general principles of distributive justice will identify them as such. We will see in Chapter 4 that egalitarian principles entailed by considerations of liberal legitimacy positively demand redistribution considerably more progressive than that required to ensure that nobody live in poverty. Principles of general justice will also include a robust principle of anti-discrimination. And we plausibly have non-gender-specific reasons to elevate the social status and remuneration of caregiving labor: It is socially valuable work, even if the market doesn’t reward it as such. Insisting on these distinctions is fully consistent with thinking—and I do think—that distributive justice is a matter of particular feminist concern because of the harms women in particular suffer in our distributively unjust society. And it is fully consistent with thinking—and I do think—that fair compensation for caregiving is of particular concern to feminists. Feminists qua feminists should care about distributive justice, and 111

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feminists qua feminists should care about caregiver justice.26 But the vulnerability of caregivers and the distributive inequality that characterize most liberal democratic societies are unjust no matter their gender dynamics. Unfairly badly off men and men caregivers should give rise to moral concern no less than similarly unfairly badly off women and women caregivers. Other distributional consequences of the gendered division of labor—the distributional consequences of the apparently benign cases, where no discrimination is present and after principles of general egalitarian distributive justice are realized—are morally objectionable, when they are, only because of problems with the broader structural context in which they arise. The fundamental injustice of the gendered division of labor resides not in its distributional consequences but in the social backdrop against which individuals make decisions about what paid and caregiving labor commitments to undertake. Gender norms and gendered social institutions explain the injustice in the resultant distribution; not the other way around. My hunch is that the mal-distribution strategy has been so seductive because of its apparent promise of justifying gender-egalitarian policies without making any judgments as to the relative value of gender-egalitarian and gender-inegalitarian lifestyles. By locating the problem in the distributional consequences of a certain set of choices, we might think, we can avoid making value judgments about the choices themselves, and thus avoid running afoul of the neutrality constraint. I have argued that the appeal of this strategy is illusory. Distribution does not account for what is fundamentally wrong with the gendered division of labor, and redistribution cannot fix it. Along the way, I hope to have begun priming an intuition: The distribution of opportunities, health, and other valuable outcomes that results from the gendered division of labor is unjust—when it is unjust—because it results from an unjust set of social constraints. The mal-distribution strategy misplaces this injustice and issues correspondingly misguided prescriptions for how to fix it. On the other hand, we should not yet give up on the possibility of affirming the value of gender egalitarianism itself while still abiding by the neutrality constraint and acknowledging that individuals should retain the option to choose traditional gender-specialization roles. The diagnosis I favor locates the injustice of the gendered division of labor within the reciprocal interaction of gendered social norms and social institutions built upon those norms—an interaction that constrains choices regarding the allocation of paid and caregiving labor. Crucially, the constraints in question frustrate essential interests of citizenship. Because our interests as citizens are interests that we are all presumed to share—interests that are not unique to any particular value

26

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I thank Amy Baehr for urging me to be clearer on this point.

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system—those interests generate neutral, political reasons. If this is right, then political power can legitimately be used to reform the social circumstances that make gender-egalitarian lifestyles so difficult to achieve. Such reform, I will argue, requires subsidies for those lifestyles in the form of family leave provisions, work time regulation, and social supports for substitute caregiving. Okin thought that Rawls’s move to political liberalism forfeited powerful theoretical resources for answering feminist challenges. In embracing political liberalism’s restrictive constraints on legitimate political intervention, Rawls seemed to foreclose some of the most promising strategies for feminists to justify gender-egalitarian interventions from within the liberal framework. In fact, in some underappreciated ways, political liberalism is more feminist than comprehensive liberalisms. The positive case I just foreshadowed draws not on a particular politically liberal theory of justice, but rather on the principles of political legitimacy that political liberals think all liberal theories of justice must obey. If my argument is successful, it will show not only that political liberalism can approve some theory of justice with feminist implication; it will show too that the very ideals on which approval depends themselves impose feminist requirements. I have suggested that political liberalism’s ideal of mutual respect through justificatory community is appealing enough that it’s worth finding out if it can be made consistent with feminist social goals. In fact, those goals turn out to be not only consistent with the guiding ideal of political liberalism; that ideal positively requires that the goals be promoted. Before getting to that, a bit more preliminary work needs to be done. Chapter 4 addresses a challenge for any liberal feminist view: the restriction of justice to institutions. The traditional liberal view holds that institutions and structural features of society are the primary subject matter of justice and that principles of justice apply to individuals’ behavior within those institutions only derivatively. If the traditional view is vindicated, it seems to condemn gender-egalitarian interventions as illegitimate on their face. On the contrary, I argue that some version of the traditional view is defensible, but that such a version will not categorically classify gender-egalitarian interventions as illegitimate. While justice is restricted in scope, the restrictions are consistent with the possibility of legitimate interventions that target the behavior of individuals within families. This argument will highlight the role of citizenship in questions of liberal neutrality. In Chapter 5, I consider an approach developed by Christie Hartley and Lori Watson. Hartley and Watson argue that political liberalism’s commitment to protecting citizenship imposes substantive feminist requirements on the just liberal state. I agree with Hartley and Watson that the liberal concept of citizenship holds the key to justifying gender-egalitarian political interventions. I will argue, however, that their approach is limited in important respects. Once those are drawn out, we will be ready to turn to the positive argument I have promised. 113

4 The Family and the Basic Structure

The gender revolution has stalled. Social policies like work time regulation, subsidized substitute caregiving provisions, and family leave initiatives could kick it back into gear, and many believe that such interventions are necessary if we are to have any further progress toward gender egalitarianism.1 But the status quo is sustained by choices that individuals make, and many citizens reasonably prefer it to a more gender-egalitarian society. Many others would prefer the more gender-egalitarian society in the abstract, but not at the costs that these policy interventions would impose. Given this opposition, do these policy interventions constitute legitimate exercises of political power? If we hope to abide by the neutrality constraint, then this question of legitimacy depends upon the reasons that can be given for the social policies in question. The goal of this book is to answer the question in the affirmative: Political interventions aimed at bringing about a more gender-egalitarian society are legitimate because they can be justified fully on the basis of reasons that can be recognized as such consistent with neutrality. Before considering those reasons, we must first address a challenge that threatens to stop the project in its tracks: the worry that liberalism cannot tolerate gender-egalitarian political interventions, no matter what reasons can be offered in their favor, because it restricts the legitimate reach of the state so as to take this type of intrusion off the table from the start. The interventions I’m concerned to defend aim to bring about gender egalitarianism by targeting the behavior of individuals within their families, where (in the apparently benign cases) that behavior is no threat to other family members’ basic liberties. If such intrusions into the family are illegitimate on their face, then the question of what reasons we could offer in their favor seems beside the point. The interventions are ruled out from the start.

1 This chapter draws on my article “Restricting Justice: Political Interventions in the Home and in the Market” (Schouten 2013).

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0004

The Family and the Basic Structure

Liberals have long afforded the family a sort of presumptive immunity against certain requirements of justice, and this has drawn sharp criticism from some feminists. The gendered division of labor—a linchpin of gender injustice—is sustained by household labor allocation decisions. If such household decisions are categorically excluded from the legitimate scope of political intervention, we have no hope of defending gender-egalitarian interventions from within a politically liberal theory of justice. There would be no point to developing a positive argument for such interventions because the interventions would be illegitimate for the same reasons the imposition of a state religion would be illegitimate: Citizens’ domestic work allocations, like citizens’ spiritual lives, simply do not fall within the state’s legitimate sphere of coercion. My project in this chapter is to argue that political liberalism does not restrict the domain of legitimate political coercion in such a way as to rule out the possibility that gender-egalitarian interventions can be legitimate. I situate my argument within the perennial debate over “what justice judges,” arguing that the scope of justice is restricted, but that individuals’ interactions within families—and, in particular, their allocations of work—can nonetheless be the target of legitimate political interventions and thus fall within the reach of a political conception of justice. Following Rawls and others in this debate, I use the term “coercion” to apply broadly to any exercise of political power.2 In the process, I hope to win over readers who might so far be inclined to reject this project as too state-focused. Such readers might be thinking that a better path toward realizing the gender-egalitarian social ideal goes by way of changing hearts and minds to bring about a gender-egalitarian culture shift. They might think that we should rest content with unadorned caregiver support policy, and work toward gender-egalitarian use of such policy through non-political means like persuasion and consciousness-raising. My response, roughly, will be that our democratic politics is one indispensable tool by way of which to urge that culture change along. The social science I reviewed in Chapter 1 suggests that policy levers are necessary to bringing about a further significant shift toward gender egalitarianism. That doesn’t mean they are sufficient. We need not deploy social policy to the exclusion of persuasion and consciousness-raising. But political action can promote just the kind of culture, or ethos, that would sustain gender-egalitarian policy use in the long run, even without the policy incentives that we rely on in the short run to prompt that culture change. The upshot of my positive argument will be that political legitimacy demands that we use our politics in this way. The ideal of fair cooperation among free and 2 “Political power is always coercive power applied by the state and its apparatus of enforcement.” See Rawls 2001, 40; 1993, 68.

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equal citizens imposes certain demands on us to use our shared democratic power, through politics, to promote the social ends that that ideal embodies or implies. One task of this chapter is to show that what that ideal implies depends on social circumstances. Ultimately, I will argue that our circumstances demand that we promote gender egalitarianism. Just as we would not leave the protection of basic liberties to persuasion and consciousnessraising, neither, under our circumstances, may we leave the erosion of gender norms and of the gendered design of our social institutions to those tools alone. For this chapter, the task is just to argue that culture change through politics is a viable path forward, even when that culture change requires manipulating the costs and benefits that attach to the kinds of personal decisions individuals make about how to cooperate with their loved ones in meeting their shared needs.

4.1 What Does Justice Judge? Liberal theorists of justice like John Rawls have maintained that a theory of justice should apply primarily to the institutional mechanisms of society, and only derivatively to the behavior of individuals within institutions. Institutions of taxation, for example, may be just or unjust by the lights of a theory of justice, but such a theory should deem the behavior of individuals unjust only insofar as that behavior undermines just institutions. As Rawls puts it, “we are to comply with and to do our share in just institutions when they exist and apply to us, [and] we are to assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist.”3 Critics of this restricted conception of justice argue that a theory of justice should judge individual behavior directly, even when that behavior complies with just institutions. These critics have tended to focus on two kinds of behavior that they argue should fall within the subject matter of a theory of justice: the “market-maximizing” behavior of economic agents who demand incentives to exercise marketable talents in socially beneficial ways,4 and the

3 Rawls 1999, 293–4. See also Rawls 1999, 99,154,415. Consider Rawls’s difference principle, which specifies that institutions are to be arranged in such a way as to optimize the position of the least advantaged. Among the various possible ways of arranging society’s institutions, the difference principle approves that arrangement within which the worst off are better off than under any other feasible arrangement. But the difference principle does not dictate that within society’s institutions, individuals must behave in ways that benefit the least advantaged. On the contrary, individuals are required only to support and comply with institutions approved by the difference principle, and to work toward the formation of such just institutions insofar as they do not yet exist. 4 See Cohen 1992; 1995; 1997; 2000; Murphy 1998.

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“housework-shirking” behavior of family members who distribute power and labor unequally according to gender.5 These critics argue that the restricted conception of justice implausibly places these behaviors beyond the reach of justice. Call this the “restrictiveness objection” to the restricted conception. A second objection to the restricted conception threatens to undermine the restricted conception from within: This criticism alleges that the restricted conception is arbitrary, because the theorists who embrace it lack a principled justification for restricting the subject matter of their theories to institutions while exempting the behavior of individuals within those institutions. Call this the “arbitrariness objection” to the restricted conception.6 In this chapter, I defend the restricted conception against both objections. Along the way, I consider and reject an alternative strategy for defending the restricted conception, but I use insights gleaned from the inadequacies of that alternative strategy to build my own defense against the two objections: Working from within the framework of political liberalism, I demonstrate first that the scope of justice can non-arbitrarily be restricted to the basic structure, or the institutional structure by which “the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation”;7 and second, that such a restriction does not result in an implausibly narrow scope of justice. I conclude that neither objection undermines the restricted conception. This may seem a setback, given my ultimate goal of finding grounds to object to the gendered division of labor, which is sustained by individual household labor allocation decisions. But I do not defend the restricted conception as it has typically been understood. A crucial premise in my argument is that determining the extension of the basic structure is itself a substantive normative task, which must be responsive to relevant differences among enactments of political power. I argue for a more expansive notion of legitimate political power than either critics or defenders of the restricted conception

5

See Lloyd 1995; Neufeld 2009; Nussbaum 1999a; 2000b; Okin 1989a; 1994; 2005. The following are representative of those who oppose the restricted conception: Cohen 1992; 1995; 1997; 2000; 2008; Murphy 1998. Michael Titelbaum concurs with Cohen that constraints on individual behavior are “required on Rawls’s own terms” but disagrees with Cohen regarding the content of those constraints (2008, 295). In this chapter, I focus primarily on Cohen’s formulation of the two objections. Various defenses of the restricted conception have been attempted. See Cohen 2001; Daniels 2003; Estlund 1998; Neufeld 2009; Pogge 2000; Scheffler 2006; Tan 2004; Williams 1998; Wolff 1998. I address Scheffler’s and Neufeld’s defenses directly later in this chapter. For Cohen’s reply to Williams, see Cohen 2008, 344–71. For his reply to Pogge, see Cohen 2008, 394–403. 7 Rawls 1999, 6. I use Rawls’s term “basic structure” because I endorse the restriction of justice to the institutional mechanisms by way of which major social institutions exercise power over citizens. Depending on one’s interpretation of Rawls’s usage, he and I may diverge regarding the extension of that term. This will become clearer. 6

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have tended to adopt.8 My defense of the restricted conception thus occupies a conceptual middle ground within the debate about the subject matter of justice: With defenders of the restricted conception, I maintain that a theory of justice applies directly only to the basic structure of society, such that a society with just institutions may be fully just even though houseworkshirking and market-maximizing occur within it. But I agree with critics of the restricted conception that market-maximizing and housework-shirking should not be beyond the reach of a theory of justice. I reconcile these convictions by defending a view of political legitimacy according to which housework-shirking and market-maximizing can be targets of legitimate political interventions. While a society is not made less just by the mere occurrence of housework-shirking and market-maximizing, it can be less just for having a basic structure that enables or encourages these behaviors. If my argument is successful, it will show that, contrary to appearances, political liberalism imposes no categorical prohibitions on political interventions aimed at influencing the labor-sharing behavior of individuals within families. A society with a gendered division of labor can be unjust, even though the injustice is sustained by individual behavior, insofar as that society lacks the institutional policies that would influence individuals to act in more egalitarian ways—precisely the kinds of institutional policies that this book is concerned to defend.

4.2 Arbitrariness, Restrictiveness, and the Basic Structure John Rawls, the best-known defender of the restricted conception of justice, argues that “the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation.”9 The principles of justice, he argues, “must not be confused with the principles which apply to individuals and their actions in particular circumstances” because “the two kinds of principles apply to different subjects and must be discussed separately.”10 It is not altogether clear what Rawls intends the basic structure to include. Generally, he includes just those institutions that are part of the system through which the state coercively limits the freedom of individuals.11 But 8 Other theorists have argued that the basic structure extends further than is typically thought. See Cohen 2001; Estlund 1998; Scheffler 2006; Tan 2004. Cohen at times seems open to this defense of the restricted conception (e.g., in Cohen 2008, 12). Elsewhere, he appears to reject this approach (e.g., Cohen 2008, 126n20). 9 10 Rawls 1999, 6. Rawls 1999, 47. 11 For textual support of this interpretation, see Rawls 1993, 282–3.

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when discussing his rationale for the basic structure restriction, he commits himself to what some have argued is a more expansive notion of the basic structure, which includes any major social institution that profoundly influences citizens’ life prospects. Rawls claims, for example, that the “basic structure is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound and present from the start.”12 According to G. A. Cohen, the restricted conception is in tension with Rawls’s stated justification for it:13 If profundity of impact qualifies an institution for inclusion in the basic structure, then the basic structure should include all social mechanisms that exert a profound impact on the life prospects of citizens. As Cohen points out, non-institutional mechanisms can exert just as profound an impact on citizens as political institutions. But because these non-institutional mechanisms are partly constituted by individual behaviors that cumulatively shape social norms, they seem to be excluded from the subject matter of justice on the restricted conception.14 We can illustrate by contrasting two kinds of social mechanisms: the institutions that make up society’s penal system on the one hand, and the informal social norms that sustain the heterosexual family as the dominant model for domestic life on the other. The penal code profoundly influences citizens’ lives by determining the conditions under which they can avoid lawful imprisonment. But social norms valorizing heterosexuality also profoundly influence citizens, by shaping their beliefs, the values they come to affirm, and the people they aspire to be. These mechanisms operate in different ways—the former through society’s formal constitution and laws; the latter in part through the choices and behaviors of individual citizens—but the formal, legal mechanisms are no more profound in their impact than are the informal social norms sustained by individual behavior. The restricted conception must

12 Rawls 1999, 7, italics added. This is just one of Rawls’s reasons for restricting the purview of justice. For a discussion of the others, see Scheffler 2006. Samuel Freeman says that the basic structure includes those institutions that are “essential to social life” (Freeman 2007, 102). For his part, Cohen appears to ignore Rawls’s other justifications for the restricted conception: “Given . . . his stated rationale for exclusive focus on the basic structure—and what other rationale could there be for calling it the primary subject of justice?—Rawls is in a dilemma” (Cohen 2008, 137. (Cohen is referring to the profundity of effect rationale offered in the quotation to which this note is attached.) 13 Cohen 1997, 18–19. Okin also makes this point. See Okin 1993. For a slightly different rendering of the arbitrariness objection, see Murphy 1998. For a response more specifically directed at Murphy, see Pogge 2000. 14 In Cohen’s own words, “Why should we care so disproportionately about the coercive basic structure, when the major reason for caring about it . . . is also a reason for caring about informal structure and patterns of personal choice? To the extent that we care about coercive structure because it is fateful with regard to benefits and burdens, we must care equally about the ethos that sustains gender inequality and inegalitarian incentives” (Cohen 2008, 138). See also Cohen 1997, 21–2. Baynes and Williams also endorse the arbitrariness objection to the restricted conception. See Baynes 2006; Williams 1998.

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be rejected, according to Cohen, because it restricts the purview of justice in a way that is arbitrary, given Rawls’s stated rationale for it.15 While the arbitrariness objection maintains that the restricted conception lacks a principled justification, the restrictiveness objection alleges that the restricted conception is implausible for its exclusion of individual behavior from the primary purview of justice. Proponents of this objection have focused on two kinds of behavior that they claim should be part of the subject matter of justice: the behavior of “market-maximizers” who demand material incentives to exercise their talents in socially beneficial ways, and the behavior of “housework-shirkers” who allocate work and power unequally according to gender. First consider the market-maximizers. A restricted theory of justice does not judge the behavior of individuals within the basic structure; rather, a distribution of income and wealth is just so long as distributive institutions comply with principles of justice. And a just distribution remains just irrespective of the (legally permissible) behavior of individuals within those institutions. But because political institutions are blunt instruments, just institutions may leave considerable space for individuals to (legally) influence the distribution of income and wealth. Assume egalitarian principles of justice. Working within just (egalitarian) institutions, talented marketeers can demand incentives that enhance their earnings, thereby disrupting equality.16 If justice judges only institutions, then a society with just institutions whose talented demand such incentives will be no less just than a more egalitarian society whose talented do not demand the incentives. But this is implausible, according to the restrictiveness objection. If individuals can help or hinder the goals of justice, then their behavior should not be beyond the reach of principles of justice.17

15 Notice that one could defend the restricted conception against the arbitrariness objection without accepting Rawls’s stated justification for that restriction. The restricted conception is arbitrary only if no principled justification can be given for it. I will argue in due course that some principled justification can be given. Because a principled justification is available, the failure of Rawls’s proposed justification—if indeed it does fail—need not concern defenders of the restricted conception. 16 In this context, “talented” is stipulated to mean that the individuals “are so positioned that [they] . . . command a high salary and . . . can vary their productivity according to exactly how high [that salary] is” (Cohen 1997, 6–7). 17 On Cohen’s account, principles of distributive justice apply not only to the basic structure but also to “people’s legally unconstrained choices.” See Cohen 2008, 116. Cohen concedes that there are some “agent-centered prerogatives” to pursue non-egalitarian personal projects. See Cohen 2008, 10. See also Cohen 2008, 61. But he evidently thinks this a modest concession: “In my view,” he claims, “there is hardly any serious inequality that satisfies the requirement set by the difference principle.” See Cohen 2008, 119. David Estlund and Kok-Chor Tan have argued that this seemingly modest concession commits Cohen to a broader array of prerogatives than he wants to allow. See Estlund 1998; Tan 2004. For Cohen’s reply to Estlund, see Cohen 2008, 387–94. Michael Titelbaum argues, with Cohen, that a restricted conception of justice must be supplemented by principles to regulate the behavior of individual agents within institutions, but quarrels over the content of those principles. See Titelbaum 2008, 296.

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More directly relevant for our purposes are the housework-shirkers. According to Cohen, the restricted conception renders justice blind to norms that reinforce unequal sharing of paid work and unpaid caregiving work and power among domestic partners. Because those norms are constituted and perpetuated by the behavior of individuals within families, and because the restricted conception allegedly locates those behaviors beyond the legitimate reach of a theory of justice, the norms themselves appear to be beyond the reach of any theory of justice on the restricted conception. We have seen that the gendered division of labor disadvantages women in labor market competitions, causes elevated levels of stress and other negative outcomes within families, and generates serious hardships for family structures that do not allow for specialization, such as single-parent families. These are just a few among its presumptively worrying consequences. Critics of the restricted conception seem to be on good footing, then, when they argue that it implausibly places these norms outside the purview of justice. Liberals’ trouble with the family is nothing new. Classical liberals took the family to be a natural unit, separate from considerations of political justice.18 Justice was the virtue of the “public” realm of adult men dealing with other adult men as representatives, or “heads” of families; family relationships were a “private” domain regulated by natural affections and sympathies. For this reason, classical liberals took justice to regulate relations among families rather than among individuals, and this assumption has drawn sharp criticism over the years from those concerned about gender justice.19 More recently, liberals have rejected the premise that only adult men can properly participate in the public realm; in name at least, they affirm gender equality in the public realm. But even gender-progressive liberals like Mill continued to treat the family as presumptively immune to considerations of justice.20 In Rawlsian political liberalism, we find that classical liberalism’s public/ private distinction has been revised. For Rawls, the relevant distinction is between the personal domain in which citizens are free to pursue and practice their own conceptions of the good and the political domain in which they execute their role as citizens. Rawls characterizes the family as personal but insists that individuals’ behavior within families is not thereby immune to considerations of justice. In explicating his most considered position on the matter, Rawls clarifies that the behavior of individuals within families falls within the purview of justice insofar as that behavior constitutes a violation of the rights of another family member: Political principles do not apply directly to [the family’s] internal life, but they do impose essential constraints on the family as an institution and so guarantee the 18 20

See Pateman 1980 and Satz 2013. See, for example, Mill and Mill 1970.

19

See Kymlicka 2002, 386.

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Here Rawls distinguishes the person as citizen from the person as family member. In their capacity as citizens, family members enjoy the same protections as any other citizens. But in their capacity as family members, people are free, for example, not to arrange their domestic lives in compliance with principles of distributive justice: As citizens we have reasons to impose the constraints specified by the political principles of justice on associations; while as members of associations we have reasons for limiting those constraints so that they leave room for a free and flourishing internal life appropriate to the association in question. Here . . . we see the need for the division of labor between different kinds of principles. We wouldn’t want political principles of justice—including principles of distributive justice—to apply directly to the internal life of the family.22

Critics of the restricted conception remain unsatisfied. Non-rights-violating cases of housework-shirking remain unchallenged by Rawls’s treatment of the family. The exclusion of housework-shirking from the subject matter of justice is implausible, these critics say, given the profound disadvantages caused by the norms sustaining the gendered division of labor. Some proponents of gender egalitarianism have proposed to redraw the distinction between the personal and the political such that all political principles of justice—including distributive principles—apply directly to the internal workings of families.23 This proposal is unappealing. Interventions to, for example, mandate a certain distribution of resources and labor within families should be much harder to justify than interventions to bring about a particular distribution of resources outside of families. For example, we can imagine legitimate interventions to ensure that women and men receive pay equity within relevantly similar occupations, but ensuring equity between domestic partners in their domestic labor burdens will be much more difficult—if not impossible—to defend as legitimate. We want the sharing of benefits and burdens of domestic cooperation to be up to the individuals involved in ways that the sharing of benefits and burdens of social-economic interdependence need not be. Nor do we think that such requirements of 21

22 Rawls 1993, 469. Rawls 1993, 469. See Okin 1987; 1989a; 1994; 2005; 2003. See also Green 1986. On Okin’s (alleged) ambivalence about the public/private distinction more generally, see Cohen 2009. 23

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citizenship as the obligation to defend one’s position using only reasons that appeal to shared interests should apply within families.24 It is no mark against the restricted conception, then, that it immunizes families from arranging the benefits and burdens of their domestic cooperation according to the dictates of some principles of distributive justice like the Rawlsian difference principle. But the gender-egalitarian interventions under consideration are not like this. They do not mandate household labor distributions that maximize the position of the household member whose position is worst. Still, they target the behavior of individuals within families. The restricted conception of justice appears to locate that behavior outside the purview of justice; it thus appears to deem political interventions meant to influence that behavior illegitimate. Of course, whether the restricted conception of justice actually excludes housework-shirking from the reach of justice depends on what is included within the basic structure. As Rawls makes clear by invoking the case of protections for the basic liberties, the personal realm isn’t categorically off limits. Nor is legitimate intrusion into the family limited to cases necessary to protect basic liberties. To see this, notice that enactments of political power can take many different forms. The state exercises political power when it forces a citizen to adopt a preferred course of action upon threat of incarceration, but it also exercises political power in obstructing alternative courses of action that would otherwise be available. More gently still, the state exercises political power by reducing the costs of a preferred course of action or raising the costs of non-preferred courses, by manipulating the incentives that attach to various options in order to change the context against which citizens make choices. By charging deposits on glass bottles, the state raises the cost of throwing them out. By offering benefits like tax incentives to married couples, the state encourages the formation of stable, legally recognized partnerships. Similarly, the state could exercise political power to discourage marketmaximizing and housework-shirking. It could impose an educational curriculum that instills a distributive egalitarian or gender-egalitarian ethos,25 or offer non-transferrable caregiving leave to encourage a more equal sharing of domestic labor between genders. These interventions may turn out to be illegitimate, but this is a substantive philosophical question. In rejecting the restricted conception as implausibly restrictive, Cohen treats the delineation of the basic structure as if it were settled pre-theoretically. But the extension of the basic structure is a normative matter, and the restricted conception restricts justice to what it rightfully includes. As such, a fair assessment of the

24 25

I’ll have more to say about this obligation in Chapter 6. For Cohen’s first use of the term “ethos” to refer to a “culture of justice,” see Cohen 1992, 315.

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restricted conception must await an account of legitimate enactments of political power. Only with such an account can we determine the reach of justice as determined by the restricted conception, and only then can we judge whether that reach is sufficiently expansive and in keeping with an otherwise viable rationale for imposing the restriction. One of Cohen’s own examples illuminates this point: Cohen asks us to imagine a sick child who desperately needs medical treatment. Because of their religious beliefs, the child’s parents prefer that she not be treated. Cohen argues as follows: Because the behavior of the parents clearly has a profound impact on the child, the case shows that the restricted conception excludes from the purview of justice some aspects of society that profoundly impact citizens’ lives. But notice that this case makes Cohen’s point only if the parents’ behavior really falls beyond the reach of legitimate exercises of political power. We can imagine societies that recognize a legally enforceable right of children to life-sustaining medical care, regardless of the wishes of the parents. To determine whether the parents’ behavior really falls within reach of justice on the restricted conception, then, we must ask: Is it legitimate for the state to exercise power to induce the parents to accept treatment on behalf of their child? If so, then political institutions can be designed to provide that inducement, and an adequate theory of justice can judge society unjust insofar as its institutions fail to do so. Depending on the extent of legitimate political power, the restricted conception need not render justice blind to the behavior of individuals within society’s institutions.26 Cohen’s assumption that the parents’ behavior is excluded from the restricted purview of justice is understandable. These “personal” interactions within families are thought to exemplify the kind of behavior that the restricted conception (implausibly) excludes from the reach of justice. Presently, I will defend a much more expansive account of legitimate political power, according to which institutions can legitimately use certain types of political power to target certain behaviors of individuals typically thought to be beyond the reach of justice. I argue, further, that under some circumstances, institutions cannot legitimately abstain from doing so. In these circumstances, a restricted, political conception of justice will deem social institutions unjust insofar as they fail to intervene to shape individual behavior in the relevant ways. Once we have on hand this account of legitimate political power, we will see that the restricted conception is neither arbitrary nor implausibly narrow.

26 In an argument against incentive inequalities, Cohen seems to acknowledge this possibility of arranging social institutions to change personal behavior within labor markets: “Habits can change,” he says, and, continuing in a footnote, “if not always at the level of the individual, then certainly at the social level, through reformed structures of education.” See Cohen 2008, 50.

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4.3 Does Political Power Face a Special Justificatory Burden? Before developing my account of legitimate political power, I want to consider an alternative strategy for defusing the arbitrariness objection. I argue that the strategy is unsuccessful, but its difficulties are enlightening. By assessing the arbitrariness objection and this particular attempt to address it, I hope to show that the basic normative commitments that undergird liberalism’s commitment to the neutrality constraint perform another crucial role: They help delineate the subject matter of justice on a restricted political conception of justice. Recent attempts to defend the restricted conception of justice against the arbitrariness objection have alleged that enactments of political power face a “special justificatory burden”:27 In liberal societies, exercises of political power are purportedly sanctioned by citizens as a collective body,28 and those citizens are generally unable to withdraw from the jurisdiction of those institutions; thus, exercises of political power should be acceptable to all free and equal citizens. Those who pursue the special justificatory burden strategy argue that an application of principles of justice to the basic structure provides a way to meet this burden. Because the application of principles of justice to political institutions is called for by the justificatory burden those institutions face, the restricted conception is not arbitrary. Political power does indeed face a justificatory burden. But in order to justify a restriction of the subject matter of justice, we need to establish not only that exercises of political power face a justificatory burden; we must establish that exercises of political power face a justificatory burden that does not apply to omissions of political power. If—as I shall argue—some omissions face the same justificatory burden that exercises of political power face, then we are left without a principled justification for excluding from the subject matter of justice those individual behaviors that the basic structure leaves unregulated. Because the justificatory burden is not unique to enactments of political power relative to omissions, it will not serve as a principled justification for restricting the purview of justice to the basic structure of society. Political power is thought to face a special justificatory burden because exercises of coercive political power are taken to be legitimate only insofar as they are acceptable from the perspective of citizenship. Citizens are characterized as possessing two moral powers that underwrite their free and equal citizenship: the capacity for a conception of the good, and the capacity for a 27 Variations of this strategy are pursued by Neufeld and Scheffler. See Neufeld 2009; Scheffler 2006. Neufeld and Scheffler both refer to the restricted conception as a restriction of justice to the “coercive” apparatus of society, where coercion is understood broadly to include any exercise of political power. In this, they follow Rawls. See Rawls 2001, 40; 1993, 68. 28 Rawls 1993, 136.

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sense of justice. They are also characterized as having a higher-order interest in preserving those capacities.29 To protect that higher-order interest, free and equal citizens not only will accept but will in fact insist upon those exercises of political power that are necessary for the preservation of their two moral powers. If citizens’ basic liberties are under threat, for example, then their capacity to form and rationally to pursue a conception of the good is jeopardized. Citizens possessed of a higher-order interest in protecting that capacity would call upon their government to enact interventions to protect their basic liberties against infringement, and to preserve social conditions conducive to the development of that capacity in the first place. In short: Political power may be a necessary means of amending social circumstances that undermine the development of free and equal citizenship. In these cases, abstaining from exercising political power is unacceptable from the perspective of free and equal citizenship. In a liberal state, then, omissions and exercises of political power face the same justificatory burden: They are illegitimate insofar as they are unacceptable to free and equal citizens. A second condition thought to generate the special justificatory burden for political interventions is the difficulty of amending political institutions or exempting oneself from their jurisdiction. We cannot easily opt out of our society’s taxation scheme, for example, or effect meaningful changes to that scheme through our individual actions. But exercises of political power are not unique in their inescapability. Coercive enactments of non-political (hereafter “private”) power can be just as inescapable. Parents, for example, can exert a power over their children that is arguably less escapable and less amenable to change than the political power of the state over its citizens. Crucially, certain exercises of private power are possible only when the state abstains from exercising political power. The parents of Cohen’s sick child exercise private power in refusing treatment on the child’s behalf, and the child can no more escape that power than can she escape the political power of the state. But the parents’ exercise of private power is possible only if the state omits a particular exercise of political power: the enactment of laws that demand life-sustaining medical treatment on behalf of sick children. Insofar as an exercise of private power is inescapable and omissions of political power enable that exercise, the omissions of political power inherit the moral import of inescapability attributed to exercises of political power more generally. Liberalism may well impose a presumption in favor of political omissions, but this presumption cannot be grounded in the deep inescapability of political power. Because private power often also has this feature, and because private power is possible only because the state omits exercises

29

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of political power that would otherwise disrupt it, exercises of political power are not categorically less avoidable than omissions. The justificatory burden strategy does not offer a principled justification for the restricted conception because it fails to identify a feature of political power that is unique relative to omissions of political power. More generally, the justificatory burden strategy fails because it is insufficiently attentive to the substantively normative project of delineating the basic structure. The political conception of the person as citizen imposes not only negative constraints on how far the basic structure can legitimately extend, but also positive requirements on how far it must extend. It must be expansive enough to protect the development of the kind of political personality that animates the fundamental liberal democratic ideal we begin with: the ideal of society as a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens. Some enactments of political power are positively required on the basis of that ideal, and their omission is illegitimate. Moreover, the legitimacy of enactments and the legitimacy of omissions is grounded in the same considerations: the needs and interests of free and equal citizens. Because the same considerations that legitimize the enactments also legitimize the omissions, no justificatory burden categorically distinguishes between the two and renders the restricted conception non-arbitrary. In the remainder of this chapter, I execute an alternative strategy for vindicating the restricted conception of justice. I begin by developing an account of the legitimate extension of the basic structure. I argue that the considerations that determine the legitimate extension of the basic structure also justify restricting the subject matter of justice to it: The principle for delineating the basic structure also justifies its role as the primary subject of justice. After defending the restricted conception against the arbitrariness objection, I turn finally to the task of defending it against the restrictiveness objection.

4.4 Political Liberalism and the Basic Structure Political liberals aspire to find terms of cooperation that can regulate society stably over time by ensuring that all coercive exercises of political power be mutually justifiable, even among citizens who disagree deeply over matters of personal and political value. Two theoretical commitments are essential to political liberalism because they issue from this basic aspiration. First, political liberalism mandates that exercises and omissions of political power be justifiable using reasons that are acceptable to all reasonable citizens. We have referred to this commitment so far as the neutrality constraint; it is also spelled out more formally in Rawls’s “liberal principle of legitimacy”: “our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a 127

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constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason.”30 To meet this burden, political interventions must not depend for their justification on value judgments peculiar to particular conceptions of the good. Crucially, as we have seen, the acceptability to citizens of any particular exercise of political power is a normative matter. For an exercise of political power to comply with liberal neutrality, it need not be acceptable to actual individuals taken as they are. Instead, it must be acceptable to citizens given a particular idealized characterization of citizenship. Within political liberalism, citizens are characterized as reasonable and rational, free and equal, and with a higher-order interest in preserving the capacities of citizenship.31 Because not all actual citizens are so constituted and because even among those who are, the considerations these capacities generate are not always deliberatively salient or easily balanced against one another, determining whether exercises of political power are “acceptable to citizens” is not an empirical matter, but a substantive philosophical project. The second theoretical commitment of political liberalism that concerns us here is the restricted scope of justice. Within political liberalism, the full realization of justice must leave ample space for citizens to affirm and practice non-liberal conceptions of the good in their personal lives. Though liberal values like autonomy and equality continue to play a role in political liberalism, the scope of these values is limited. For example, political liberalisms must respect the right of religious fundamentalists to reject such liberal values as moral autonomy within their personal and spiritual lives. It is by limiting the scope of justice to the basic structure that social institutions can hope to maintain the reasoned allegiance of citizens over time, whatever values and ideals those citizens embrace in their personal lives.32 Notice that these two theoretical commitments of political liberalism—the first concerning the justification of political interventions, the second concerning the scope of those interventions—are related in an important way. The justificatory commitment articulated by the neutrality constraint and the liberal principle of legitimacy embodies the “fundamental normative ideal” of political liberalism: the criterion of reciprocity, which calls for mutual justifiability of the terms of social cooperation across profound social and ideological diversity.33 The restricted scope commitment follows from that justificatory commitment. Political liberalism restricts the scope of political 30

31 Rawls 1993, 137. Rawls 1993, 142–3. For helpful discussion, see Quong 2011. Assuming those values and ideals are reasonable. Recall that a value system is reasonable if it respects the political freedom and equality of all citizens and is compatible with the various justificatory burdens citizens face in a society marked by reasonable pluralism. 33 Rawls 1993, xliv. 32

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interventions and protects citizens’ prerogative to enact illiberal values precisely because political liberalism’s justificatory commitment generates de facto restrictions on the legitimate reach of political power. Exercises of political power must be acceptable from the perspective of citizenship. Because citizens value their capacity for a conception of the good, they will impose a stronger burden for the justification of political interventions within areas of their lives in which the enactment of their comprehensive values is particularly important. The result is a de facto delineation of certain areas of life that tend to be beyond the reach of political intervention: Certain types of intrusion tend to be proscribed by the neutrality constraint, because they tend to be unacceptable by the lights of citizenship. Accordingly, behavior within those domains tends to fall outside of the basic structure. The restricted scope commitment, in other words, is not a rigid designation of certain domains of life as immune to political intrusion, but a consequence of particular verdicts rendered by the neutrality constraint. Cumulatively, these verdicts generate a presumption against certain types of political intrusion. But political liberalism’s delineation of the basic structure—its restricted scope—is conceptually secondary to its commitment to the criterion of reciprocity and the neutrality constraint. As such, the presumption against political power in certain areas of life is overridden when the very consideration that generates that presumption—the criterion of reciprocity—approves an intrusion into that area of life. This approval occurs when political values are implicated in defeasibly protected domains. When political values are at stake, the justification for intrusion need not rest on substantive values peculiar to particular conceptions of the good, because a legitimate, political justification is available. Suppose, as many believe, that the behavior of individuals within families enjoys a presumption against political intrusion. This presumption is generated by the neutrality constraint: Citizens value their capacity for a conception of the good; domestic life is a particularly important setting for the exercise of that capacity; thus, citizens will demand considerable protection against political intrusion into the home. As a matter of fact, then, liberal legitimacy will deem many such intrusions illegitimate. But the presumption generated by these cumulative verdicts is overcome when a particular intrusion is approved by the neutrality constraint on the basis of political values. Consider a case of domestic abuse. Because citizens are committed to the protection of the basic liberties, including the right to physical security, citizens would accept political intrusions to protect victims of abusive domestic partners. Those intrusions are therefore approved by liberal neutrality. But something stronger can be said: The criterion of reciprocity at the heart of political liberalism demands such protective intrusions, as a condition positively required to secure certain essential interests of citizenship. 129

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The basic liberties are politically valuable because political liberalism’s characterization of citizenship implies that they would be valued by citizens, and on the basis of this valuation citizens would demand protections for those liberties. This discussion illustrates a framework for drawing a more general distinction between political and substantive values. Consider equality. The substantive value of equality is one commitment of comprehensively liberal conceptions of the good, but it cannot legitimately ground political intervention within political liberalism. Political equality, however, can legitimately ground political intervention. The substance of the distinction derives from political liberalism’s characterization of citizenship. Political equality implies that individuals are equally entitled to the protection of a certain range of basic liberties and to the fair value of those liberties precisely because citizens would insist upon those protections. Equality as a political value does not depend for its viability on the fact of moral equality among persons; instead, it follows from political liberalism’s conceptualization of citizenship: Citizens conceive of themselves as equally entitled to certain forms of equal treatment implied by their possession of and commitment to the two moral powers. In those respects, all individuals, as citizens, are equal political persons. Equality as a substantive value may also imply that individuals are equally entitled to the protection of their basic liberties and to the material conditions for the effective exercise of those liberties. But equality as a substantive value goes beyond political equality: It denies the moral relevance of certain differences among us that opponents of substantive equality regard as salient. Political equality implies that people ought to be treated equally because certain forms of equal treatment are implied by the project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a democratic, pluralistic society, a project that gives rise to the conception of citizenship and the criterion of reciprocity. Substantive equality implies that people ought to be treated equally because they really are moral equals. This conviction cannot permissibly be invoked to ground exercises of political power within political liberalism because not all reasonable citizens affirm it and it isn’t entailed by the characterization of citizenship. But the political equality of persons is part of that characterization, and accepting the political equality of all is a requirement of reasonableness. Thus, for example, while many reasonable religious fundamentalists believe in natural differences between sexes that justify different gender roles, all reasonable citizens accept the political equality implied by political liberalism’s conceptualization of citizenship. Just like the restricted scope of justice, then, the distinction between political and substantive values can be thought of as a heuristic that depends ultimately on political liberalism’s characterization of citizenship. Equality as a political value licenses interventions not because the designation “political” 130

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carries some intrinsic import; rather, the designation tracks the verdicts rendered by the criterion of reciprocity. We identify certain aspects of liberal values as “political” to mark those senses in which liberal legitimacy approves the invocation of those values to justify exercises of political power. Even in domains in which they demand considerable protection for the expression of their personal values, idealized citizens will sometimes deem the reasons in favor of intervention weightier than the reasons against. Such reasons in favor of intervention are political, because they figure into citizens’ calculations—because the salience of the values that generate them is implied by the characterization of citizenship. When political values are at stake, the criterion of reciprocity can override its own general presumptions against interference. Since the kind of neutrality to which political liberals should be committed is itself a requirement of reciprocity, we might use “neutrality” to refer to presumptions and prohibitions against interference, and reserve “reciprocity” to refer to the positive permissions (those compliant with neutrality) and requirements that the ideal implies. The two amount to the same thing, as both requirements and prohibitions are down to the interests of citizenship. My point is to emphasize the too often overlooked positive requirements of the fundamental normative ideal that underlies the neutrality constraint. In Section 4.5, I return to citizens’ deliberations in light of competing political values. But to disarm the arbitrariness objection to the restricted conception of justice, it is enough to note that within political liberalism, the liberal principle of legitimacy delineates the size and shape of the basic structure. It includes only those aspects of citizens’ lives that they would agree to order politically on mutually defensible grounds and all those aspects of citizens’ lives that they would insist be ordered on mutually defensible grounds. If justice consists in the fair terms of cooperation among free and equal citizens, then the legitimate scope of justice plausibly consists in those aspects of citizens’ lives that they reasonably agree should be regulated on mutually defensible terms. Of course, critics of the restricted conception need not be political liberals,34 and thus may reject the account of legitimacy and the basic structure defended here. But because the restricted conception can be justified on principled grounds, critics cannot maintain the charge of arbitrariness. The arbitrariness objection is therefore unpersuasive.35

34

Cohen is a case in point. The restricted conception of justice might cohere after all with the justification Rawls gives for it (though not with the extension he claims for it), namely, that the “profound effect” of the basic structure justifies its status as the primary subject of justice: It is plausible to think that citizens would agree that behaviors are legitimately susceptible to exercises of political power to the extent that those behaviors profoundly impact the lives of other citizens. 35

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4.5 Housework-Shirkers, Market-Maximizers, and Liberal Legitimacy We might think that any defense against the restrictiveness objection situated within political liberalism is doomed to fail. Political liberalism imposes demanding standards for legitimate exercises of political power, and one of its theoretical commitments implies that political power cannot legitimately be justified on the basis of substantive conceptions of liberal values like equality. One consequence of this is that market-maximizing and housework-shirking appear implausibly to be excluded from the reach of justice. But appearances are deceiving. Recall that in political liberalism, the scope of justice is set by the criterion of reciprocity. This explains why liberal values like equality and autonomy can play a restricted role within political liberalism, even though substantive conceptions of those values cannot be invoked to justify exercises of political power. Citizens have a capacity for a conception of the good, which implies the capacity to reject the substantive moral equality of persons and the importance of moral autonomy. Because they value this capacity, citizens will not accept intrusions into their lives that are justified only on the assumption that illiberal lifestyles are misguided. But certain versions of liberal values are implied by citizenship itself and are therefore acceptable to free and equal citizens as reasons-generating. To determine how restrictively the restricted conception draws the purview of justice, we must ask what values those are, what they imply, and how they weigh against each other. Or: Which exercises of political power would citizens accept, and with respect to which aspects of their lives? Without attempting to give a comprehensive answer, I argue that citizens would accept a good deal more political intrusion than political liberals—and their opponents—have traditionally thought. The considerations I raise serve to undermine the restrictiveness objection by demonstrating that market-maximizing and housework-shirking are susceptible to legitimate exercises of political power and therefore fall within the reach of principles of justice as determined by the restricted conception. In applying the neutrality constraint and the criterion of reciprocity, remember, citizenship must be understood normatively. We do not ask whether an exercise of political power is acceptable to actual citizens with developed conceptions of the good and loyalties to particular moral, religious, or philosophical doctrines, but whether the exercise of power would be acceptable to citizens as characterized according to political liberalism’s conceptualization of the political person. We ask: Is this exercise of political power acceptable to free and equal citizens with capacities for a conception of the good and a sense of justice and with a higher-order interest in preserving those 132

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capacities? In answering this question, we can attribute to citizens two motivating projects, both implied by this political characterization of citizenship. First, because of their capacity for a conception of the good, citizens will be motivated to ensure that they have adequate protection from outside interference in acting on their conceptions of the good. In some cases, this motivating project will cause citizens to reject exercises of political power. They might reject the establishment of an official state religion, for example, in order to protect their right to practice a religion of their own choosing. In other cases, this motivating project will lead citizens to accept political interventions, or even demand them. Citizens may, for example, call upon the state to intervene in the workplace to protect against oppressive exercises of power by employers, or within the family to protect children against certain harmful parenting behaviors. Second, because of their higher-order interest in protecting the capacities of citizenship, citizens will be motivated to ensure that conditions obtain which are conducive to the development of citizenship for all. If society failed to secure the conditions necessary for the realization of these capacities, then no particular citizen could be assured the protection of her own capacities as a citizen. Moreover, political personhood is necessary to get the very project of justice off the ground. For ideals of justice to meaningfully guide social cooperation, we must understand individuals as free and equal citizens, capable of forming and living out a conception of the good and capable of conforming their behavior to principles of justice. If individuals were not political persons in this sense, they would have no need for or interest in finding fair terms of social cooperation, and no capacity for complying with those terms once found. Because citizens have an interest in living in a stable, just society,36 they will be motivated to secure social conditions consistent with the development of the moral powers of citizenship for all. This second motivating project, like the first, generates positive requirements and negative constraints on the legitimate use of political power. Negatively, the state must avoid intrusions into people’s lives that can be justified only by appeal to values that citizens may reasonably reject. Positively, the state must ensure for citizens access to the necessary means for the development of their moral powers as well as adequate space in which that development can occur. This might require protections against exercises of private power. And it might require interventions to ensure access to certain social goods necessary for the effective development of citizenship, for example, to an adequate income attached to a social position from which

36

I will have much more to say about the citizenship interest in stability in Chapter 7.

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one can derive self-respect.37 Other things equal,38 this second motivating project will lead citizens to demand enactments of political power necessary to establish and preserve those conditions. Depending on the circumstances, different exercises of political power will be necessary to enable the realization of the two motivating projects. Consequently, the acceptability to citizens of an exercise of political power—and thus the legitimacy of that exercise—will depend on the character of the society in question. Consider an example: Citizens will insist upon enactments of political power necessary to protect their political liberties from infringement and to ensure conditions under which it is materially possible to effectively exercise these liberties.39 On the basis of the criterion of reciprocity, then, those exercises of political power are legitimate—indeed required, since citizens insist upon them. But whether political power must be exercised to protect citizens’ political liberties—and to what extent it must be exercised—is context-dependent. In a society thoroughly pervaded by an ethos of sharing and community, it may well be that no coercive redistribution of income and wealth would be necessary to ensure for all citizens adequate all-purpose means to, for example, run for public office. Thus, no such redistribution would be justified on the grounds of protecting the fair value of that liberty.40 But in a society characterized by vast inequality with severe poverty and deprivation on the losing end, redistribution is straightforwardly justified as a means to the protection of the fair value of the political liberties. Interventions necessary to ensure that every citizen meets the threshold of material wealth necessary for the effective exercise of the basic political liberties are required within political liberalism, because their omission is unacceptable to citizens. The two motivating projects of citizenship will sometimes be in tension with one another.41 Because interventions that further one project may frustrate another, citizens will not automatically accept all interventions that can be justified by appeal to one of the projects. We will sometimes have to adjudicate competing considerations to determine which exercises of political power are legitimate. This need to manage tradeoffs means that the legitimacy of political interventions is contingent on the type of force those interventions involve. Citizens may accept interventions that incentivize certain behaviors while rejecting the criminalization of alternative behaviors. Suppose that

37 And to adequate all-purpose means to make effective use of the basic liberties and opportunities. See Rawls 1993, xlvi, 6. 38 The importance of this qualifier will become clear below when I discuss the need to manage tradeoffs among citizens’ various motivating projects. 39 Rawls 1999, 179; 1993, 324–31. 40 This is, of course, consistent with redistribution being justified on some other grounds. 41 Or with other motivating projects of citizenship.

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being raised to affirm fundamentalist religious doctrines impedes children’s development of citizenship. Even so, citizens will reject legal statutes prohibiting religious fundamentalists from raising their children to affirm such doctrines, because raising one’s child to share one’s values is an important way to enact one’s conception of the good, and citizens will want this transmission of values protected. They will reject the statutes, which would have furthered their motivating project of protecting children’s development of citizenship, because the statutes are unacceptably inimical to a different motivating project: the protection of adequate space for citizens to exercise their conceptions of the good. Insofar as this tradeoff is required, however, citizens will be inclined to accept gentler exercises of political power to advance the compromised motivating project, like interventions to protect children’s development of citizenship that pose less of a threat to the ability of parents to share their conceptions of the good with their children. For example, citizens might accept interventions requiring that children be educated to understand their basic rights and duties as citizens. Exercises of political power generally impose some restrictions on some individuals, and so citizens will generally not accept a more forceful intervention where a gentler one would suffice. Accordingly, the neutrality constraint imposes a presumption in favor of enacting the gentlest intervention sufficient to accomplish the objective in question.42 Because political interventions vary in their forcefulness, we cannot infer from the illegitimacy of certain interventions that the behaviors targeted by those interventions are categorically beyond the reach of justice. In the case considered above, the fundamentalist parents’ transmission of their values to their children may fall within the reach of principles of justice, even though some forceful interruptions of that transmission constitute illegitimate uses of political power. Similarly, while it would clearly be illegitimate to criminalize housework-shirking, we cannot infer from this that household allocations of labor are beyond the reach of justice. Gentler exercises of political power may be acceptable to citizens. In sizing up the basic structure, then, we must keep several considerations in mind: First, citizens are motivated to ensure that conditions obtain which are conducive both to individuals’ enactment of their own conceptions of the good and to the development of citizenship capacities among all individuals. These motivating projects have implications not only for the enactments of political power that citizens will reject, but additionally for the enactments 42 Similarly, citizens need not accept interventions intended to maximize the realization of citizenship above the threshold at which citizenship is genuinely attainable for all. Free and equal citizenship is a “threshold concept”: What matters, from the perspective of the political conception of justice, is not that citizens realize the virtues of political personhood as fully as possible, but that they attain them to a sufficient degree.

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upon which they will insist. Second, whether or not a political intervention is acceptable to citizens depends on the circumstances in which it is to be enacted, because the interventions needed to realize citizens’ motivating projects vary depending on circumstances. Finally, whether or not a political intervention is acceptable to citizens depends on the type of political power being exercised. Relatively gentle interventions may be legitimate where more forceful interventions are not. These considerations imply that the basic structure can be a great deal more expansive than critics of the restricted conception of justice assume it to be. Imagine a large community of citizens who believe that women and men are naturally unequal in their capacities and predilections and that this inequality justifies a rigidly gendered allocation of power and labor. Due to the insularity of the community, members interact almost exclusively with other members, and illiberal values are reliably transmitted from parents to children. Under these circumstances, citizenship interests favor such exercises of political power as incentives for women to work outside the home and for men to care for children. These interventions are favored by citizenship interests because, plausibly, children cannot develop a conception of themselves as equal citizens when substantive equality is never apparent to them as a feasible option. Citizens who affirm doctrines that deny their substantive equality may well retain conceptions of themselves as equal citizens if they experience themselves as choosing among feasible alternatives, some of which affirm their substantive equality. But those who grow up under circumstances that prevent them from recognizing substantive equality as a feasible option are unlikely to conceive of themselves as equal in any sense, including as equal citizens. Under these circumstances, political intervention is necessary to preserve substantive equality as a feasible option. The incentives mentioned above would therefore further citizens’ motivating project of preserving social conditions under which all individuals can develop as citizens. Of course, citizens are not motivated only to protect the capacity of all to develop as citizens. They are also motivated to preserve space for citizens to exercise conceptions of the good. They will therefore reject interventions that use more force than is necessary to protect the children’s development of citizenship. But by incentivizing paid work among women and caregiving among men, the state might establish enough heterogeneity to preserve children’s ability to see substantive equality as a feasible option, and thereby preserve their capacity to develop as citizens. Plausibly, this intervention furthers a motivating project of citizenship without sacrificing comparable progress toward other motivating projects. If the balance of citizenship interests favors this exercise of political power, it is legitimate by the lights of the criterion of reciprocity. 136

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I will not argue that the circumstances described above generalize broadly. Nor will my argument for gender-egalitarian social policy rely on the insularity of particular communities that celebrate traditional gender roles. The point for now is a general one: Even if familial interactions generally enjoy a presumption against political intrusion, circumstances can render interventions that target interactions within families legitimate, because circumstances will bear upon the question of which interests of citizenship would go unprotected absent political intervention. The argument just outlined for incentivizing gender egalitarianism relies on the all-pervasiveness of gender inequality under the (supposed) status quo. Our circumstances are not like this, and so this falls far short of providing the justification for genderegalitarian interventions that this book promises. The argument I will give for gender-egalitarian interventions under our status quo is more complicated than the one gestured to here. But I take myself to have established that domestic labor allocations are not categorically off limits from the perspective of political interventions meant to bring about a more just society or to preserve a just society once achieved. The same theoretical resources that equip political liberalism to approve interventions into the family to protect basic liberties open the door to intervention to protect other fundamental interests of citizenship, depending on the circumstances and on the weighting of the interests in question. This clears ground for the positive argument yet to come. Gendered domestic work allocations are not beyond the reach of a restricted theory of justice. Nor does a restricted conception of justice place market-maximizing behavior beyond the reach of justice. Imagine that, for generations, every “talented” citizen has demanded material incentives in exchange for the exercise of her productive talents. The result is persistent social-class stratification. Citizens recognize a clear social demarcation between high-status workers who can demand higher wages for their (trained) marketable talents and lower-status workers who cannot. Over time, the inequality may jeopardize the development of political personhood, as entrenched inequalities between social classes that persist across generations may plausibly undermine citizens’ capacity to see themselves as political equals. Institutional mechanisms like labor laws and the tax-and-transfer system may already be compliant with principles of distributive justice; they may do as much to erode these inequalities as those blunt instruments legitimately may do. After all, the entrenched inequalities in question needn’t be large in order to undermine equal citizenship. They need only be persistent, and they may persist by way of interactions among family members that such things as labor laws cannot disrupt: for example, investments by parents in the human capital of their children. In this scenario, citizenship interests favor exercises of political power intended to restore conditions conducive to the development of citizenship. 137

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But under these circumstances, protecting citizenship interests seems to require changing the individual behaviors that threaten those interests: market-maximizing behavior and the intergenerational transfers of advantage that enable it. It seems to require promoting an egalitarian ethos, by way, for example, of laws requiring students to be educated in the virtues of social solidarity and fraternity. Such interventions would protect the development of citizenship at a relatively small cost in restricting the space for citizens to exercise their conceptions of the good.43 Moreover, even on a restricted conception of justice, individuals do incur duties of justice: We are required to support just institutions and work toward their furtherance when they do not yet exist. The expanded account of the basic structure developed here may imply corresponding duties for individuals to “self-police”: to ensure that their behavior does not contribute to the sustaining of norms and institutions inconducive to the realization of citizenship. Granted, I have only defended the legitimacy of “gentle” interventions, and resisting incentives against housework-shirking and market-maximizing need not constitute non-compliance with the political institutions offering those incentives. A thorough investigation into what constitutes compliance with institutions enacting “gentle” political interventions is needed. But it is worth noting in the meantime that my expansive account of the restricted conception of justice does more than permit political institutions to intervene to encourage certain behaviors. An expanded basic structure carries with it a correspondingly expanded set of obligations of justice requiring individuals to comply with the institutions of that basic structure. When resisting egalitarian political inducements helps perpetuate social circumstances inconducive to citizenship, that resistance might properly be regarded as non-compliance.44 Citizens will accept—and even insist upon—the gentlest interventions sufficient to preserve social conditions conducive to the development 43 One of Cohen’s own examples can be used to illustrate: The ratio of top executive salaries to production worker wages in 1988 was 6.5 to 1 in West Germany and 17.5 to 1 in the United States. Cohen argues that the German distribution was more just, but that Rawls cannot render that verdict, “since the smaller inequality that benefited the less well off in Germany was not a matter of law but of ethos.” Cohen contends that this alleged failure to recognize Germany’s distribution as more just is “a grave defect in [Rawls’s] conception of the site of distributive justice” (2008, 143). Notice, however, that the restricted conception deems the two societies equally just only if the income inequality in the United States is unobjectionable from the perspective of citizenship (and from the perspective of the relevant political conception of justice). If the inequality suffices to compromise the conditions for the realization of citizenship, citizens would condemn it and insist on political interventions to remedy it. The prescribed interventions are likely to include educative measures to inculcate an egalitarian ethos of justice. Insofar as the political institutions in the United States failed in this regard, the restricted conception of justice can render the verdict Cohen calls for: that the United States was less just in virtue of its less egalitarian distribution. 44 It is worth noting, too, that the legitimacy of political intervention will often depend in part on the extent of self-policing. If people self-police sufficiently well that conditions conducive to citizenship are preserved, then the coercive political interventions otherwise called for on the grounds canvassed here will be unnecessary.

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of citizenship. Under certain circumstances, these interventions include exercises of power aimed at protecting the development of citizenship by discouraging inequality-generating behaviors of individuals within households and labor markets.45 Because citizens can accept interventions that target housework-shirking and market-maximizing, institutions that aim to amend these behaviors can be a part of the basic structure as delineated by the liberal principle of legitimacy. Thus, individual behaviors such as houseworkshirking and market-maximizing do fall within the reach of principles of justice set by the restricted conception of justice. Like the arbitrariness objection, the restrictiveness objection is unpersuasive. My account of the subject matter of justice offers something appealing to both sides. On the one hand, my defense of the restricted conception of justice secures the status of justice as a restricted political ideal. Principles of justice legitimately apply, first and foremost, to the basic structure of society. On the other hand, the reach of justice delineated by the restricted conception is more expansive than either critics or proponents of that conception have taken it to be, because the basic structure is more expansive than it initially appeared to be. Even so, I suspect that neither camp would find my account fully satisfactory. My defense of the restricted conception legitimizes exercises of political power that Rawls would likely have found objectionable. And though I have argued that we can identify institutions as unjust insofar as those institutions fail to target housework-shirking and market-maximizing behavior, my account still prevents us from categorizing that behavior itself as an injustice, something that Cohen evidently thinks a theory of justice should permit. Moreover, interventions to discourage housework-shirking and marketmaximizing will be legitimate only insofar as those behaviors perpetuate norms and institutions that jeopardize interests of citizenship. But the conceptual middle ground has much to recommend it. First, my defense of the restricted conception is principled: It is grounded within the 45 Cohen attributes to Ronald Dworkin a proposal similar to the one I defend here: that justice might require political institutions that promote an ethos that discourages market-maximizing. See Cohen 2008, 127. Cohen’s response is puzzling. He claims, “Rawls could not have said that, to the extent that the indicated ethos-promoting policy failed, society would as a result be less just than if the policy had been more successful. Accordingly, if . . . Rawlsian justice requires government to promote an ethos friendly to equality, it could not be for the sake of making society more distributively just . . . even though it would be for the sake of making its distribution more equal” (Cohen 2008, 127). See also Cohen 2008, 379–81. But Cohen does not explain why society’s failure in this regard could not constitute a failure of justice on a Rawlsian restricted conception of justice. The failure, after all, is institutional, and Cohen himself describes it as the failure of a policy. The fact that the policy has as its objective the development of an ethos does not disqualify the policy from inclusion in the basic structure. Institutions of the basic structure regularly perform the role of inducing individuals to behave in certain ways, including (as Cohen elsewhere acknowledges, for example, at Cohen 2008, 50) inducing them to develop certain dispositions or habits of behavior. For a similar rejoinder to Cohen’s defense against Dworkin’s objection, see Cohen 2001.

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framework of political liberalism, and it is justified on the basis of salient considerations regarding the acceptability of political interventions to free and equal citizens. Second, the account I have defended constitutes an intuitively plausible picture of what justice judges. It can render nuanced verdicts about the legitimacy of political interventions that are sensitive to the type of power being exercised, the purpose of its exercise, and the circumstances at hand.46 One upshot is that housework-shirking and market-maximizing fall within the reach of principles of justice. Under certain circumstances, certain exercises of political power can legitimately be used to discourage those behaviors: to promote a gender-egalitarian ethos and a distributive egalitarian ethos. By showing how such exercises of power can be legitimate, my approach accommodates plausible intuitions about what justice judges, while retaining the restriction of justice to the basic structure. The task of this chapter has been to clear ground for a positive argument yet to come. I have argued that no categorical prohibition on intervention to encourage gender-egalitarian domestic cooperation is implied by political liberalism’s restriction of the subject matter of justice to the basic structure. Family life may constitute a personal domain in which we are exempt from certain duties of citizenship, like the duty to justify one’s claims by appeal to shared reasons. But that in no way settles the matter of whether a legitimate basic structure can include political subsidies for gender egalitarianism like those I will go on to defend. Whether any particular intervention into the family is justified depends on the citizenship interests at stake, on any countervailing citizenship interests, and on the circumstances that make those interests politically salient. Our circumstances certainly don’t approximate those described in the quick illustration of a few paragraphs ago; that illustration is meant not to approximate the argument I will give but to illustrate a framework for how such an argument can be developed. In brief: The very same theoretical resources that equip political liberalism to approve interventions into the family to protect basic liberties open the door to intervention into the family to protect other fundamental interests of citizenship as well. By locating families’ work allocations within the purview of justice, my approach shows that critics have been wrong to think that gender-egalitarian political interventions are ruled out from the start on the basis of political liberalism’s restricted purview of justice. The way is clear for a politically liberal defense of gender-egalitarian political interventions, if only a positive argument for those interventions can be given. To be successful, this argument must rely only on considerations that are permissible reasons to 46 My account enables us to “apply principles of justice to dominant patterns of social behavior . . . [since] that, as it were, is where the action is” (Cohen 2008, 142).

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ground exercises of political power within political liberalism. The citizenship interests on the basis of which I will rest my case for the legitimacy of progressive gender-egalitarian interventions in our circumstances are the interest in stability and the interest in preserving a capacity for a conception of the good. The point for now is just this: Gendered housework allocations are not beyond the reach of a restricted theory of justice, and genderegalitarian political interventions are not illegitimate on their face.

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5 Citizenship and Gender Hierarchies in Political Liberalism

The positive aim of this book is to develop an argument for gender-egalitarian political interventions, using only considerations available to political liberals.1 Such interventions effectively subsidize gender egalitarianism relative to the status quo, aiming ultimately to erode the gender norms that sustain compliance with the gendered division of labor. To comply with political liberalism’s guiding aspiration of mutual justifiability, the argument I offer must invoke only reasons that are acceptable to all reasonable citizens. So far, we have come up short. Because many reasonable citizens conscientiously enact and even celebrate a traditional gendered division of labor, and because the value of gender egalitarianism is not among the shared commitments of citizenship, the case cannot proceed straightforwardly from the goodness of gender egalitarianism. Because it is a practical impossibility to make every reasonable lifestyle choice equally costly, the case cannot proceed straightforwardly from the observation that gender egalitarianism is costlier than gender inegalitarianism under the status quo. Finally, the case cannot proceed straightforwardly from the fact that gender inegalitarianism is nonvoluntary. In order to categorically classify gender-inegalitarian choices as non-voluntary, we would need to invoke a notion of voluntariness too demanding to be permissible within political liberalism. An argument put forth by Christie Hartley and Lori Watson gets us closer to reconciling the constraints of liberalism with the commitments of feminism than any of the arguments so far considered. Drawing on the positive demands of reciprocity, Hartley and Watson argue that political liberalism imposes substantive feminist requirements on the just liberal state.2 I argue 1 Some of the material in this chapter build on arguments I first developed in “Does the Gendered Division of Labor Undermine Citizenship?” (Schouten 2015b). 2 Hartley and Watson 2009; 2010; Watson 2007; Watson and Hartley 2018. I am grateful to Hartley and Watson for their critical feedback on the entire manuscript, and on this chapter and earlier versions of it in particular.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0005

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that, despite its appeal, Hartley and Watson’s strategy cannot successfully establish that political liberalism approves gender-egalitarian political interventions. I identify two problems with their argument. The first is that it faces an argumentative burden that has not been met. The second is that, at best, it can license interventions targeted at undermining the hierarchy of the gendered division of labor. This is unsatisfactory because many of the harms of the gendered division of labor would persist even if it were non-hierarchical, and because interventions targeted only at undermining the hierarchy of the gendered division of labor are likely, if anything, to exacerbate the harms of a non-hierarchical gendered division of labor. The argument I develop in Chapters 6 and 7 of this book draws on much of the same theoretical machinery from political liberalism that is at work in Hartley and Watson’s argument. I begin in Section 5.1, then, by further unpacking that machinery, focusing in particular on the relationship between the criterion of reciprocity and political liberalism’s notion of citizenship. I also introduce a general framework—to be further developed in Chapter 6—for defending progressive political interventions using only premises implied by fundamental politically liberal commitments of legitimacy. In Section 5.2, I explain Hartley and Watson’s attempt to use that machinery to justify gender-egalitarian political interventions. In Section 5.3, I elucidate the argumentative burden their argument must meet if it is to be successful. In Section 5.4, I argue that the gendered division of labor is not entirely hierarchical, and in Section 5.5, I explain why that generates problems for Hartley and Watson’s strategy. Along the way, I respond to Hartley and Watson’s recent attempt to alleviate these worries.

5.1 Citizenship and Reciprocity Within political liberalism, citizens are characterized as possessing “the intellectual and moral powers appropriate to that role . . . and capable also for the political virtues necessary for them to cooperate in maintaining a just political society.”3 We can get some purchase on this idea of persons as free and equal citizens by contrasting it with what I will refer to as “background personhood”: the identity of persons as fully fleshed-out individuals with comprehensive conceptions of the good and various social affiliations. Background personhood is the substantive identity that individuals take on or that is developed in them by the social institutions operating in the “background culture” of society. This background culture includes the various non-political 3

Rawls 1993, xliv.

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associations with which and within which individuals interact in their daily lives: churches, families, educational institutions, and media outlets, to name a few.4 Background personhood is the kind of personhood that individuals actually embody in their day-to-day lives. Citizenship, in contrast, is a normative, political conception of the person constructed to animate the liberal project of finding fair terms of social cooperation for a pluralistic society. For that project, we have seen, citizens are characterized as possessing two moral powers: the capacity for a sense of justice—“the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice which characterizes the fair terms of social cooperation”; and the capacity for a conception of the good—“the capacity to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of one’s rational advantage or good.”5 Citizens are also characterized as having a higher-order interest in protecting their capacities as citizens: They want to protect their capacities for a sense of justice and a conception of the good, as well as their capacities to act out the free and equal citizenship that the two moral powers confer. The conception of citizenship at work here is normative and political in that its “content is given by certain ideals, principles, and standards, and these norms articulate certain values, in this case political values.”6 Accordingly, its justification depends not on whether it accurately describes us as we are, but on “whether we can apply and affirm its principles and ideals in political life, and on whether we find the political conception of justice to which it belongs acceptable on due reflection.”7 Still, in one aspirational sense, this political ideal of citizenship does describe us: We might say that we enact our citizenship—or aspire to live up to the values citizenship embodies—when we meet others on terms of freedom and equality to discuss matters of basic justice in the language of public reason: roughly, when we restrict the reasons that serve as inputs in deliberation to reasons deriving from essential interests of citizenship.8 This characterization of citizenship provides content for a political theory of justice. If justice is a matter of fair terms of social cooperation among citizens, then we need to know something about how citizens are to be characterized in order to know what constitutes fair cooperation among them. The justification for the particular characterization utilized within political liberalism—that of citizens as free and equal, possessed of two moral powers and a higher-order interest in preserving those powers—is broadly coherentist: This characterization conforms with the basic presuppositions we bring to the project of political liberalism, and it provides a workable basis on which to develop a political

4

5 6 7 Rawls 1993, 443. Rawls 1993, 19. Rawls 1993, 11n. Rawls 1993, 87. Rawls 2001, 26–7. In a society well ordered by a political conception of justice, public reason also admits into deliberation the reasons that derive from that conception. See Section 0.5. 8

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theory of justice. It conforms with the presupposition that we are seeking terms of cooperation to regulate a society of individuals capable of complying with those terms (thus, the characterization of citizens as possessing a sense of justice), and it conforms with the presupposition that those terms of cooperation must fairly and stably order society despite profound and reasonable differences among free and equal individuals’ moral, religious, and philosophical convictions (thus, the characterization of citizens as possessing a capacity for a conception of the good). The characterization provides a workable basis on which to develop a politically liberal theory of justice, because it gives substance to political liberalism’s fundamental normative principle, the criterion of reciprocity. In Chapter 4, we encountered the ideal of reciprocity as the fundamental normative commitment of political liberalism, which undergirds both the liberal principle of legitimacy and the neutrality constraint. More formally, the criterion of reciprocity dictates that “our exercise of political power is proper only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we offer for our political action may reasonably be accepted by other citizens as a justification of those actions.”9 Moreover, we must sincerely believe that those reasons may be accepted by others as free and equal citizens, not as individuals who are “dominated or manipulated, or under the pressure of an inferior political or social position.”10 The criterion of reciprocity requires that citizens cooperate with one another on terms that all parties can accept, not as adherents of particular comprehensive doctrines, but as free and equal citizens. By identifying legitimate uses of political power as those that are acceptable from the perspective of citizenship, the criterion of reciprocity imposes some absolute constraints on what can be considered just within a politically liberal society: It forbids exercises of political power that threaten citizenship, and it requires those that are necessary to protect it. In Rawlsian political liberalism, the positive requirements include the requirement that society specify and protect certain rights, liberties, and opportunities; that it afford a special priority to these rights, liberties, and opportunities, especially with respect to claims of the general good; and that it ensure for all citizens adequate allpurpose means to make effective use of these rights, liberties, and opportunities.11 The criterion of reciprocity demands these protections because they safeguard essential interests that follow from political liberalism’s characterization of citizenship, such as the interest in preserving the capacity to exercise one’s conception of the good—an interest that is jeopardized when the

9

10 Rawls 1993, xliv. Rawls 1993, 446. Rawls 1993, xlvi, 6. On the demandingness of the third of these requirements, see Freeman 2007, 402. 11

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basic liberties are vulnerable. Free and equal citizens cannot consent to circumstances under which society fails to secure the three conditions. To be sure, we can imagine circumstances under which actual individuals might consent to the infringement of their rights and liberties. A desperate father might attempt to sell himself into slavery to provide food for his starving child. In such cases, actual individuals accept circumstances under which the three conditions are unrealized. What does it mean, then, to say that citizens cannot consent to circumstances under which society fails to secure the conditions? The idea is that citizenship, idealized according to the normative characterization at work within political liberalism, precludes acceptance of those circumstances. As we have seen, it is this normative, political conception of the person that determines the acceptability or unacceptability of social conditions and political interventions to remedy those conditions. Actual individuals may accept political tradeoffs that compromise the protections in question, for example when the interests of their background personhood subordinate the interests of their citizenship, or their political personhood. In applying the criterion of reciprocity, then, we invoke only the interests implied by political liberalism’s characterization of citizenship, black-boxing those parts of individuals’ identities that extend beyond their citizenship. We do this not because we regard political personhood as more important than background personhood. Rather, we do it because the criterion of reciprocity and the mutual justifiability it preserves require that the terms of cooperation be acceptable to us all. To be acceptable to us all, the terms must be defensible invoking only reasons that we can all recognize as such. Sharable reasons are those generated by the interests we share: those implied by our shared status as free and equal citizens. The characterization of this status includes the fact that citizens have a conception of the good and a corresponding background identity, but the content of that conception, and the nature of the background identity, are set aside—they are matters of background personhood. It is unlikely that any actual person could ever fully embody this notion of citizenship; we cannot reason as if our conceptions of the good were a “black box” to us. But the fact that we never fully embody the perspective of citizenship is no mark against it, given the role it plays as an animating, normative ideal within political liberalism. To claim that citizens cannot accept social circumstances under which the three conditions are not met, then, just is to say that those three conditions are demanded on the basis of essential interests of citizenship, which we take to be shared among us. As we have seen, what particular interventions citizenship demands as means to securing those interests will depend on the circumstances that render the interests vulnerable. Meanwhile, when actual citizens try to deliberate together on the basis only of interests sharable among all reasonable citizens—perhaps in order to discern the course 146

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favored by the weight of those shared interests under their circumstances— they exercise public reason. We can see more clearly now why free and equal citizenship demands the three conditions Rawls identifies. The citizenship capacity to form and revise a conception of the good generates a strong interest in protections for the freedom to, for example, espouse a religion of one’s own choosing or none at all. Similarly with the other basic liberties, with the prioritization thereof, and with the provision of the material necessities for the effective exercise of those liberties: Because citizens cannot accept society’s failure to secure these conditions, any society that does fail to secure them straightforwardly violates the criterion of reciprocity. The criterion of reciprocity takes some social arrangements off the table from the start.12 In this way, the criterion of reciprocity becomes an important theoretical resource upon which we can ground positive arguments for political intervention. We saw in Chapter 4 that it imposes not only negative constraints on legitimate exercises of political power, but also positive requirements specifying that some such exercises are required—that their omission is illegitimate. The negative constraints are derived from limits on which exercises of political power are acceptable from the perspective of citizenship; the positive requirements are derived from limits on which omissions are acceptable. Reciprocity rules out interventions that citizens cannot accept and requires interventions whose omission citizens cannot accept. Consider three pieces of legislation: First, consider voter-identification laws that systematically disenfranchise certain groups of would-be voters by requiring forms of identification that are extraordinarily difficult for members of those groups to obtain. (It may be extremely difficult, for example, for highly mobile families to show proof of permanent residence.) Second, consider work requirements for receipt of certain welfare benefits, exemplified, for example, by the transition from unconditional cash assistance for families living in poverty to non-refundable income tax credits for low-income workers. Finally, consider zoning policies that require developers to provide highquality, low-cost housing in safe neighborhoods with good schools. Assume that we combine these policies with housing subsidies so that low-income families can afford to live in the new housing units and stay there. The zoning policies are intended to improve access to high-quality education among lowincome children, by reducing their families’ mobility and providing them with access to housing in school districts with schools that serve the more advantaged students already living in those communities.

12 The criterion of reciprocity is the “limiting feature” of a reasonable political conception of justice (Rawls 1993, 450).

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The criterion of reciprocity straightforwardly rules out the first piece of legislation as illegitimate. By disenfranchising individuals systematically based on housing mobility, the voter-identification laws described would undermine the ability of those individuals to participate in the public political sphere, thereby undermining their political equality. Because the legislation effectively undermines individuals’ ability to exercise their basic political liberties, it is unacceptable from the perspective of citizenship and thus violates the criterion of reciprocity. The second piece of legislation is also likely illegitimate, at least in circumstances where access to jobs is not guaranteed through a public jobs program. Those who seek work but cannot secure it will fall below the threshold of material wellbeing at which they can effectively exercise their basic liberties, as will dependent members of their families.13 I think reasonable people might disagree as to whether political values demand unconditional access to the material pre-requisites for the effective use of one’s political liberties. If work can be guaranteed to all who seek it, then conditioning certain benefits on participation may be consistent with mutual respect. What is certainly true is this: If the benefit in question provides families with resources necessary for effective participation in the political arena, then work requirements that restrict genuine access to that benefit are unacceptable from the perspective of citizenship. The third piece of legislation is perhaps the most interesting for my purposes. Under certain circumstances, it—or something like it—will be positively required by the criterion of reciprocity. Education is essential to securing fair opportunities for individuals to occupy competitive social positions later in life. It is also an important mechanism for ensuring that actual individuals develop the capacities of citizenship: Prospective citizens must be educated to understand their status as citizens and to effectively exercise the moral powers that status entails. Because citizens are characterized as having a higher-order interest in preserving their capacities as citizens, we can infer that citizens also have an interest in preserving the circumstances under which all are educated sufficiently well to effectively exercise those capacities. Housing segregation and high mobility among the disadvantaged are impediments to the provision of an adequate education. If providing affordable housing in safe communities is essential to ensuring that all students receive an education adequate for citizenship, then the failure to

13 Citizenship interests may preclude this piece of legislation on other grounds as well—if, for example, work requirements are stigmatizing or marginalizing in a way that undermines mutual respect. Whether they do undermine political equality in this way is contingent, I suspect, on the character of the society in question. I take it that the basic liberties case is the most straightforward.

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provide affordable housing is unacceptable to citizens and thus violates the criterion of reciprocity. The residential zoning legislation further illustrates the point we encountered in Chapter 4, which we can now see is crucial to appreciating the progressive potential of political liberalism as a framework of legitimacy: Because the criterion of reciprocity defines legitimacy as acceptability to citizens characterized normatively, some progressive social policies will turn out to be not only legitimate but positively mandatory. Insofar as citizens would not accept omissions of certain exercises of political power in certain circumstances—insofar as they would insist on the enactment of those exercises—the criterion of reciprocity demands those exercises. It follows that it is illegitimate—by the lights of the fundamental normative principle of political liberalism—for the state to abstain from those exercises of political power. This exemplifies a general strategy for grounding progressive political interventions from within the constraints of political liberalism, by invoking the basic theoretical commitments of political liberalism: We begin with political liberalism’s conception of citizenship. From the characteristics of citizenship, we can attribute to citizens certain fundamental interests. Finally, we can infer that citizens would insist on certain political interventions, under certain circumstances, to preserve or further the objects of those interests. In the case of the zoning laws, we begin by invoking political liberalism’s characterization of citizens as possessing a higher-order interest in preserving their moral powers as citizens. Based on this characterization, we can infer that citizens would have an interest in ensuring that each person receive a sufficiently good education to develop those moral powers. This inferred interest is not explicit in political liberalism’s characterization of citizenship, but it is implied by it. Finally, we infer that citizens would insist upon any exercise of political power that is, under the circumstances at hand, essential to the adequate realization of the interest we have attributed to them and that doesn’t compromise, or compromise too much, other citizenship interests. When circumstances are such that de facto segregation renders residential zoning laws a necessary means to an adequately good education for citizenship, citizens would insist that the state intervene to enact those laws. Similarly, we saw in Chapter 4 that when circumstances are such that progressive taxation policies are essential to the adequate exercise of the basic political liberties, citizens would insist that the state intervene to enact those policies. This framework enables us to make arguments for progressive policy interventions without invoking substantive values that are specific to any particular conception of the good. The argument for the zoning laws is not grounded in any claim as to the intrinsic value or choice-worthiness of a certain kind of education, or of an education that prepares students to live a certain kind 149

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of lifestyle affirmed from within a particular comprehensive doctrine. In justifying exercises of state power, political liberalism foregoes such considerations. Rather, the framework generates arguments for political interventions from the essential commitment to maintaining justificatory community among free and equal citizens. Before applying this framework to genderegalitarian political interventions, I want to examine an alternative strategy due to Christie Hartley and Lori Watson. Like me, Hartley and Watson think that the criterion of reciprocity imposes substantive feminist requirements on the just liberal state. Although I will argue that Hartley and Watson’s argument is inadequate for establishing the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions,14 it exemplifies the framework I have just discussed, and so sets the stage for my own argument, which I will turn to in Chapters 6 and 7.

5.2 The Incongruity Strategy According to Hartley and Watson, the criterion of reciprocity imposes substantive feminist requirements on the just politically liberal state that extend beyond the basic protections Rawls recognized. First, it demands political interventions to eliminate “pervasive social hierarchies that thwart the give and take of public reasons among free and equal citizens.”15 These pervasive social hierarchies are often perpetuated by gender norms regarding, for example, what kinds of work women or men are best suited to. The criterion of reciprocity demands that these hierarchies be dismantled, because citizens could not accept being subject to the domination they imply.16 Second, it demands that society ensure “the social conditions necessary for recognition respect among persons viewed as free and equal citizens.”17 Recognition respect exists only when citizens recognize and respect other citizens’ status as free and equal citizens. Because citizens could not accept circumstances under which others fail to recognize and respect them as citizens, the criterion of reciprocity demands that society establish and preserve whatever positive conditions are necessary for citizens to relate to one another in this capacity. Rawls recognized a civic education as one condition necessary for recognition respect; Hartley and Watson argue that recognition respect may impose additional requirements. Certain pervasive social hierarchies compromise citizens’ ability to relate to one another as citizens; those hierarchies therefore undermine conditions necessary for recognition respect. Because citizenship 14 My objections target only the application of Hartley and Watson’s strategy to the gendered division of labor; their argument may establish its intended conclusions with respect to the other feminist policies they consider. 15 16 Hartley and Watson 2010, 8. Hartley and Watson 2010, 10–11. 17 Hartley and Watson 2010, 8.

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requires recognition respect—because the criterion of reciprocity demands it—those pervasive social hierarchies are incompatible with essential interests of citizenship. As Watson puts it, “[a] kind of bifurcation of self occurs as one tries to maintain competing or incongruent identities. In the case of members of socially dominated groups, the identity of free and equal citizen is incongruent with that aspect of their identity in which they are regarded as a social unequal.”18 Because the hierarchies and inequalities threaten to undermine the very conditions of citizenship, citizens will insist that they be dismantled, and that conditions be established that are conducive to their recognition of free and equal citizenship in themselves and others. In societies in which routine threats to women’s physical integrity are sustained by the sexualization of violence, for example, recognition respect may require that violent pornography, rape, and domestic abuse be classified as civil rights violations. And because work is a dimension of social life central to citizenship, Hartley and Watson argue that the criterion of reciprocity licenses political interventions aimed at dismantling the hierarchical gendered division of labor.19 While political liberalism would generally defer to individuals’ voluntary choices about how to cooperate with intimates regarding the sharing of paid and unpaid labor,20 its most basic theoretical commitments demand protections for the realization of citizenship. If the individual labor-allocation choices sustaining the gendered division of labor collectively threaten the realization of citizenship, then political liberalism would license remedies to influence those choices and undermine the gendered division of labor. These remedies might include just the kinds of structural interventions— family leave initiatives, work time regulation, and substitute child- and dependent-care provisions—that we are concerned to justify. These interventions would be necessary to restore congruence between the personal, background identities that citizens develop, currently in response to gendered labor norms, and the political identity of citizens as free and equal, which the just politically liberal state must preserve. Hartley and Watson conclude that “political liberalism’s criterion of reciprocity can curtail the . . . subordination of women with respect to the dimensions of social life central to equal citizenship and can deliver the social goods necessary for equal citizenship.”21 At the heart of the argument is the idea that pervasive social hierarchies— and the background identities they foster—are incongruent with individuals’ identities as free and equal citizens.22 Accordingly, I’ll call this the “incongruity 18

19 Watson 2007, 105. Hartley and Watson 2009, 533–5; 2010, 17. See Chapter 2 for an argument in defense of classifying gender-norm-compliant choices as voluntary even if those choices result from socialization processes or the relative costliness of gender-norm-non-compliant alternatives. 21 22 Hartley and Watson 2010, 18. Watson 2007, 105. 20

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strategy” for establishing the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions from within political liberalism. The incongruity strategy fits within the broader framework I set forth above. It begins by ascribing to citizens an interest in preserving conditions that are conducive to the realization of citizenship. Because there is an incongruity between the development of citizenship and the gendered division of labor, Hartley and Watson argue, citizens’ interest in preserving conditions that are conducive to the realization of citizenship implies that they will insist on the political interventions necessary to undermine the gendered division of labor. But does the gendered division of labor really undermine citizenship in the way Hartley and Watson allege? In the remainder of this chapter, I point out two major complications that must be overcome in order to execute the incongruity strategy successfully. First, I argue that the strategy faces an unmet argumentative burden, and I clarify the kind of evidence that would be required to meet it. Second, I argue that there are non-hierarchical aspects of the gendered division of labor and that these are not susceptible to legitimate remediation by way of the incongruity strategy. This is problematic for reasons that will become clear in due course. I conclude that the incongruity strategy is an inadequate execution of the framework set forth above. Citizens do indeed have an interest in preserving circumstances conducive to the realization of citizenship, but that has not yet been shown to imply the legitimacy of interventions to dismantle the gendered division of labor.

5.3 Understanding the Burden: What Kind of Incongruity? Hartley and Watson do not argue that every social hierarchy can legitimately be dismantled by way of political intervention. Such an argument would implausibly identify such hierarchies as high school student councils as legitimately susceptible to political dismantling. If it is to establish that political liberalism approves gender-egalitarian political interventions, Hartley and Watson’s argument must show that the background inequalities caused by the gendered division of labor really are incongruous with citizenship. Hartley and Watson argue that they are, for two reasons: First, the hierarchy of gender thwarts the exchange of public reasons; second, it undermines recognition respect. Certainly, citizenship interests favor remedies for social conditions that undermine women’s citizenship in either of these two ways. But does the alleged incongruity actually exist? In this section, I explore the kind of incongruity that must exist between the gendered division of labor and the interests of citizenship in order for the strategy effectively to ground gender-egalitarian interventions: First, it must actually be the case that women’s status as citizens 152

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is insecure in our gendered society; second, the undermining of citizenship must actually be due (at least in part) to the gendered division of labor, rather than some other gendered social hierarchy; third, that undermining must be systematic, and not frustrate citizenship only in isolated cases; and fourth, the undermining must be significant, frustrating citizenship severely enough to warrant intervention by the lights of political liberalism. I will consider each requirement in turn. What is the evidence that women’s status as citizens is undermined? Certainly, women are unfairly regarded as less competent than men—and afforded less respect than men—in many domains. But do gender norms undermine their ability to stand as equals in the exchange of public reasons? Do gender norms undermine their recognition respect, in the sense relevant to citizenship? The premise appears to be empirical, and I am not sure where to turn for clarity other than to women’s own experiences. Speaking only for myself: I definitely experience myself as subject to gender norms, and as treated in ways that suggest that the others with whom I interact are also subject to gender norms. But I am far less confident that any of this constitutes a threat to my status as a political equal. Plausibly, were I to run for office, I would be subject to harsher scrutiny than an equally qualified male candidate. Likely, similar dispositional traits would be judged differently in me than in my male competitor. That matters, and it might be enough to meet this part of the argumentative burden. But to justify social policy to tackle the gendered division of labor, we might have thought we would need an incongruity that applies beyond competition for political office. Plausibly, the incongruity just conjectured applies in other domains relevant to political equality. And the fact that I don’t experience myself as politically sub-equal in my day-to-day life certainly doesn’t establish that I’m not sub-equal. In any case, my own experience shouldn’t count for much. Women are diverse, and I’m privileged along several dimensions. But insofar as women who experience their citizenship as undermined are unprivileged along a social dimension other than gender, we might wonder whether the threat to citizenship is tied to that other dimension or its intersection with gender. My aim here is not to shift an argumentative burden but to point out that one already exists for the incongruity strategy. That strategy’s crucial claim is that background inequality engenders political inequality, and certainly often enough it does. But Hartley and Watson readily admit that not all background inequality does this—not all hierarchies undermine citizenship. We might take “incongruous with citizenship” to mean something broader than incompatible with citizenship. Let’s take it to mean, perhaps more in keeping with the intended extension of Hartley and Watson’s argument, that the hierarchies in question are incompatible with the interests of citizenship. These interests might include not only the development of citizenship 153

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itself, but also the attainment of goods that are valuable from the perspective of citizenship: goods like rights, liberties, and the ability to pursue one’s conception of the good. Here still, we seem to need further argument that the threat to citizenship interests exists, particularly in light of the point from Chapter 2 that the gendered division of labor does not violate political liberties in any systematic way. In the colloquial sense, women are often treated as second-class citizens. But in the technical sense, are they treated as secondclass citizens? I suspect this burden can be met, but it requires far more than simply identifying disparate political outcomes between women and men, such as unequal representation in legislatures. Second, in order to use the incongruity strategy to justify interventions to remedy the gendered division of labor, we need to establish not only that the groups in subordinate roles in the gendered division of labor have their citizenship interests frustrated; we need to establish that the gendered division of labor is the mechanism that does the frustrating. Hartley and Watson discuss several implications of their argument that reach beyond the gendered division of labor; for example, they propose that their argument might justify anti-pornography legislation, if women’s citizenship interests are undermined by a sexual power hierarchy maintained by objectionable types of pornography. Given political liberalism’s constraints on legitimate political intervention, it matters a great deal which aspects of gender inequality are actually incongruous with citizenship. If citizenship interests can be preserved without the intrusion of gender-egalitarian political interventions, then the balance of political reasons is unlikely to favor that intrusion. The gendered division of labor may well be a linchpin of gender injustice; indeed, I am convinced that it is. But is it the linchpin of gender injustice’s threat to citizenship? Unless citizenship interests are frustrated by the gendered division of labor, the incongruity strategy will not justify exercises of political power that target the gendered division of labor. Third, the incongruity must be systematic. Surely, in some cases, enactments of the gendered division of labor undermine citizenship. Imagine a domestic partnership in which a woman is forcefully made to perform housework against her will. In such a case, we have clear justification for intervention, and political liberalism can recognize that. But the approved intervention will involve isolated intrusion to remedy the isolated violation and to protect the individual in question: for example, by protecting the victim’s right to exit the partnership without violent repercussions. In contrast, we are concerned here to find political reasons sufficient to justify structural remedies like substitute childcare and family leave initiatives. The criterion of reciprocity can certainly approve targeted interventions like legal protections for victims of domestic abuse, but to make a case that the criterion of reciprocity licenses structural solutions, we must show that the gendered 154

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division of labor undermines citizenship in a systematic way. And establishing that the threat to citizenship is systematic requires far more than showing that the gendered division of labor is systematic, or that it is systematically disadvantageous in some way. The systematic disadvantage must be recognizable on the basis of citizenship interests. Pursuing Hartley and Watson’s strategy, that means establishing that the systematic gendered division of labor systematically undermines citizenship. In their most recent work, Hartley and Watson undertake to answer these challenges. They locate the threat to citizenship in caregivers’ inability to participate in both caregiving and labor markets: “Being able to participate in both the family and labor market is important for citizenship, as is . . . being able to participate in the political sphere and in civil society.”23 This is so, they argue, because citizenship demands being able to participate in all spheres of life crucial to citizenship, including the labor market, the political sphere and civil society, and the family. By systematically undermining women caregivers’ ability to participate in labor markets and in civil society, the gendered division of labor systematically undermines citizenship. I am not convinced, though, that this is a plausible way to meet the burdens set forth. Two premises are necessary to make their argument work: first, the normative premise that the ability to combine participation in the various dimensions of life crucial to citizenship is itself a requirement of citizenship; and second, the descriptive premise that the gendered division of labor leaves caregivers unable to manage the combination. I worry that we can’t defend both premises at once, holding fixed a single understanding of “able to combine.” The more demanding the normative requirement of “able to combine,” the less plausible the normative premise becomes. That is, it is implausible that the interests of citizenship demand a very accessible pathway to combining serious commitments within the various spheres. But the less demanding the normative requirement of “able to combine,” the less plausible the empirical premise becomes. To begin with the extreme case, it is simply false that the gendered division of labor makes it impossible to combine participation in the various spheres. Assume for a minute that we accept the normative premise: that being able to participate in both the family and labor market is important for citizenship. Still it remains unclear that the citizenship threat actually exists, because it remains unclear that the combination in question really is obstructed in the way that Hartley and Watson claim that it is. In particular, it is unclear that the combination is “effectively precluded,” or that participation in one sphere means being “effectively excluded” from another.24 Certainly some jobs preclude significant

23

Watson and Hartley 2018, 203.

24

Watson and Hartley 2018, 208.

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caregiving, and certainly a great many more make the combination very costly. But do the high costs establish that participation in labor markets can’t be combined with significant caregiving? Hartley and Watson must not intend to claim that combining caregiving with labor market participation is effectively impossible; such a claim would clearly be undermined by the existence of many women who have long managed to pull it off. Indeed, sometimes they write as if the demand of citizenship is far stronger, and the empirical premise they need to defend correspondingly weaker: They write, for example, that each person must “be able to participate in all spheres relevant to citizenship to a significant degree.”25 But it is not clear that even the weaker empirical premise is true. That is, it is not clear that combining labor market participation and caregiving to a significant degree is impossible. Plenty of people manage it—low-income single mothers are a case in point—despite facing very high costs to doing so. Maybe, then, these high costs are the problem. Elsewhere, Hartley and Watson put the point in terms of disadvantage: Caregivers “should not be disadvantaged relative to other citizens with respect to their ability to participate in the various spheres of social life central to citizenship.”26 The challenge, then, is to show that this normative premise remains true— that high-but-not-preclusive costs are a systematic threat to citizenship— without relying on considerations of distributive justice that are independent of gender egalitarianism. We have now weakened the empirical premise considerably, and it seems nearly undisputable: Caregivers are disadvantaged in their ability to participate in labor markets relative to those without caregiving responsibilities. But notice that we’ve now weakened the empirical premise to the point that it just describes the consequences of the gendered division of labor which we have set out to argue is politically actionable. The trick then becomes to defend the normative premise holding fixed this understanding of what it means to be able to combine participation in two spheres. Is it true that a fundamental interest of citizenship is frustrated just in virtue of the fact that labor market participation is on average costlier for those with significant caregiving responsibilities? Later in this chapter, I respond to the normative premise that citizenship requires being able to combine labor market participation with serious participation in other domains central to citizenship. For now, I just note that, because combining paid work and caregiving is not positively precluded on a systematic scale, we must further ask about the level of costliness at which citizenship is threatened. The systematicity burden that remains, then, is to specify the level of costliness at which the citizenship interest gets triggered

25

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26

Watson and Hartley 2018, 202.

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and to establish that the caregiving and labor market combination systematically meets that threshold of costliness on account of the gendered division of labor. A final piece of the argumentative burden concerns the weighting of citizenship interests. The criterion of reciprocity does not demand that any particular interest of citizenship be maximally promoted, because citizens would not accept the intrusions necessary for that. Consider the citizenship interest in developing one’s sense of justice. If we were concerned to maximize that development, we might dispense altogether with the family as an institution for raising children. While some families do well at developing children’s sense of justice, not all do, and we might do better overall if we were to raise all children from a young age in institutions whose sole purpose is to train them for citizenship and shelter them from socializing influences that impede that training. This remedy is not acceptable from the perspective of citizenship—and so it is not approved by the criterion of reciprocity—because other citizenship interests outweigh the protection at that extreme. In other words, measures to further interests of citizenship are, at some level, constrained by other countervailing citizenship interests. These countervailing interests include the interest in limiting political intrusion to enable the effective exercise of one’s own conception of the good—an exercise that might include sharing one’s life and values with one’s children. This is not to say that this interest is a trump, either. It too is constrained within the balance of all citizenship interests. I think, for example, that compulsory education and certain compulsory curricular elements are called for by the weight of citizenship interests, even if those requirements limit the ability of many families to share their conceptions of the good across generations. No one citizenship interest is a trump, even as some weigh more heavily than others and some become especially weighty under certain circumstances. The criterion of reciprocity demands the promotion of each citizenship interest only up to the threshold above which political protections become too costly in terms of other interests of citizenship. Specifying the threshold with respect to any particular interest under any particular set of circumstances requires substantial argumentation; the point for now is this: It is not enough to show that the gendered division of labor compromises citizenship to some degree. For the incongruity strategy to work, it must be the case that the balance of citizenship interests tells in favor of intervention: that the citizenship interest in dismantling gendered hierarchies outweighs the citizenship interest in avoiding political intrusions to change the relative costliness of gender-egalitarian and gender-inegalitarian domestic arrangements.27 27 To recall: Given that the status quo is sustained, at least in part, by individuals’ choices regarding how to arrange their domestic lives—choices that a political conception of justice

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The incongruity strategy faces a formidable argumentative burden. Those who would use that strategy to justify gender-egalitarian political interventions must show that the gendered division of labor systematically frustrates the interests of citizenship severely enough to outweigh the presumption in favor of deference to individuals’ choices regarding work allocation. Perhaps this burden can be met—indeed, my own argument will require meeting parts of it—but I hope to have shown just what meeting it requires. In particular, more needs to be shown than simply that some interests of citizenship would be more fully realized if our society had no gendered division of labor. We might equally claim that some interests of citizenship would be more fully realized if our society had no families. In neither case does that suffice to justify political interventions to bring the condition about.

5.4 Is the Gendered Division of Labor Hierarchical? A second complication lurks. The gendered division of labor is not entirely hierarchical. But according to the incongruity strategy, it is the hierarchy of gender that generates political reasons for remediation, because the alleged citizenship-undermining mechanism of gender is the hierarchy of income, power, and status associated with it. If successful, then, the strategy will justify interventions to dismantle that hierarchy. If there are interventions to dismantle the hierarchy while leaving the non-hierarchical aspects intact, the incongruity strategy offers no grounds for preferring instead to enact interventions that dismantle the gendered division of labor in its entirety. In this section, I defend these claims. In Section 5.5, I explain why this is a problem for the incongruity strategy, arguing that the harms of the gendered division of labor that call for political concern do not inhere only in its hierarchical features. When we stipulate away the hierarchy, the gendered division of labor remains objectionable. In short, the incongruity strategy does not get us everything we should want from it. Gendered labor in our society is undeniably hierarchical. As we saw in Chapter 1, the norms of the gendered division of labor both steer women and men into different social roles and ensure that those roles will be unequally socially rewarded. We’ve seen that the interaction of gendered norms and gendered institutions leads to significant hierarchical inequalities in income, status, and power between women and men.28 cannot categorically classify as non-voluntary—it is not enough to show that gender egalitarianism is relatively costlier under that status quo. 28 This picture of the mutually reinforcing relationship between gender norms and gendered social institutions will be further defended and elaborated upon in Chapter 7. For now, it is meant merely to be illustrative of the hierarchy of the gendered division of labor.

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But there are non-hierarchical parts of the gendered division of labor as well. Imagine a society that compensates caregivers sufficiently to end their financial dependence on partners who work outside the home, and to offset foregone human and social capital that would otherwise be accumulated working outside the home.29 Assume also that this compensation is sufficient to ensure that caregivers do not face formidable barriers to exiting domestic partnerships; they will not end up non-reciprocally vulnerable if their partnerships are dissolved. More than that, assume that the compensation is actually commensurate with the profound social value of the work that caregivers do. And assume that effective safeguards are in place to protect women from statistical discrimination in the workplace. Even with these stipulations, we can imagine that work remains gendered: Women continue specializing in caregiving work in the home, while men specialize in work outside the home. Perhaps we would need to impose other stipulations in order to render the gendered division of labor truly non-hierarchical, but the point remains: We can imagine a society in which serious commitments to caregiving and serious commitments to paid work remain very difficult to combine, and in which gender norms incline women and men systematically toward different background identities, but in which the identities are not arranged in a hierarchy of income, status, and power.30 On the incongruity strategy, the political reasons that justify interventions to remedy the gendered division of labor derive from the incompatibilities between citizenship and social hierarchies. Thus, this strategy offers no resources for justifying the remediation of a non-hierarchical gendered division of labor, exemplified by the gendered but non-hierarchically gendered society—a society with gender steering but no gender stacking—just sketched.

5.5 Why Does It Matter? Would a non-hierarchical gendered division of labor remain morally objectionable? Is it something the remediation of which our principles of justice and legitimacy should license? The hierarchy of income, power, and status that accompanies the gendered division of labor in our society is clearly problematic, and Hartley and Watson are hardly alone in identifying that hierarchy as 29 See Alstott 2004 for an argument in favor of caregiver resource allowances. See Fraser 1997, 55–9 for an argument against such allowances. 30 Some critics might regard the gendered division of labor as hierarchical by definition. If so, the argument developed in this and the following sections can be reformulated as follows: Something similar to the gendered division of labor, which is objectionable in much the same ways as the gendered division of labor, can exist and be non-hierarchical. That thing is something the remediation of which our principles justice and legitimacy should license. But that thing is nonhierarchical, so the incongruity strategy lacks the resources to justify that remediation.

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the injustice of the gendered division of labor.31 But serious harms also stem from the non-hierarchical features: from the mere steering. In what remains of this chapter, I identify two harms that persist even when the hierarchy is stipulated away, and I argue that those of us concerned to make society more gender just should seek political remedies to those harms. Since the incongruity strategy cannot license those remedies, it is not a fully satisfactory reconciliation of political liberalism and gender egalitarianism. I then argue that we should not rest content with the partial reconciliation that the incongruity strategy offers. First, consider the harms that result from women and men being systematically obstructed from combining serious commitments to caring for others with similarly serious commitments to attainment in the world of paid labor. Caregiving work and paid work outside the home are both potentially gratifying uses of one’s time, and for many, each commitment is made more valuable when complemented by the other. As we will see in Chapter 7, a growing majority of women and men are coming to prefer a more egalitarian sharing of paid and caregiving work and to resent the social forces that obstruct such a sharing, like time-greedy workplaces, inadequate childcare support, and labor-intensive childcare norms. It is harmful that the growing majority of domestic partners who genuinely want to share work equally are effectively prevented from doing so by—on the one hand—labor markets that assume that workers have no serious caregiving responsibilities and—on the other—childcare policy that hasn’t kept up with growing demands of paid labor. Women and men both face obstacles as they undertake to combine serious commitments to their jobs with serious commitments to caring for dependents. What I’ve just described are not—or haven’t yet been shown to be—political harms, and so I should explain why I invoke them here. My aim in this section is to identify gendered harms that committed gender egalitarians should regard as such, in order to motivate further inquiry into whether we can regard them as such for political purposes, consistent with the constraints of political liberalism. I am writing for now from within a certain conception of the good, urging gender egalitarians not to rest content just yet. This is not to say that I regard political liberalism as an adequate framework of legitimacy only if it can accommodate every commitment of gender egalitarianism. The constraints that political liberalism imposes and its aspiration of civic respect by way of mutual justifiability are appealing, and worth imposing even if that means that many matters that I regard as problems of justice escape legitimate political remedy. What I want to urge in this section is this: If robust 31 See Hirschmann 2003 for an argument that gender differences are unobjectionable when unaccompanied by power imbalances.

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constraints of liberal legitimacy can license political responses to remedy these harms—if there are political dimensions to the harms—then gender egalitarians should want to make that case. More generally, those of us interested in unearthing the progressive potential of political liberalism should be moved to look deeper into whether it has more to say about the gendered division of labor than Hartley and Watson’s strategy allows. The first set of harms considered above were the harms resulting from a social arrangement that presumes specialization. A second (not yet politically rendered) set of harms result from the terms of presumed specialization: Apart from the harm of having no viable alternative to specializing in either paid or caregiving work, gendered specialization imposes harms. These harms result from the ways in which social norms differentiate between women and men and push them into social roles that might not best suit their interests and temperament. While demanding workplaces and the dearth of childcare supports make it very difficult not to specialize, still-pervasive gendered social norms dictate the terms of specialization: When work and care conflict, men’s role is to prioritize work, and women’s role is to prioritize caregiving. Accordingly, men are still systematically molded into breadwinning specialists and women into caregiving specialists. Apart from the many women and men who find specialization itself unfulfilling, many more would plausibly have been better off specializing in a gender-atypical role, even assuming no genuinely open route to combining the two roles. While the harms of presumed specialization are caused by the foreclosing of genuine opportunities to combine two worthy life projects, the harms of gendered presumed specialization are caused by the social context against which individuals choose how to specialize, given that they cannot realistically choose not to specialize. The gendered division of labor structures society according to the assumption that women are better suited to or more inclined to enjoy caregiving, while men are better suited to or more inclined to enjoy paid work. But this assumption is problematic: In some cases, it is self-fulfilling, as individuals come to embody the attributes expected of them, despite wearing those attributes uncomfortably. Some comply with gender norms—even those they find oppressive, or would find oppressive if the norms were not so heavily internalized—in order to avoid social sanctions. These sanctions can be severe, diminishing individuals’ material, social, and emotional wellbeing.32 In other cases, individuals reject the prescribed attributes, but at their own peril. Being pushed into a social role one finds unfulfilling in order to avoid social sanctions is a serious harm, as is actually suffering sanctions for violating expectations.

32

See Valian 1998.

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These harms can persist even after stipulating away the hierarchy of the gendered division of labor. Gender-egalitarian interventions could ease these harms by diminishing the gendered social norms that perpetuate the gendered division of labor and by reforming the social institutions that make it so difficult to avoid specialization. But these harms are independent of the hierarchy of gender; they inhere in the steering, not in the stacking. Even if those who specialize in paid labor were not unfairly privileged in their holdings of income, power, status, and other social goods relative to those who specialize in caregiving labor, the obstacles to equal sharing could remain; so too could the forces that ensure that specialization remain gendered. Some might argue that the specialization is itself hierarchical. Hartley and Watson say something like this in responding to my challenges. They take political liberalism “to be premised on a relational theory of equality” in which “what is of fundamental importance is that persons stand in a relationship of free and equal citizenship in a liberal democratic society viewed as a shared cooperative enterprise.”33 For them, we have seen, relational equality requires that all citizens be able effectively to participate in all spheres of life central to citizenship. Because the political sphere, the labor market, civil society, and the family are all spheres central to citizenship, relational equality requires reforms that enable full-time labor market participation to be combined with caregiving. Eliminating hierarchies requires enabling the combination of paid and caregiving work, because when that combination is precluded, relational equality is violated.34 And so we return to the normative claim identified earlier in this chapter. In this argument, Hartley and Watson derive the normative claim relevant for our purposes—that equal citizenship demands being able to combine labor market participation and caregiving—from the more general normative conviction that equal citizenship, and relational equality, demand being able to participate to a significant degree in all spheres of life crucial to citizenship. Our current society certainly fails to meet this standard. But then, the standard strikes me as implausibly demanding. Consider other combinations of participation in different domains: Many positions in labor markets are very costly to

33 Watson and Hartley 2018, 208. I take political liberalism itself to be a theory of relational equality, which is compatible with some range of views on distributive equality. But I don’t take this to have the implications that Hartley and Watson think it has, for reasons I explain. On relational egalitarianism, see Anderson 1999; 2014. 34 Sometimes they frame the problem as a problem of marginalization rather than of hierarchy. Watson and Hartley 2018, 210. I’m not sure how the argument from marginalization works, given that we have to regard women’s specialization in caregiving and men’s specialization in breadwinning as voluntary in the cases under consideration. But in any case, the relational inequality is what unites these worries about specialization, and my response here can be framed as a denial that ending specialization is necessary for securing relational equality.

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combine with significant participation in civil society. It may be just as difficult to manage the combination of full-time employment with being a dedicated candidate for public office as it is to combine full-time employment and motherhood. But we would hesitate to say that an otherwise privileged white man running for public office is relationally sub-equal insofar as juggling his campaigning schedule and his lucrative full-time job leave him time poor. We might have plenty of reasons to subsidize that combination of activities, but the thought that its costliness undermines his equal standing in society is implausible. We can see the implausibility of the general premise more starkly still by considering other courses of action that that premise might favor: Ensuring that citizens can combine significant participation in all spheres of life crucial to citizenship would require discouraging singleminded pursuits of particular passions in any one domain of life that limit the time and energy we can spend on other domains. Indeed, the general normative premise implies that our failure to do so can amount to tolerating unjust social hierarchies. If I am right to regard it as implausible that equal citizenship requires being able to combine serious participation in all domains of life crucial to citizenship, then we should resist the inference from that premise to the particular case of caregiving and labor market participation. Luckily, Hartley and Watson also offer an argument that seems to stand or fall independently of the general premise: They argue that participating in labor markets in particular is “important for a person’s sense of self-worth, insofar as the kind of distinctive relationships and opportunities it offers affirms persons’ contributions to society as a collective enterprise.”35 But this argument, too, must be rejected. The problem is that it overstates the distinctness of labor market involvement as an essential source of selfworth, and as a singular contribution to society as a collective enterprise. Hartley and Watson are right that labor market participation can be valuable as a contribution to the cooperative social enterprise. But plenty of ways of participating in and contributing to that enterprise are worthy of supporting self-worth; and plenty of these don’t involve participation in labor markets. If the society we inhabit is structured in such a way that caregiving is not among the contributions to the cooperative enterprise from which individuals can derive self-worth—or, indeed, if it is so structured that labor markets are the only contribution from which they can—then that is a social problem. But that is not Hartley and Watson’s argument. Their argument is meant to establish 35 Watson and Hartley 2018, 209. They also claim that there is a failure of equal opportunity “when social norms overwhelmingly steer members of one social group to one of the spheres of life . . . and overwhelmingly steer members of another social group to another sphere” (Watson and Hartley 2018, 204). I do not think this argument as it stands is successful, for reasons I discuss in previous chapters.

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that specialization in caregiving or labor market participation is hierarchical in and of itself. For it to work, then, they need to claim that even if caregiving were appropriately socially valued and esteemed, it would still need to be combined with serious commitments to participation in labor markets in order for selfworth to be secure and relational equality to obtain. This argument goes wrong by devaluing caregiving as a valuable contribution in its own right to the cooperative social scheme. If we imagine a society in which caregiving is valued commensurate with the actual social contribution it constitutes, then we will see that in such a society, caregivers’ contributions can constitute an adequate basis for self-worth all on their own. The fact that in our circumstances, labor market participation is necessary shows only that we currently fail to value caregiving appropriately. Of course, aligning our treatment of caregiving with its actual value requires not only equalizing distributable goods, but equalizing status among those who do this kind of work relative to those who contribute to the social scheme by working in labor markets. It requires equalizing the status of those whose labor market contribution involves professional caregiving, as such contributions are currently devalued in part because of their association with devalued private unpaid caregiving work. It requires ensuring that caregivers not be socially marginalized. Full-time caregiving in the home or in the labor market can be lonely work. Other work in the labor market can be lonely as well, and we may have reasons of citizenship to restructure it to make it less so. In the case of caregiving, this might involve things like facilitating the formation of caregiver co-ops. Truly elevating the status of caregiving is clearly no easy task, and certainly equalizing material wellbeing won’t suffice. But working in labor markets is not inherently unique as a source of social status and esteem. A citizen shouldn’t need to contribute to the cooperative scheme through the labor market in order to stand as a social equal. Recall, too, that on Hartley and Watson’s argument, the normative requirement of being “able to combine” one’s other roles with labor market participation must be quite strong; otherwise, the complementary empirical claim that we currently are not “able to combine” such participation will be implausible. Under our actual status quo, combining paid work and caregiving is possible—many families do it out of economic need. To use Hartley and Watson’s argument to justify the kinds of gender-egalitarian subsidies that both they and I are after, then, they must establish that relational equality demands being “able to combine” paid and caregiving work in a stronger sense—a sense that characterizes our actual status quo as one in which we are not able to combine paid work and caregiving. Must those who contribute through appropriately socially valued caregiving be robustly able to combine that contribution with significant labor market participation in order to stand as social equals? To answer this question affirmatively, Hartley and Watson 164

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must attribute to labor markets an implausible political status: They must think that labor markets have a kind of value such that even the most socially valuable and highly esteemed contributions must be robustly combinable with participation in them. Indeed, they must think something even stronger: Not only would it be good for the labor-market combination to be available; a social contributor’s status as political equal is conditional on it. Perhaps Hartley and Watson would rejoin that it is not labor market participation as such that must be manageable in conjunction with caregiving, but any additional socially valuable project. They might argue that even if caregivers seem to stand as social equals, they still in fact occupy subordinate social positions so long as this is all they do. I can’t see how such a position can be maintained except by impugning the value of caregiving. To argue that caregivers lack equal political standing even when that contribution is appropriately valued is to suggest that caregiving itself is not a sufficient social contribution to secure one’s status as an equal citizen. Alternatively, Hartley and Watson might rejoin that all gendered specialization is hierarchical. But specialization can be hierarchical only if either of two conditions obtains: Either the kinds of work must be unequally socially valued, or they must be unequally intrinsically valuable.36 For the sake of argument, I have stipulated away the first possibility by specifying a hypothetical society in which financial wellbeing, power, and status accrue equally to caregiving and non-caregiving work. Thus, the contention that the gendered division of labor is hierarchical is plausible only if it can be established that non-caregiving work is intrinsically superior to caregiving work. Indeed, it might plausibly be claimed that some forms of non-caregiving work are intrinsically more valuable than some forms of caregiving work. Perhaps winning a lawsuit on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union is more valuable than shopping for diapers. But then, comforting a child or teaching her something important might be more valuable than many forms of non-caregiving work. The relevant comparison is not between some aspects of non-caregiving work and caregiving work, but between non-caregiving work specialization and caregiving work specialization. And the former is no more intrinsically valuable than the latter. It is the way caregivers are treated, rather than their relative absence from labor markets, that threatens their free and equal citizenship. Hartley and Watson’s diagnosis is important, because if the argumentative burdens can 36 Describing domestic cooperation among enslaved women and men in North America, Angela Davis says that the gendered division of labor “does not appear to have been hierarchical: men’s tasks were certainly not superior to and were hardly inferior to the work performed by women.” See Davis 1983, 18. See also Collins 2008, 58. This was clearly a profoundly unjust society, but if Davis’s assessment is correct, the case suggests that non-hierarchical gendered specialization is no mere conceptual possibility.

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be met, it can help us to see how problematic this treatment is and how morally urgent it is that it be remedied. My point is just that, even if we could remedy that problematic treatment, we should still be concerned about the gendered division of labor insofar as the roles into which individuals are socialized are gendered. This is not because all gendered specialization is hierarchical; neither is it the case that all gendered trends in how individuals participate in the cooperative enterprise must be cause for moral and political concern. The problem with the gendered division of labor that Hartley and Watson’s strategy does not address—the problem that I am for now trying to illustrate only roughly and intuitively—has to do with the facts about how the gendered division of labor in our circumstances arose and is maintained. It is about what causes the steering, and it survives even if we eliminate the stacking. The objectionable gendered division of labor survives the elimination of status inequality between caregivers and other social contributors, and so Hartley and Watson’s strategy does not enable us to diagnose and respond to the full problem. The harms of presumed specialization and the harms of gendered presumed specialization remain, even when the hierarchical elements of the gendered division of labor are stipulated away. Because the incongruity strategy locates the grounds for intervention in the hierarchical features of the gendered division of labor, that strategy cannot establish the legitimacy of interventions aimed at protecting against the full spectrum of harms that the gendered division of labor causes. If the argumentative burdens can be met, the incongruity strategy can justify gender-egalitarian political interventions that undermine the hierarchical features of the gendered division of labor. But those of us who would use the tools of political reform to bring about a more gender-just society should be concerned about the full range of harms systematically imposed by the gendered division of labor, including those that survive the elimination of the hierarchy. There is a good deal at stake in diagnosing what is wrong with the gendered division of labor in such a way as to register the non-hierarchical harms as politically actionable: Some of the most promising interventions for undermining the hierarchy of the gendered division of labor threaten to further entrench its non-hierarchical aspects, and thus exacerbate its non-hierarchical harms. To illustrate, consider the proposal to ease the vulnerabilities of caregiving specialists by setting up caregiver resource accounts for primary parents into which funds would be deposited annually for specified purposes.37 If a caregiver can save for retirement, take college courses, or pay for childcare at taxpayer expense, she will be less dependent on her wage-earning partner for

37

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financial security. By providing some income or other resources for caregivers, we might lessen the power and income inequality between caregivers and wage-earners, thereby undermining the hierarchy of wage-earners over caregivers. We could take a step toward valuing caregiving in a way that is commensurate with its actual social value—toward treating caregiving more in keeping with the way we (mostly believe we ought to) treat military service under the status quo: as a worthy social contribution that the market doesn’t reward adequately. This would clearly be an important social improvement. Even so, proponents of gender egalitarianism have good reason to worry about policies like caregiver resource accounts. Such policies effectively subsidize caregivers’ withdrawal from paid work. In our gendered society, this means they effectively subsidize women’s withdrawal from paid work, since gender norms, household economic considerations, and path dependencies will tend to favor women over men taking up facially gender-neutral opportunities to specialize in caregiving. Indeed, the evidence canvass in Chapter 1 suggests that providing income to caregivers reduces women’s participation in paid labor by lessening their incentive to stay in the workplace, or return to it, after a child is born.38 Easing the hierarchy of the gendered division of labor will thus plausibly exacerbate its non-hierarchical aspects, such as presumed caregiver/wage-earner specialization and the gender norms that influence partners’ navigation of presumed specialization. Interventions like caregiver resource accounts, which are supported by Hartley and Watson’s strategy (assuming the argumentative burdens can be met), will bring us closer to a society wherein the status and remuneration of caregivers is elevated to be more commensurate with the actual social value of the work that caregivers do. But against our backdrop of gender norms, such interventions are likely to bring about a further entrenchment of gender specialization. Insofar as we are concerned about the harms I have urged us to recognize, we should be concerned about this likely outcome. By dismantling the hierarchy but not dismantling norms sustaining gendered work specialization, we might remove the most effective inducement to non-compliance with those norms: the costs of compliance in terms of unequal power, status, and security that accrue to caregivers. This is not to say that we should avoid easing caregivers’ vulnerabilities. Rather, we should embrace remedies that ease vulnerability conjoined with remedies to undermine gendered specialization itself. A comprehensive policy to address all the harms of the gendered division of labor should include mechanisms to ease caregivers’ vulnerabilities and mechanisms to induce take-up of caregiving by 38 This parallels the worries about basic income raised in Chapter 1 to illustrate possible policy tradeoffs.

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men. If we rely on the incongruity strategy alone, the latter component of the comprehensive policy remains, as yet, unjustified. Despite its initial appeal, the incongruity strategy is an inadequate approach to defending gender-egalitarian political interventions within the justificatory constraints of political liberalism. Even if the argumentative burdens are met and it is shown that a hierarchical gendered division of labor systematically frustrates citizenship interests in a way that generates political reasons for remediation, the interventions that the incongruity strategy licenses will offer no protection against the harms of a non-hierarchical gendered division of labor. They are likely, in isolation, to exacerbate those harms. Hartley and Watson rightly insist that political liberalism need not recognize and license political response to all gendered harms that comprehensive feminists regard as such.39 But we have good reason to hope for a way to make that framework speak up about the harms of a non-hierarchical gendered division of labor I sketched above, and to license political measures to alleviate those harms. Not least of these reasons is the fact that only by recognizing those harms as politically relevant can the framework avoid sanctioning the kinds of interventions that—taken in isolation—will exacerbate them. Those of us concerned to establish the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions should not yet rest content. Of course, plenty of readers will think that we have no good reason to regard the harms of a non-hierarchical gendered division of labor as politically objectionable—or even as genuine harms. Such critics will think either that the hierarchy exhausts what is (politically) objectionable about the gendered division of labor, or, if not convinced by Hartley and Watson’s public reasons argument, that even the hierarchy is (politically) unobjectionable. I argue in Chapters 6 and 7 that the harms are genuine, that they are injustices, and that they are politically actionable.40 We should be concerned about the hierarchy and about the gendered norms and institutional design that lead to specialization in the first place. We should care about—and politically respond to— both the stacking and the steering. The inadequacy of the incongruity strategy does not undermine the general framework sketched at the beginning of this chapter. Like Hartley and Watson, I am convinced that the ideal of citizenship is the key to unlocking political liberalism’s progressive potential. Where the incongruity strategy

39

Watson and Hartley 2018, 210. More precisely, the harms are actionable because they are problematic by the lights of the very commitments of legitimacy that constrain the conceptions of justice we legitimately may aspire to realize. This means that we will find the tools for resolving the tension between feminism and political liberalism in the very commitments that are thought to make that framework distinctively unfeminist. 40

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goes wrong is in its narrow construal of the interests implied by that ideal. From political liberalism’s normative characterization of citizenship, we can derive a richer conception of citizenship interests. I turn now to the work of expanding on the general framework and developing my positive argument for the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions.

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We have seen that the gendered division of labor is maintained by interactions among three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: First, social institutions like labor markets still presume specialization and therefore make non-specialization a costly option for families; second, gender norms about who is best equipped to do what kind of work still influence the choices families make against this backdrop of presumed specialization; and third, the choices individuals make in interacting with social institutions remain compliant with presumed specialization and gender norms, in large part because noncompliance is so costly. We have seen, too, that gender-egalitarian political interventions could interrupt these mechanisms and undermine the gendered division of labor. Such interventions subsidize non-compliance with presumed breadwinner/ homemaker specialization. They incentivize gender egalitarianism with the objective of inducing individuals to take up that lifestyle in sufficient numbers to overcome the institutional presumption of specialization, and to erode gender norms that sustain compliance with that presumption under the status quo. But in subsidizing gender-egalitarian lifestyles—and thereby making gender specialization costlier than it is under the status quo—these interventions appear to violate a basic liberal requirement for legitimacy: Because we live in a society of deep but reasonable pluralism, we exercise mutual respect by authorizing enactments of democratic political power only when those exercises are defensible within the justificatory community of reasonable citizens. Within the tradition of political liberalism, we have seen, this requirement is embodied by the criterion of reciprocity: “[O]ur exercise of political power is proper only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we would offer for our political actions . . . are sufficient, and we also reasonably think that citizens might also reasonably accept those reasons.”1

1

Rawls 1993, 446–7.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0006

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Because exercises of political power are legitimate only when they can be justified on the basis of reasons that are shareable among reasonable citizens, proponents of gender-egalitarian interventions must offer a justification for subsidizing gender-egalitarian lifestyles that is so shareable. In these final two chapters, I set out an argument for gender-egalitarian interventions that I take to proceed solely by way of reasons that are shareable among reasonable citizens. I argue, further, that the reasons I offer justify those interventions as not only consistent with liberal legitimacy, but also as positively required by it.

6.1 Looking Back, Moving Forward The argument of these final two chapters builds on what came before. First, it builds on the lessons gleaned from the strategies for justifying genderegalitarian interventions that we found unsatisfactory or in violation of the neutrality constraint. A successful justification for gender-egalitarian interventions within the framework of political liberalism cannot proceed from the goodness of gender egalitarianism, because that is a comprehensive value commitment that many citizens reasonably reject. Nor can the case proceed straightforwardly from the claim that gender egalitarianism is costlier than gender inegalitarianism under the status quo. We cannot make every reasonable lifestyle choice equally costly, and the norms and institutional constraints that make egalitarianism relatively costly under the status quo are sustained by individuals’ permissible lifestyle choices, which liberalism is committed to respecting. Nor can the case proceed straightforwardly from the fact that gender inegalitarianism is non-voluntary in virtue of resulting from the unconscious internalization of gender norms. In order to classify gender-inegalitarian choices as non-voluntary in the apparently benign cases, we would need to invoke a standard of voluntariness too demanding to be permissible within political liberalism. Finally, the case cannot invoke rights violations that occur within particular cases of gender specialization. What we want is a systemic diagnosis of the problem with the gendered division of labor that points toward structural interventions to remedy it. Such a diagnosis appears difficult to muster within the constraints imposed by political liberalism. Many have concluded that political liberalism cannot accommodate gender-egalitarian interventions,2 and we have seen that this apparent proscription partly accounts for the traditionally fraught relationship between political liberals and feminists 2 Most notably, Susan Okin. See Okin 1994; 2003; 2005. See also Chambers 2008; Exdell 1994; Hirshman 1994; Yuracko 1995; 2003.

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who seek progressive political remedies for the gendered division of labor and the persistent gendered norms that sustain it. Liberal proponents of genderegalitarian interventions have offered sophisticated arguments in favor of structural intervention, which they believe abide by the justificatory constraint.3 I tried to show in Chapters 3 and 5 that the arguments on offer are unsatisfactory in crucial respects. In Chapter 4, I cleared the way for a positive argument in favor of genderegalitarian interventions by showing that such interventions are not categorically excluded as illegitimate on account of the kind of individual behavior they target. I suggested that the criterion of reciprocity can be regarded as the positive corollary to the neutrality constraint, in that both are derived from interests of citizenship, which are interests we can all be presumed to share. Mutual respect requires that we constrain exercises of political power to those that are mutually justifiable among citizens, and neutrality and the criterion of reciprocity specify the prohibitions and permissions the commitment to mutual justifiability issues: On the basis of citizenship interests, neutrality limits coercive political intervention; on the basis of citizenship interests, reciprocity positively licenses certain coercive political interventions. In these final chapters, I develop the concepts of citizenship and the criterion of reciprocity to offer a novel justification for gender-egalitarian interventions within the justificatory constraints of political liberalism. I argue, further, that, under certain circumstances, the fundamental commitments of political liberalism actually demand gender-egalitarian interventions. The bulk of my argument is given to defending a conditional claim: that if the circumstances I specify obtain, then the just liberal state must respond with gender-egalitarian political interventions. I then argue that these circumstances do obtain in the United States (U.S.) today. Although I do not make the case explicitly, I am convinced that the argument generalizes beyond that context. The U.S. context, then, acts as a case study, and further inquiry will determine how far the conditional argument extends. But so long as the conditional argument itself is sound, gender-egalitarian interventions can, under foreseeable circumstances, be positively required by the most basic normative commitments of political liberalism, and political liberalism can countenance a much more progressively gender-egalitarian political agenda than many liberals and many gender egalitarians have tended to think. The argument proceeds over the course of two chapters, which correspond with two distinct stages in the argument. The first stage, executed in this chapter, is to demonstrate that a reciprocity-abiding argument can justify

3 See, for examples, Baehr 2008; 2013; Brake 2004; 2013; Gheaus 2012; Hartley and Watson 2009; 2010; Laden 2013; Lloyd 1998; Neufeld 2009; Neufeld and Schoelandt 2014; Nussbaum 2000a; Robeyns 2007; Watson 2007.

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certain ways of promoting comprehensively liberal lifestyles, even though neutrality rules out appeal to liberal values themselves—and the goodness of those lifestyles—to justify any special protections for them. As we have seen, a basic commitment of political liberalism is that, while political institutions should be ordered by liberal values, individuals should be substantially free to reject those values within their own lives. To maintain justificatory community with those who do reject them, the state must be neutral between comprehensively liberal lifestyles and comprehensively illiberal lifestyles. Neutrality does not require that social policy impact lifestyles equally or make them equally costly. Rather, it requires that social policy be justified on the basis of reasons that are neutral, that do not invoke comprehensive values: in this case, comprehensively liberal values. Legitimate interventions may have the consequence of subsidizing liberal lifestyles relative to illiberal lifestyles, but for them to have that aim appears illegitimate. I will argue that, contrary to this appearance, the comprehensive liberal value of autonomy has a privileged status that allows for its promotion, as the aim of political intervention, consistent with the neutrality constraint. The privileged status is not derived from any claim that autonomy is intrinsically valuable; rather, under certain circumstances, the promotion of actual comprehensive autonomy is necessary to preserve essential interests of citizenship. Under those circumstances, then, the promotion of comprehensive autonomy can be required by the criterion of reciprocity, and we have a neutral justification for a non-neutral policy aim. The project of this chapter, then, is to develop a reciprocity-abiding justification for privileging comprehensive autonomy, under certain circumstances, even though the value of comprehensive autonomy could not itself legitimately be invoked to justify that privileging. The legitimacy of privileging comprehensive enactments of autonomy, which I defend in this chapter, will be a key premise when I turn, in Chapter 7, to defending a stability argument for gender-egalitarian political interventions. I will argue, essentially, that a society risks instability insofar as it tolerates formidable systemic obstacles to the enactment of genderegalitarian lifestyles. Persistent gender norms and social institutions built upon the presumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization constitute formidable systemic obstacles in the relevant sense. Because there is a citizenship interest in stability, then, there is a further citizenship interest in dismantling such systemic obstacles by enacting gender-egalitarian interventions. Because the circumstances demanding those interventions actually obtain in the U.S. today—because gender norms and gendered institutions do constitute formidable systemic obstacles to the enactment of gender-egalitarian lifestyles—gender-egalitarian interventions are a legitimate and obligatory means of making our society more gender just. 173

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The important role played by the autonomy premise will become clear when the stability argument is set forth, but a few clarifications are worth making in advance. The argument will not rely on the claim that promoting comprehensive autonomy simply entails promoting gender egalitarianism, or that it favors promoting gender egalitarianism as a means of increasing the number of lifestyle options available to citizens. The relationship between gender egalitarianism and autonomy is a subtle one. It leaves room for individuals autonomously to choose gender specialization, and it does not assume that one is more autonomous insofar as one has more numerous affordable lifestyle options. What will be problematic from the perspective of autonomy is the institutionalized presumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization, and that presumption is problematic in large part because of the autonomyinimical assumptions that undergird it. (We can begin to see, though it will become still clearer in due course, why the argument will not support a corresponding requirement that gender inegalitarianism be subsidized should circumstances ever conspire to make it highly costly.) Note that the premise defended in this chapter makes no essential reference to gender egalitarianism or to stability. The goal for now is simply to justify a special status for comprehensive enactments of autonomy, which political liberalism appears to rule out. To begin, I further explore the conception of citizenship that animates political liberalism’s constraints on legitimacy, reviewing and extending the general framework for developing positive arguments for progressive political interventions.

6.2 Citizens and Citizenship We have seen that political liberalism proceeds by way of a political conception of the person as free and equal citizen. This conception of the person gives substance to the neutrality constraint. We cannot legitimately intervene on the basis of reasons that are not shareable. But which reasons are shareable? Since citizenship is a political status we are all presumed to share in common, reasons based on essential interests of citizenship can be taken to be shared. But what is that status, and what are the reason-generating interests it implies? We should distinguish between two senses of the term “citizenship.” In the more familiar sense of citizenship, citizens are actual members of society with certain political entitlements and responsibilities. This sense of citizenship has so far played a less fundamental role in this book; indeed, I have been at pains to distinguish it from citizenship in a second sense, more important for my argument: citizenship as a normative concept, meant to systematize a set of value commitments. As we have seen, in a politically liberal framework, this 174

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second notion of citizenship is not meant to describe actual citizens, as political subjects and agents with comprehensive value commitments and social affiliations and allegiances. It is, rather, a tool for systematizing the constraints on legitimate exercises of political power that such a framework is committed to imposing—the constraints called for by the interests we take to be shared in common among all actual citizens, whether or not those actual citizens identify with those interests.4 Normative citizenship is an idealized conception of the person, the purpose of which is to animate the liberal project of finding fair terms of social cooperation among moral equals and legitimate means by which to pursue those terms given disagreement about what they are. In one way, actual citizenship is conceptually secondary to questions of legitimacy: Who counts as a citizen—which people have basic democratic entitlements and responsibilities—is among the questions that our theories of justice and of legitimacy should inform. In at least many actual cases, it is unjust and illegitimate to exclude cooperating members of society from the benefits of actual citizenship. In this way, we can refer to the concepts of justice and legitimacy—and to the normative ideal of citizenship at their heart—to answer questions about how far the protections of actual citizenship should extend. But in a different way, actual citizenship is conceptually prior to questions of legitimacy: Subject to some constraints and within some domain, coercive political intervention is justified insofar as it is actually approved by the actual citizens who are party to and subjects of that coercion. In a democratic society, after all, a suitably constrained popular decisionmaking process can be legitimacy-conferring.5 The key to understanding why actual citizenship should be conceptually secondary to some questions of legitimacy and conceptually prior to others is this: Normative citizenship sets the very constraints within which popular decision-making is legitimacy-conferring. Notice that some coercive interventions are not reliant for their legitimacy on the actual consent of the governed. Return to our paradigmatic example: Laws necessary to protect basic liberties 4 To recap: This second notion of citizenship, liberalism’s concept of citizenship as political personhood, is normative in the sense of being built upon liberal values. Citizens have “the intellectual and moral powers appropriate to that role” and are “capable also of the political virtues necessary for them to cooperate in maintaining a just political society” (Rawls 1993, xliv). In a Rawlsian framework, citizenship embodies two moral powers—the capacity for a conception of the good and the capacity for a sense of justice—and a higher-order interest in the protection of those powers. The sense of justice is “the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice which characterizes the fair terms of social cooperation.” The conception of the good is “the capacity to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of one’s rational advantage or good” (Rawls 1993, 19). The plausibility of political liberalism’s conception of citizenship depends not on whether it accurately describes us as full persons under our status quo political institutions, but on whether it can provide a plausible and workable basis on which to develop a political conception of justice. 5 For a recent philosophical account of why democratic processes confer authority and legitimacy, see Estlund 2008.

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like freedom of conscience need not be approved by an actual majority in order to be legitimate; indeed, we might legitimately insulate political protections for those liberties from majority rule. This we do on the basis of the normative, idealized conception of political personhood that lies at the heart of liberal theories of legitimacy. In this way, basic considerations of legitimacy, which are determined by interests of normative citizenship, delineate the space within which actual citizens’ actual consent is legitimacy-conferring. As we have seen, normative citizenship informs basic considerations of legitimacy because it gives substance to political liberalism’s criteria of legitimacy. In a free society, actual citizens will reasonably disagree about matters of personal value—about what kinds of lives are good lives and what kinds of values are worth espousing. They will also reasonably disagree about matters of political value—about what kinds of societies are just, and about the conditions under which the state may restrict our personal pursuits for the good of public values. Given this disagreement, a state that acts to promote and preserve justice inevitably promotes a disputed conception of justice and inevitably makes it costlier for some to live out their values than for others to do so. But if in so doing it abides by the neutrality constraint, then this unequal burdening is consistent with mutual respect: with the treatment of all those in our political community—who are, like us, both parties to and subjects of our state’s exercise of power—as part of a justificatory community. Though we may disagree about many things, we show mutual respect by exercising coercive political power only when that exercise is justified on the basis of reasons that we can all recognize as such, because they derive from interests that we share. These shared interests include an interest in finding fair terms of cooperation for a pluralistic democracy, which terms adjudicate our divergent interests fairly. Insofar as we all have an interest in the success of that project, we are taken to share the further interests that the project implies, whether or not we identify with them. The idea of political liberalism, remember, is not to theorize justice and legitimacy while avoiding value commitments altogether; rather, we endeavor to generate a theory based on a minimal set of value commitments: those we should be able to embrace precisely because we want fair terms of cooperation despite our deep and reasonable disagreement. Normative citizenship systematizes those commitments that are implied by the very project of finding such terms of cooperation, by embodying the interests those commitments imply.6 Because we assume that seeking fair

6 Citizenship’s “content is given by certain ideals, principles, and standards, and these norms articulate certain values, in this case political values” (Rawls 1993, 11n). I don’t think political liberals must avoid saying that their minimal value commitments are commitments to true values. But I think there are ways of establishing the fundamentality of the thin values without insisting

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terms of cooperation is not futile, we construe citizens as capable of a sense of justice: of willingly complying with principles of justice. Because we assume that we are seeking terms of cooperation for a diverse society, but one wherein we can generally be held accountable for the values we espouse, we construe citizens as capable of forming and revising a conception of the good. And because we aim for conditions under which a just society can stably persist over time, we attribute to citizens a higher-order interest in protecting these moral powers. The collective democratic decision-making of actual citizens acts within the space carved out by the interests implied by the liberal democratic project itself, conferring legitimacy on political interventions that are neither ruled out nor required by the shared interests of normative citizenship. That such a space must be preserved is implied by the very same starting value commitments that we invoke to constrain the space. That is, the value of actual citizens exercising sovereignty—of their having space within which collectively to set and pursue ends of their choosing—is derived from the same considerations that delineate the space within which they legitimately exercise that sovereignty. In some cases, the chosen ends may be worthy of pursuit only because they are chosen by actual citizens expressing simple preferences through democratic decision-making processes. In other cases, actual citizens are morally bound to consult the interests of normative citizenship, whether or not they are otherwise motivated to do so. The point for now is simply that the idealized interests of normative citizenship both call for some space within which actual citizens can exercise sovereignty and impose the constraints within which they legitimately exercise it.7 Only with respect to gender-egalitarian policy will I be concerned to work out the details of how the interests of normative citizenship impose constraints and demands of legitimacy. But we can consider other cases to illustrate the basic idea. For example, we saw in Chapters 4 and 5 that a fairly robust threshold of social support is required on the basis of citizenship interests; but plausibly, above that threshold, legitimacy demands that the level of support—and perhaps what form it takes—be decided by actual citizens acting through democratic processes. Or consider public education. I take it that universal provision of compulsory primary education is positively required on the basis of citizenship interests, as are some common curricular elements of compulsory education. By the end of this chapter, I will have on their being true. I set these questions aside in this project. See Estlund 2008, especially 57–8 and 61–3, and Raz 1990. 7 Here I am suggesting, without using Rawlsian language, that the values embodied by the normative conception of citizenship should settle the scope of public reason; those values should settle what counts as a constitutional essential or matter of basic justice. See Rawls 1993, 227–30.

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argued that under some circumstances, education aimed at promoting autonomy is among those elements. Other curricular elements are ruled out on grounds of neutrality. And still other common curricular elements are plausibly matters that citizenship interests leave open. In some cases, political interventions that are positively required by the weight of citizenship interests are not subjected to popular decision-making. For example, in the U.S., religious freedom is not treated as an issue to be decided by majority rule. Other interventions positively required by the weight of citizenship interests tend to be treated as if their legitimacy depends upon popular support; they are put on the agenda for a popular vote. In many cases, I think this is a mistake. Protections necessary to secure housing and basic sustenance for all citizens should not be at the discretion of a majority of actual citizens. In other cases, we might have good reason to await democratic approval before implementing protections that citizenship interests demand. These reasons may be strategic or epistemic.8 Interventions required by reciprocity may be highly controversial, as my argument for gender-egalitarian interventions will demonstrate. In such cases, practical, strategic considerations may favor consensus-building. And uncertainty about the demands of citizenship interests may justify deferring to the verdicts rendered by actual citizens in complicated cases. But when strategic or epistemic reasons win the day, we should keep squarely in mind that we are delaying protections called for by the most fundamental commitments of liberalism—just as protections for the basic liberties are called for by fundamental commitments of liberalism—in order to build political consensus or manage uncertainty. This is not to say that we should never do it; rather, it is to say that doing it is a very big deal. In such cases, the legitimacy of the intervention in question does not depend on the outcome of the majoritarian process; rather, citizens are illegitimately failing to approve something that is independently required by the weight of political reasons. In expressing their judgments through democratic decision-making, actual citizens are bound to act on the basis of shared interests of normative citizenship when those interests are decisive. The space within which actual citizens’ verdicts themselves confer legitimacy— the space in which legitimacy depends on actual citizens’ actual assent—is the space of intervention that is neither prohibited by the neutrality constraint nor demanded by the criterion of reciprocity. That is, exercises of political power that are not ruled out by the neutrality constraint nor demanded by reciprocity are consistent with mutual respect among citizens if they are approved by the processes by way of which actual citizens express their

8 On epistemic considerations favoring democracy generally, and on their normative significance, see Estlund 2008. (By “democracy,” Estlund means “the actual collective authorization of laws and policies by the peoples subject to them,” p. 38.).

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sovereignty. But for our purposes, we can focus on exercises of political power that are positively required by the criterion of reciprocity and thus decisively favored by the weight of political reasons: those exercises that are necessary to protect essential interests of citizenship. My argument ultimately will conclude that the interests of normative citizenship—interests that are not reliant on the endorsement of actual citizens to confer legitimacy—decisively favor interventions to subsidize gender egalitarianism. Further conclusions in democratic theory will be needed to discern exactly where this leaves us, practically speaking: whether the state should immediately enact the interventions with or without the approval of actual citizens, or whether we should await the approval of actual citizens, which approval those citizens are bound by citizenship interests to provide. Just as it is illegitimate to fail to enact protections for religious liberties when circumstances are such that the protections are necessary to secure basic interests of citizenship, so too under certain circumstances is it illegitimate to fail to enact interventions to erode obstacles to gender-egalitarian lifestyles.9 In both cases, the criterion of reciprocity requires intervention as a condition of legitimacy. Why relativize these claims to circumstances? Citizenship interests can be in tension with one another: For example, there’s a standing citizenship interest in limiting state intrusion, and that interest will be in tension with every citizenship interest that tells in favor of coercive intervention—even those necessary to protect basic liberties.10 To determine which political reasons prevail, and which interventions are legitimate means of preserving or promoting which interests, we will have to weigh the relative importance of competing interests. This weighting will be sensitive to circumstances, for reasons that emerged in Chapter 4: We have political reasons to avoid restricting the space for citizens to act out their conceptions of the good, but those reasons weigh relatively less heavily when preserving that space means frustrating other essential interests of citizenship or leaving more important interests unprotected. Consider an example. Allowing parents to opt their children out of compulsory public schooling might protect the exercise of their conception of

9 This does not entail that the state itself is illegitimate. An illegitimate act or omission does not imply that the political state is illegitimate or that its mandates do not generate moral duties to comply; these are further questions. 10 On the need to balance competing political values in particular cases of public reason, see Rawls 1993, 243. If the interventions are implemented without the actual consent of citizens expressed through democratic processes, then interests in favor of intervention will also conflict with the standing citizenship interest in deferring to the collective deliberative decision-making of actual citizens.

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the good—namely, the importance of their sharing their values with their children.11 But that interest will weigh relatively less heavily insofar as it comes at a cost to other essential interests of citizenship, like the children’s interest in developing their own conceptions of the good. The extent to which these interests are in tension will depend on other contingent facts about the society in question. In culturally integrated societies where children from different backgrounds interact with one another outside of school, for example, those children may enjoy adequate opportunities to develop their own conceptions of the good without the integration that—at its best—compulsory public schooling can provide. Or consider the positive interventions required to ensure effective use of the basic liberties. When basic liberties are threatened, political reasons against protective intervention—reasons such as the concern that intervention might itself restrict liberty to some degree—are overridden by the stronger citizenship interest in the exercise of the liberties most basic to citizenship, within the range of exercise most crucially implicated in the enactment of citizenship. Why must we ensure for all citizens adequate material means to make effective use of the political liberties? Why must we, for example, ensure that our economic institutions provide enough material welfare for the least advantaged effectively to exercise their political liberties? Because the political reasons in favor of that provision are sufficiently weighty to override the political reasons that disfavor the enactments of political power it requires. But how the weighting works out with respect to any particular political intervention will depend on whether circumstances are such that the intervention in question is necessary to secure the effective use of basic liberties. A society with a universal guarantee of work to those who want it and strong protections for workers may be one that requires a less active tax-and-transfer system. However the weightings of citizenship interests are resolved, those interests can generate reciprocity-abiding arguments for coercive political interventions, because those interests generate reasons that we can all recognize as such, insofar as we endorse the project of finding mutually justifiable terms of cooperation in the first place. Because of the strong citizenship interest in maintaining adequate space free from state intrusion to pursue our own conceptions of the good, the neutrality constraint might be thought of as issuing a general presumption against state intrusion. But omissions of political power will be unacceptable whenever strong political reasons favor intrusion

11 Other interests may also be relevant here, of both parents and children. I take it that the intergenerational sharing of values as an integral component of conceptions of the good is the most straightforward political interest. See Brighouse and Swift 2016.

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and are not overridden by any political reasons disfavoring it. When this occurs, the weight of citizenship interests decisively favors intervention. Because citizenship interests not only rule out interventions that citizens cannot accept but also require interventions whose omission citizens cannot accept, citizenship constitutes a powerful theoretical resource for grounding progressive political interventions. If poverty or inequality threatens the effective exercise of political liberties, then citizenship interests demand that this be remedied. If progressive taxation policies are an essential means of securing adequate material wellbeing for the exercise of the political liberties—and if such policies are the means least inimical to other interests of citizenship—then citizenship interests demand that the state enact those policies. It is illegitimate, by the lights of the fundamental normative principle of political liberalism, for the state to abstain from those exercises of political power. In Chapter 5, I outlined a general strategy for grounding progressive political interventions from within the justificatory constraints of political liberalism. We can see better now how all the positive requirements for a just liberal state can be understood within that framework: Based on political liberalism’s conception of citizenship, we can attribute to citizens certain fundamental interests. When those interests are jeopardized and can be protected without jeopardizing other stronger interests of citizenship, exercises of political power to protect the interests in question are interventions whose omission citizens cannot accept. This strategy generates arguments for progressive political interventions from essential features of political liberalism: the criterion of reciprocity and the conception of citizenship that animates it. In the remainder of this chapter and Chapter 7, I argue that the political conception of citizenship implies a much richer set of citizenship interests than political liberals have tended to acknowledge. When social circumstances render those interests salient, they can constitute decisive political reasons for progressive interventions that would, under other circumstances, be unjustified. While these interventions might tend generally to be illegitimate by the lights of the criterion of reciprocity, their omission can become illegitimate under the relevant circumstances. Part of the appeal of this strategy, I suggest, is that although it proceeds without invoking comprehensive feminist values, the citizenship interests that call for gender-egalitarian interventions become salient in precisely those social circumstances under which feminists too should find gendered labor allocations morally objectionable. Although the argument is political rather than comprehensively feminist, we will see that this coincidence is no accident. Rather than developing an argument for the injustice of the gendered division of labor and then arguing that its premises can be recognized as reasons-giving compliant with the constraint of neutrality, then, I begin 181

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with the interests of citizenship itself. In due course, I will argue that fundamental interests of citizenship favor subsidies for gender-egalitarian lifestyles. We have seen that the citizenship interest in protecting the basic liberties justifies different interventions depending on the circumstances. So too will the citizenship interests I invoke favor different policies to promote gender egalitarianism depending on the circumstances—on what is required to protect the interests in question, and what countervailing political reasons are salient. My burdens, then, are to argue that political reasons favor genderegalitarian interventions and that those reasons are weighty enough to call for robust protections under a wide range of foreseeable social circumstances, just as robust protection for basic liberties are justified under a wide range of foreseeable social circumstances. If the argument is successful, then genderegalitarian interventions are positively required by the criterion of reciprocity, and their omission is politically illegitimate. In the remainder of this chapter, I defend a crucial premise in that argument, concerning the comprehensive liberal value of autonomy.

6.3 Comprehensive Values in a Politically Liberal Society We have seen that a basic commitment of political liberalism is that, while political institutions should be ordered by liberal values, individuals should be substantially free to reject those values within their own lives. Recall the distinction between political versions of liberal values, which can be used as reasons to justify political intervention, and comprehensive versions, which cannot.12 The political versions of values are those implied by the interests of citizenship. To illustrate, consider autonomy. Political autonomy includes the sort of independence necessary to exercise the moral powers of citizenship. Comprehensive autonomy involves actually critically reflecting on and evaluating our ends and the values we espouse.13 The value of political autonomy is a fundamental commitment of political liberalism because legal independence and political enfranchisement are valuable from the perspective of citizenship, independently of any particular conception of the good. But the value of comprehensive autonomy apparently cannot be affirmed from the 12 See Rawls 1993, 194, where he explains how ideas of the good can legitimately play a role in justifying exercises of state power. He says, for example, that political values of liberalism must “belong to a reasonable political conception of justice for a constitutional regime.” 13 See Rawls 1993, xlii–xliii for further discussion of the difference between political and comprehensive autonomy. Nussbaum characterizes political autonomy as “the idea that each citizen as citizen is an equal chooser of ends, and that none should be debarred by the luck of race or sex or class from the exercise of political judgment” (Nussbaum 1999b, 110). Autonomy is the subject of a huge body of literature that I (safely, I think) set aside here. For a sense of the relevant landscape, see Christman 2014; Christman and Anderson 2009.

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perspective of citizenship. Many may reject the value of this kind of critical reflection, and engagement in it seems not to be implied by the citizenship interest in having the capacity for autonomous citizenship. While the state may intervene on the basis of political autonomy—by prohibiting me from selling myself into slavery, say—it may not intervene on the basis of comprehensive autonomy—for example, by requiring or encouraging me critically to evaluate my deepest ends before embracing a spiritual affiliation. That is to say, in political liberalism, political inducements or encouragements cannot be justified on the basis of comprehensive autonomy. In this, political liberalism is distinct from comprehensive liberalism. Consider the comprehensive liberalism of Joseph Raz. For Raz, in liberal societies,14 comprehensively autonomous lives are more reliably good than comprehensively non-autonomous lives, and the value of that autonomy can straightforwardly be invoked to justify political intervention. This does not mean that it is legitimate or even possible to make people autonomous.15 But it means that the value of comprehensive autonomy can be invoked legitimately as justification for social policy. Within political liberalism, by contrast, the neutrality constraint forbids invoking the value of comprehensive autonomy as justification for the exercise of political power. For example, we cannot justify an autonomy-promoting public schooling curriculum by invoking the relative value of autonomous over non-autonomous lives. It does not follow, however, that within political liberalism no legitimate exercise of political power may have the effect or even the aim of promoting comprehensive autonomy. I have emphasized already that legitimacy does not depend on the consequences of particular exercises of political power. Here I add that it does not depend even on what those exercises principally aim to do. The criterion of reciprocity requires that our reasons for intervention be mutually acceptable. Legitimacy therefore depends only on the justification for those exercises. If we have sufficient political reason to justify promoting comprehensive values, interventions to promote those values could be legitimate. Suppose (probably counterfactually) that the monogamous family were essential to children’s development of the moral powers of citizenship. In this

14 Raz 1986. It is unclear whether Raz regards autonomy as transcendentally valuable, such that one cannot lead a fully good life without it in any sort of society, or merely contextually valuable, such that it is of central value only in some social contexts. See McCabe 2001. I should note that Raz uses the term “coercion” differently than I do. I follow Rawls in regarding coercion as including any use of political power: “Political power is always coercive power applied by the state and its apparatus of enforcement” (Rawls 2001, 40; 1993, 68). Raz, in contrast, regards “coercion” as an evaluatively laden term, where an act is coercive only if it is prima facie wrong (Raz 1986, 148–50). This terminological difference doesn’t matter for my purposes. The substantive question is: What kinds of considerations can justify exercises of political power? I, but not Raz, regard this as synonymous with: What kinds of considerations can justify exercises of coercive political power? 15 See, for example, Raz 1986, 407–8.

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case, a politically liberal regime might legitimately incentivize monogamy. The state could not invoke the value of monogamy itself to justify such incentives, but it could invoke values implied by interests of citizenship—in this case, the development of moral powers. More generally, if we can show that citizenship interests favor certain interventions, those interventions can be compliant with the neutrality constraint—indeed, they can be required by the criterion of reciprocity—even if the promotion of comprehensive values like the value of monogamy figures among their aims. In the rest of this chapter, I offer a political argument for the promotion of comprehensive autonomy. That is, I argue, from within political liberalism, that autonomy should receive special protections that amount, under certain circumstances, to subsidies for the actual enactment of lifestyles that celebrate and enact comprehensive autonomy. No conclusions about gender egalitarianism in particular will be defended in this chapter. Rather, the autonomyprotection premise defended here will then be used in Chapter 7 to defend a further argument—a stability argument—for the legitimacy of interventions to subsidize gender egalitarianism. While I focus here on the politically liberal case for the conclusion that subsidies for comprehensive autonomy can be legitimate, the legitimacy of the kinds of subsidies in question is often thought to be a verdict more comfortably accommodated by comprehensive liberalism. Accordingly, we might think of this as an argument for a practical convergence of the two versions of liberalism in the face of divergence in the kinds of political justification the two versions are willing to countenance. In the final section of this chapter, then, I consider whether this practical convergence is a mark against political liberalism as I construe it. Recall that citizens are characterized as possessing a conception of the good, or a capacity to form, reflect on, and revise their philosophical, religious, or moral outlook on life. Citizens also have a higher-order interest in protecting that capacity, which includes an interest in preserving conditions under which they can revise their conception of the good. In a nutshell, the argument for the special status of comprehensive autonomy unfolds as follows: Protecting the capacity for revising one’s conception of the good requires ensuring the capacity for comprehensively autonomous reflection and action. If a person is immersed in a lifestyle that discourages developing that capacity, then we can have assurance that she can develop that capacity only if role models of comprehensive autonomy are visible to her. It follows that citizens have an interest in ensuring that lifestyles enacting comprehensive autonomy be taken up sufficiently broadly that autonomy remain accessibly role modeled, even to those who do not value it. If broad enactment of comprehensively autonomous lifestyles does not obtain as a matter of course, then a citizenship interest favors subsidizing those lifestyles. 184

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First, consider why protecting the capacity for revising one’s conception of the good requires ensuring the capacity for autonomous reflection and action. Imagine that Joan, who was raised in a very insular religious community, slowly comes to realize that she no longer shares many of the doctrinal commitments of that community. Perhaps she comes to question her religion’s condemnation of homosexuality. She decides that she cannot participate in the social, cultural, or spiritual components of her faith while rejecting this doctrinal conviction. Raised and educated in this community, she realizes that her crisis of faith now threatens alienation from many of her most deeply valued social networks as well as the many moral and political convictions previously grounded in her spiritual commitments. Joan reflects on whether she will remain in the community or defect. Her deliberation is an exercise of autonomy: In critically examining her deepest ends and values, Joan conceives of herself as an autonomous agent with some capacity for choosing how to live her life. Perhaps she does not endorse the exercise of autonomy as intrinsically valuable. She never considers reflecting on other ends from a critical distance or incorporating this reflection itself into her value system. Indeed, the religious community in which she was raised celebrates deep spiritual heteronomy, and Joan retains a commitment to religious devotion on the basis of faith alone, to accepting rather than questioning, to inheriting values rather than choosing them. She just finds that the values she inherited are not values that she can live well by, and hopes to join a different religious community more closely aligned with her doctrinal convictions. Even without valuing comprehensive autonomy, Joan enacts it in reflecting on her values. This reflection amounts to a critical distancing of herself from her affiliations. It does not presume that she can or should become an “unencumbered self,” choosing how to live based purely on rational deliberation over personal preferences, as if from a menu of options.16 But it does presume that she can exercise reflection and judgment based on considerations that she herself endorses. Comprehensive autonomy is not the capacity “to detach ourselves from all our ends,” but to ask “about the value of any particular end with which we currently identify and . . . give a thoughtful answer to what we ask.”17 As Raz puts it, “significantly autonomous agents are part creators of their own moral world.”18 Even within a narrow range of possibilities, and even if only temporarily, Joan’s reflection on her conception of the good requires that she be capable of autonomy—of partly creating her own moral world—because her reflection just is an exercise of autonomy.

16 17

For elaboration on the notion of “encumbered selves,” see Sandel 1984. 18 Callan 1997, 54. Raz 1986, 154.

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Citizenship interests favor protecting the moral powers of citizenship, including the capacity to reflect on and revise our conceptions of the good. For that capacity, we must also have the capacity for comprehensive autonomy. We may decline ever to reflect on our conceptions of the good, but because there is a citizenship interest in the preservation of social circumstances under which we can do so, there is a derivative citizenship interest in preserving circumstances under which we can exercise comprehensive autonomy. Joan may never come to value autonomy as a mode of life involving critical reflection on her choices and values: She may not be someone who continues partly to create her own world, or who values doing so. But Joan is presumed to share the citizenship interest in protecting her moral capacity to reflect on and revise her conception of the good. This interest generates a derivative interest in preserving conditions under which she can come to reflect autonomously, even though she is steeped in a lifestyle that eschews its value. This citizenship interest can be fully explained without invoking the value of comprehensive autonomy itself. Whereas comprehensive liberalism begins with the conviction that comprehensive autonomy is valuable as such, I begin, instead, with the conviction that an enactment of comprehensive autonomy must be within the reach of any particular person, because being able to reflect comprehensively autonomously is necessary to secure that person’s capacity to revise her conception of the good, should she choose to do so. The second premise of the argument asserts a role-modeling requirement: We can be assured that any particular (autonomy-eschewing) citizen can reliably attain the capacity for comprehensive autonomy only if it is role modeled to her. It follows that, in order to ensure that individuals can engage in the exercise of autonomy necessary to reflect on their conceptions of the good, comprehensive autonomy must be sufficiently broadly practiced throughout society to meet this role-modeling requirement. But why think the role-modeling requirement is true? Recall that political liberalism is committed to protecting individuals’ ability to reject comprehensive autonomy—to deem it dis-valuable and to avoid enactments of it when possible. Many do so, and many seek like-minded communities in which to raise their children. We might imagine that Joan’s family and community were like this. They rejected mainstream culture’s valorization of the individual over the collective, of independence over mutual interdependence, of autonomous reason over faith. Citizenship interests demand that we protect children’s capacity to form and revise a conception of the good, and thus their capacity for comprehensively autonomous thought and action. But if the children of Joan’s community are steeped in a value system that discourages those attributes and judges them to be disvaluable, then ensuring those children’s mere capacity for autonomy requires that they have access to visible enactments of comprehensive autonomy 186

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outside of their community. Some among us may be able to become part creators of their own moral worlds without seeing anyone around them doing it. But we must protect the moral powers even for those of us who are not so morally powerful, and assurance of that demands that the rolemodeling condition be met. Arguably, assurance of the capacity for any set of cognitive and behavioral practices requires practitioners to serve as role models. This fact generates the citizenship interest in the case of autonomy only because access to that capacity is essential for the protection of a moral power of citizenship. In a liberal society, we must preserve citizens’ freedoms to reject comprehensive autonomy, to live in community with those who share their values, and to raise their children (to some extent) to share their values. Because we cannot legitimately prevent children from being raised in insular communities that reject comprehensive autonomy, and because we nonetheless must protect those children’s capacity to reflect on their conceptions of the good should they choose to do so, we must preserve prospective citizens’ capacity for comprehensive autonomy by ensuring access to role models who are visibly enacting comprehensive autonomy. This is not an issue only for insular communities of religious adherents who respect the political values of liberalism like free and equal citizenship but who affirm illiberal comprehensive values. Mainstream culture can itself have a homogenizing effect. We must ensure that Joan and those like her have exposure to enactments of comprehensive autonomy in order to protect their capacity to revise their conceptions of the good, and we must also ensure that those who share the values of the vast majority of society have exposure to such enactments to protect their capacity to revise the conception of the good they see mirrored all around them—to defect from mainstream culture in favor of a different lifestyle and set of values. In both cases, we must ensure the capacity to exercise comprehensive autonomy by ensuring that enactments of it remain in broad social circulation.19 The breadth of social circulation matters because effective role modeling requires more than that practitioners of comprehensive autonomy exist. Presumably, it also has a distributional component; if all the role models are distributed in such a way that those who don’t value comprehensive autonomy have no interactions with them, then

19 Clare Chambers distinguishes first-order autonomy, which “concerns the attitude one has to the rules and norms that are part of life,” from second-order autonomy, which “concerns the way that one comes to lead a particular way of life writ large” (2008, 160). As I understand the distinction, both of these orders of autonomy correspond to different parts of comprehensive autonomy, as Rawls described it. As such, it seems to me that the role-modeling requirement as a condition for protecting citizens’ capacities to revise their conceptions of the good applies to both orders of autonomy, on Chambers’s construal of them.

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the role-modeling condition necessary for the protection of the moral powers is not met.20 Reflecting on and revising one’s conception of the good require that one have the capacity to judge which of the values she sees reflected around her are worthy and which are unworthy of her own endorsement and allegiance. It is this capacity that I claim, in order reliably to be realized, depends on visible access to role models of comprehensive autonomy. Considerations of armchair sociology suggest that, in societies ordered by liberal political values, a critical mass of individuals will come to live out comprehensively autonomous lifestyles even without any additional nudges to do so. Because social institutions and the political principles that regulate them play a crucial role in influencing citizens’ value formation, the political values that order a society’s institutions provide some indication as to the comprehensive values individuals will come to affirm. Liberal political institutions affirm and recognize the political value of autonomy in many ways: Citizens are systematically taught their rights and duties as citizens so that they are capable of giving autonomous support to just political institutions. They are educated for the skills and knowledge necessary to exercise their political autonomy, should they choose to do so. They learn that they have certain basic liberties, that they are entitled to protections for those liberties and to the basic material necessities for their effective exercise, and that protections for those liberties are enshrined in law.21 Because of the socializing influence of political institutions in a democracy, we can reasonably expect a society that values and protects political enactments of autonomy to be one in which many citizens come to value and enact comprehensive autonomy as well. If this is right, then meeting the role-modeling requirement may require no special protection or subsidy for comprehensively autonomous lifestyles. But if lifestyles that manifest comprehensive autonomy are not taken up enough to maintain the broad visibility of comprehensive autonomy enactments, then the citizenship interest I have been arguing for supports positively incentivizing those lifestyles. Such incentives may have consequences that some individuals despise, but the justification for the incentives is one that complies with the neutrality constraint and one that positively calls for 20 Effective role modeling might also have an identification component: that the role models be sufficiently like me along relevant dimensions—race, class, or sex, for example—that I am able to envision myself doing as they do. Note that I don’t defend access to role models as a sufficient condition for assuring the capacity to revise one’s conception of the good; only as a necessary condition. 21 Education of all citizens to understand their citizenship and the rights and opportunities it demands is a requirement of stability. If society failed to educate citizens in this way, then it could not be relied upon to persist stably across time. See Rawls 1993, 142. I will say a good deal more about stability in Chapter 7.

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intervention by the lights of reciprocity. Unlike the case we might give from within a comprehensively liberal conception of the good, this argument for subsidizing comprehensive autonomy does not invoke the liberal value of autonomy itself; rather, it rests on the political value, derived from citizenship interests, of preserving the capacity to revise one’s conception of the good. Some might worry that this argument proves too much. Assume that very few individuals choose to enact comprehensively autonomous lifestyles and that, despite political interventions to incentivize those lifestyles, they remain insufficiently widely practiced to be adequately role modeled. Under these circumstances, does the citizenship interest invoked here legitimize the use of political power to force individuals to enact comprehensively autonomous lifestyles? Surely this would be a conclusion political liberals must reject, along with the argument alleged to imply it. Fortunately, my argument avoids this implication. As we have seen, citizenship interests will often be in tension with one another. If successful, my argument shows that a political reason favors promoting comprehensive autonomy when doing so is necessary to preserve the accessibility of autonomy, but there are countervailing citizenship interests to which we must attend in determining which particular political interventions are justified, all-things-considered, in our circumstances. One countervailing interest of citizenship is the interest in limiting political intrusion to ensure that individuals have ample space within which to pursue their conceptions of the good. This interest in limiting governmental intrusion weighs against enactments of political power that are favored as means to ensuring the development and exercise of the moral powers. We have seen that, to determine the legitimacy of interventions all-thingsconsidered, the various interests of citizenship must be balanced. Regarding political interventions to promote comprehensive autonomy, we can discern in broad outline how the weighting would go: Citizenship interests would not demand unencumbered access to autonomy if that access required the state to mandate the practice of comprehensively autonomous lifestyles. In that case, protecting the capacity to revise a conception of the good comes at too great a cost in terms of individuals’ prerogative to practice whatever conception they happen to hold. But citizens’ interest in protecting the capacity to revise a conception of the good is strong enough to overcome their interest in avoiding political intrusion that merely incentivizes liberal lifestyles. For example, the balance of citizenship interests may tell in favor of compulsory public education curricula that equip students with the skills and dispositions associated with comprehensive autonomy. Certainly, such compulsory curricula are disfavored by some political reasons—namely, those derived from the citizenship interest in preserving space for the intergenerational sharing of values that is such an important component of many 189

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reasonable conceptions of the good. Compulsory education for autonomy will likely involve exposing students to social, cultural, and religious diversity, which in turn will likely raise the incidence of defection from certain traditional or separatist ways of life. The fact that compulsory curricula frustrate this citizenship interest matters, but in this case, the reasons the interest generates are decisively outweighed by the countervailing citizenship interest in protecting the capacity for a conception of the good by ensuring adequate autonomy enactments circulating throughout society. Autonomy education enables us to ensure adequate autonomy enactments with only minimal frustration to other citizenship interests, because it leaves plenty of space for parents to share their values with their children. But the balance of citizenship reasons will tell against other sorts of interventions that might promote adequate autonomy enactments—for example, mandatory waiting periods of critical reflection before joining a religious organization. By promoting certain types of lifestyles for strategic purposes approved by political liberalism while leaving ample space for citizens to reject those lifestyles and opt for alternatives instead, the state can protect a citizenship interest without incurring too great a cost as measured by other citizenship interests. Because the balance of citizenship interests would lead citizens to reject interventions that legally compel the enactment of comprehensive autonomy, the neutrality constraint deems those interventions illegitimate. But under circumstances in which comprehensive autonomy is insufficiently enacted to be visibly modeled, citizenship interests positively favor interventions that incentivize its enactment. When those interventions can be effective without resorting to legal compulsion, they are called for by the criterion of reciprocity. While the citizenship interest in protecting the capacity to revise one’s conception of the good can justify interventions to subsidize comprehensively autonomous lifestyles, other citizenship interests block the extension of this argument to overly forceful interventions. The argument does not prove too much.

6.4 Citizenship Interests and Hypothetical Consent In a politically liberal society, broad enactment of comprehensive autonomy is likely to obtain as a matter of course; but if it does not, then interventions to promote it are legitimate, indeed required. In Chapter 7, I explore the implications of this fact for assessing the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions. In so doing, I consider an objection that is likely already to be on many readers’ minds: As the political permissions issued by political liberalism begin to converge with those thought to be more typical of comprehensive liberalism—as political liberalism begins to look more comprehensive 190

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with respect to its treatment of autonomy, for example—does it also forfeit the theoretical and practical advantages it once looked to have? Political liberalism is supposed to support mutual respect by way of preserving justificatory community among diverse citizens. Can it still achieve this aim once its practical implications begin to converge with those of comprehensive liberalism, which does not aspire for neutrality—even justificatory neutrality— toward non-liberal conceptions of the good? In Chapter 7, I defend the permissibility of promoting a set of values that looks initially to be even more at odds with liberal neutrality than the circumscribed promotion of comprehensive autonomy I just defended.22 As such, the worry about whether—on my rendering of it—political liberalism retains its practical and theoretical advantages over comprehensive liberalism has not yet become as acute as it will be for my argument. To give this objection a full and fair hearing, then, I delay part of my response until Chapter 7. Still, a preview of my response—and in particular, a discussion of where I take political liberalism’s advantages to lie—will come in handy now. My response, essentially, is to insist that it really is justificatory neutrality that secures mutual respect. Sometimes, as in the case of gender egalitarianism, justificatory neutrality approves interventions that will strike some as far too friendly to progressivism. In other cases, justificatory neutrality will approve interventions that progressives despise: I earlier offered the example of circumstances under which monogamy promotion might be a legitimate aim of the state. The difficulty of ideological diversity is precisely that actual citizens endorse divergent social ends. A version of neutrality that aims to preserve mutual respect in a society of divergent ends cannot apply to the ends themselves; it must instead apply to the justification we offer for our pursuit of them. Justificatory neutrality remains well worth aspiring to, though its appeal does not lie where we might have thought. In particular, we might have thought that the appeal of political liberalism lies in its use of the hypothetical consent of citizens: By conditioning legitimacy on what citizens would agree to or insist upon under the right circumstances, we tie the state’s authority to citizens’ free and reasoned acceptance, rather than to a set of comprehensive liberal values that many actual citizens reasonably reject. We condition the state’s pursuit of any ends on citizens’ acceptance of those ends and our means of pursuing them. This is what actual democratic decision-making processes aim to do. Roughly, the outputs of such processes are legitimately binding because they are the product, in some sense, of our collective consent. But in the case of the protections

22 I argue elsewhere that political liberalism has even more robust demands regarding autonomy than those defended here. See Schouten 2018. The less ambitious argument developed here suffices for my purposes in this book.

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justified straightforwardly on the basis of citizenship interests, consent does not play this role. Indeed, in idealizing normative citizenship so thoroughly, I’ve severed citizenship interests completely from actual citizens’ actual consent. This raises two worries, both of which get to the heart of the worries about convergence gestured to above. The first worry is that in idealizing citizenship so thoroughly, I forfeit political liberalism’s apparent advantage over comprehensive liberalism with respect to stability, or the capacity of the just political order to retain the reasoned consent of citizens over time. I postpone addressing this worry until Chapter 7. The second worry concerns the normative force of citizenship interests: If citizenship interests are divorced so completely from the actual consent of actual citizens, what normative, legitimizing force can they have? Consider a dilemma posed by David Enoch in raising questions about the normative significance of hypothetical as opposed to actual consent: Either hypothetical consent is normatively significant for will-based reasons—because it shows that the relevant agent’s will is engaged in the right way in offering consent; or it is normatively significant for reason-based reasons—because it shows that the relevant agent has the right kind of reasons for offering consent.23 A willbased explanation for the normative importance of hypothetical consent is subject to an objection: Without actual consent, the relevant exercise of will— the exercise of will that changes the landscape of moral prohibitions and permissions when we actually consent, say, to lending someone some piece of our property—is absent. Unlike actual consent, hypothetical consent just doesn’t show that our will is engaged in the relevant sort of way.24 But suppose we opt instead for the second horn of the dilemma. If hypothetical consent is alleged to be relevant for reasons-based reasons, then the hypothetical consent itself seems to fall out of the normative picture entirely; the reasons are what, at bottom, do all the normative work. So to show that hypothetical consent actually matters normatively speaking, we must show either that it involves the will in a way that matters normatively, or that the hypothetical consent itself does some normative work despite bypassing the will.25 In itself, this is no problem for me, because I quite clearly embrace the second horn of the dilemma and the implication the dilemma assigns to it. The hypothetical consent (or insistence) of citizens is not what secures a consideration’s political reason-giving status; rather, it is the citizenship 23 Enoch 2017, 13. Enoch adapts Waldron’s distinction between will-based consent theories and reason-based consent theories. See Waldron 1987. 24 Compare Dworkin’s much discussed argument that hypothetical contracts “do not supply an independent argument for the fairness of enforcing their terms” and are in that sense “no contract at all” (Dworkin 1975, 17–18). For Rawls’s response, see Rawls 2001, 17. 25 Enoch argues that in some cases, hypothetical consent is normatively relevant, but his vindication does not seem to include the cases relevant to us, of consent to political intervention.

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interests on which that consent (or insistence) is based. The normative concept of citizenship is simply a tool for systematizing the interests and values that are implied by the project of finding just terms of social cooperation—and legitimacy principles for the pursuit of justice—within a society characterized by profound disagreement. It is a construct to represent shared interests. We do not appeal to some deep commitment or higher-order desire of actual citizens to prioritize interests of citizenship.26 Citizenship interests matter, quite simply, because they are the interests that we share—not because we all endorse them, but because they are implied by our shared project of pursuing justice and legitimacy despite inevitable and reasonable disagreement among us. That is the source of their normative force. The interests matter, whether or not we recognize them as our interests, because they are implied by a project that all reasonable citizens should regard as reasons-generating. One of those interests is the very interest with which Enoch is concerned in his discussion of hypothetical consent in the political context: sovereignty, the political manifestation of the will-based reasons at stake in the first horn of the dilemma. Hypothetical consent to political intervention cannot be normatively important on the grounds of sovereignty, Enoch argues, because the value of sovereignty is the value of actually having one’s own actual say, and this value is decidedly not preserved by way of deference to some hypothetical preferences. This challenge for the significance of hypothetical consent in the political context seems more worrisome still for the account of citizenship interests I’ve put forth. If hypothetical consent cannot secure sovereignty, then certainly sovereignty is not secured by an account of legitimacy that licenses intervention on the basis of reasons that do not even purport to depend for their status as reasons upon citizens’ consent, even their hypothetical consent. In fact, one of the advantages of political liberalism over comprehensive liberalism—even if the two frameworks converge on a great many of their practical upshots concerning the legitimacy of political interventions—is that political liberalism prizes sovereignty in the right way. Recall that citizenship interests, which are not based in hypothetical or actual consent, set the parameters within which actual consent is authoritative. Within those parameters, political liberalism defers to actual citizens’ sovereignty, both politically and personally. Politically, it carves out a space for collective democratic deliberative ends-setting and decision-making. More distinctive of political liberalism it its principled deference to actual citizens’ personal sovereignty: its strong and principled presumption against burdening actual citizens’ pursuit of their own conceptions of the good. This principled presumption is itself an 26 In attributing to citizens a sense of justice, we do attribute to them a capacity to comply with the demands of such interests.

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implication of our shared interest in preserving justificatory community by relying only on considerations that are derived from the shared end of arranging a diverse society in a way that deals fairly with the various divergent ends its free and equal citizens pursue. I noted earlier that political liberalism does not aspire to build a theory of justice and legitimacy that is value free. In the social contract tradition of Rawls as well as Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, I think justice and legitimacy depend irreducibly on moral commitments. What distinguishes political liberalism is its aspiration to build a theory atop a set of values that we all can as equal citizens recognize as reasons-giving, whatever else divides us, and without privileging any comprehensive conception of the good. These are the values implied by the project itself. If the principal argument of this book is sound, then in an important sense, those values are less thin than they are generally taken to be: The thin values on which political liberalism rests imply more robust protections than political liberals and their opponents have tended to attribute to it. For this reason, it is a framework that defers less to personal sovereignty than many might have hoped. The fact that the domain of deference to sovereignty must be constrained is nothing new: Liberals have long recognized, for example, that basic liberties must be protected, even if actual citizens prefer individually to subordinate them, and even if those citizens decide collectively through majoritarian processes to enact policy that violates them. Preferences and decisions that are incompatible with the protection of basic liberties are not authoritative, even if they reflect the sovereignty of actual citizens, individually or collectively. Still, some will think that the extent of the constraints on sovereignty I argue for counts against political liberalism as I understand it. I delay addressing that objection head-on until we can gauge its full force. For now, I want only to insist that the constraints are principled. My understanding of political liberalism forfeits any recourse to the normative importance of hypothetical consent as such to justify limiting actual citizens’ personal or political sovereignty. But as Enoch points out, hypothetical consent as such is (often) not a satisfactory basis on which to justify political intrusion into citizens’ lives anyway: The thought . . . that in a real-life political disagreement . . . you can coerce me, insisting that there’s really no problem with my liberty (or autonomy or some such) because the policy you’re pushing down my throat is one that is approved of by my own deeper commitments, or one that I would accept under suitably described hypothetical conditions—that thought just seems entirely ludicrous. Perhaps it’s not quite as ludicrous as the thought that hypothetical consent suffices for the permissibility of sex, but it’s close. I am willing to concede that if a political arrangement was in line with everyone’s deep commitments, that would have counted in favor of it; but still, a dictatorship that governs in a way that jibes well with all the governed’s deep commitments but in which the

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If this is right,28 then political liberalism as I construe it forfeits little in idealizing the concept of citizenship to such a point that it purports to represent not even hypothetical consent. But in the place of hypothetical consent, political liberalism offers a principled and plausible justification for deferring to sovereignty within sovereignty’s authoritative domain, and a principled and plausible justification for the constraints that it imposes on that domain. Moreover, these justifications are unified: Both the protection of the domain and the constraints imposed on it rest on considerations implied by the shared interests of citizenship. I agree with Jeremy Waldron that the foundation of liberalism includes a view about how social arrangements are justified: “that all aspects of the social order should either be made acceptable or be capable of being made acceptable to every last individual”;29 that “justifications in social and political life must be available in principle for everyone.”30 Waldron regards this as a hypothetical consent basis of political legitimacy.31 But in that categorization, he includes accounts of legitimacy wherein “even the barest possibility of consent is enough to justify the law,” wherein what matters is whether the law “can be represented” as an object of agreement.32 On such accounts, it is a feature of the reasons in favor of a law that makes it the case that it can be represented as an object of agreement: the fact that those reasons are generated by the underlying interests we share in common.33 On my understanding of political liberalism, the normative construction of citizenship provides a 27

Enoch 2017, 35. I thank David O’Brien for encouraging me to engage with this argument. And I’m not sure it is. For an account of how normative consent establishes political authority, see Estlund 2008, ch. 7. See footnote 31 below on the distinction between legitimate coercion and the moral power to make it morally obligatory for citizens to comply (“authority” for Estlund). 29 30 Waldron 1987, 128. Waldron 1987, 135. 31 Which he defends against the standard objections to hypothetical consent as a basis for political obligation. See, for example, Nozick 1974, 9. My focus in this book is on the permissibility of the state coercively imposing certain policies on citizens. Obligation to follow rules is a distinct question. I take it to be related, and I take it that we are presumptively obligated to comply with a legitimate social policy. But legitimacy as I understand it might not suffice to generate obligation in every case. On the conceptual distinctness of legitimate enforcement and moral power to make compliance obligatory, see Estlund 2008. See also Stark 2000; Rawls 1999, 99. 32 Waldron 1987, 141–2. His example here is Kant: “If the law is such that a whole people could not possibly agree to it (for example, if it stated that a certain class of subjects must be privileged as a hereditary ruling class), it is unjust; but if it is at least possible that a people could agree to it, it is our duty to consider the law as just, even if the people is at present in such a position or attitude of mind that it would probably refuse its consent if it were consulted” (Kant 1970, 77). 33 Waldron 1987, 144–5. 28

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basis for discerning which interests of ours rightly play a role in determining how society is to be arranged, given that we aspire to find terms of social cooperation that are mutually justifiable among us. The view remains within the social contract tradition because it is based on the ideal of mutual justifiability among moral equals and because the values that inform the perspective from which we evaluate which interests we share are values implied by that very ideal. The legitimacy of our social arrangement remains reliant on that arrangement being freely acceptable to all those who are party to and subject to it. It is presumptively binding on us because “if rational individuals in appropriately defined circumstances could or would agree to certain rules or institutions, then insofar as we identify with those individuals and their interests, what they accept should also be acceptable to us now as a basis for our cooperation.”34 We should identify with the interests of political liberalism’s normative characterization of citizenship, because they are the interests we share insofar as we share a commitment to the project of regulating our interdependence on terms that are consistent with our political equality, despite all that divides us. The idea of agreement plays a role, because it is in virtue of needing to reach a fair agreement that we characterize citizenship as we do. But what then justifies the verdicts the theory renders are the reasons that citizens so characterized would recognize as such. According to Waldron, invoking such a reasons-based account of legitimacy requires abandoning any claim to neutrality. I disagree. The right account of neutrality just is the account that requires justification on the basis of shared reasons as a condition for legitimacy. In returning to this battery of objections in Chapter 7, I will argue that this is the only notion of neutrality that liberalism can achieve, and that it is one well worth having. For now, it is enough to notice that justificatory neutrality distinguishes the argument for autonomy promotion that I’ve given here from those offered by comprehensive liberals. Unlike Raz’s comprehensive liberalism, political liberalism opposes exercises of political power that are justifiable to us only if we endorse the value of comprehensive autonomy. The argument developed in this chapter abides by that constraint. Citizens have an interest in the promotion of comprehensive autonomy because exposure to enactments of autonomous lifestyles is essential to preserving the moral power to reflect upon and revise one’s conception of the good. The citizenship interest in preserving the moral powers thus generates a derivative interest in securing a broad circulation of comprehensive autonomy. Special protection for autonomy is not based on the value of autonomous lifestyles as such. It is based on three considerations, each permissibly invoked within political liberalism to justify 34 Freeman 1990, 122. For more on the “presumptively,” see footnote 31 above on the conceptual difference between the legitimacy of coercion and obligations to comply with it.

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the use of political power: first, that citizens have an interest in protecting the moral powers including the capacity for a conception of the good; second, that visible access to comprehensively autonomous role models is an essential guarantor to ensure that all enjoy the capacity to reflect upon and critically to revise their conceptions of the good; and third, that this visible access can be ensured only by ensuring that comprehensively autonomous lifestyles are enacted broadly throughout the background institutions of society.

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7 The Political Case for Gender Egalitarianism A Stability Argument

There is a strong citizenship interest in ensuring broad enactment of comprehensive autonomy because access to role models of comprehensive autonomy is necessary for assurance that all citizens are secure in their capacity for a conception of the good.1 Assuming the means necessary to achieve broad enactment fall short of force, that citizenship interest will be decisive. From the perspective of citizenship, then, we can expect that a broad enactment of comprehensive autonomy will obtain. Until now, nothing has been said about the implications of this for gender egalitarianism. In this chapter, I use the conclusions from Chapter 6 just rehearsed to develop a stability argument for the legitimacy of gender-egalitarian political interventions— such as family leave initiatives, work time regulation, and substitute dependent care provisions—that subsidize the cost of gender-egalitarian lifestyles relative to the status quo. Here is the argument in outline: From the fact that a critical mass of individuals in a just politically liberal society will enact comprehensively autonomous lifestyles, we can infer that a critical mass of individuals will value the genuinely available option to enact gender-egalitarian lifestyles. Those individuals will reasonably experience the high social costs of achieving gender-egalitarian lifestyles as an obstacle to the genuine availability of those lifestyles. Although not all lifestyles can be made equally affordable, and although political liberalism is not committed to subsidizing all those that are particularly expensive, certain facts about the costs in question make it reasonable for citizens to experience those costs as unfair. These reasonable perceptions of unfairness mean that the high costs constituting obstacles to 1 Some of the material in this chapter builds on arguments I first made in “Citizenship, Reciprocity, and the Gendered Division of Labor: A Stability Argument for Gender Egalitarian Political Interventions” (Schouten 2015a).

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0007

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the genuine availability of gender egalitarianism generate a problem of stability, in a technical sense of stability that I will clarify. Because there is a citizenship interest in preserving stability in that sense, and because the prospects for stability are threatened by the high social costs of gender egalitarianism under the status quo, there is a derivative citizenship interest in subsidizing gender egalitarianism. As this characterization suggests, the argument proceeds in three stages. First, I’ll lay out a “bare tactical case.” The bare tactical case involves identifying some (on their own) weak, readily overridden reasons for subsidizing gender egalitarianism, which derive simply from the observation that a critical mass of individuals can reasonably be expected, over time, to prefer affordable access to that lifestyle choice. The second stage is the “principled case.” This involves showing that those who prefer affordable access to gender-egalitarian lifestyles could reasonably experience the high costs to those lifestyles as unfair. Both the bare tactical case and the principled case draw on the conclusion of the autonomy argument defended in Chapter 6. Only with the bare tactical case and the principled case set forth do we proceed to stage three: the stability argument. The sense of stability that we have political reasons to promote includes both tactical and value-laden aspects. In this context, “stability” means stability for the right reasons. We want our political institutions to maintain principled support from citizens over time, and we want that support to be based in citizens reasonably regarding those institutions as just and legitimate. Drawing on both the tactical case and the principled case, I will argue that the costliness of gender egalitarianism under the status quo jeopardizes stability, and that a strong citizenship interest therefore demands gender-egalitarian intervention.

7.1 The Bare Tactical Case for Gender-Egalitarian Interventions Those who enact a gendered division of labor certainly need not be regarded as non-autonomous in their choice to comply with presumed gender specialization. This is true whether they comply enthusiastically and on principle or in response to the costs of non-compliance. Individuals can exercise comprehensive autonomy to varying degrees and in various domains, and they can autonomously embrace their received values or the mainstream values of their society. Comprehensively autonomous citizens might choose to enact a gendered division of labor, then, either because they autonomously choose it or because they non-autonomously do so while exercising autonomy in other domains. Let’s imagine that a comprehensively autonomous person—it could be Karen, from Chapter 2—enacts a modern-day gendered division of labor 199

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with her partner: Karen specializes in caregiving work with peripheral attachment to the labor market, while Dave specializes in paid labor and “pitches in” with the caregiving. The choice to specialize may have been made in response to any number of considerations. For our purposes, we can helpfully distinguish the possibilities along one dimension in particular: The role played by the relative costliness of relevant alternatives. Karen might have chosen to specialize despite having what she regarded as an affordable option not to specialize. Or she might have chosen specialization in response to what she judged to be too high a cost of not specializing. In both cases, Karen might rightly experience her choice as an exercise of comprehensive autonomy. In the first case, she chose for herself which social roles to populate, which affiliations to continue, and which domains fall within the scope of her comprehensive values. She made those same choices in the second case, but against a different set of extrinsic costs and benefits. Compared to the first case, her choice in the second case was more responsive to those extrinsic costs and benefits and less to her assessment of the intrinsic merits of the options. But she did choose. She might reasonably regret that the costs and benefits were what they were—that the high costs of gender egalitarianism rendered gender specialization the better option despite not aligning with her values. But she would also be reasonable to recognize that not all lifestyles will be equally costly, that she can still choose voluntarily among them, and that she is owed nothing nor necessarily any less autonomous in virtue of the bare fact that her preferred lifestyle is costlier than alternatives. Consider, now, a subset of these “too costly” cases that meets two further conditions: First, it is not only Karen who prefers a more genderegalitarian arrangement; the preference for more affordable access to gender egalitarianism is widespread. Second, the high costs effectively deter Karen and others like her from enacting their preferred balance of caregiving and breadwinning, despite their preference being a strong and durable one. I will argue in due course that over the long run, in a society that protects the two moral powers of citizenship, we must assume that the first condition will obtain. This argument will depend on the precise connection between comprehensive autonomy and gender egalitarianism, to be filled in shortly. And I will argue that the second condition in fact obtains in the United States (U.S.) today, and plausibly elsewhere as well. For now, just take for granted that the conditions obtain. Under these circumstances, considerations of political expediency tell in favor of subsidizing the preferred lifestyle choice. We risk disruption, unrest, loss of productivity, health decline, and any number of other bad social outcomes if we allow the reasonable and durable lifestyle preferences of a significant portion of our population to be prohibitively costly for them. This is the bare tactical case for gender-egalitarian subsidies. Because of these bad social outcomes, we have some reason to subsidize gender egalitarianism. 200

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The argument I am building does not rest with these considerations of expediency. It is not a bare tactical case. But it does build on the bare tactical case. Crucial premises remain to be unpacked, but we have narrowed in on a relevant set of social circumstances, and it is worth introducing some terminology to pick it out: When the social costs of a particular lifestyle are reasonably perceived as excessive in that they reliably deter those who are otherwise strongly inclined to choose that lifestyle, say that the high costs constitute a “formidable systemic obstacle” to the lifestyle. When a formidable systemic obstacle obstructs some way of life, say that the way of life is not a “genuinely available option.”2 Suppose, as I will argue is the case, that gender-egalitarian lifestyles are obstructed by a formidable systemic obstacle; they are not genuinely available options. This observation does not yet tell us what politically should be the case. Plenty of lifestyle choices in any society will be prohibitively costly, and yet we have as yet no grounds to subsidize them. Combining a serious commitment to excelling as an oncologist while also winning important legal battles as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union would be an extremely costly lifestyle—perhaps prohibitively so for everyone! And yet this fact gives us no reason to subsidize lifestyles that combine those two pursuits. Why think the case is different when it comes to lifestyles that combine meaningful commitments to paid and caregiving labor? The bare tactical case combines the costliness of balancing paid and caregiving labor with the observation—still to be defended—that that balance is one that many citizens wish were more affordable. That the costs constitute a formidable systemic obstacle that actually obstructs a widely preferred option generates strategic reasons in favor of removing it. Still, political liberalism limits the extent to which political expediency can legitimize coercive political intervention. Gender-egalitarian interventions are a public expense. Even among those who do not particularly value gender specialization, many would regard gender-egalitarian subsidies a misuse of public resources. Recall, too, that gender-egalitarian interventions are family support policies that explicitly privilege gender-egalitarian take-up of support. And while social institutions are currently arranged so as to make specialization of some sort the more affordable option under the status quo, the mechanisms that make gendered specialization most affordable under the status quo operate informally, through the social norms that guide our negotiations with institutions. Although these mechanisms aren’t categorically off limits from

2 Notice that I define “formidable systemic obstacle” and “genuinely available option” in terms of reasonable perceptions. That the perceptions of excessive costliness are reasonable will be borne out, later in the chapter, by a review of scholarship on the mechanisms that sustain the high costs of gender egalitarianism.

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the perspective of political intervention, interventions that would target them do carry a de facto heavy justificatory burden, because those interventions must aim, in the short run, to change individuals’ behavior: to encourage caregiving among men and labor market attachment among women. Given the justificatory burden imposed by political liberalism, even a strong expediency argument is a readily overridden foundation for interventions that systematically undertake to shape our behavior and, eventually, the values that influence the terms of our domestic cooperation. In short, the reasons the bare tactical case invokes are easily defeated by the reasons that stand against intrusion. They are crucial to the larger argument, but insufficient, on their own, to justify social policy aimed at promoting gender egalitarianism.

7.2 The Principled Case for Gender-Egalitarian Interventions In the case of gender egalitarianism, two additional features about the formidable systemic obstacle jointly generate a stronger case for its removal. The first is that the obstacle itself is an affront to comprehensive autonomy, even if choices that are responsive to that obstacle are not thereby rendered nonautonomous. The second is that comprehensive autonomy has a special status even in a politically liberal society, as argued for in Chapter 6, so that such an affront matters politically. I consider each feature in turn. The high costs of gender egalitarianism are an affront to autonomy because those costs result from the institutionalized assumption that Karen and others like her should specialize in caregiving, and Dave and others like him in breadwinning. Presumed specialization is compatible with gender-atypical specialization—with men specializing in caregiving and women in breadwinning. Even so, the terms favoring specialization are gendered. As will become clear, the features of our social arrangement that make equal sharing so costly are sustained by a gendered presumption about families that remains embedded in the design of social institutions: families as heterosexual partnerships in which women do the background work to support men’s labor market participation. The institutional design that presumes specialization, and thus makes it so costly to avoid specializing, results from and is sustained by this assumption that families consist of a male breadwinning specialist and a female caregiving specialist. This institutionalized assumption is inimical to comprehensive autonomy because it presumes that one’s sex will dictate the work one does. A comprehensively autonomous person is able to reflect upon, revise, and reject at least some of her social affiliations, which requires that some range of options be available to her. The point I am making now concerns the social mechanisms that determine which options are available and at what costs. If gender 202

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egalitarianism is prohibitively costly due to institutionalized gender norms, then its costliness is an affront to autonomy—an insult to the comprehensively autonomous person as a comprehensively autonomous person—even though it does not render choices made in light of that costliness non-autonomous. Under the circumstances just described, the costs constraining choices about how to allocate time and energy between paid work and caregiving—choices that for many are fundamental to identity—are determined by normalized assumptions that effectively assign roles based on membership in certain social groups. Whether or not decision-makers within institutions endorse gender norms, the institutional design takes them for granted. Gender specialization itself needn’t make Karen less comprehensively autonomous; she may autonomously choose a gendered division of labor. But because the constraining costs of gender egalitarianism are due to a socially embedded assumption associating sex with work roles, they are an affront to her as a comprehensively autonomous person. Notice that, while the formidable systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism is an affront to autonomy, a hypothetical formidable systemic obstacle to gender specialization would not be. What accounts for this asymmetry between gender egalitarianism and gender specialization? The difference is a matter of what explains (or would explain) and sustains (or would sustain) the obstacle in question. Remember that the relevant question is not about the number of lifestyle options among which one can choose, but about the social facts that explain the distribution of costs among them. As we’ll see, the high costs of gender egalitarianism result from gendered assumptions about who is most fit to do what kind of work: an institutionalized assumption that effectively constrains individuals to populate the roles in question whether or not they endorse those roles. Insofar as its costs under the status quo are sustained by an institutionalized assumption inimical to autonomy, those costs are an affront to autonomy. An institutional arrangement that failed to preserve the genuine availability of gender specialization, on the other hand, would not be an affront to autonomy, because the costs of specialization in our social context are not due to institutionalized gender assumptions that are inimical to autonomy. I have said that Karen may be fully autonomous in her choice to comply with presumed gender specialization. Even so, she could reasonably regard it as an affront to her autonomy that society is arranged in such a way that sex so influences labor-allocation decisions even if those involved reject sex as a relevant consideration. That it is an affront to their autonomy makes it reasonable for them to regard it as such. When gender egalitarianism is made very costly by assumptions inimical to comprehensive autonomy, a comprehensively autonomous person would be reasonable to want more affordable access to gender egalitarianism, even if she would not choose it, and even if she would autonomously choose specialization instead. 203

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This is not yet enough to generate a politically liberal argument for subsidizing gender egalitarianism. Comprehensive autonomy is just that: a comprehensive value. Political liberalism approves subsidies for it only insofar as they are called for by political reasons. Although I argued in Chapter 6 that political liberals can and should countenance asymmetric protections for comprehensive autonomy, the protections in question seem like they can coexist with the embedded assumption of gender specialization that makes gender egalitarianism so costly. Indeed, the status quo is characterized both by the broad circulation of autonomy enactments and by the embedded assumption that is inimical to comprehensive autonomy. We know, then, that the preservation of the requisite threshold of autonomy enactments does not itself require gender egalitarianism. The comprehensively autonomous person might prefer more affordable access to gender egalitarianism, but the preferences of adherents of a particular comprehensive doctrine are not politically relevant as such. Visible exemplars of comprehensive autonomy can circulate to the degree necessary to protect the capacity of all citizens for a conception of the good, even if social institutions take breadwinner/homemaker specialization for granted. In short: The citizenship interest in protecting the capacity to revise one’s conception of the good justifies asymmetric protections for comprehensive autonomy, but comprehensive autonomy can be adequately protected even if gender egalitarianism remains very costly. A final premise is needed for the stability argument I will turn to next. This premise draws on the conclusion of Chapter 6: Comprehensive autonomy is politically valuable because its enactment helps to ensure that all citizens have access to visible role models of autonomous reflection and action, which helps to ensure that the capacity to rationally revise a conception of the good is within the reach of all citizens. Now for the premise: Because comprehensive autonomy is politically valuable in protecting a fundamental moral power of citizenship, citizens wishing to enact it have a reasonable complaint of unfairness against an institutional arrangement that makes it excessively costly due to an institutionalized assumption that is inimical to it. The status quo shows that it is possible to impose the costs without forfeiting the political value of autonomy enactments. But those who bear the costs would be reasonable to regard them as unfair. We are impugning the very value that we rely upon them to enact. To add to the bare tactical case, we now have a principled case in favor of subsidizing gender egalitarianism: Comprehensively autonomous citizens would be reasonable to regard the high costs that obstruct gender egalitarianism as unfair. Let’s take stock of how we’ve gotten here: The fact that gender egalitarianism is not genuinely available for Karen would be of little political importance, were that the end of the story. That the formidable systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism effectively deters the many citizens with a 204

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strong and durable preference for genuinely available access to gender egalitarianism means that we have reasons of political expediency to subsidize that lifestyle.3 This is the conclusion of the bare tactical case. Within the framework of political liberalism, which prizes a strong presumption against political interference, that case is at best shaky as an argument for intervention. But in the case of gender-egalitarian intervention, the story doesn’t end there. The formidable systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism is sustained by an institutionalized assumption inimical to comprehensive autonomy: the assumption that men and women are fundamentally suited to different kinds of work. Meanwhile, comprehensive autonomy is politically valuable, because its enactments further the citizenship interest in protecting and preserving the capacity for a conception of the good. For these reasons, comprehensively autonomous citizens would be reasonable to experience the formidable systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism as unfair: It is an affront to their comprehensive autonomy, their enactment of which is politically valuable because it helps to ensure protection for a fundamental interest of citizenship. Perhaps this principled case is enough to generate a politically liberal justification for gender-egalitarian interventions. The case for thinking that the formidable systemic obstacle in question is unfair derives from political values, based on citizenship interests. Moreover, the unfairness is not a verdict rendered by one among the permissible political conceptions of distributive justice, as in the case of the mal-distribution arguments considered in Chapter 3. Rather, it derives from the fundamental commitments of political liberalism that impose the very constraints that differentiate the permissible from the impermissible conceptions of justice in the first place: the interests of citizenship and their role in political legitimacy. But there’s a stronger argument to make, and it’s worth the trouble of making it. Remember that gender-egalitarian interventions target choices that are fundamentally important to individuals’ pursuit of their conceptions of the good. Those interventions also impose burdens on the pursuit of reasonable ways of life that would, under different circumstances, be totally unproblematic from the perspective of justice. For these reasons, a standing citizenship interest disfavors those interventions. To justify the interventions, then, we must overcome the presumption against them by building not only a complete justification for intervention but a strong justification. In Section 7.3, I offer such a justification, building on both the reasonable perceptions of unfairness excavated here—the principled case—and the tactical case begun in Section 7.1. Together, those premises support a stability argument for gender-egalitarian interventions. Because there is a strong and fundamental

3

To recall: I have yet to establish that the italicized points obtain.

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citizenship interest in stability, this will constitute a stronger politically liberal justification for political interventions to preserve the genuine availability of gender egalitarianism than we have seen so far.

7.3 The Stability Argument for Gender-Egalitarian Interventions In a society wherein a formidable systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism is sustained by an institutionalized assumption inimical to autonomy, respect for the political value of comprehensive autonomy favors restoring gender egalitarianism as a genuinely available option. Because comprehensive autonomy is politically valuable, those who practice it would be reasonable to regard our failure to remove that formidable systemic obstacle as an unfairness to them. But because the removal of that obstacle requires subsidizing genderegalitarian lifestyles in the short run, this argument might not yet be fully decisive. Unfairness to those practicing politically valuable comprehensive autonomy seems a strong political reason in favor of subsidizing gender egalitarianism, but given the costs imposed by the subsidies favored by comprehensive autonomy, it is not yet clear that unfairness to the comprehensively autonomous would be a decisive political reason. The principled case is not yet the best we can do. I have argued, too, that because comprehensive autonomy enactments are politically valuable, there is a citizenship interest in ensuring a critical threshold of comprehensive autonomy enactments circulating throughout society. We can now fill in a missing piece from the bare tactical argument: I asked us to temporarily take it for granted that the preference for more affordable access to gender egalitarianism is widespread. Now we can see that, in a society that protects the two moral powers of citizenship, we must assume that this preference will be widespread in the long run. Because we must ensure that a critical threshold of individuals enacting comprehensively autonomous lifestyles exists in order to protect the capacity for a conception of the good, we can foresee that that threshold will exist under any social arrangement that we should seek to bring about. We can thus foresee that such a threshold of individuals will value the genuinely available option for gender egalitarianism. This is not to say that they will want to enact gender egalitarianism. That might be the case as well, but all I mean to argue is that a critical threshold can be expected to resent the high costs sustained by an assumption that their sex should dictate the work that they do. The political value of comprehensive autonomy has now played two roles in the argument: First, as we saw in Section 7.2, it makes the obstacles to gender egalitarianism politically relevant. Because enactments of comprehensive 206

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autonomy are politically valuable, the preference for gender egalitarianism generates grounds for subsidizing it that aren’t based in bare political expediency. So the political value of comprehensive autonomy is a crucial premise in building the principled case. Second, it rounds out the bare tactical case: Because comprehensive autonomy is politically valuable, we can reasonably predict—because we must ensure—that enactments of it will circulate broadly. Because a just politically liberal society will be one marked by broad enactments of comprehensive autonomy, and because under our social circumstances, given what explains them, high costs of gender egalitarianism are an affront to comprehensive autonomy, we can reasonably expect that our society will be marked by a broad and strong desire for the genuinely available opportunity to enact gender-egalitarian partnerships. Whether or not they prefer gender-egalitarian partnerships for themselves, comprehensively autonomous individuals will reasonably experience high costs that obstruct them as unfair. From this, we can foresee that society risks generating large-scale discontent insofar as it fails to preserve that genuinely available option. Presently, I will argue that the discontent rises to the level of a politically actionable problem of stability. For now, let’s stay with the argument establishing the risk of discontent. Showing that society risks large-scale discontent need not involve showing that such discontent actually obtains. The risk of large-scale discontent can be established non-empirically, by invoking the two considerations already defended: first, that autonomy will circulate broadly (because a citizenship interest favors ensuring that it does); second, that comprehensively autonomous individuals will value the genuinely available option to enact a gender-egalitarian lifestyle (because the formidable costs of that lifestyle are an affront to their politically valuable exercise of autonomy, given what sustains those costs). While the risk of discontent can be established non-empirically, plenty of empirical data provide buttressing support, and it is worth digressing briefly to present it. In interviews with women and men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two, Kathleen Gerson found that it’s not only the option people want; most respondents hoped actually to form partnerships wherein paid and caregiving work are shared equally.4 This majority preference for more gender-egalitarian households held regardless of race or class, and it held among women and men independently: 80 percent of women reported wanting gender-egalitarian domestic arrangements, and nearly 70 percent of men reported having that preference.5 Gerson concludes that “if social arrangements allowed men and women to enact their values, most would prefer to

4

Gerson 2010, 106–7.

5

Gerson 2010, 11.

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balance market and nonmarket work rather than specializing in one at the expense of the other.”6 The preference for something closer to equal sharing is suggested in other studies as well. “Sharing household chores” ranks third on both male and female respondents’ lists of factors contributing to a happy marriage.7 Twothirds of people under age thirty-two strongly support gender equality in the home and workplace, and a full 90 percent more closely identify with that view than with the view that women’s place is in the home.8 Eighty percent of men and 90 percent of women who work over fifty hours per week wish they could work less,9 and a majority of full-time workers report preferring lower incomes in exchange for more time to perform caregiving work.10 Sixty-five percent of fathers report feeling that mothers and fathers should provide equal amounts of caregiving for their children.11 Seventy-two percent of both women and men aged eighteen to twenty-nine agree that the best marriages are those in which husbands and wives both take care of the house and work outside of it, and 62 percent of the general public agree that a marriage with equal sharing of caregiving and earning responsibilities would be more satisfying than a marriage with a traditional division of labor.12 The preference for something closer to equality is perhaps most evident in the conflicts that arise when cooperating partners find themselves unable to attain it. Only 30 percent of fathers who want to share childcare equally with their wives actually (manage to) do so.13 It is unsurprising, then, that 45 percent of employed men report experiencing work–life conflict, and that 60 percent of employed men in two-job households experience conflict.14 And here’s where the threat of large-scale discontent enters the picture: In Gerson’s study, respondents who reported a preference for a genderegalitarian arrangement were doubtful that they could actually attain it.15 They expressed doubt about the possibility of parenting well while meeting the demands of the modern workplace. Skeptical about the possibility of achieving an equal balance between work and home, young women and men have apparently given considerable thought to their “fallback strategies.” And, although women and men both report a strong preference for a more equal sharing, their fallback strategies diverge sharply. Women prefer “selfreliance” rather than “economic dependence within a traditional marriage,” while men prefer a “neotraditional” arrangement wherein they prioritize

6 7 8 9 12 15

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Gerson 2010, 104–23. Behind faithfulness and having a healthy sexual relationship. Pew Research Center 2007. Teixeira 2009. For similar findings about gender-egalitarian preferences, see Musick et al. 2007. 10 11 Jacobs and Gerson 2004, 65–6. Bond et al. 2004. Harrington et al. 2011. 13 14 Pew Research Center 2010. Harrington et al. 2011. Galinsky et al. 2009. Gerson 2010, 200.

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earning and perform as ideal workers, while their partners specialize in caregiving and earn, at most, supplemental income.16 This divergence helps to make sense of a complexity that the data reveal. While the studies just canvassed depict a widespread and growing preference for a more affordable option of sharing paid and caregiving work, plenty of other data show that we are not, on the whole, ideological proponents of gender egalitarianism as a social idea. The findings of a recent Pew Research survey are telling:17 79 percent of Americans rejected the idea that women should return to traditional housewife roles, yet only 16 percent said that having a full-time working mother is “ideal” for children, compared with 42 percent who said that having a part-time working mother is ideal and 33 percent who thought it ideal for young children to have a full-time caregiving mother. This contrasts sharply with attitudes about what working patterns for fathers are ideal: 70 percent thought that working full time is ideal, 20 percent thought that working part time is ideal, and only 4 percent thought it ideal for fathers not to work outside the home at all. The International Social Survey Program similarly reveals the stickiness of traditional attitudes concerning gender roles. The prevailing attitude is “essentially that women should work full-time before having children and after the children have left home, while they should work only part-time or not at all when they have children living at home.”18 This attitude is robust across different countries, and the survey shows little difference between women and men in registering it.19 This evidence of traditional attitudes is not inconsistent with Gerson’s findings. Wanting to share work more equally is fully consistent with rejecting the ideal of a society wherein gender plays no role whatever in influencing our navigation of the social structures (or absence of structures) within which paid work and caregiving happen, and it is fully consistent with preferring to navigate existing social structures in gendered ways. Even those who would profess to prefer a strictly equal sharing may nonetheless retain more traditional attitudes that would influence their actual policy use behavior, or they may simply be socialized in gendered ways that they don’t endorse, but that nonetheless influence their behavior. Moreover, the data showing a preference for more equal sharing are data about a particular sample of respondents. In Gerson’s case, the interviewees were young, ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-two.20 So none of the data about the preference for sharing paid work and caregiving more equally undercuts the arguments from earlier in the book that, in the

16

17 18 Gerson 2010, 11, 122–3, 159–61. See Parker 2015. Kleven et al. 2018, 6. On the stagnation of progress toward fully gender-equal social attitudes, see also Bertrand et al. 2015. 20 Gerson 2010, 8. 19

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short run, positive subsidies for equal sharing will be necessary to override existing norms. But Gerson’s study does make the large-scale discontent worry vivid. We see frustration at the costliness of gender-egalitarian lifestyles and a sharp gendered divergence in fallback strategies for domestic cooperation in response to the costs. We have seen that our reasons of expediency to avoid large-scale discontent are politically weak. Even setting legitimacy concerns aside, not all large-scale discontent can be avoided; nor should we want to avoid all of it. Social moral progress often generates large-scale discontent, as it has for example during periods of progress toward greater justice for racial minorities. Luckily, the threat of large-scale discontent doesn’t stand alone in this argument. Stability in the sense that interests us here requires more than the absence of discontent or unrest. It is achieved only when a structure of political institutions generates its own support among citizens who endorse that structure as free and equal citizens.21 For ease of exposition, I use the simple term “stability,” and distinguish that ideal from mere lack of unrest or discontent. But it is worth noting that Rawls refers to the ideal in question as “stability for the right reasons.”22 What this highlights is that stability has both practical and principled dimensions. Stability-preserving support cannot come, for example, from resignation to an unjust status quo. Citizens must support their society’s arrangement of political institutions because that arrangement is congruent with those citizens’ own conceptions of the good. This does not mean it promotes their values, or even avoids burdening them. Neutrality doesn’t seek to avoid social cost, and some lifestyles will be burdened more than others. Minimally, a social arrangement is congruent with a citizen’s reasonable conception of the good only if that arrangement avoids

21

See, for example, Rawls 2001, 185. Rawls contrasts stability for the right reasons with “modus vivendi.” See Rawls 1993, xxxvii. Rawlsian stability has two elements: The first concerns whether those raised under just politically liberal institutions will reliably acquire a sense of justice. The second concerns congruence between the terms of justice and each individual’s rational good. See Rawls 1993, 140–4. The stability concern I raise here concerns congruence, but I do not rely on the demanding conception of congruence according to which individuals’ own comprehensive values must support the political arrangement; instead, I rely on something weaker according to which we have a problem of congruence, roughly, if citizens reasonably experience incongruence between their comprehensive values and the arrangement of political institutions where their complaint can be expressed in terms of political values. For Rawls, the question of stability is taken up only once we have a conception of justice that we can assess the stability of. My argument here, in Rawlsian terms, shall be that any reasonable political conception of justice must, if it is to be stable, license genderegalitarian interventions in the circumstances under consideration. For discussion of congruence and Rawlsian stability in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, and of how concerns pertaining to stability motivated Rawls’s “political turn,” see Weithman 2013. For an argument that political liberalism fails to deliver the first element of stability, see Edenberg 2018. Recall that it was also the citizenship interest in stability that justified educating all citizens to understand their citizenship and the rights and opportunities it demands. If society failed to educate citizens in this way, then it could not be relied upon to persist stably over time. See Rawls 1993, 142. 22

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imposing costs that that citizen might reasonably regard as unfair in light of shareable political values. It is this minimal condition that I claim cannot be met by any arrangement that allows to persist an institutionalized social norm that is an affront to comprehensive autonomy. With its practical and principled dimensions, stability is politically valuable. Unlike bare expediency reasons to avoid mere discontent, our reasons to avoid instability are based in citizenship interests: Citizens possess a sense of justice and a strong and normally effective desire to see that justice is done for themselves and others. Because the just politically liberal state is one that effectively ensures the satisfaction of that characteristic desire, citizens have an interest in preserving the just state stably over time. Citizens also possess a capacity to form and revise a conception of the good. Because the just state is one that preserves the conditions under which citizens can fairly execute this power, citizens again have an interest in that state persisting stably over time. It is this compelling citizenship interest in preserving stability that enables us to invoke it in building a neutral case for political intervention. All the pieces are now in play. By joining the bare tactical case and the principled case, we can see that the formidable systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism risks generating not only large-scale discontent; it risks causing instability in the morally laden sense. First, from the principled case: The high costs of gender egalitarianism are due to an institutionalized assumption contrary to the value of comprehensive autonomy—the value of individuals choosing for themselves which social roles to populate. Because it is a comprehensive value, we cannot invoke comprehensive autonomy itself to justify political remediation. But we can invoke the fact that society relies upon enactments of comprehensive autonomy to protect a crucial citizenship interest: Those who role model comprehensive autonomy help to protect the citizenship interest in the capacity for a conception of the good. Society’s failure to preserve the genuinely available option of gender egalitarianism detracts from citizens’ ability to endorse society’s arrangement of social institutions, as free and equal citizens, because that failure is an affront to a way of life that we share a citizenship interest in preserving. One who is enacting politically valuable autonomy might justifiably feel that her society is treating her unfairly when the design of social institutions is predicated on the assumption that she is not autonomous, and when that presumption generates costs that effectively constrain her to comply with the presumption in an important domain of her life. The breadwinner/homemaker specialization presumption is just such a presumption of non-autonomy. Insofar as an institutional arrangement takes that specialization for granted, then, it insults the very values we rely on her to manifest. The bare tactical case establishes that in the long run, norms and institutions at odds with comprehensive autonomy are liable to be met with large-scale 211

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discontent. Since we must ensure wide circulation of comprehensive autonomy enactments, we can expect wide circulation of values that make the inaccessibility of gender egalitarianism reasonably feel unfair. That the perception of unfairness is reasonable is shown by the principled case just rehearsed: by the fact that the obstacle in question is sustained by the institutionalized assumption that insults the very commitment that the politically valuable lifestyle celebrates. The discontent we can expect in a society characterized by the inaccessibility of gender egalitarianism is, indeed, a discontent justified by reasons shareable among citizens. Those shareable reasons are, essentially, reasons not to tolerate a socially imposed and socially sustained obstacle that stands at odds with a way of life that we share a citizenship interest in preserving. When high social costs that are an affront to comprehensive autonomy obstruct access to gender egalitarianism, gender-egalitarian subsidies are a legitimate means of removing that obstruction. In Section 7.5, I apply the argument. I show that gender egalitarianism is not a genuinely available option and that the high costs that obstruct it are sustained by institutionalized assumptions inimical to autonomy. The largescale discontent that might foreseeably result from this social arrangement constitutes a threat to stability, because comprehensively autonomous citizens would be reasonable to withdraw endorsement from a set of political institutions that obstructs the full enactment of their politically valuable conception of the good, and that obstructs it by failing to expunge institutionalized assumptions inimical to it. Before applying the argument, I’ll finish the conditional case by considering some challenges to it.

7.4 Expensive Tastes and Thick Political Values Let’s return briefly to the distinction between instability and mere large-scale discontent, as a way to clarify how far this argument extends. A society risks generating large-scale discontent when it obstructs the exercise of any widely endorsed value system, and we may have reasons of expediency to dismantle such obstacles. Within political liberalism, reasons of expediency are not strongly robust against countervailing citizenship interests, like the interest in avoiding the political intrusion that subsidies involve, both in their financing and in their implementation. But stability is politically valuable. Our reasons to dismantle obstacles that jeopardize stability are political reasons, derived from citizenship interests. As such, they are far more robust against countervailing citizenship interests. Imagine a political regime whose culture and institutions incline individuals to affirm Catholic conceptions of the good. We might expect large-scale discontent if, under that regime, Catholic lifestyles turn out to be very costly. 212

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This needn’t generate a stability case for subsidizing those lifestyles, however, because the discontent does not result from the frustration of a lifestyle that is politically valuable (as I have argued autonomous lifestyles are), and because the costs causing that discontent do not result from institutionalized assumptions inimical to that politically valuable lifestyle (as I have argued they do in the case of autonomy and the gendered division of labor). The high costs of Catholicism therefore do not generate shareable, political reasons for citizens to think that their society’s arrangement of costs and benefits treats them unfairly. The threat of large-scale discontent may generate reasons of expediency to subsidize Catholic lifestyles; we may have a bare tactical case for subsidies. But because the discontent is not due to the systemic frustration of a politically valuable lifestyle where that frustration is due to a socially embedded assumption inimical to the essential values of that lifestyle, we lack a principled case—and thus, a stability case—for subsidies. Under these circumstances, we may regard the preference for a Catholic way of life as an expensive taste, the costs of satisfying which individuals are legitimately held to internalize. The taste is expensive to satisfy not because of anything objectionable; perhaps it is expensive due to some combination of what the faith demands of its adherents and the lack of economies of scale that would exist if more people practiced it. The preference may be a perfectly good one, and those who have it may be right to have it. Still, its being expensive to satisfy under the imagined circumstances needn’t call for redress. Because nothing politically objectionable sustains the costs, we can legitimately expect individuals to internalize them. Contrast this with the costliness of gender egalitarianism: In this case, we cannot discourage individuals from pursuing the costly lifestyle or hold them to internalize the costs, because doing so is contrary to the ideal of reciprocity at the heart of liberalism. Unlike the costliness of Catholicism, the costliness of gender egalitarianism is generated in such a way that those who bear it might feel—justifiably, from the perspective of citizenship—that their being expected to bear it is unfair. The formidable systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism threatens to bring about instability because the citizenship interest in protecting the moral powers renders enactments of comprehensive autonomy politically valuable, and because those who enact comprehensive autonomy would be reasonable to find it unfair that gender egalitarianism is effectively obstructed by high costs due to social circumstances that are an affront to autonomy. In the case of costly gender egalitarianism but not in the case of costly Catholicism, the bare tactical case combines with a principled case to generate a stability argument, which provides a political justification for intervention. Since there is a citizenship interest in stability, the way to manage the obstacle is to remove it, not to hold individuals to internalize the costs of surmounting it 213

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or to socialize them to internalize those costs. We therefore have strong political reasons to ensure that gender-egalitarian lifestyles be genuinely available, and to subsidize those lifestyles if their costs under the status quo constitute a formidable systemic obstacle to their enactment: No arrangement of social institutions can be stable, in the value-laden sense, if it tolerates formidable systemic obstacles that are sustained by institutionalized assumptions inimical to autonomy. Because the obstacle to gender egalitarianism is such an obstacle, any social arrangement that hopes to be stable over time must dismantle it. The preference for access to gender egalitarianism cannot be dismissed as an expensive taste, and the call to make it less costly is no call to pander. Preserving stability calls for subsidizing gender egalitarianism. Formidable systemic obstacles to gender egalitarianism do not make instability inevitable. Even as the principled dimension of stability is present, the practical dimension is only a projection: The bare tactical case did not conclude that large-scale discontent is inevitable, only that under the circumstances specified, it is reasonably foreseeable. But given the strong citizenship interest in maintaining stability, citizenship interests favor amending conditions that pose a serious threat to stability, even if those conditions do not make instability inevitable. Because stability is significantly likelier under a social arrangement that is not predicated upon a social role presumption that is inimical to autonomy, and because the unrest we can foresee under arrangements that are predicated on such a presumption is principled, a citizenship interest favors reforming the norms and institutions that embody that presumption. Because the breadwinner/homemaker presumption is just such a presumption, a citizenship interest favors removing that systemic obstacle to gender-egalitarian lifestyles and subsidizing that lifestyle option when subsidies are necessary to restore its genuine availability.23 23 The proposal to subsidize or incentivize gender egalitarianism may appear to be in tension with the evidence that many individuals already prefer it. If they prefer it, one might wonder, why do they need inducements to take it up? To respond, I review several points made already: First, the evidence in question suggests that many prefer a more equal sharing; this is consistent with many others not having that preference, with those who do have that preference still wanting something short of full equality, and with even those who would report preferring full equality still retaining conservative gender attitudes that influence their actual behavior. Indeed, the full weight of the evidence suggests that all of these are true. Second, the policies I endorse subsidize gender egalitarianism relative to the status quo, under which individuals who would otherwise prefer equal sharing are deterred by its high costs. In justifying a deviation from the status quo, interventions can properly be regarded as incentives even when their aim is to achieve political goods by enabling a choice that individuals would already be inclined to take up were the costs and benefits of doing so different. Third, individuals who might not have been inclined toward equal sharing under the status quo might be persuaded by the subsidies to choose it. This is not the ultimate aim of the subsidies—their ultimate aim is to increase the affordability of a lifestyle choice for those who want it. But many of the institutionalized assumptions that make equal sharing so costly will be overcome only if sufficiently many people actually enact gender egalitarianism— thereby, for example, reducing the supply of employees willing to live up to demanding workplace expectations inconsistent with dual-earner, dual-caregiver arrangements. Plausibly, then, lessening

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Notice that the argument I have been developing derives the citizenship interest in ensuring the genuine availability of gender-egalitarian lifestyles from a fundamental characteristic of citizenship to which political liberalism is committed. Political liberals must idealize citizens as having the two moral powers and a higher-order interest in protecting those moral powers in order to explain why, for example, a just politically liberal state must protect the basic liberties and their fair value. If more robust citizenship interests follow from this basic characterization of citizenship, and if preserving those interests requires political intervention, then the legitimacy of intervention can be denied only by abandoning the same central tenet of political liberalism that grounds that theory’s commitment to protecting the basic liberties. Political liberals have commonly thought that progressive political interventions could be justified only by invoking a “thick” theory of the good that includes comprehensive liberal values. My argument undertakes to defend gender-egalitarian interventions using only a “thin” theory of the good. I invoked the value of comprehensive autonomy, but only its conditional political value. I have argued, essentially, that political liberalism’s “thin” conception of citizenship entails much “thicker” and more robust requirements than political liberals have noticed. Because this “thin” conception of citizenship is at the heart of political liberalism, the progressive genderegalitarian political interventions that I am defending are called for by the theory’s most basic theoretical commitments. That a citizenship interest favors preserving stability is relatively uncontroversial. More controversially, I have argued that a citizenship interest favors ensuring that enactments of comprehensive autonomy circulate broadly throughout society. From these two interests, I have generated a conditional case for a third: When high costs of gender egalitarianism jeopardize stability—as they do when they are maintained by institutionalized assumptions inimical to comprehensive autonomy—there is a citizenship interest in removing that obstacle and preserving the genuine availability of genderegalitarian lifestyles by enacting subsidies to lessen their costs. When this can be accomplished without undue cost to other citizenship interests, the interest in subsidizing gender egalitarianism is decisive. The citizenship interest in stability is strong, and the argument developed in Chapter 4 implies that merely incentivizing gender-egalitarian lifestyles will not unduly threaten

the costs of gender egalitarianism requires inducing some to take it up who would not do so if specialization and egalitarianism were equally affordable. For this reason, making gender egalitarianism affordable requires, in the short run, political inducements to take it up, even if many individuals already prefer it. After gendered social norms wear away and we come closer to realizing gender egalitarianism as a social ideal, on the other hand, such inducements will no longer be necessary to maintain equal sharing as a genuinely available option.

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other interests of citizenship.24 Thus, when gender egalitarianism is not a genuinely available option, citizenship interests decisively favor genderegalitarian political interventions. Under these circumstances, the criterion of reciprocity licenses those interventions as not only legitimate, but as a requirement of legitimacy. But do these circumstances obtain? Do gender norms and gendered social institutions foreclose the genuine availability of the option to live a genderegalitarian lifestyle? In Section 7.5, I consider the U.S. as a case study, arguing that it is indeed characterized by a formidable systemic obstacle that obstructs the genuine availability of gender egalitarianism, and that the obstacle is indeed sustained by an embedded assumption inimical to autonomy.

7.5 A Formidable Systemic Obstacle Recall that the stability argument relies upon, in the bare tactical case, the premise that gender egalitarianism is reasonably perceived as excessively costly and, in the principled case, the premise that its costs are sustained by assumptions inimical to comprehensive autonomy. In this section, I apply the conditional argument given so far by finishing my defense of these two premises. In the U.S., the assumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization—which is embedded in labor markets, childcare structures, and social norms—is indeed predicated on and sustained by institutionalized assumptions inimical to autonomy: assumptions that men and women will not and should not participate equally in paid and household labor.25 Moreover, the breadwinner/homemaker specialization assumption effectively constrains both women and men from equally participating in paid and household labor. Earlier, I canvassed empirical evidence suggesting that individuals prefer a more gender-equal sharing of paid and caregiving work but deem it too costly to enact. In this section, I want to show that this judgment is reasonable. My goal is to defend the claim that labor markets, childcare institutions, and gender and parenting norms—all premised on 24 The resources for political interventions are scarce, and in extenuating circumstances, they might be needed to preserve even stronger citizenship interests. For example, citizens would not insist on gender-egalitarian interventions were those interventions purchased at the cost of interventions necessary to protect the political liberties of minorities. I set aside the important question of what political opportunity costs gender-egalitarian interventions may justify under extenuating circumstances that impose bleak tradeoffs. 25 I take my argument to be consistent with, but not reliant on, the idea that the gendered division of labor persists in part because women’s unpaid labor benefits capitalism by, for example, freeing up workers to work longer hours. Using my terminology here, the idea would be that the benefits to capitalism (partly) explain why the breadwinner/homemaker assumption persists in labor markets. Plausibly, the new normal of partial specialization is more beneficial still. See Holmstrom 1981, especially 194–5; Davis 1983, 222–44.

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the assumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization—interact in such a way that individuals reasonably deem gender egalitarianism excessively costly. Because prospects for stability depend on reasonable perceptions, this judgment constitutes a threat to stability. The circumstances on which the stability argument was conditioned actually obtain. Consider labor markets first. Joan Williams has documented the growing ubiquity of extraordinarily demanding workplaces, and what she refers to as the “ideal worker” assumption: the expectation of employers that they are entitled to demand that their employees work very long hours and take little or no time off for caregiving work.26 While certain elite professions have long demanded this single-minded commitment from employees, the ideal worker norm has come to pervade most decent jobs paying a living wage, including full-time blue-collar jobs as well as high-level professional jobs. Employers expect that their employees will not only meet the increasing time demands of full-time work, but also work overtime when the needs of the workplace demand it.27 Employees are increasingly expected to be “on call,” even in industries where this availability has not traditionally been demanded, and in many fields, ideal worker status requires a willingness to relocate.28 For many families, part-time work is not a viable alternative to having at least one adult performing as an ideal worker in a full-time position, because part-time work carries a wage penalty relative to full-time work and generally provides no benefits.29 Even when workplaces offer “family-friendly” policies, the choice to take them up often comes with penalties: leveled advancement trajectories and even the risk of job loss.30 Seminal works like Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robin, The Overworked American by Juliet Schor, and The Time Bind by Arlie Hochschild document the increasing number of hours in the American work week. The result is more illness and stress among workers and less quality time spent with family.31 Jerry Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson draw on data from the Current Population Survey (1970–2000) to show that the combined working time of couples has risen dramatically, resulting in “deepening time dilemmas.”32 Gerson maintains that “more than ever, workplaces are greedy organizations with scant room for other loyalties.”33 Workers are expected to 26

27 Williams 2000. See also Boushey 2016. Gerson 2010, 118, 168. 29 Gerson 2010; Williams 2000, 24, 71–2, 75. Williams 2000, 72–5, 96. 30 Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Maume 2006; Williams 2000, 74, 94. 31 Dominguez and Robin 1998; Hochschild 1997; Schor 1993. 32 “As revolutionary social and economic shifts have propelled most women into the workplace and left most American households depending on either two workers or one parent, deepening time dilemmas are a logical consequence of the clash between changing family forms and intransigent, time-greedy workplaces” ( Jacobs and Gerson 2004, 4). As with the work time of American individuals, the work time of American couples exceeds that of couples in other industrial countries (Jacobs and Gerson 2004, 133–4). 33 Gerson 2010, 119–20. 28

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have “immunity from family work”: to have no serious caregiving responsibilities or to have “someone else at home” to meet caregiving demands.34 Unsurprisingly in light of this, mothers are facing ever growing obstacles to attaining job market success.35 While the ideal worker norm is not itself gendered, the harms it imposes fall disproportionately on women, since women perform a much larger share of caregiving work. Meanwhile, labor-intensive parenting norms and the poor quality of substitute childcare options available on the market make the commodification of caregiving an unappealing alternative to providing care oneself.36 Annette Lareau’s extensive ethnographic study of parenting styles reveals that dominant middle-class parenting norms demand that parents exert tremendous energy not only to meet children’s everyday needs but also to enhance their human capital.37 Though Lareau emphasizes that this “concerted cultivation” may not be intrinsically better for children than less intensive parenting practices, concerted cultivation is clearly advantageous for children raised in a society wherein important institutions like schools and colleges implicitly endorse that style of parenting and the assertive sense of entitlement it fosters. Although concerted cultivation prevails primarily among middle-class families, poor and working-class families are constrained by it too because the norms of concerted cultivation have permeated the social institutions with which all families must interact. Parents who fail to provide intensive attention risk being perceived by teachers, doctors, and social service providers as inadequately committed to their children’s development.38 Surveys show that parents feel as though allegedly “voluntary” involvement in children’s schooling is really mandatory and that their regular presence in schools is essential for establishing goodwill among their children’s educators.39 This perception is not inaccurate; norms of intensive parenting account for part of the correlation between parental involvement and school success.40 At the same time, colleges and employers increasingly expect applicants to demonstrate social and human capital by citing a vast array of extra-academic experiences. To enhance their children’s future prospects for college success and job marketability, parents often feel that they must enroll them in human-capital-enhancing experiences like piano lessons and supposedly character-building experiences like team sports. Insofar as parents care about their children’s future prospects—and these days, parents are expected to care about little else—they often feel they must ensure that their children participate in a broad array of extracurricular activities. Perhaps some paid childcare 34

35 Williams 2000, 24. Williams 2000, 5. Coltrane 1997; Gerson 1993; 2010; Hays 1998; Jacobs and Gerson 2004, 80–3. 37 38 39 Lareau 2003. Lareau 2003. Williams 2000, 34. 40 Williams 2000, 34. On the increasing amount of time spent on parenting activities, see also Guryan et al. 2008; Ramey and Ramey 2010. 36

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providers can accommodate schedules filled with extracurricular activities. But the work of taxiing children from activity to activity, remembering to bring the snacks, cheering with gusto from the sidelines, and supervising the team during an impromptu post-game pizza party involves a kind of attentive caregiving that only the most privileged parents are in a position to purchase on the market. Lillian Rubin describes this phenomenon aptly: “The notion that mom should be there for the children always and without fail, that her primary job is to tend and nurture them, that without her constant ministrations their future is in jeopardy, is deeply embedded in our national psyche.”41 Intensive parenting norms are not the only reason that the commodification of childcare is an unappealing strategy for balancing work and family. The U.S. has long failed to provide adequate support for substitute childcare.42 It offers less support for childcare than any other industrialized nation,43 and the cost of high-quality childcare is high enough to price out many would-be consumers.44 These factors have depressed the quality of care available to most parents in the U.S. In countries like France that have significant governmental support for substitute childcare, childcare facilities are safe and well regulated. Childcare workers enjoy high status and good remuneration, and they are well qualified for the work they do. In contrast, professional caregiving in the U.S. is a low-wage, low-status occupation. There are, of course, notable exceptions, and some parents enjoy excellent substitute childcare options. But social and economic forces continue to exert downward pressure on the quality of childcare in the U.S., with many parents resorting to unqualified caregivers and dealing with high turnover rates.45 This is a problem both for the parents and for the paid caregivers, and gender-norm-compliant behavior helps to sustain it by sustaining the devaluation of caregiving work. So employers’ expectations severely penalize those with caregiving responsibilities, and for many parents, significant commodification of caregiving is not an adequate and affordable alternative. As a result, many partners feel that they have no viable option but to specialize: At least one partner must perform as an ideal worker to earn the salary and benefits that ideal worker employment provides. When caregiving responsibilities arise, the other partner cannot perform as an ideal worker, and so becomes the caregiving specialist. Because employer expectations are so demanding and the skills of caregiving so dependent upon familiarity and experience, the specialization quickly becomes deeply entrenched. Partners might significantly reduce the costliness 41

Rubin 1994, 79. In 1971, President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act due to pressure from a lobbying campaign that lambasted the legislation’s preference for “communal approaches to child-rearing over and against the family centered approach.” Similar legislation was defeated in 1975 on the grounds that it constituted an effort to “Sovietize the family.” See Williams 2000, 49. 43 44 45 Williams 2000, 49. Williams 2000, 49–50. Williams 2000, 49–50. 42

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of gender egalitarianism by choosing to remain childless, but many caregiving responsibilities are not elective. The responsibility to care for the elderly, ill, or disabled often falls to family members, who are likely at least temporarily to be unable to perform as ideal workers as a result. Caregiving responsibilities are difficult to avoid entirely, and even if the excessive costs of gender egalitarianism can be substantially lessened by trying to avoid caregiving, this will not change the difficulty of avoiding specialization when caregiving responsibilities do arise. Nor will it eliminate the other domestic responsibilities that employees are expected to have “someone else at home” to see to.46 Nor is it reasonable to insist that gender egalitarianism is not so costly after all because many could afford it if they remained childless. Demanding employer expectations, intensive parenting norms, and the dearth of high-quality substitute childcare interact so as to render genderegalitarian lifestyles, on average, highly costly, and we have seen that most partners with caregiving responsibilities do not perceive an affordable option of sharing paid work and caregiving work equally. With the exception of highquality substitute care, the social circumstances considered here may apply broadly throughout the developed world, and if so, the argument applies in those contexts as well. Across the contexts to which the argument so far applies, what dictates that presumed specialization must be gendered? These mechanisms are facially gender neutral. Why, then, do so few fathers specialize in caregiving labor, and so few mothers perform as ideal workers? While it is clearly becoming less common for people explicitly to endorse norms such as “a woman’s place is in the home,” deeply internalized gender norms still influence our behavior. Recall the results of the International Social Survey Program or the Pew Research survey discussed earlier. In the latter, only 16 percent of respondents thought that having a full-time working mother was ideal for children, whereas 70 percent thought it ideal for children that fathers be employed full time. This despite the fact that 79 percent of respondents rejected the idea that women should return to traditional fulltime motherhood.47 Our norms and attitudes have changed significantly, but they are still not gender egalitarian. Persistent gender norms are reinforced in myriad inescapable ways: For example, we needn’t look far to find articles about the harm of mothers working long hours or the importance of bonding with mom for baby’s emotional and intellectual development.48 It is still unusual for male actors to be cast to sell parenting goods in magazines or on television, and when we see media images of men cleaning, we often see an indulgent woman smiling in the background, following up to fix his 46 See Fraser 1994 for an argument that existing welfare state provisions are designed on the presumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization. 47 48 See Parker 2015. See also Bertrand et al. 2015. For examples, see Chambers 2008, 125.

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endearingly incompetent housework blunders. Women feel pressure to nurture kin and friendship networks that men are freer from often because men benefit from women’s “kin-keeping.” Gender norms and all the subtle and overt forces that sustain them in turn influence how adults behave and how children are socialized. Most importantly for our purposes, they influence our strategies for navigating presumed specialization. Intensive parenting norms dictate that children are entitled to a parent whose primary project is caregiving, and gender norms—though perhaps less directly and in ways less consciously endorsed than in previous decades—make the mother seem best suited to perform that role. Meanwhile, employers expect employees with caregiving immunity, and gender norms— again in circuitous fashion—ensure that fathers typically serve as primary breadwinners. Parenting norms, workplace expectations, and the dearth of substitute childcare ensure that for many, specialization is a far easier option than non-specialization. While gender norms themselves no longer really call for strict specialization, they favor gendered specialization when specialization occurs. In this way, gender norms reciprocally reinforce and are reinforced by gendered social institutions and parenting norms. Even setting aside the ways in which gender norms mediate partners’ choices about how to navigate the constraints of presumed specialization, assumptions about who is best suited to what kind of work are manifest in the very design of institutions that presume specialization in the first place: in the ideal worker assumption that characterizes labor markets, in the notoriously poor quality of commodified childcare options, and in the parenting norms that prescribe the time-intensive parenting that now typifies middleclass family life. The design of our labor markets is suited to husband breadwinners supported by wife homemakers, and workplaces continue to take labor specialization for granted.49 Design features based on the needs and availability of paid labor specializers remain. Though men increasingly want to take on more caregiving responsibilities and women have long been working outside the home, labor markets retain the gendered assumptions that whoever earns the bread does only that. Similarly, the gendered specialization presumption manifests in inadequate support for childcare. Assumptions that women will take on the burdens of caregiving for free deflect pressure to support high-quality substitute caregiving. Such assumptions depress the status and remuneration of professional caregiving, ensure that the profession remain feminized, and ensure that anything perceived as women’s work is devalued—even if, like childcare and elementary school teaching, it is among the most important work our society

49

Boushey 2016. See also Holmstrom 1981.

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needs to have done. And the gendered specialization presumption is manifest in intensive parenting norms. Mothers presumed to specialize in caregiving are, unsurprisingly, expected to develop the domain-specific competence typical of specialization: to perform caregiving attentively, expertly, and labor intensively. The structure of schooling is a vivid example: Surely the presumption of mothering is part of what explains our failure to update the traditional schooling schedule of early start and release times and long summer breaks. Though the institutional design is compatible in many ways with gender-atypical specialization, it is the presumption of gendered specialization that explains and sustains that design. It is because the presumption of specialization is gendered in this sense that it is inimical to autonomy: Woven into the very fabric of our social institutional design is the idea of women doing women’s work in the home, and men working outside of it. Earlier in this chapter, I surveyed data showing that those who prefer to avoid gendered work specialization perceive non-specialization to be excessively costly. In this section, I have tried to show that this perception is reasonable and that the costs are sustained by features of social institutions predicated on gendered assumptions about work. Gender norms and parenting norms interact reciprocally with labor markets and childcare institutions—all predicated on the assumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization—so as to obstruct access to gender-egalitarian lifestyles. In a society characterized by a critical mass of individuals affirming the comprehensive value of autonomy, this can be expected to generate large-scale and reasonable perceptions that gender egalitarianism is unfairly costly, given that what makes it so costly is a presumption of specialization that is inimical to the value of autonomy. Note that the argument developed over the course of this chapter and Chapter 6 proceeds in two distinct steps. First, comprehensive autonomy must be widely enacted in order to ensure citizens’ capacity for a conception of the good. Comprehensive autonomy is fully compatible with choosing a traditional gendered division of labor. But, second, once we have a critical mass of comprehensively autonomous citizens—a critical mass that we must preserve in order to protect the citizenship interest in a capacity for a conception of the good—the stability problem arises. Gender-egalitarian lifestyles are not claimed to be politically valuable, but up to a threshold, enactments of comprehensive autonomy are. And comprehensively autonomous individuals will experience excessive socially imposed costs to gender egalitarianism as an affront to their autonomy, the practice of which is politically valuable, when those costs are sustained by an institutionalized gendered presumption about who is best suited to which work roles. Even comprehensively autonomous people who would opt against gender egalitarianism could reasonably deem it unfair for that option to be obstructed by high costs 222

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constituting a formidable systemic obstacle. Because we must ensure a critical threshold of comprehensive autonomy enactments, we can expect too that these reasonable perceptions of unfairness will be common, and thus that failure to act risks instability. Gender egalitarianism is widely and reasonably regarded as excessively costly, and its costs are due to institutionalized assumptions inimical to autonomy. The large-scale discontent that is likely to result constitutes a threat to stability. Because of the strong citizenship interest in stability, there is a derivative citizenship interest in enacting gender-egalitarian interventions to subsidize those costs, thereby preserving gender egalitarianism as a genuinely available option.

7.6 Stability Revisited I have developed an argument for gender-egalitarian political interventions that abides by the justificatory constraints imposed by political liberalism. My argument relies only on premises that are permissibly invoked within political liberalism—that are in fact implied by the most fundamental commitments of political liberalism: the characterization of citizenship, and the citizenship interests that characterization implies. In concluding this chapter, I want to address some important objections to my defense of the legitimacy of these interventions. These objections begin with a simple question: What is the point of political liberalism, if not to rule out precisely the kinds of robust, partisan interventions that I have argued for here? The whole idea, after all, is to specify a set of conditions under which a diverse society can be regulated stably over time by a system of just political institutions. But the interventions whose legitimacy I have defended will be inhospitable to many conceptions of the good. Whether or not these interventions are acceptable to citizens understood in the idealized, value-laden sense of citizenship, they will not win the allegiance of all actual citizens in a pluralistic society. Indeed, those who value traditional gender roles or favor non-interventionist, minimalist government will enthusiastically resist the kinds of interventions I have claimed to be demanded by the commitments of political liberalism. Some philosophers argue that the dictates of political liberalism are—at least within certain domains—effectively indistinguishable from the dictates of comprehensive liberalisms. Amy Gutmann, for example, argues that comprehensive and political liberalisms issue the same judgments regarding the controversial cases of restricting parents’ authority over their children’s education, because the political conception of citizenship is rich enough to justify the kinds of restrictions on parental prerogatives that comprehensive liberals 223

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have tended to support.50 Similarly, I argue that the political conception of citizenship is rich enough to justify intrusive interventions to promote gender egalitarianism. I frame my project as an argument for the welcome conclusion that political liberals can endorse progressive social reforms as legitimate and, in some cases, even required by their basic theoretical commitments. Gutmann, on the other hand, uses the progressive potential of political liberalism to cast doubt on the importance of the political/comprehensive distinction. We might wonder: If political liberalism does little more than offer a different justification for the same verdicts as comprehensive liberalism, does it really offer better prospects for long-term stability in a pluralistic society? In fact, the argument I have developed over the course of this chapter suggests something that might be regarded as worse than convergence between political and comprehensive liberalisms: It suggests that political liberalism’s basic normative commitments constitute an independent source of justification for political intervention. Does political liberalism offer favorable prospects for stability if its basic normative commitments issue positive requirements for liberal legitimacy that might in some domains be more interventionist than the demands of a comprehensively liberal theory of justice? And if not a better promise of stability, what does political liberalism offer? Political liberals might be inclined to restore the theoretical advantage of political liberalism over comprehensive liberalism by denying the verdict I have attributed to their theory. They may disavow the interventions I have endorsed precisely because those interventions would be rejected by some actual reasonable citizens. They may think that this rejection demonstrates that the interventions fail to be appropriately neutral among various conceptions of the good. Indeed, the interventions I have endorsed have non-neutral consequences. But no political regime is neutral in its consequences, and political liberals have long recognized that they cannot impose a standard of neutrality that forbids all political interventions that impede or promote certain ways of life. We have seen already that political institutions will inevitably influence the lifestyle choices and values of those living under them.51 What matters is that we can justify political interventions using reasons that are neutral among conceptions of the good, reasons that are acceptable from the perspective of citizenship.

50 Gutmann 1995. Will Kymlicka makes a similar point about the general convergence of judgments between political and comprehensive liberalisms. See Kymlicka 2002. 51 Recall the Rawls quote invoked in Chapter 3: “It is surely impossible for the basic structure of a just constitutional regime not to have important effects and influences as to which comprehensive doctrines endure and gain adherents over time; and it is futile to try to counteract these effects and influences . . . We must accept the facts of commonsense political sociology.” See Rawls 1993, 193. See also Rawls 1993, 192–5.

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My burden has been to show that gender-egalitarian interventions abide by the only standard of neutrality that political liberalism can impose: justificatory neutrality. The interventions I endorse are justified without invoking any controversial premises asserting the intrinsic value of particular lifestyles. The promotion of gender egalitarianism is justified on the grounds that failing to maintain the genuine accessibility of gender-egalitarian lifestyles jeopardizes stability, and temporary promotion of those lifestyles is necessary to ensure their accessibility. This argument invokes political values that all citizens ought to recognize as such. And, for good measure, the interventions I have endorsed meet Rawls’s criteria for legitimate interventions within liberal political conceptions of justice: These interventions “apply to the basic political and social institutions . . . of society” (argued for in Chapter 4), “can be presented independently from comprehensive doctrines of any kind,” and “can be worked out from fundamental ideas implicit in the public political culture of a constitutional regime, such as the conceptions of citizens as free and equal persons” (argued for in Chapters 6 and 7).52 Some critics will object to my use of an idealized, value-laden conceptualization of citizenship. But it is only by invoking that idealized conceptualization that political liberals can establish the absolute prohibitions and protections definitive of their theory. Recall that political liberalism imposes some absolute conditions on any just society: It must specify and protect certain rights, liberties, and opportunities; it must afford a special priority to those rights, liberties, and opportunities; and it must ensure for all citizens adequate all-purpose means to make effective use of them.53 These conditions are implied by the criterion of reciprocity because of the strong citizenship interest in protecting the moral powers of citizenship. And yet, virtually any intervention could conceivably be opposed by some actual citizens, precisely because political regimes have the effect of discouraging particular lifestyles and encouraging others. We can imagine circumstances under which actual people would waive these protections even for themselves. Someone who cares sufficiently strongly about his conception of the good might consent to society’s prioritization of his values over the protection of his basic liberties. Someone who is disinclined to exercise her political liberties might consent to society’s failure to provide the means to make effective use of those liberties, preferring instead that society provide for other needs. These individuals accept violations of the three conditions because their own conceptions of the good subordinate the protections of liberalism to other values, and because even the most minimal interventions to protect basic liberties might promote lifestyles in which those liberties are exercised at the expense of lifestyles in which they are not. 52

Rawls 1993, 453.

53

Rawls 1993, xlvi, 6.

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But were they reflecting purely in their capacity as citizens, these individuals would demand those protections as necessary features of the just politically liberal state. It is precisely this counterfactual consideration of what individuals would accept or demand were they reflecting purely in their capacity as citizens that the normative, value-laden characterization of citizenship captures. That we cannot read off that counterfactual consideration straightforwardly from what actual persons accept should come as no surprise, given the extreme difficulty actual persons encounter in setting aside the content of their conceptions of the good to deliberate solely over political reasons derived from citizenship interests. To secure the protections definitive of political liberalism, then, we must apply the criterion of reciprocity using the idealized conceptualization of citizenship that characterizes citizenship only in political terms. This brings us back to the question of stability. Can institutions that incentivize gender-egalitarian lifestyles maintain the allegiance of the many actual citizens who will oppose such incentives? Can political liberalism as I construe it deliver on its pursuit of stability? In Chapter 6, I argued that political liberalism’s advantage lies in its aspiration to secure mutual respect by insisting on justificatory neutrality. But I did not insist on that advantage to the exclusion of favorable prospects for stability. Indeed, the progressive potential that I have argued for on behalf of political liberalism is fully consistent with it providing favorable prospects for stability. These favorable prospects are won precisely by way of its insistence on justificatory neutrality. Stability comes not from avoiding all controversial social policy but from preserving justificatory community among free and equal citizens. By imposing the justificatory requirements that reciprocity entails, we fortify our social scheme against the risks that might otherwise attend imposing social policy that unequally burdens different ways of life. The requirement that political enactments be publicly justifiable imposes a corresponding presumption that those enactments be defended politically in the language of public reason. A society that abides by this presumption gives due respect to adherents of diverse ways of life and demonstrates publicly that the basic interests of citizenship to which all should be committed call for the interventions in question despite those interventions unequally burdening different ways of life. This requirement of public justification makes it likelier that actual citizens will accept those interventions, because it makes available a justification for controversial interventions to which all citizens ought to assent, even if they find those interventions unwelcome. Even if I am wrong to be optimistic, though, I have so far been addressing the objection as if the risk of large-scale discontent suffices to present a threat of instability. In fact, even if gender-egalitarian political interventions did cause such discontent, that discontent would not jeopardize stability. The goal is not 226

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to avoid all discontent, remember, but to find conditions conducive to stability in the technical sense, wherein free and equal citizens give reasoned and principled support to the institutional arrangement of their society. For any intervention at all, circumstances may arise under which that intervention could be met with large-scale discontent. Political liberalism does not undertake to avoid this. Rather, it aims to avoid instability borne of discontent due to a political regime that invokes controversial value considerations in justifying its exercises of power, or that fails to protect and promote the interests of citizenship. Actual citizens will find interventions more palatable insofar as those interventions are shown to be called for by political values, the endorsement of which is in turn called for by those citizens’ status as citizens. But the requirement of public justification that political liberalism imposes does not guarantee universal endorsement. Political philosophy remains a normative enterprise, and we should not defer too much to the fact of the matter about what political aims and means we find palatable under the status quo. This is particularly the case when we are thinking about how to move from a society not well ordered by a political conception of justice to one that is. By imposing the standard of mutual justification embodied by the criterion of reciprocity, political liberalism strikes a principled balance between deference to pluralism on the one hand and allegiance to the values of liberalism on the other. It does not prize order over justificatory community, but by aiming for the latter, we have better prospects for attaining a legitimate and just stability. The task of this book has been to show that the instability threatened by the costliness of gender egalitarianism calls for political remediation. Discontent caused by subsidizing gender egalitarianism does not. Whatever deference the preferences of gender egalitarianism’s opponents merit, the frustration caused them by gender-egalitarian interventions does not jeopardize the kind of stability that political liberals should aspire to bring about.

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This book charts the course for a reconciliation between feminism and political liberalism by building a politically liberal case for a progressive feminist agenda to tackle a “linchpin” of gender injustice: the family and the gendered division of labor. Now that the terms of that reconciliation are on the table, what is the take-away, and what questions remain? I have been fortunate to receive a great deal of feedback on the various parts of this project from excellent mentors, colleagues, and audiences. Many of the challenges I’ve gotten have already been addressed: for example, challenges like the question of whether some of the arguments “prove too much.” By far, the most common challenges are the ones just considered: versions of the worry that the political liberalism I land on is one not really worth having. I know that there is something to this—that many who are drawn to political liberalism will find my gloss on it unappealing. It does look to be quite a comprehensive political liberalism and one that appears to give up a lot of what political liberals have taken themselves to be after. Even as it restricts the permissible grounds for intervention, it offers new theoretical resources for justifying intervention as well, derived from its signature “constraints” on legitimate exercises of coercive power. But over time, and with the benefit of so many conversations on just these questions, I have become, if anything, more convinced that my gloss is one worth fighting for. It preserves what political liberals should be most committed to preserving: the possibility of justificatory community as a way of expressing mutual civic respect in a profoundly ideologically divided society. If those ideals take us in what seem to be radical directions, we might conclude that something has gone wrong in our liberal theorizing. But I think we should conclude instead that much of what is controversial in our divided society shouldn’t be: We needn’t endorse it as called for by some controversial value commitments; we can defend it on the basis of political values that should be shared among us. Noticing that so many oppose the course of action favored by political reasons, we might infer that unreasonableness abounds. After all, the criterion Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. Gina Schouten, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198813071.003.0008

Conclusion

for reasonableness—and inclusion in the justificatory community—is roughly a willingness to cooperate with others on terms they can reasonably accept, and an acceptance of the inevitability of pluralism in a democratic society. But from the fact that so many evidently are unmoved by political reasons, we should not conclude that they are unwilling to be moved. Rather than dismiss those who oppose the course of action as unreasonable, we should notice that the political course favored by the weight of often divergent political reasons is difficult to discern. Indeed, this difficulty is an often overlooked consideration in favor of actually deliberating together in the language of public reason. Many of the interests we share require some work to unearth, and still more work is needed to discern the political course those interests favor in our circumstances. Getting it wrong isn’t always a matter of failing to care about political reasons; and plausibly, getting it right will often require working through the various considerations together. My gloss on justificatory community foregoes much of the conservatism and status quo deference often thought to typify political liberalism. I think this is a virtue, not a bug. What matters from the perspective of political liberalism is not whether any particular social policy is congenial to a diverse array of actual citizens under the status quo, but whether we can justify the choices we make regarding how individuals will be influenced and what costs they will bear. More specifically, what matters is that we can justify these choices to one another, using reasons we can all recognize as such because they derive from interests that we share. If my argument is sound, then political liberals should not only abandon opposition to gender egalitarian interventions; they should in fact proactively advocate for those interventions as demanded by their most basic theoretical commitments regarding political legitimacy. I would also like to conclude that feminists should abandon any resistance to political liberalism and should in fact embrace it as a promising vehicle for articulating their demands for a more gender just society. But my argument falls short of supporting this conclusion, even if it is fully successful in establishing the legitimacy of the interventions in question. First, the scope of my argument is limited. The gendered division of labor does not exhaust the problems of gender injustice. If political liberalism can be feminist with respect to the gendered division of labor, that bodes well for a more general reconciliation. But more is needed to show definitively that political liberalism is able adequately to address all areas of feminist concern.1 Second, whether feminists regard the reconciliation as successful will depend on the extent

1 Others have considered the capacity of political liberalism to handle feminist concerns other than the gendered division of labor. See, for example, the discussion of sex work in Hartley and Watson 2017.

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to which they are committed to invoking feminist comprehensive values themselves to justify coercive exercises of political power. No political liberalism can be feminist in the way that a feminist comprehensive liberalism is feminist, and even within the arena in which I have argued for a feminist extension of political liberalism, feminists might regard the framework as un-feminist still in light of its refusal to accept feminist comprehensive values as justification. I have argued that gender egalitarian interventions can be justified relying fully on reasons acceptable from the perspective of citizenship. Not only are such interventions not ruled out by the constraints imposed by political liberalism; under certain circumstances, they are positively called for by those constraints. This is significant, given that the gendered division of labor acts as a linchpin of gender injustice, and that it is thought to be a particularly difficult case for political liberalism. The relevant question from the perspective of feminist liberals, then, is whether political liberalism can be feminist enough. I have offered no argument for any particular standard of what should be regarded as feminist enough. I have only argued that political liberalism is more feminist than it seems to be, that in fact it is fairly radically feminist, in a particularly important domain wherein it looked to be decidedly un-feminist. This doesn’t bother me much. Any standard for what counts as a feminist extension of a liberal account of political legitimacy will ultimately rely for its defense on appeal to intuition. The extension my gloss on political liberalism implies certainly seems feminist in the area of gendered labor policy, and it accommodates the intuitions invoked by the many feminist critics of political liberalism that this book is in conversation with. The fact that it does this without invoking comprehensively feminist values that some citizens reasonably reject seems a virtue. My argument accomplishes something significant from the perspective of political liberalism and from the perspective of feminism—even if not to establish conclusively that feminist opposition to political liberalism can be overcome in all domains of feminist concern. My own most pressing reservation about the argument concerns the convoluted route through which the citizenship interests I invoked support the feminist conclusion. This is a challenge that was raised against my argument much less often, but my own rendering of the challenge draws on this vexing image I have of the argument as a torturous feat of acrobatics: If you have to do that many somersaults to justify gender egalitarian interventions compliant with the constraints of political liberalism, then should we really regard the alleged reconciliation as successful? To address gender injustice compliant with politically liberal legitimacy, shouldn’t we want an argument that proceeds more directly to the conclusion that the policies in question are permissible exercises of political power? 230

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At one extreme, the worry amounts to a rejection of the reconciliatory project I am pursuing. You might think that any adequate framework must license gender egalitarian interventions on the basis of one very straightforward premise—something like: It is bad for women to specialize in caregiving. But to impose that standard for an adequate framework of legitimacy is to abandon the project of mutual respect by way of mutual justifiability. It is to reject political liberalism on its face and embrace comprehensive feminist values to justify political intervention. This version of the concern can be set aside for our purposes. The version that I worry about is more difficult to make precise. Assume for a moment that I am right about the real appeal of political liberalism: that we might achieve fair terms of cooperation and mutual respect in a pluralistic society by building and preserving a justificatory community among reasonable but profoundly ideologically divided citizens. In outline, the justifications we offer might go something like this: “You ought to endorse these interventions, in our circumstances, on the basis of values that you ought to accept insofar as you’re on board with the project of building and preserving a justificatory community in the first place. And you ought to endorse these interventions on the basis of those values even if the interventions come at a cost to you or to the comprehensive values you affirm.” What must follow, of course, is an argument, drawing on the shared values to support the conclusion that intervention is needed. I have argued that we have available all the premises we need to execute such an argument. Still, I can’t persuade myself to be fully satisfied. Even if each of the premises is true and each of the inferences sound, I can’t quite imagine the argument being articulated in public discourse. This isn’t a lamentation that feminists and gender traditionalists and fiscal conservatives don’t (often enough) engage together in public discourse. Rather, it’s a worry that the argument itself lacks a virtue that it should have if it’s to be fully in the spirit of political liberalism as I understand it. The virtue I have in mind is something like simplicity. But the concern is also not about the intelligence of feminists or gender traditionalists or fiscal conservatives, or about their ability to follow a nuanced argument. We cannot impose a standard of accessibility according to which a political argument must be so simple that it can be followed without effort or engagement. Still, there are two poles here with a lot of space between them: on the one hand, requiring that the argument must be so straightforward that one’s opponents can’t help but follow it; on the other, insisting that it’s enough that some argument be available, whether or not anyone can track it. The argument of this book sometimes feels to me like a philosopher’s argument, falling too far on the latter end between the two poles of being transparently accessible and being merely available but mostly opaque. 231

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I am certainly not claiming that my argument is so sophisticated that it will be inaccessible to the average citizen; my reservation is just that it is not close enough to the accessible end to be fully in the spirit of political liberalism. Political arguments are meant to be available for public deliberation. I have offered an argument that I take to be sound and to rely only on premises that are available for public deliberation—those based on political reasons. But maybe that doesn’t suffice to make the argument available for public deliberation. I have presented it here as clearly and straightforwardly as I can, and I am sure someone more skilled could render it clearer still. Yet it remains difficult to imagine it actually being articulated, in public deliberation, offered by a feminist to a gender traditionalist or small government conservative. Maybe this is a failure of imagination on my part. Even if it isn’t, we needn’t take it to be a problem for the argument. If I’m right that the course of action favored by the weight of political reasons will often be difficult to discern, then cases in which we must deliberate publicly through a complicated set of premises and inferences will abound. This has important implications across several domains. We will need to redesign public deliberative space to allow for the exchange of more complicated chains of reasoning, and we will need to train prospective citizens to follow such chains of reasoning in thinking through their own views and deciphering those offered to them by others. This isn’t just about imparting the skills of analytical reasoning. Following complicated arguments requires analytic skills, to be sure, but it also requires a certain kind of temperament for deploying those skills: the disposition to accept and expect that things will be complicated, and the patience to think through the complication. If this is right, then citizenship education becomes profoundly important—and profoundly difficult to pull off. Some part of me wants to insist that of course public reason requires citizens to develop the capacity to deliberate over complicated arguments. Even if public reasons arguments must be follow-able in addition to being sound, this can’t mean that they must be simple, because politics is not simple. On the other hand, we must be clear-eyed about the limits on our capacity to educate citizens to follow complicated political arguments. Maybe the difficulty of arranging society to enable public deliberation over complicated arguments cuts against a gloss on political liberalism that features them so prominently. To my mind, the most important lingering questions circle around this connection between political reasons and public reasoning. Beyond soundness, what should we demand of arguments that we take to be fit for articulation within a political justificatory community? To be mutually justifiable, need a policy only be justified on the basis of reasons we can all recognize as such? Or need it also be derivable by way of reasoning that we can all follow? How do we avoid both the pitfall of expecting political reasoning to 232

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be simpler than it is and the pitfall of expecting too much of citizens’ capacity to engage in public deliberation over complicated arguments? If political liberalism imposes an accessibility requirement, in addition to the requirement of soundness, in order for arguments to be admissible in public deliberation, then feminists might yet have cause to reject that framework as incompatible with gender justice, and political liberals might yet resist my argument that gender egalitarian policy is legitimate. My current thinking is that any accessibility requirement that rules out the argument developed here will also rule out much else that we should want to allow within the justificatory community. Any plausible accessibility requirement must be weak enough to allow for the fact that political reasons are often divergent, and thus that political arguments will often need to be nuanced to allow for weighting considerations, even in the case of political reasons favoring the essential protections of liberalism. In other words, any plausible accessibility requirement will still permit arguments that require skills and dispositions for following complicated arguments; thus, even tempered by an accessibility requirement, any plausible account of public reason will still impose strong demands on educational institutions to prepare students for citizenship. If that’s right, then the fact that an argument for gender egalitarian interventions is complicated is no mark against it. Even if I am wrong about that, quite an important upshot for political liberals remains: Political liberalism is often thought to rule out gender egalitarian interventions because political reasons are thought to be insufficient to support such interventions. This, I have argued, is a mistake. Political reasons positively mandate gender egalitarian interventions in our circumstances. If an argument based on political reasons doesn’t suffice for public reasoning—if in addition that argument must meet an accessibility standard—and if my argument fails that standard, then this would reveal a serious tension within political liberalism: The fundamental normative commitments of that framework seem to demand gender egalitarian interventions, and yet the citizenship interests on the basis of which those commitments demand those interventions are difficult enough to discern that they seem to resist operating as shared premises: They are not easily enough recognized as shared interests that generate political reasons. I am inclined to think that, should the complicatedness of political reasons outpace our capacity for public reasoning, this would give us a very good reason—a political reason!—to get the latter to catch up. We must not allow fundamental interests of citizenship to go unprotected, even if those interests turn out to be more difficult to discern than we would initially have expected them to be. Political reasons should inform and constrain public reasoning, not the other way around. Even if I am still wrong, quite an important upshot remains for feminists as well. Adequately diagnosing what is wrong with the gendered division of labor 233

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requires deploying some of the theoretical tools of political liberalism: in particular, the commitment to constraining political power on the basis of considerations of reciprocity and mutual justifiability. A great deal of the injustice of the gendered division of labor can be diagnosed using the traditional tools of comprehensive liberalism, but the critical part of this book suggests that something politically objectionable remains after those tools have done all they can. The positive part of the book suggests that political liberalism’s criterion of legitimacy can help us to make sense of what that something is. If this is right, then feminists need to embrace the theoretical tools of political liberalism in some form in order to adequately theorize gender injustice, whether or not the arguments they use those tools to develop are ultimately effective in public deliberation. The gendered division of labor is a problem of legitimacy, and only by deploying the conceptual resources of political liberalism can we fully recognize it as such.

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Index

Note: References to notes are indicated by a letter “n” after the page number. accessibility of arguments 231–3 adult care 46 American Time Use Survey 33–5 arbitrariness objection to the restricted conception of justice 116–17, 119–20, 125, 131 exercises of political power and the justificatory burden, and 125–7 asymmetric vulnerability 38–9 autonomy 21 first-order autonomy 187n.19 second-order autonomy 187n.19 see also comprehensive autonomy; political autonomy background personhood 143–4, 146–7 Baehr, A. 101n.16 bare tactical case for gender–egalitarian interventions 200–2, 211–12 basic income 51–4 basic liberties 68–70, 88–91, 145–6, 180, 225 consent to the infringement of 146 basic structure of society 114, 117–19, 123–4, 128, 131 extension of 136, 138–9 Brake, E. 48, 75n.16 breadwinner / homemaker specialization 3–5, 36–7, 43, 60–1, 170, 216–17 institutionalized presumption of breadwinner / homemaker specialization 174 career progression and parenthood 35–6 caregiver co-ops 164 caregiver justice 111–12 caregiver parity model 56–7 caregiver resource accounts 166–7 caregiving devaluation of caregiving work 36–7, 42–3, 52, 163–4, 219 elevating the status of caregiving 56–7

socializing the costs of caregiving 96 time-poverty consequences of the “second shift” of caregiving 40, 43 working conditions of professional caregivers 47 see also childcare caregiving responsibilities breadwinner / homemaker ideal, and 3 earner-caregivers, and 4 institutional arrangements, and 3–4 outsourcing of 3 share of 2–4 time and labor-intensive 2–3 vulnerability, and 4–6 caregiving-specialist partner implicit assumption of 43–4 Chambers, C. 187n.19 childcare as a secondary activity 34 institutions 218–19 responsibility for, and management of 33–4 unpaid childcare and gender distribution 33–4 see also caregiving “child penalties” 35–6 children non-voluntary behaviour of children 85–6 citizenship 19–20, 128–30 actual vs. ideal citizens 225–6 capacity for a conception of the good, and 144, 176–7, 184 capacity for a sense of justice, and 144, 176–7 citizens as actual members of society 174–6 free and equal citizenship 144–7, 150, 174 hypothetical consent and citizenship interests 190 interests of citizenship 112–13, 174–5, 189 interventions demanded by citizenship 146–7, 149–50 motivating projects of 115–36 normative ideal, as 144–7, 174–6, 192–3

Index citizenship (cont.) reasonable citizenship 76 reciprocity, and 143, 179 sovereignty, and 177–9 “thin” conception of citizenship 215 weighting of citizenship interests 157, 178–81, 189–90 civic education 150–1 civil rights violations 151 coercive political power 32, 115, 123, 175–6 Cohen, G. 119–21, 123–4, 138n.43, 139, 139n.45 collective ends-setting 27–8, 193–4 comprehensive autonomy 182–3, 198 capacity for revising one’s conception of the good, and 184–6, 196–7 citizens enacting comprehensive autonomy 188 compulsory public education curricula, and 189–90 enacting a gendered division of labor, and 199–200 incentives for 188–9 justificatory neutrality, and 173, 196–7 neutrality constraint, and 183 privileged status of 173, 202 reciprocity, and 173, 183–4 role models of 186–8, 204 systemic obstacles to gender egalitarianism, and 202–7, 211–12 weighting of citizenship interests, and 189–90 comprehensive liberalism 64–5, 183–4 political liberalism, and 223–4 comprehensive values 182–3 concerted cultivation 218 consciousness-raising and persuasion 115–16 costliness of gender egalitarianism as a threat to stability 213–17, 219–20, 222–3, 227 childcare institutions, and 218–19 gender norms, and 220–2 labor markets, and 217–20 parenting norms, and 218–19 cost of alternatives to gender specialization 82–3

distribution of social goods 94–5 see also mal-distribution strategy distributive justice 16, 96–9, 111–12 see also mal-distribution strategy domestic abuse 4, 129, 151, 154–5 Dominguez, J. 217–18 dual-caregiving, dual-breadwinning families 43

“daddy months” 8 “daddy quotas” 8, 45–6, 56 democratic decision-making 175–9, 191–4 democratic values 8–9 Denmark gender inequality, and 7, 35–6 design of political institutions 65–6 devaluation of caregiving work 36–7, 42–3, 52, 163–4, 219 difference principle 97, 116n.3, 123

gender-atypical specialization 202 gender-norm-compliant choices 86 gendered division of labor 1 linchpin of gender injustice 4–6, 16, 230 sustaining the devaluation of traditionally female work 5–6 gendered social institutions 112–13, 170 gendered specialization 43 benign cases of case study 70–5

252

earner-caregivers 4 education see public education educational attainment 38 emotional energy devoted to household maintenance 33 Enoch, D. 192–4 equal costliness 58–9 equal opportunity 48, 97–8, 103–5, 110–11 exercising and leisure activities time spent on 33–4 expensive tastes 213–14 fair terms of social cooperation 66, 115–16, 144–5, 174–7, 231 fallback strategies 208–10 family applicability of considerations of justice to 115, 121–4 cooperative domestic unit, as 17 interventions targeted at behavior of individuals within their families 114 family leave initiatives 45 duration of leave 45 effectiveness of 49–51 pay replacement rates 45 restrictions / incentives to encourage fathers to take leave 45–6 feminism 62, 113 caregiver justice, and 111–12 feminist requirements on the just liberal state 142–3, 149–50 feminist values 16–17 political liberalism, and 63, 229–30, 233–4 first-order autonomy 187n.19 Fishkin, J. 48 Fraser, N. 56–7 free and equal citizenship 144–7, 150, 174 full-time homemaking 2

Index harms of 161–2 hierarchical 162, 165 gender-egalitarian domestic arrangements 15, 54 gender-egalitarian interventions 15–16, 170 bare tactical case for gender-egalitarian interventions 200–2, 211–12 liberal neutrality, compliance with 70 principled case for gender-egalitarian interventions 202–6, 211 protection of basic liberties, and 70 see also gender-egalitarian social policy; stability gender egalitarianism behaviour change, and 54–5 justificatory neutrality, and 69 social ideal, as 15–16, 54–5 gender-egalitarian lifestyles conflict in attaining 208–10 preference for 207–9 gender-egalitarian social policy 15, 54 see also gender-egalitarian interventions gender inequality 7–8 gender injustice gendered division of labor as linchpin of 4–6, 16, 230 gender norms 112–13, 170, 220–2 gender pay gap 35–6, 107 gender socialization 43, 95–6 voluntary compliance with gender roles, and 82–3 vulnerability of women, and 37–8 gender steering vs. gender stacking 159–60, 162, 165–6 gentle interventions 135–6, 138–9 genuine availability of gender-egalitarian lifestyles 198–9, 206–7, 212 citizenship interests, and 215 stability, and 198–9, 207 Gerson, K. 207–10, 217–18 Gheaus, A. 101n.16 glass ceiling 53–4 Gutmann, A. 223–4 Hartley, C. 19–20, 103n.18, 142–3, 149–50, 152–6, 159–60, 162–9 health outcomes 101–3, 107–10 heterosexual family 119–20 hierarchy of the gendered division of labor 158 see also incongruity strategy; nonhierarchical gendered division of labor Hochschild, A. 40–1, 217–18 homemaker / breadwinner specialization see breadwinner / homemaker specialization homosexuality 185

housework as a secondary activity 34 implications of parenthood on performance of 34 increased load of women with cohabitation and marriage 33–4 men’s optional performance of 33 planning, management, and organizational aspects of 33 unpaid work 2–3, 15–16, 32–3 housework-shirking behaviour 116–18, 121–2, 139–40 gentle interventions, and 138–9 susceptible to legitimate exercises of political power 132 hypothetical consent of citizens and citizenship interests 190 ideal worker norm 217–20 illiberal lifestyles 132 incentive inequalities 124n.26 incongruity strategy 151–8 hierarchy of gender as the problem, and 158–9 inadequacy of 159–60, 166–9 recognition respect, and 152–3 systematic undermining of citizenship, and 153–6 thwarting the exchange of public reasons, and 152–3 weighting of citizenship interests, and 157 individual ends-setting 27–8 inducements to encourage take-up of options by men 8 see also “daddy months”; “daddy quotas” informal social norms 29 institutionalized gender norms 202–3 insular religious communities 185, 187–8 International Social Survey Program 209, 220–1 Jacobs, J. 217–18 justice disputed conception of justice 65, 176 political liberalism, and 64–5 justificatory community 76–8, 176, 228–9, 231 justificatory neutrality 67–9, 78, 92–3, 191, 196–7, 225–6 see also neutrality justificatory reciprocity 26–9 see also reciprocity labor markets costliness of gender egalitarianism, and 217–20 reform of 52 Lareau, A. 218

253

Index legitimacy 8–9 see also liberal legitimacy legitimacy of gender-egalitarianism interventions 9–10, 12, 31–2, 55–6 association of women with caregiving, and breaking the 56–7 costs of interventions, and 61–2 costs of specialization, and 60–1 gender-inegalitarian domestic arrangements to remain, and 61–2 justificatory burden, and 62 mutual civic respect, and 55–7, 62 opportunity costs, and 60 restriction of options, and 56–7 status of caregiving, and 56–7 subsidies, interventions as 57–8 leisure activities and exercising time spent on 33–4 liberal democracy 8–9 liberalism 8–9 fundamental aspiration of 63–4 liberal legitimacy 8–9, 127–9, 131 see also legitimacy Lloyd, S. 101n.16 mal-distribution strategy 94 assessment of the strategy 94 equal opportunity, and 103–5, 110–11 gendered division of labor as a problem of distribution, and 107 gender socialization, and 95–6 health outcomes, and 101–3, 107–10 inadequacy of the strategy 94, 99–100 instrumental value, and 95 neutrality, and 100 value of mal-distributed goods 94–5 market-maximizing behaviour 116–18, 120, 137–40 gentle interventions, and 138–9 susceptible to legitimate exercises of political power 132 marriage housework load of women, and 33–4 minimal marriage 48 mental and emotional energy devoted to household maintenance 33 Mill, H. 121 Mill, J. 121 minimal marriage 48 monogamy 183–4, 191 moral calculations 53–4 mutual respect 11, 14, 55–7, 62, 64–5, 176, 191, 228, 231 neutrality 11, 172–3, 196 comprehensive autonomy, and 173, 183, 196–7

254

gender-egalitarian interventions, and 11–14 mal-distribution strategy, and 100 political liberalism, and 67–8, 127–31, 224 see also justificatory neutrality non-hierarchical gendered division of labor 159–60 systematic obstruction from combining serious commitments to caregiving and paid work, and 159 non-ideal theory 28–30 non-voluntary behaviour of children 85–6 Nussbaum, M. 101n.16 Okin, S. M. 37–9, 63, 75, 78, 94–5, 113 omissions of political power 180–1 opportunity costs 60 opposition to gender-egalitarian policy disregard, potential to 77–80 reasons for opposition 79–80 opt-out revolution 34–5 outsourcing of caregiving responsibilities 3 overlapping consensus 23–4, 26 parental leave 50, 79 parenthood career progression, and 35–6 implications for performance of noncaregiving-related domestic labor 34 unequal labor market outcomes, and 35–6 parenting distributions benefits of reducing discrepancies 42 parenting norms 218–19 paternal childcare 50 penal system 119–20 persistent social–class stratification 137 persuasion and consciousness-raising 115–16 pervasive social hierarchies 150–2 Pew Research 209, 220–1 policy trade–offs 51–4 divert social resources from other policies 51–2 political autonomy 182–3 political equality 130–1 political interventions legitimate despite frustrating reasonable ends 10 political liberalism 1, 22, 63–5 basic liberties, and 68–9 comprehensive liberalism, and 223–4 design of political institutions, and 65–6 disputed conception of justice, and 65 fair terms of cooperation, and 66, 231 feminism, and 63, 229–30, 233–4 justice, and 64–5 justificatory community, and 228–9, 231 justificatory neutrality, and 67–9, 78 mutual respect, and 64–5, 228, 231

Index neutrality constraint, and 67–8, 127–31, 224 reasonable disagreements, and 65 reasonable pluralism, and 65–6 shared values, and 66 political reasons 25–6 political values 182–3 pornography 151, 154 poverty 96–7, 111–12 principled case for gender-egalitarian interventions 202–6, 211 privacy, right to 88 private / public dichotomy 121 progressivism 191, 215 public deliberation 228–9, 232–4 public education 10, 177–8, 189–90 compulsory curricula 189–90 opting out 179–80 see also civic education public reason 25–6, 28–9, 146–7 thwarting the exchange of public reasons 152–3 racist conceptions of the good 76 Rawls, J. 63, 64n.3, 65, 67, 68n.11, 75–6, 78, 81, 104–5, 113, 115–16, 118–19, 121–3, 127–8, 139, 147, 150–1, 210–11, 225 Rawlsian political liberalism 23–4, 29 Raz, J. 183, 185, 196–7 reasonable citizenship 76 reasonable conceptions of the good 75–6 reasonable disagreements 24–5, 65 reasonableness 228–9 reasonable pluralism 65–6, 76, 170 reciprocity 20–1, 25, 128–32, 170, 172 citizenship, and 143, 179 comprehensive autonomy, and 173, 183–4 hierarchical gendered division of labor, and 151 recognition respect 150 civic education, and 150–1 civil rights violations, and 151 pervasive social hierarchies, and 150–2 undermining recognition respect 152–3 residential zoning see zoning policies restricted conception of justice 116–18, 124, 128, 139–41 arbitrariness objection, and 116–17, 119–20, 125–7, 131 basic structure of society, and 114, 118–19, 123–4, 128, 131, 136, 138–9 duties of justice, and 138 housework-shirking behaviour, and 121–2, 138–40 individual behaviour, and 123 market-maximizing behaviour, and 120, 137–40 profound impact on citizens, and 118–20, 124

restrictiveness objection, and 116–17, 120, 132, 138–9 restrictiveness objection to the restricted conception of justice 116–17, 120, 132, 138–9 Robeyns, I. 101n.16 Robin, V. 217–18 Rubin, L. 218–19 Schor, J. 217–18 scope of justice 117 see also restricted conception of justice secondary activity, domestic work as 34 second-order autonomy 187n.19 self-worth 163–4 sexist doctrines 76 shared values 66 single parents 36–7 social contract 193–4, 196 socializing the costs of caregiving 96 social sanctions 161–2 sovereignty 177–9, 193–5 specialization costs of 60–1 speed-up in work and family life 41 stability 21, 26, 199, 210–12, 226–7 citizenship interests, and 211 genuine availability of gender-egalitarian lifestyles, and 198–9, 207 instability and large-scale discontent 212–14, 226–7 justificatory neutrality, and 226 political value, and 211–12 systemic obstacle to gender egalitarianism, and 211 see also costliness of gender egalitarianism as a threat to stability stalled gender revolution 32–5, 39–40, 114 statistical discrimination 42–3 status quo baseline 59–60 status quo bias 27–9 structural reform 90, 93–4, 171–2 subsidies, interventions as 57–8 subsidized substitute caregiving initiatives 46 adult care, and 46 avoiding taking the place of men’s contributions 46–7 effectiveness of 49–51 working conditions of professional caregivers, and 47 systemic obstacles to gender– egalitarianism 173, 201–2, 211 comprehensive autonomy, and 202–7, 211–12 taxation 116, 149 theory of justice 63, 116 housework-shirking behaviour, and 116–18

255

Index theory of justice (cont.) individual behaviour, and 116–17 market-maximizing behaviour, and 116–18 time-poverty consequences of the “second shift” of caregiving 40, 43 “traditional” gendered family 2, 4–5, 9, 17 “traditional” gender roles 209 “traditional” marriage 208–9 unequal bargaining power within domestic partnerships vulnerability of women, and 38–9 universal breadwinner model 56–7 unjust distributions 19, 93–4 see also mal-distribution strategy unpaid childcare gender distribution 33–4 unpaid domestic work 2–3, 15–16, 32–3 voluntariness 171 voluntary compliance with gender roles 81–7, 90–1

256

cost of alternatives to gender specialization, and 82–3 gender socialization, and 82–3 harm, and 85–7 voter-identification laws 147–8 waged work 2 Waldron, J. 195–6 Watson, L. 19–20, 103n.18, 142–3, 149–50, 152–6, 159–60, 162–9 welfare benefits work requirements 147–8 Williams, J. 217 working conditions of professional caregivers 47 workload of full-time employment 40–1 workplace discrimination 97–8 work time regulation initiatives 47–8 effectiveness of 49–51 zoning policies 147–50