Caring for Liberalism: Dependency and Liberal Political Theory 2020037208, 2020037209, 9780815394341, 9781351186315

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction to Caring for Liberalism
Part I Historical Sources
1 On Domination and Dependency: Learning From Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality
2 Kantian Care
3 Mill’s Liberalism, The Subjection of Women, and the Feminist Care Ethic
Part II Individualism and Autonomy
4 Care Ethics and Liberal Freedom
5 Individualism, Embeddedness, and Global Women’s Empowerment
Part III Working With Rawls
6 Interpersonal Reciprocity: An Antiracist Feminist Virtue for Liberal Care Arrangements
7 Moral Desert, Rawls’s Justice as Fairness, and the Gendered Division of Labor
8 Political Constructivism and Justice in Caregiving
Part IV Policy and the Design of Institutions
9 Care as Work: The Exploitation of Caring Attitudes and Emotional Labor
10 The Free-Market Family: Liberalism, Families, and Government’s Responsibility to Regulate the Market
11 Justice and Legitimacy in Caregiver Support: Managing Tradeoffs Between Gender Egalitarian and Economic Egalitarian Social Aims
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Caring for Liberalism

Caring for Liberalism brings together chapters that explore how liberal political theory, in its many guises, might be modified or transformed to take the fact of dependency on board. In addressing the place of care in liberalism, this collection advances the idea that care ethics can help respond to legitimate criticisms from feminists who argue that liberalism ignores issues of race, class, and ethnicity. The chapters do not simply add care to existing liberal political frameworks; rather, they explore how integrating dependency might leave core components of the traditional liberal philosophical apparatus intact, while transforming other aspects of it. Additionally, the contributors address the design of social and political institutions through which care is given and received, with special attention paid to non-Western care practices. This book will appeal to scholars working on liberalism in philosophy, political science, law, and public policy, and it is a must-read for feminist political philosophers. Asha Bhandary is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. She is author of the monograph Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture (Routledge 2020), the first systematic theory of liberalism to address dependency care, as well as numerous journal articles on care and liberalism. Amy R. Baehr, Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University, writes on liberalism and feminism. Recent work can be found in Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, The Journal of Applied Philosophy, and Ethics, as well as in John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions (2020) and The Original Position (2016).

Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

Logics of Genocide The Structures of Violence and the Contemporary World Edited by Anne O’Byrne and Martin Shuster Revising Fiction, Fact, and Faith A Philosophical Account Nathaniel Goldberg and Chris Gavaler The Indexical Point of View On Cognitive Significance and Cognitive Dynamics Vojislav Bozickovic Toleration and the Challenges of Liberalism Edited by Johannes Drerup and Gottfried Schweiger The Philosophy of Reenchantment Edited by Michiel Meijer and Herbert De Vriese Caring for Liberalism Dependency and Liberal Political Theory Edited by Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr Language and Phenomenology Edited by Chad Engelland The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence Being of Two Minds Edited by Berit Brogaard and Dimitria Electra Gatzia For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Contemporary-Philosophy/book-series/SE0720

Caring for Liberalism Dependency and Liberal Political Theory Edited by Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bhandary, Asha (Associate professor), editor. | Baehr, Amy R., editor. Title: Caring for liberalism : dependency and liberal political theory / edited by Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in contemporary philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020037208 (print) | LCCN 2020037209 (ebook) | ISBN 9780815394341 (hardback) | ISBN 9781351186315 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Feminism—Political aspects. | Feminist theory. | Liberalism—Moral and ethical aspects. | Caregivers—Social conditions. | Care of the sick—Social aspects. Classification: LCC HQ1236 .C3727 2021 (print) | LCC HQ1236 (ebook) | DDC 305.4201—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037208 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037209 ISBN: 978-0-8153-9434-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-18631-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Asha dedicates this book to Kumar Narayanan, for recognizing what is required to be – simultaneously – an analytic philosopher, a mother, and a woman of color in academia. Amy dedicates this book to Joe Basile, with whom she shares in the exhausting and fascinating caregiving project of raising children.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction to Caring for Liberalism

1

ASHA BHANDARY AND AMY R. BAEHR

PART I

Historical Sources 1 On Domination and Dependency: Learning From Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality

23 25

CHRISTIE HARTLEY AND LORI WATSON

2 Kantian Care

50

HELGA VARDEN

3 Mill’s Liberalism, The Subjection of Women, and the Feminist Care Ethic

75

WENDY DONNER

PART II

Individualism and Autonomy 4 Care Ethics and Liberal Freedom

95 97

DANIEL ENGSTER

5 Individualism, Embeddedness, and Global Women’s Empowerment SERENE J. KHADER

120

viii

Contents

PART III

Working With Rawls 6 Interpersonal Reciprocity: An Antiracist Feminist Virtue for Liberal Care Arrangements

143 145

ASHA BHANDARY

7 Moral Desert, Rawls’s Justice as Fairness, and the Gendered Division of Labor

168

CYNTHIA A. STARK

8 Political Constructivism and Justice in Caregiving

187

AMY R. BAEHR

PART IV

Policy and the Design of Institutions 9 Care as Work: The Exploitation of Caring Attitudes and Emotional Labor

213 215

ELIZABETH BRAKE

10 The Free-Market Family: Liberalism, Families, and Government’s Responsibility to Regulate the Market

238

MAXINE EICHNER

11 Justice and Legitimacy in Caregiver Support: Managing Tradeoffs Between Gender Egalitarian and Economic Egalitarian Social Aims

266

GINA SCHOUTEN

List of Contributors Index

292 295

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our contributors, for their insightful original contributions, enthusiasm about this project, careful responses to our editorial comments, and patience during a collaborative process involv­ ing ten authors and two editors, and a delay in the final months due to the Covid-19 worldwide pandemic. We are confident that their contribu­ tions to this volume will enrich and advance the philosophical conversa­ tion concerning liberal justice. For her alacrity at all things related to being a research assistant for this book, we thank Jamie Ritzo. She managed the chapters and conducted copyediting. She also wrote an index, while marooned in France during the coronavirus pandemic. The publication of this volume would have been delayed further if it had not been for her involvement at that crucial stage. For funding to support Jamie’s research assistantship, we thank the University of Iowa Philosophy Department. The second section of Chapter 5 is reprinted from Decolonizing Universalism, by Serene Khader, with permission of Oxford University Press. We thank Hofstra University for a Faculty Development and Research Grant which defrayed related costs. The volume was improved at the stage of conceptualization by the reviewers at Routledge, Andrew Weckenmann’s editorial guidance, and Allie Simmons’s fast responses to our queries. Asha wishes to thank her philosophy friends, family, and Iowa City neighbors for their good humor and sage advice as she completed this book during a global pandemic. She is particularly grateful to the fol­ lowing people: Diana Tietjens Meyers, Lori Gruen, Richard Fum­ erton, David Stern, her sister-scholars at the University of Iowa, the FEAST community for pushing the discipline of philosophy to be bet­ ter, and Hilkka and Jagannivas Bhandary, Kavita and James BhandaryAlexander, Kumar Narayanan, and, for their curiosity, Alma, Sundari, Sebastien, Iyla, Sahana, and Mitali. Amy extends thanks to her network of friends, family, and colleagues (you know who you are!) whose camaraderie and support continue to sustain and inspire her. We have engaged in countless hours of discussion and debate with each other since first meeting a decade ago. We hope this volume conveys at least some of the texture of those discussions about the future of liberalism.

Introduction to Caring for Liberalism Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr

As soon as care ethics1 appeared on the scene, it was construed as a criticism of, and an alternative to, liberal theories of justice. Care ethics’ conceptions of the moral domain and moral persons were commonly understood as incompatible with liberal accounts. The thought was that moral and political philosophers would have to take sides, and a litera­ ture developed evaluating the merits of each.2 Eva Kittay’s groundbreak­ ing Love’s Labor (1999) construed the challenge of care ethics differently. Kittay suggested that any theory of justice must take on board a funda­ mental insight of care theory, namely what she calls “the fact of depend­ ency” (1995, 10): that all human beings begin life as utterly helpless infants and episodically rely on the care of others even as adults for sur­ vival; that many human beings depend on the care of others throughout their lives; as well as that individuals who provide hands-on caregiving often become dependent on support from others. Acknowledging the fact of dependency is, on Kittay’s view, a criterion of adequacy for any seri­ ous approach to political philosophy.3 Many have argued that standard approaches to liberal political philosophy fail to satisfy this criterion.4 We agree with Kittay’s dependency criterion of adequacy and thus hold that including dependency in liberal political philosophy is a necessary condition for its viability. In other work, each of us has proposed how we might include dependency in liberal political philosophy,5 but in this volume, we seek to open the range of solutions, frameworks, and consid­ erations that might be used to address dependency care within liberalism. Taken in its entirety, this volume is not committed to any one form of ethical or moral theory. The chapters within it span a range of theories – utilitarian, Kantian, Rawlsian contract theory, and novel forms of liberalism – developing them in ways that better address the human need for dependency care.6 Caring for Liberalism is the first book to present multiple philosophers in one volume working to develop forms of liberalism that address depend­ ency.7 In doing so, the volume contributes to the project of thinking sys­ tematically and foundationally about how to properly situate the fact of dependency in liberal political theory. We begin this introduction with

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Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr

overviews of the chapters. Following the overviews, Baehr briefly explores how the public/private distinction and the distinction between comprehen­ sive and political liberalism play themselves out in the chapters; she then offers some reflections on the importance of political injustice claims aris­ ing out of lived experience and articulated by social movements. Bhandary then briefly explores how the distinction between ideal and nonideal the­ ory figures in the chapters and concludes by discussing the importance of race, and of women of color, as a category of analysis in liberal care theory.

The Chapters The chapters situate the fact of dependency in a variety of ways. The result is a set of philosophical innovations at the level of concepts, theory design, institutional design, and policy, as well as novel readings of foun­ dational texts in the history of political philosophy. To aid readers in locating work most relevant to their concerns, and to provide a pathway through the volume, we have sorted the chapters into four clusters. A first cluster of chapters (Part I) focuses on key figures in the his­ tory of political philosophy: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. A second cluster (Part II) presents arguments as to how caring liberals should – and should not – think about individualism, autonomy, and freedom. A  third cluster (Part III) draws on explicitly Rawlsian resources for thinking about justice and caregiving. And finally, a fourth cluster (Part IV) focuses on policy and the design of institutions, exploring the family, policy protections for carers as workers, and the gendered division of labor. Any single chapter might evaluate the role of dependency care in liber­ alism in more than one way and contribute to more than one conceptual revision. Readers should note, too, that there is innovation in concepts and theory design in many of the chapters and that many of the chap­ ters discuss policy and the design of institutions. But just as a person might take a tour of a town focusing on the homes of literary figures and another might take a botany tour, the organizing logic is but one map through the chapters of this volume. We have sorted the chapters into parts to aid the scholar’s project of locating the work most relevant to their concerns. For students of dependency theory and liberalism, we rec­ ommend reading the entire volume. However, readers with more specific interests may find the organization helpful.

Historical Sources Christie Hartley and Lori Watson open the volume by urging us to think of human dependency broadly, as encompassing the need for hands-on caregiving, the need to be supported when we provide caregiving to oth­ ers, as well as the need for social goods like being recognized by others

Introduction to Caring for Liberalism

3

as a person of equal moral status. They turn to Jean-Jacques Rousseau not because he adequately conceptualizes dependency. (While his con­ cern is with the threat to men’s freedom and equality born of the divi­ sion of labor, they understand dependency more broadly.) Nor do they turn to him because he adequately conceptualizes inequality. (While his concern was with being subject to another’s arbitrary will, they under­ stand inequality more broadly as oppression.) They turn to Rousseau for three insights, which they extend to the case of dependency broadly understood. First is the insight that dependency can create conditions for social inequality. Second is the insight that dependency can, itself, be the product of social arrangements, norms, and institutions. Third is what Rousseau suggests as the way forward, namely to create social arrangements, norms, and institutions that, while accepting our reliance on others, nonetheless embody and express the equal moral status of each. Hartley and Watson conclude their chapter by exploring the dis­ tinction between distributive and relational egalitarianism. They present an understanding of relational egalitarianism  – which they identify in Rousseau, and which has been more recently elaborated by Elizabeth Anderson (1999) – that counts dependency, understood in the broad way they suggest, as a core concern. The volume’s second chapter is by Helga Varden, and it focuses on early liberal political philosopher Immanuel Kant. Varden argues that an unfortunate rationalist reading of Kant has obscured the resources in his philosophy for thinking about human beings as vulnerable, frag­ ile, embodied, and potentially dependent and for conceptualizing and responding to both “deep systemic injustices” and “asymmetrical care relations.” Varden presents a Kantian account of what it’s like to be a human being in which caring for self and others are understood as ongo­ ing endeavors that are far from simple, far from easy, and which must be carried out in ways that show respect for and are cognizant of both the particularities of individuals who have their own lives to lead and the diverse relationships in which they are embedded. On Varden’s reading of Kant, the highest goal is not to distance ourselves from the human inter­ ests that derive from our vulnerability, embodiedness, and relationality; it is, instead, to reconcile them with the demands of morality. Applying Kant’s understanding of basic rights to human beings understood in this rich way, Varden argues, offers insights for how we might understand and respond to systemic injustices and to the special qualities of caregiv­ ing relationships. Varden situates her chapter in the context of a growing literature that has sought to remedy the mistaken view that the Kantian agent is merely rational by drawing out what may be “learned from Kant with regard to emotionally healthy, morally sound human psychologies,” and ultimately about a “morally good, emotionally healthy human life,” and by drawing out resources from Kant for thinking about human rela­ tionships and injustice.

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Chapter 3, by Wendy Donner, reveals the ways John Stuart Mill’s dis­ tinctive forms of liberalism and utilitarianism include central roles for compassion and sympathy. For Mill, freedom and self-development are inextricable from the cultivation of compassion and sympathy. There­ fore, according to Mill’s holistic approach to self-development, the cul­ tivation of the emotions is no less important than reason. Because Mill locates caring and compassion among “the core virtues essential to well­ being and a good life,” his theory takes steps toward securing care for people who need it. Donner then evaluates the gendered division of labor and the family in a way that goes beyond the burdens experienced by the mother to include, as well, how the children should be raised so as not to perpetuate an unjust status quo in which boys are overly concerned with their selfish interests and girls are taught to be self-abnegating. She emphasizes that a significant aspect of childcare is teaching children not to perpetuate the tyranny of men and of self-interest. Donner also argues that Mill considered the activities of women within a traditionally gen­ dered household to be work. He assumed, too, that, given the choice, many women would not necessarily get married. Drawing on evidence of Mill’s astute practical insights and political activity, she argues that one reason Mill did not propose an equal division of housework among men and women was because doing so would have made him face too much opposition at the time. The more moderate position that he defended was a better strategy to protect women from the patriarchal violence typical in families, which included legal marital rape. In presenting this argument, Donner highlights aspects of Mill’s thought that we can today identify as nonideal theory, that is, consideration of what it might be best for us to do in the here and now, given our actual circumstances. She concludes that Mill’s often-criticized defense of what he called “the common arrangement,” by which a woman who is married attends to the details of running the household, was based on an understanding of his social context as well as the valuing of the activities of women within a traditionally gendered household as work.

Individualism and Autonomy In Chapter 4, Daniel Engster argues that negative liberty and autonomy theories are incomplete without a relational care perspective. Combining accounts of autonomy from care ethics and the positive liberty tradi­ tion, he defends the view that attachment theory reveals the link between freedom and care. Attachment theory establishes that care is needed to develop a sense of self-worth and self-trust and that without these secure attachments, a wide range of capabilities are diminished. Receiving suf­ ficient care is not merely a background condition for developing auton­ omy. Instead, for Engster, sufficient care is constitutive of autonomy. Consequently, a society that is committed to promoting negative liberty

Introduction to Caring for Liberalism

5

and autonomy must secure the conditions for secure attachment. The resultant theory of relational autonomy emphasizes the importance of attachment for self-trust, self-respect, and self-worth, which serve as a basis for autonomous action. And, the absence of adequate care leads to distress in children that predictably creates obstacles to choice and opportunity. Therefore, the absence of good care results in a lack of free­ dom. A  corresponding conceptual modification is that liberal freedom must include the receipt of care within it. Engster concludes by remarking on the policy implications of his account. A  society committed to lib­ eral freedom should promote good care; protect people from neglectful, abusive, and other harmful forms of care; and also provide opportuni­ ties to develop the basic capabilities for the people in that society. More than merely a background condition for freedom, care is a component of negative liberty and autonomy. In Chapter 5, Serene Khader argues that, for a form of liberalism to be a form of feminism, it cannot be committed to a variety of individualism she calls “independence individualism.” Khader’s chapter responds to the critique that individualism is a parochial value that western women impose on Southern women in the name of feminism. Disambiguating the idea of individualism that is used in development discourses into two concepts, “personhood individualism” – the view that people have inter­ ests of their own that are not reducible to the interests of others – and “independence individualism” – the view that individuals should meet their own economic needs and that only chosen relationships are of value, Khader contends that whereas the first may have value, the second is thoroughly embedded in a western imagination that assumes that moral progress occurred in the context of industrialization. She then argues that there are feminist reasons to promote personhood individualism in many practical contexts because “counting as a separate person was a currency of advantage in most societies” (6). What promotes personhood individualism is context-dependent, and this is something independence individualism – as a prescription for increased economic self-sufficiency and relationships of choice  – fails to grant. Engaging in the project of nonideal theory, Khader argues that independence individualism actu­ ally hinders the project of gender justice, even in western contexts where arguments for it have typically arisen. She ultimately argues that sup­ port for independence individualism is incompatible with feminism, even liberal feminism, because a liberal feminism that endorses independence individualism will deny that costs to relationships are even costs.

Working With Rawls In Chapter 6, Asha Bhandary highlights the value of Rawls’s earliest for­ mulations of justice as fairness as applying to a “system of practices” for its ability to circumvent the public/private division that has located care

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Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr

within a private family. She argues that because caregiving arrangements have been invisible in the social forms where liberalism is endemic, the sys­ tem of practices tends to be unjust. Therefore, liberals seeking to develop societies with just caregiving arrangements should learn from societies where care is explicitly valued. To that end, Bhandary engages the work of indigenous feminist Kim Anderson, whose account of native prac­ tices includes systems of caregiving in which providing care is entwined with other goods, such as education. The value of reciprocity structures Anderson’s account of these practices. Contrasting Anderson’s account of reciprocity with Rawlsian reciprocity, exchange reciprocity, and Kittay’s concept of doulia, Bhandary defends the virtue of “interpersonal reci­ procity,” which is a disposition to reciprocate the care one has received. Because human relations structured around care tend to bend toward inequality, the virtue of interpersonal reciprocity mitigates tendencies toward entitlement and privilege that mark societies structured by groupbased hierarchies, and, most saliently, by race and gender. It is what she calls an ameliorative virtue. Although the recommendation for interper­ sonal reciprocity is best described as nonideal theory – in part because interpersonal reciprocity is intended as an ameliorative virtue – it aug­ ments Bhandary’s nonideological ideal theory,8 which is a neo-Rawlsian two-level contract theory, consisting in the hypothetical acceptability of the system of practices when they include the facts of dependency care, and tethers hypothetical acceptability to the real world by requiring autonomy skills for real people, because they indirectly shape the social context in which the theorist works (Bhandary 2020). In Chapter 7, Cynthia Stark demonstrates that Rawls’s theory of jus­ tice provides conceptual resources for critiquing the current social organ­ ization of caregiving work, and thus that a Rawlsian well-ordered society would not include a gendered division of labor. Stark shows that the gen­ dered division of labor, which in our society is entrenched in the design of institutions and basic practices, rewards individuals for conduct consist­ ent with “sex-specific virtues.” She then offers a novel interpretation of Rawls’s writings about desert in A Theory of Justice, according to which society’s basic social and institutional arrangements may not reward moral virtue. Since the gendered division of labor in our society rewards individuals for conduct consistent with a particular, gendered, account of virtue, it is unjust. As a remedy, Stark calls for the elimination of incen­ tives for conformity with sex-specific caregiving roles. Stark then turns to property-owning democracy, which Rawls endorses as an institutional framework to realize his principles of justice, and shows that the wide dispersal of “physical and human capital” required by property-owning democracy rules out an institutionalized gendered division of labor. In Chapter 8, Amy R. Baehr adapts Rawlsian constructivism. She pro­ vides a constructivist justification for a conception of justice that includes

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justice in caregiving and is alive to the fact of past injustice. Baehr devel­ ops an initial choice situation out of political conceptions of society and the person that give dependency pride of place and are implicit in our public political culture. She shows that parties to such an initial situa­ tion would choose a conception of justice that includes the requirement that individuals (fully cooperating and not) receive the caregiving they need to survive and thrive, while those with dependents needing caregiv­ ing are able to provide or procure it (and are able to do so voluntarily and without being disadvantaged), under conditions of equal recognition of the caregiving needs of each. She then argues that such a conception could become the subject of an overlapping consensus and gain the rea­ soned allegiance of those who grow up under it. Baehr’s aim is to propose a conception of justice which includes justice in caregiving and is alive to the fact of past injustice not as what Rawls calls a “comprehensive doctrine” (Rawls 1993, 13). That is, the conception is not presented as true but rather as reasonable; and it is presented as a conception for the political and not for direct application to the internal workings of the many parts of associational life. It is presented as what Rawls calls a “freestanding” view (10) so that it may serve as a shared normative basis on which citizens may justify to one another their basic institutions and social arrangements. In this sense, Baehr’s chapter is an exercise in politi­ cal liberalism.

Policy and the Design of Institutions In Chapter 9, Elizabeth Brake argues for the claim that care is work and that conceptualizing it as such can remedy the exploitation of caregivers. Although caring relationships are a good in human life, they can also be the source of exploitation, and therefore treating caregiving as work can protect caregivers from exploitation. She distinguishes three types of care: material caretaking, taking care of physical and material needs; emotional caring labor or emotional support; and attitudinal care, or “subjectively experienced benevolent attention and concern.” Because emotional and attitudinal caring can harm the self of the caregiver, women’s dispropor­ tionate caring creates harms to the self. Treating care as work means that people who engage in caring can have some of the legal protections offered to workers, such as sick days, but Brake notes that paying caregivers could be impractical. Her chapter builds on Sandra Bartky’s (1990) important concept of the “epistemic lean,” which describes how women lose the self by prioritizing the perspective of men, and identifies its relevance for liber­ alism, arguing that the solution to the distinctive harm Bartky identified is to treat care – including emotional care – as work. Maxine Eichner, in Chapter 10, argues that thriving families – fami­ lies that are, among other things, able to see to the developmental and

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Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr

caregiving needs of their members – should be a main concern of the state in a liberal society. Eichner offers an illuminating historical account of the relationship of families to markets, from the 19th-century “house­ hold economy” to the precarious situation of many families in contem­ porary industrialized capitalism. She then provides a rich description of the many ways in which, in our society today, families are harmed by market forces, in particular harmed in ways that systematically interfere with families’ caregiving for the youngest children. In the face of this harm, what is called for is family-supportive regulation of markets and a variety of other “pro-family policies” – for example publicly subsidized family leave, flexible work schedules, public investment in child care, and economic support for families with limited incomes. After all, Eichner explains, markets are but one part of the larger economy “whose job, properly conceived, is to ensure that goods and resources support the wellbeing of citizens.” Finally, in Chapter 11, Gina Schouten explores a tension between what she calls “gender egalitarian” and “distributive egalitarian” policy pro­ posals, both of which feminist liberals are likely to endorse. While poli­ cies like universal basic income promote distributive justice by addressing poverty, under current conditions such policies (which provide income untethered to employment outside of the home) could erode women’s attachment to paid work and thus reinforce the gendered division of labor. At the same time, policies that aim directly at undermining the gendered division of labor  – gender-neutral parental leave policies, for example – do little (though more than you might expect) to address seri­ ous problems of poverty and are arguably most valuable to wealthier women. One might think that the mandate to remedy the gendered division of labor derives from the value of equality of opportunity and thus that, as a practical matter, it should take a back seat to remedying the more dire problem of poverty. While ultimately agreeing with this ordering of direness, Schouten shows that the gendered division of labor threatens more than mere equality of opportunity. She argues that the “institutional assumption that one’s sex will dictate the work that one does” runs afoul of “the criterion of reciprocity” in Rawlsian political liberalism, which sets limits on coercive measures the state may under­ take in pursuit of just arrangements. One upshot of Schouten’s argument is that policies that address poverty without risking the further entrench­ ment of the gendered division of labor should be preferred.

Distinctions in Liberal Theory and Considerations on Its Whiteness9 Feminist and antiracist critics of liberalism have argued that much of what we want to examine, criticize, and remedy falls out of view in

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liberal political philosophy. The distinction between what’s public and what’s private, central to liberalism, is often blamed for this, as is liberal political philosophers’ preoccupation with ideal theory rather than diag­ nosing actually existing injustice and exploring what we might do about it here and now. This supposed liberal failure is also sometimes blamed on the turn which Rawls took in his later work, and which many fol­ lowed, from what he called “comprehensive” to what he called “political liberalism” (Rawls 1993, 196). We share the belief that taking the fact of dependency seriously is important for moving liberal political philoso­ phy forward, but our approaches to liberalism and dependency care are different in salient ways. In the next section, Baehr explores the publicprivate distinction, the distinction between comprehensive and political liberalism, and the importance of political injustice claims to what, fol­ lowing Ruth Abbey, she calls “transformative liberalism” (Abbey 2011, 261–265).10 Then Bhandary explores the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory and points the way toward disciplinary and methodo­ logical requirements for anti-oppression liberalisms that incorporate care and take meaningful steps to address race and intersectionality.

The Public and the Private, the Comprehensive and the Political, and the Foundational Role of Injustice Claims (Baehr) The distinction between public matters (which are the proper object of political concern) and private matters (which are not) plays an important role in liberalism. One might worry that dependency and the arrange­ ments through which dependency needs are satisfied fall on the private side of the ledger in liberalism. If they did, they would not be recognized as matters of political concern, and many of the dependency-related injustice claims made by social justice movements, and of interest to dependency theorists, would be unaccounted for. We can gather from the chapters in this volume a set of responses to this worry, that is, a set of explanations of the political nature of dependency and caregiving. For example, some of the chapters argue that a proper understanding of key liberal political values requires appreciating the fact of human dependency and the value of care. Khader, for instance, reveals in great detail the dangers of misunderstanding individualism as independence and self-sufficiency; Hartley and Watson argue that a proper under­ standing of equal citizenship requires attention to various ways in which human beings are dependent upon one another; and Engster shows that realizing the sort of freedom and autonomy liberalisms cherish depends on individuals receiving good care. Other chapters, working in the Rawlsian tradition, understand the institutions and social arrangements through which caregiving is given and received as part of society’s basic

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structure  – which, as a whole, is the subject of political justice  – and understand care as a primary social good. Including caregiving institu­ tions and arrangements in the basic structure makes it imperative that we have an adequate understanding of the activity of caregiving. We may appreciate Brake’s argument that caregiving is best understood as a kind of work in this context.11 Several of the chapters – those by Schouten, Stark, and Baehr – apply liberal standards to the distribution of caregiving work and, not sur­ prisingly, find that they rule out our current gendered division of labor. As Bhandary argues, they also rule out our current racialized distribu­ tion as well. In addition to applying liberal standards to the distribu­ tion of caregiving work, several chapters examine the distribution of the receipt of care. Eichner points to deficits in needed care due to poverty and insufficient time off for caregiving, for which she blames an insuffi­ ciently regulated market. Baehr proposes principles of justice in caregiv­ ing that promise caregiving to all who need it and disallow inequalities in receipt of caregiving that track past injustice. In addition to directing our attention to society-wide patterns of distribution of caregiving work and receipt of care, some of the chapters direct our attention to the inter­ nal workings of caregiving arrangements and to the norms that struc­ ture them. The chapters by Bhandary, Hartley and Watson, Donner and Brake, for example, identify caregiving arrangements as frequent sites of exploitation, social hierarchy, and lack of reciprocity, and as breeding grounds for interpersonal despotism and subservience. The focus on internal workings might lead one to think that situating dependency and care in liberalism means proposing what Rawls calls a “comprehensive doctrine” (1993, 13). Indeed, some feminist liberals endorse comprehensive liberalism – for example, of Kant or Mill – rather than political liberalism, arguing that political liberalism’s focus on what Rawls calls “the basic structure of society” (1993, 11) makes it unable to get at precisely the injustices in the internal workings of associational life with which feminists are concerned (Okin 1989; Hay 2013). After all, on Rawls’s account, comprehensive liberalisms include values with broad scope, values for personal relationships, for example, rather than merely for the political. The chapters by Donner (on Mill) and Varden (on Kant) surely reveal some of the power of comprehensive liberalisms to shed light on parts of associational life. But Brake, Schouten, and Baehr situ­ ate their chapters in the tradition of political liberalism and focus on the ways in which the justice of society’s basic structure depends – to some degree and in diverse ways – on what goes on in, and on the norms gov­ erning, the internal workings of that structure’s many parts.12 The comprehensive liberal/political liberal distinction concerns not only the range of application of relevant standards but also the nature of their justification. Feminist critics have argued that political liberalism

Introduction to Caring for Liberalism

11

is incapable of grounding feminist and other progressive calls for social change because it relies for its justification on an overlapping consensus of doctrines actually existing in society – which we can expect are insuf­ ficiently critical of the arrangements we seek to criticize (Okin 1994). They have argued that only a comprehensive liberalism, grounded in a distinctive morality  – say that of Kant or Mill  – has the normative heft necessary to critique extant arrangements that exploit, disempower, and oppress (Hay 2013; Abbey 2007). Rejecting this reading of politi­ cal liberalism, Schouten and Baehr suggest that its core normative con­ ceptions of citizenship and legitimacy can be put to work grounding measures necessary to undermine oppressive and hierarchical social arrangements. The opening section of this chapter asserted that liberal political theory must acknowledge the fact of human dependency – any theory that fails to do so is inadequate. It might be worthwhile to reflect a bit on why. Perhaps the reason is, simply, that human beings are dependent. But peo­ ple are many things, and the passage from facts to values is notoriously difficult. I want to suggest here another reason for building in the fact of dependency, a reason that emerges when we think of liberalism in the tradition of critical theory. That tradition suggests that normative theorizing emerges out of an appreciation of injustice claims arising out of lived experience and articulated by social movements. It suggests that normative theorizing’s task is to work out the “alternative visions” of a just, or more just, society implicit in such claims (Young 1990, 7, see also 5, 10), that is, to give expression to their animating sense of justice. So we might think of building the fact of dependency into liberal politi­ cal philosophy as a way of being accountable to the individuals who, and social movements that, have articulated dependency-related injustice claims over many decades.13 I  lack space to offer an exhaustive list of dependency-related injustice claims. Students of history and social move­ ments will know that they range from the calling out of forced childbear­ ing,14 forced caregiving,15 and forced sterilization16 to the calling out of the racist forcible removal of children from families.17 From the delete­ rious effects of mass incarceration on caregiving relationships18 to the national and international exploitation of the caregiving labor of disad­ vantaged communities by privileged communities.19 From opposition to the dismantling of the welfare state20 to the demand for legal recognition of queer families21 and the demand for living arrangements that afford persons with disabilities the opportunity to develop their talents, live as equals, and thrive in community with others.22 In The Return of Feminist Liberalism, Ruth Abbey recommends that we understand feminist liberalism as a kind “transformative liberalism.” Abbey means by that a doctrine that advances a “transformative ethos” (Abbey 2014, 261, citing Button 2008, 5–7). While Abbey suggests that

12

Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr

such an ethos may be forthcoming from feminist liberalism only if it is a comprehensive liberalism, recent work on feminist political liberalism suggests we should keep an open mind about this (Schouten 2019; Wat­ son and Hartley 2018). In any case, I suggest that we might understand the source of that transformative ethos to be the sense of justice – and the vision of a more just society – expressed in actual dependency-related injustice claims arising out of lived experience and articulated by social movements.

On Ideal and Nonideal Theory and Racial and Gender Categories for Anti-oppression Liberalism (Bhandary) The project of transformative liberalism requires both ideal and nonideal theory. It also requires attention to the facts of oppression and privilege, and to their manifestations in the world and in philosophers. Under the umbrella of the project we may call “caring liberalisms,” these chapters encompass multiple approaches and projects that include both ideal and nonideal theory  – conceptual revision, justification, policy proposals, arguments for new practices, and ameliorative virtues. These projects, though, may be broadly described within the terrain of the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory. In the following section, I discuss that distinction before identifying some additional methodological criteria of adequacy for anti-oppression liberalisms. The distinction between ideal and nonideal theory originated with Rawls, but uses of these categories have now moved beyond Rawls’s senses (Rawls 1999).23 Perhaps the cleanest distinction, and an apt point of departure, is Zofia Stemplowska’s evaluation of ideal and nonideal theory in terms of different goals (2008). Ideal theory is theory that seeks to refine our concepts. In contrast, nonideal theory, according to Stem­ plowska, offers action-guiding recommendations that are achievable and desirable. Understood in this way, conceptual revisions are a type of ideal theory, and proposals for just policy interventions are instances of nonideal theory. Several chapters in this volume refine concepts and therefore would count as ideal theory in Stemplowska’s sense: Engster’s argument for freedom, which is a conceptual revision based on empirical evidence from attachment theory; Hartley and Watson’s assessment of the idea of equality central to relational egalitarians; and Varden’s claims about the centrality of vulnerability to Kant’s account of the self. Contract theory’s structure of justification is also standardly characterized as ideal theory. Incorporating the facts of dependency into constructivism, Bhandary and Baehr devise ways of modifying the contract device to include depend­ ency care. Bhandary’s two-level contract theory tethers the contract device to the world with a layer of theory about the context in which

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13

the philosopher theorizes, thereby acknowledging the complexity and diversity of real-world perspectives. Baehr modifies the contract idea by adding the point of view of persons immersed in and attending to car­ egiving needs. We can see, though, that even within these closely related endeavors, approaches to ideal and nonideal theory differ, for Baehr iden­ tifies her Rawlsian constructivism as ideal theory. Bhandary, too, calls her neo-Rawlsian theory of liberal dependency care ideal theory, but she identifies it as a new variant of ideal theory called “nonideological ideal theory,” a category that will be defined and discussed further in the fol­ lowing section. Nonideal theory, as philosophy that seeks to improve the real world (Sen 2009), includes policy proposals, like Eichner’s arguments for a number of policies that support families as sites of care, and assessments of the practical consequences of possible principles, which we can see in Schouten’s assessment of tradeoffs between gender equity and pov­ erty mitigation. The philosophers who evaluate how people should be educated and how we should cultivate ourselves and others, given an imperfect world, may also be described as engaged in the project of nonideal theory. For example, Donner, Engster, and Bhandary evaluate the developmental and educational process for real people, taking the real world into account in a variety of ways with recommendations for wellrounded self-development, social conditions to support healthy attach­ ments, and the antiracist and antisexist virtue of reciprocity. In fact, Donner’s engagement with Mill’s utilitarianism and liberalism highlights his awareness of the pragmatic constraints of his time, showing us that he was strategic in arguing for an improvement that did not disrupt the status quo as much as male-gendered caregiving would have. Mill’s argu­ ments about women’s equality might therefore be characterized as nonideal theory, in the sense that he defended change that was achievable and desirable. In addition, “ideal theory” is also used as a critical descriptor for the­ ory that is ideological (Mills 2004) or that persistently evades the sources and manifestations of oppression (Schwartzman 2006). Charles Mills’s criticism of the whiteness of political philosophy identifies the persistent exclusion of facts about race (2004). In a parallel argument, upon which Mills draws, feminist ethicists reject ideal theory altogether for obscuring the facts and manifestations of oppression (Schwartzman 2006; Tessman 2009). Liberalism, and Rawlsian liberalism in particular, is the primary subject of these criticisms. But liberalism need not be ideological. As the chapters in this volume attest, including care in liberalism involves conceptual revisions, policy proposals, criticisms of socialization, proposals for new virtues, and novel accounts of justification and principles of justice. Incorporating care into liberalism should become known as a classic case of insisting

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upon the salience of a fact that was previously occluded through ideo­ logical perception. And ideal theory need not be ideological. It can be, instead, “non­ ideological ideal theory” – or theoretical work that engages in the project of conceptual clarification and justification, but that does so in ways keenly attuned to the facts of oppression.24 More precisely, nonideological ideal theory approaches ideal theory in ways that do not occlude vital facts bearing on oppression (Bhandary 2017, 5). Insofar as facts about human dependency care are central to every chapter in this volume, this volume does not, in this way, perpetuate the ideological project of supporting a privileged lifestyle for white men. For example, Stark’s evaluation of the role of gendered ideology in the basic structure works with the Rawlsian apparatus to show that a more foundational understanding of his account of moral desert rules out a gendered divi­ sion of labor. In addition, the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory might change when a smaller proportion of ideal theory persists in being ideological. For instance, when Serene Khader classifies her arguments against independence individualism as nonideal theory, she locates her work in the tradition of Tessman (2009), Mills (2004), and Sen (2009). She argues that development interventions like microcredit purport to promote women’s independence but actually erode kinship ties, and thereby make women more vulnerable. These premises are strongly fact-sensitive, which is one of the markers of nonideal theory (Farrelly 2007). However, insofar as Khader identifies a concept – independence individualism – and argues that this version of the concept of individu­ alism should be precluded from feminism, and possibly also from lib­ eral feminism, she clarifies a concept. In this way, Khader’s project is one of conceptual revision that draws on relevant facts, and thus could also be placed in the category of nonideological ideal theory, along with the other chapters in the volume that approach conceptual work in this way. Another mark of nonideological ideal theory is that it aims to avoid parochialism masquerading as universalism. Nonideological ideal theory therefore includes a philosophical assessment of the ways exploitation and subordination can occur, for instance, if the category “women” implies a unitary experience. Feminist liberalisms, too, must evaluate the ways patriarchy and racism shape patterns of deference and intellectual attribution that shape the field and the process of knowledge production.25 It is only when these aspects of the production of liberalism are brought into view and acknowledged that liberalism will truly have theoretical and practical power to address oppression and its intersectional nature, where, in societies that have achieved a modicum of gender equity in the white population, white women can

Introduction to Caring for Liberalism

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be sources of violence against women of color by appropriating time, energy, and intellectual insights. These occurrences will not be detected when “woman” is used as a unitary category for all purposes, because a unitary conceptualization of women makes it more difficult to iden­ tify the oppression of one subset of that group by another. However, when women of color become a central category of analysis, and work using this category is conducted by women of color, liberalism will have the epistemic legitimacy needed to identify and address the care-based oppression and systemic oppression that are customary in patriarchal and racist societies. Therefore, caring liberalisms must continue to investigate the ways in which the theories assume the experience of affluent white women when using the term “women” or the experiences of white heterosex­ ual relationships when evaluating gendered socialization. The queer­ ing of conceptualizations of caring relationships by Brake (2012), for example, lays bare the heteronormative assumptions and philosophical presumptions that shape legal marriage. In this way, liberalisms that address care must be explicit about the decisions made to include a set of concerns as those most salient for injustice. Questions about how to frame the opening concerns of justice require decisions about what to include in the circumstances of justice, which depends on whose inter­ ests are salient to the actual people engaged in the endeavor of building the theory. Correspondingly, more work is needed to bring questions about race and intersectionality into the center of evaluations of just caregiving in liberalism. To better address racist injustice, caring lib­ eralisms must work explicitly with the concept of race and track race, gender, and intersectional identities (Crenshaw 1991) as categories of analysis in caregiving arrangements (Bhandary 2017; 2020, 72). Doing so in ways that do not perpetrate what Shannon Sullivan calls white “ontological expansiveness” (Sullivan 2006, 10) requires white liberals to engage with the work of philosophers whose perspectives on justice are shaped by the daily experience of racial injustice and to take care to remedy practices of silencing (Dotson 2011, 241) that mute the work of philosophers of color. Anti-oppression liberalisms must address care, but the work of antioppression liberalism is not complete once care is included. Stated differ­ ently, incorporating care is necessary, but it is not a sufficient criterion to yield an anti-oppression liberalism, nor is it sufficient for a transforma­ tive liberalism. Instead, liberal theorists must learn about and evaluate the specific prejudices and histories of our societies. What this means for liberal theorists in the United States is that we must also pay attention to race and make explicit the content of concepts and the modeling deci­ sions that are made about the core liberal values and concepts including freedom, autonomy, and the self.26

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Asha Bhandary and Amy R. Baehr

Conclusion Our ambitions for this volume are not modest. While we have not attempted to set to rest all criticisms of the liberal tradition, we hope to persuade the discipline that liberal political philosophy is inadequate unless it takes seriously the fact of human dependency. The range of approaches evident in these chapters reveals the abundance of theoretical resources with which philosophers and political theorists have to work. We hope also, as this introduction has suggested, that a focus on care in liberal political philosophy might occasion deeper discussion concerning the whiteness of liberalism and feminist liberalism by identifying which ideologies remain intact even after we have revealed many masking nar­ ratives that have hidden human dependency from the project of liberal political philosophy.

Notes 1. The philosophical literature on care ethics began with philosophical reflec­ tions on Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (1982). Key philosophical works include Nell Noddings’ Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984); Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (1989); Vir­ ginia Held’s Feminist Morality (1993) and The Ethics of Care (2007); Joan Tronto’s Moral Boundaries (1993) and Caring Democracy (2013); Eva Kit­ tay’s Love’s Labor (1999); and Daniel Engster’s The Heart of Justice: Care Ethics and Political Theory (2007). For a recent analytic explication of care ethics, see Stephanie Collins, The Core of Care Ethics (2015). 2. Representative work can be found in the following anthologies: Women and Moral Theory, eds. Diana Tietjens Meyers and Eva Kittay (1987) and Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, ed. Virginia Held (1995). 3. Kittay brought care ethics into conversation with liberalism by proposing modifications to John Rawls’ political theory, but she left open whether Rawls’ liberal theory could incorporate her modifications. For an assessment of the compatibility of Kittay’s proposals with Rawlsian theory, see Asha Bhandary (2010). 4. See, for example, Held (1987); Nussbaum (2006); Engster and Hamington (2015). 5. See, for example, Bhandary’s book-length treatment in Freedom to Care (2020), also (2010, 2016, 2017) and Baehr (2004, 421–433, 2015, 134–137). Others have done so as well; see, for example, Varden (2006); McClain (2006); Nussbaum (2006); Stark (2009); Brake (2012); Watson and Hartley (2018). 6. We regret that there is no direct treatment of the capabilities approach for care in this volume, but Engster has elsewhere developed a care-based theory of justice that he characterizes as “minimal capability theory” (2007, 12), and Khader’s intervention in adaptive preference theory contributes to the capabilities tradition (Khader 2011). For comprehensive accounts of the capabilities approach that incorporate care, see also Ingrid Robeyns (2011) and Nussbaum (2006).

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7. The chapters in this book are new works, with the exception of several pas­ sages in the chapter by Serene Khader, which are reprinted from her recent book Decolonializing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic (2019). 8. See Bhandary’s single-authored section (page 14 in this volume) for a defini­ tion of nonideological ideal theory. 9. For developments of liberalism that incorporate race but do not address care, see Mills (2017) and Lebron (2013). For pioneering feminist liberal theory on privacy that explicitly tracks the relevance of race, see multiple works by Anita L. Allen, for instance Allen (2016). 10. Abbey is drawing on Button (2008, 5–7). 11. It might be profitable to read Brake’s liberal discussion of this issue against the backdrop of an older literature on women’s work in the home that extends back to the 19th century and includes socialist feminists. See, for example, Reva Siegel (1994); Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James (1972); and Folbre (2001). 12. On this parts/wholes relation, see Baehr (2017). See also Cohen (2008, 117–118). 13. For more on the relationship between normative theorizing and social move­ ments, see Anderson (2014). 14. On this history of opposition to forced childbirth, see Morgan (2004) and Silliman et al. (2004). 15. See, for example, Stansell’s “Democratic Homemaking and Its Discontents” and “The Revolt of the Daughters” (2010). 16. See, for example, Kluchin’s Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950–1980 (2009). 17. See, for example, the discussion of boarding schools at the Northern Plains Reservation Aid website, accessed January  7, 2020, www.nativepartner ship.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_boardingschools. See also the National Indian Child Welfare Association (www.nicwa.org/). 18. See “Children of Incarcerated Parents, a Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration on Kids, Families and Communities,” Annie E. Casey Foundation (2016). 19. On the harms to children and their caregivers, see, for example, Mary Romero (1997). For an early articulation of the invisibility of exploited women of color caregivers, see Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman” (1949). 20. On the history of the National Welfare Rights Organization, see Kornbluh (1998). 21. See Michael Bronski’s A Queer History of the United States (2012) and Robert Barnes, “Decades of Battles Converged for Momentous Decision” (2015). 22. See for example Neilsen’s A Disability History of the United States (2013). 23. There is a vast literature on this topic. For representative works, see Mills (2004), Stemplowska (2008), Valentini (2009). My thinking on this topic has benefitted from directing Laura Brown’s dissertation in progress, Mediated Ideal Theory (Brown Forthcoming). 24. The kind of philosophy I call nonideological ideal theory overlaps with Lisa Tessman’s (2009) characterization of feminist ethics and social and political philosophy as non-ideal theory. 25. See, for example, Dotson (2011, 241) on “practices of silencing.” 26. For accounts of freedom, autonomy, and selves that warrant more attention, see for instance Welch (2012) and Ortega (2015).

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Bibliography Abbey, Ruth. 2011. The Return of Feminist Liberalism. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. ———. 2007. “Back Toward a Comprehensive Liberalism? Justice as Fairness, Gender and Families.” Political Theory 35: 5–28. Allen, Anita L. 2016. “The Declining Significance of Home: Privacy ‘Whilst Quiet’ and of No Use to Artists or Anyone, 4 HA.” The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College 84. Anderson, Elizabeth. 2014. Social Movements, Experiments in Living, and Moral Progress: Case Studies From Britain’s Abolition of Slavery. Lindley Lecture. Lawrence: University of Kansas. ———. 1999. “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109: 287–337. Annie E. Casey Foundation. 2016. “Children of Incarcerated Parents, a Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration on Kids, Fami­ lies and Communities.” 18 April. Accessed 7 January  2020. www.aecf.org/ resources/a-shared-sentence/. Baehr, Amy R. 2017. “A  Capacious Account of Liberal Feminism.” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 3 (1). ———. 2015. “Feminist Receptions of the Original Position.” In The Original Position, edited by Timothy Hinton, 119–138. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press. ———. 2004. “Feminist Politics and Feminist Pluralism: Can We Do Feminist Political Theory Without Theories of Gender?” Journal of Political Philosophy 12 (4): 411–436. Barnes, Robert. 2015. “Decades of Battles Converged for Momentous Decision.” Washington Post. 27 June 2015. Bartky, Sandra. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenol­ ogy of Oppression. New York: Routledge. Bhandary, Asha. 2020. Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture. New York: Routledge. ———. 2017. “The Arrow of Care Map: Abstract Care in Ideal Theory.” Femi­ nist Philosophy Quarterly 3 (4). ———. 2016. Liberal Dependency Care.” The Journal of Philosophical Research 41: 43–68. ———. 2010. “Dependency in Justice: Can Rawlsian Liberalism Accommodate Kittay’s Dependency Critique?” Hypatia 25 (2010): 140–156. Brake, Elizabeth. 2012. Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Bronski, Michael. 2012. A Queer History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press. Brown, Laura. Forthcoming. “Mediated Ideal Theory.” Doctoral Dissertation. Button, Mark. 2008. Contract, Culture, and Citizenship: Transformative Liber­ alism From Hobbes to Rawls. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Cohen, G.A. 2008. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Collins, Stephanie. 2015. The Core of Care Ethics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Costa, Mariarosa Dalla, and Selma James. 1972. The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community. Bristol: Falling Wall Press. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–1299. Dotson, Kristie. 2011. “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing.” Hypatia 26: 236–257. Engster, Daniel. 2007. The Heart of Justice: Care Ethics and Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Engster, Daniel, and Hamington, Maurice, eds. 2015. Care Ethics and Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Farrelly, Colin. 2007. “Justice in Ideal Theory: A Refutation.” Political Studies 55 (4): 844–864. Folbre, Nancy. 2001. The Invisible Heart. New York: The New Press. Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hay, Carol. 2013. Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Held, Virginia. 2007. The Ethics of Care. New York: Oxford University Press. ———, ed. 1995. Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics. New York: Westview Press. ———. 1993. Feminist Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1987. “Non-Contractual Society: A Feminist View.” In Science, Moral­ ity, and Feminist Theory, edited by M.P. Hanen and K. Nielsen, 111–137. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Jones, Claudia. 1949. “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman.” Political Affairs 28 (6): 51–67. Khader, Serene. 2019. Decolonializing Universalism: A  Transnational Feminist Ethic. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2011. Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment. New York: Oxford University Press. Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love’s Labor. New York: Routledge. ———. 1995. “Taking Dependency Seriously: The Family and Medical Leave Act Considered in the Light of the Social Organization of Dependency Work and Gender Equality.” Hypatia 10 (1): 8–29. Kluchin, Rebecca M. 2009. Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950–1980. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Kornbluh, F. 1998. “The Goals of the National Welfare Rights Movement: Why We Need Them Thirty Years Later.” Feminist Studies 24 (1): 65–78. Lebron, Chris. 2013. The Colour of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time. New York: Oxford University Press. McClain, Linda C. 2006. The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality and Responsibility. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Meyers, Diana, and Eva F. Kittay, eds. 1987. Women and Moral Theory. Lan­ ham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Mills, Charles W. 2017. Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Lib­ eralism. New York: Oxford University Press.

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———. 2004. “ ‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology.” In Moral Psychology: Feminist Eth­ ics and Social Theory, edited by Peggy DesAutels and Margaret Urban Walker, 163–181. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Morgan, Jennifer L. 2004. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Neilsen, Kim E. 2013. A Disability History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press. Nell Noddings. 1984. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Educa­ tion. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Okin, Susan. 1994. “Political Liberalism, Justice and Gender.” Ethics 105 (1): 23–43. ———. 1989. Justice, Gender and the Family. New York: Basic Books. Ortega, Mariana. 2015. “Latina Feminism, Experience, and the Self.” Philoso­ phy Compass 10 (4): 244–254. Rawls, John. 1999. The Law of Peoples with “The Idea of Public Reason Revis­ ited.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Robeyns, Ingrid. 2011. “A Universal Duty to Dare.” In Arguing About Justice: Essays for Philippe Van Parijs, edited by A. Gosseries and P. Vanderborght, 283–289. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain. Romero, Mary. 1997. “Who Takes Care of the Maid’s Children.” In Feminism and Families, edited by Hilde Lindemann, 63–91. New York: Routledge. Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Schouten, Gina. 2019. Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor. New York: Oxford University Press. Schwartzman, Lisa. 2006. Challenging Liberalism: Feminism as Political Cri­ tique. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Siegel, Reva. 1994. “Home as Work: The First Woman’s Rights Claims Concern­ ing Wives’ Household Labor, 1850–1880.” Yale Law Journal 103: 1073–1217. Silliman, Jael, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, and Elena R. Gutierrez, eds. 2004. Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice. Boston: South End Press. Stansell, Christine. 2010. The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present. New York: Random House. Stark, Cynthia A. 2009. “Contractarianism and Cooperation.” Philosophy, Poli­ tics and Economics 8: 73–99. Stemplowska, Zofia. 2008. “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?” Social Theory and Practice 34 (3): 319–340. Sullivan, Shannon. 2006. Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Tessman, Lisa. 2009. Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theo­ rizing the Non-Ideal. Netherlands: Springer. Tronto, Joan. 2013. Caring Democracy. New York: New York University Press. ———. 1993. Moral Boundaries. New York: Routledge.

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Valentini, Laura. 2009. “On the Apparent Paradox of Ideal Theory.” Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (3): 332–355. Varden, Helga. 2006. “Kant and Dependency Relations: Kant on the State’s Right to Redistribute Resources to Protect the Rights of Dependents.” Dialogue 45 (2): 257–284. Watson, Lori, and Christie Hartley. 2018. Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Welch, Shay. 2012. A Theory of Freedom: Feminism and the Social Contract. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Part I

Historical Sources

1

On Domination and

Dependency

Learning From Rousseau’s

Critique of Inequality1

Christie Hartley and Lori Watson Without needlessly drawing out the details, everyone must see that since ties of servitude are formed solely by men’s mutual dependence and the reciprocal needs that unite them, it is impossible to subjugate a man with­ out first having placed him in the position of being unable to do without another. (Rousseau 1997a, 159)2

Introduction Political theorists have grappled with how political and social institutions should respond to the facts of human dependency. Human beings are both dependent upon others and interdependent in multiple and intersect­ ing ways that raise serious concerns for justice. For example, all human beings, at least at some times, are dependent upon others for help with certain needs related to basic human functioning (e.g., nutrition). Infants are completely dependent upon caretakers for their survival; as children age, they still depend on others for help with their most basic needs for a number of years. Some adults, too, due to temporary illness or accident or due to some permanent conditions require care from others to meet basic needs. Thus, dependency on others for help with basic needs is one important sense of dependency relevant for justice; yet, there are others. As social and moral creatures, human beings also have interests rele­ vant to justice for certain social and moral goods. For example, children’s interests include social and emotional care, a moral education, and vari­ ous supports from others for the development of their moral capacities. They are dependent on others for these goods, and such interests are a matter of justice. Adults also have interests in social and moral goods that are a matter of justice and for which they depend on others. Crucially, among the basic interests of persons in political society is the recogni­ tion of their moral status as a free and equal person and of their politi­ cal status as a free and equal citizen. This requires recognition respect from others, in which others acknowledge an individual’s standing and

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authority as a moral person (Darwall 2006, 119–147) and as an equal citizen in political society. Persons depend on others for this recognition, and this social recognition among persons must be supported by norms, practices, and institutions that embody and/or provide the social goods needed to sustain relationships of equal moral and political status among persons. Such norms, practices, and institutions are the social conditions of recognition respect (Watson and Hartley 2018). In this chapter, we are especially concerned with the following three ways in which persons are dependent on others, though this is not an exhaustive list of dependency relations: human beings, at least at times, require the care of others to have certain basic needs met; human beings depend on others (and are often interdependent) for the realization of important social goods relevant to justice (e.g., goods involving support for social interaction and emotional care); and human beings depend on others for recognition respect as equal moral persons and as equal citi­ zens and for maintaining the social conditions of recognition respect. Liberal political theory, in particular, has been roundly criticized for its failure to adequately address the fact that human beings, at least at times, depend on others for help in meeting their basic needs and for social and emotional care. Feminist theorists have led the way in developing this critique of liberalism.3 They tend to focus on and criticize the liberal conception of persons as independent and self-reliant. They also argue that the work of caring for dependents is socially necessary work, that it is not properly valued or compensated, and that it has been traditionally assigned as “women’s work” to the disadvantage of women. This femi­ nist critique of liberalism is sometimes referred to as “the dependency critique.”4 However, some early liberals and some republicans did address a sense in which consideration of human dependency is central for theorizing justice.5 Their concern, though, was with the way in which some social and political institutions created the conditions for some adults (men) to be dependent upon the will of other adults (men). Their deepest concern was with the way in which social and political relationships could under­ mine the freedom of some men by exposing them to the arbitrary power of another’s will.6 This concern seems distinct from the type of depend­ ency noted earlier, and these early theorists simply ignored or never con­ sidered the other ways in which human beings depend on others to have certain basic needs met. Here, we explore the connections between these various senses of dependency with the aim of considering whether a liberal concern with finding a solution to dependency on the will of another can be extended to address some issues of justice related to other senses of dependency. Specifically, we explore some of the resources of a particular form of egal­ itarianism – namely, relational egalitarianism – for theorizing about mat­ ters of justice and human dependency, in all three senses noted earlier.7

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Relational egalitarians hold that equality fundamentally concerns how people stand in relation to one another and that justice requires people have the same social position – one of equal standing and authority as moral persons and as citizens (Anderson 1999, 312–315).8 For persons to have equal standing and authority as moral persons and as citizens, they must be treated as equals in certain respects in certain social domains. We are concerned here with those domains of social life that bear on one’s status as a free and equal citizen, such as (1) the political sphere; (2) civil society, where members of society seek goods, services, and participa­ tion in places of public accommodation; (3) education and employment, where members of society seek to develop and exercise some of their talents and skills and produce needed goods; and (4) care frameworks, where members of society provide and receive care. Certain types of hier­ archies in these contexts, that is, certain types of relationships of domi­ nation and subordination among persons or groups of persons in these contexts, are antithetical to all persons enjoying their status as equal moral persons and as equal citizens. We note that relationships of equal­ ity may require that particular material conditions obtain given person’s interests as equal moral persons and as equal citizens (Anderson 1999, 313–314). The structure of this chapter is as follows: first, we briefly discuss basic human needs, social and moral goods, and dependency. We emphasize the following: (1) all human beings must rely on others at times to have their basic needs met and for social and moral goods; (2) the way human beings depend on others and the degree to which human beings are dependent varies; (3) sometimes social conditions make human beings dependent on others; (4) sometimes human beings are dependent on oth­ ers due to their stage in human development or due to illness or impair­ ment, and some human beings would be dependent given any social conditions (e.g., newborns and persons with certain profound cognitive impairments are completely dependent on others for having their basic needs met and would be so regardless of the circumstances); and (5) those whose dependency is greatest or those who are completely dependent on others are most vulnerable to harm. We further stress that any theory of justice must address certain needs and interests of persons, and many of these concern relations of depend­ ency. However, by the end of the chapter, it will be clear that we think it is a mistake for liberals to make a sharp distinction between the complete and extreme dependency of some and the less extreme forms of depend­ ency of others. We are all dependent on others. Understanding this fact is crucial for keeping in perspective the fragility of the human condi­ tion, for helping us realize and appreciate our dependence on others in myriad ways over the course of a life, and for helping us dispel the fiction of independence and self-reliance that has infected and distorted much political thought. That is, the complete dependency of some should not

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be viewed as a special case or unique problem that liberals must some­ how address in a theory of justice for persons who are overwhelmingly independent and self-reliant; rather, liberals must view persons as always dependent on others in some ways and sometimes dependent on others in other ways. They must determine what justice requires for persons in such relationships and what sorts of dependency relations are incompat­ ible with justice. Following our general discussion of dependency, we consider how Rousseau, a figure from whom many liberals draw insights, was deeply concerned with dependency relations and how such relations may lead to inequality. We are interested in developing Rousseau’s concern for dependency to consider how relational egalitarians are well situated to answer the dependency critique. Rousseau may seem like an especially odd choice for drawing inspiration to respond to a feminist critique. After all, his views on women are abhorrent.9 Nonetheless, nothing in his critique of inequality depends upon the sexist views he expresses in his work, and we find the core of his critique concerning the connections between inequality, dependency, and injustice to be trenchant and illumi­ nating. We develop his critique of inequality as a useful, but incomplete, model for thinking about how dependency relations can lead to system­ atic inequalities that instantiate relationships of domination and subor­ dination (as a form of injustice). In particular, we draw on Rousseau’s insights concerning the need for recognition respect as central to social equality and his insights concerning the way in which social arrange­ ments can construct and create dependency. With Rousseau’s account explained, we extend and develop his views to consider forms of dependency that were not of concern to him, as our interest in social institutions and practices and their relation to depend­ ency and domination has a much broader focus than his. We aim to show how social arrangements and institutions can construct dependencies that place persons in relationships in which they are socially subordinated and, hence, unequal in unjust ways. In the final section of the chapter, we highlight the critical features of relational egalitarian views that we think demonstrate their usefulness for thinking about dependency relations as a central concern of justice. To the extent the arguments we provide are persuasive, we hope to make some headway in addressing the worry that liberal theories do not have the resources necessary for recognizing and addressing the facts of human dependency that are a matter of justice.

Dependency Again, all human beings are needy and vulnerable, but not all persons are dependent in the same ways and to the same degree. We do not aim to offer a full account of the basic needs and interests of persons that are a matter of justice. Nor do we aim to offer a full account of the ways in

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which persons depend on others for interests that are relevant to justice. Here we simply discuss some basic needs and interests relevant to justice, including, for example, recognition respect, and we consider some types of dependency as we consider how dependency relates to justice. All human beings depend on others to meet their basic needs as chil­ dren; some, later in life, depend on others, again, for help with their basic needs; some human beings are always dependent on others for help with basic needs. The fact that persons must rely upon others for having some of their basic needs met is an important source of dependency relations among persons.10 When persons think of basic needs, they tend to think of needs having to do with nutrition, health care, mobility, bathing and grooming, and shelter. Sometimes, those who are completely dependent on others for meeting these particular needs are viewed as “dependent” and contrasted with others who are viewed as “independent.” As we note in the introduction, this way of thinking is problematic. It is false, and it leads us to mischaracterize our condition. Furthermore, the contrast for the sake of emphasizing the needs of the most vulnerable has not been effective or helpful for securing justice for them. Beyond the most basic of needs, persons have interests in social and moral goods. Children need a great deal of social and emotional care as they develop into adults, and they are dependent on others for this. Adults, too, depend on others for emotional care, and certain types of social relationships are central to many views of a good human life.11 We depend on others in social relationships in which these interests are met. Again, for children moral education and support for the development of their moral capacities are essential; they are dependent on others for this. Also, as we noted in the introduction, recognition respect among persons requires mutual acknowledgment of persons’ equal standing and authority. In a social relationship of equality, persons depend on each other for recognition, and, together, persons create and maintain the social conditions of recognition respect. Further, insofar as self-esteem and self-respect depend to some extent on social relationships with oth­ ers, persons are partially dependent on others for these as well and for the social conditions on which they depend. Crucially, the way in which the social world is constructed matters for how (and sometimes if) specific dependency relations arise and whether the conditions in which they take place are just. The aspects of depend­ ency relations that have fostered the most reflection from liberal political philosophers concern the fact that human beings must cooperate to sat­ isfy their needs. Social cooperation requires assistance from and reliance upon others in the context of mutual exchange. Thus, cooperation cre­ ates forms of interdependence among persons. For example, in modern democratic states, individuals are dependent on others’ labor for the pro­ duction of goods and services necessary for their survival, such as food and shelter, and, too, for the goods and services necessary for functioning

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as free and equal citizens, which take us much beyond basic needs. In modern democracies, arguably the interests of persons as citizens include, inter alia, education, certain types of opportunities, and access to civil society. Complex and extensive cooperative systems are necessary for the satisfaction of such interests. The choice or development of some particular institution (or set of institutions), rather than others, creates and shapes the kinds and degrees of dependencies present in society. For example, the accessibility of labor market firms with respect to infra­ structure, technology, and business practices determines who can partici­ pate in the interdependent relations of the labor market and who cannot, which creates certain types of asymmetric dependencies. Or, consider that the frameworks, or lack thereof, for providing childcare assistance to those responsible for the care of children determine the kind and degree of dependency of caretakers on others. Whether persons are asymmetrically or mutually dependent on others, they are vulnerable to them. Relying on another for the satisfaction of one’s needs and interests leaves one in a position in which one is at risk of harm. While some types of dependency are inevitable (e.g., an infant’s dependency on a caretaker), other types are not (e.g., a blind person’s dependence on others in a social world designed only for the sighted). But, all dependency relationships are social relationships. All social rela­ tionships occur in a context of norms, roles, practices, and institutions that bear on these social relations. For example, an infant is utterly and inevitably dependent on a caretaker for having physical, social, and emo­ tional needs met. However, norms, roles, practices, and institutions bear on how the infant’s needs and interests are understood and how they are addressed. Social norms, roles, practices, and institutions also bear on how a caretaker’s work is understood, valued, and supported. The kind of equality central to relational egalitarianism is incompati­ ble with certain types of dependency relationships and with some ways of structuring dependency relationships. Relational egalitarianism requires the protection of persons in their status as equal moral persons and equal citizens in the context of dependency relations that are either inevitable or permissible. Specifying the form and shape these social arrangements ought to take to secure the conditions for persons to be equals is critical for justice. Rousseau’s work is instructive for determining the kinds of dependency relationships incompatible with a relational egalitarian view of social equality. We turn to his critique of inequality shortly. First, though, we note that any theory of justice requires an account of the needs and interests that are the appropriate bases for making claims of justice upon others. Metrics of justice are the currency of the needs and interests that are relevant to justice, where a metric allows evaluation and comparison of how well individuals in society are doing. Both relational egalitarian views and distributional views of justice employ some metric of justice. However, on a distributional view, justice is simply a matter

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of a certain distribution of “goods” obtaining; on a relational egalitarian view, a certain distribution of “goods” is not sufficient for justice even if necessary (Anderson 1999, 313–314). One metric is John Rawls’s social primary goods; Martha Nussbaum and others endorse (some set of) capabilities.12 There are other metrics, too. We do not endorse a particu­ lar metric here. However, how one thinks of the problem of justice will affect whose needs and interests matter, the type of metric one endorses, and the needs and interests that count given the metric. For example, Rawls limits his theory to what he calls the fundamental question of justice, which he understands as “what is the most appropri­ ate conception of justice for specifying the terms of social cooperation between citizens regarded as free and equal, and as normal and fully cooperating members of society over a complete life?” (2005, 20). So, he does not address what is owed to some persons with temporary or permanent impairments or illnesses. His list of social primary goods is limited to rights and liberties, opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect. Rawls’s neglect of the particular needs and interests of some persons with impairments and illnesses, of the needs and interests of caretakers, and of the needs of all persons for care has been the subject of sustained critique. In the spirit of friendly intervention, Eva Kittay, Asha Bhandary, and Elizabeth Brake, respectively, argue that frameworks for care should be part of the list of social primary goods. Kittay focuses on care in asym­ metrical relationships, such as a relationship between a parent and minor child or a relationship between a caregiver and a profoundly cognitively impaired adult or aging parent (1999). Material care is needed, and, although attitudinal care is not the sort of good that can be distributed, it can be socially supported through certain institutions. Brake focuses on adult caring relationships and the importance of such relationships for the development and exercise of the two moral powers and as part of persons’ view of the good (2012, 156–188). She argues that the social bases of adult caring relationships are a social primary good. Both Kittay and Brake urge that Rawls’s list of social primary goods should be revised to be sensitive to care. Bhandary argues that, in a Rawlsian theory, care in times of dependency should be considered as part of the social bases of self-respect and that dependency work can be properly supported given free choice of occupation and a principle of fair distribution for income and wealth (2010). While we agree that care in times of dependency and support for care­ takers must be part of any acceptable theory of justice, we are concerned with the connection between relationships of dependency and unjust forms of domination. We use the phrase “unjust forms of domination” to leave open the possibility that some forms of domination are not unjust, though we do not argue for, or take a position on, that here. Moreo­ ver, we rely on a broader conception of domination than the republican

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conception, where domination concerns the capacity agents have for imposing their will on others in an arbitrary or unchecked manner. Our broader conception of domination concerns hierarchical relationships in which those in the dominant position have greater power and author­ ity than those in the subordinate position along some dimension(s) and in some context(s). This power may include, for example, the ability to impose their will on others or the ability to define and sustain norms (or rules), practices, and institutions that work to their advantage. On our view, sometimes those who occupy the dominant position exert their power over others directly in order to subordinate or sustain subordina­ tion (e.g., in an act of violence). However, the power of those in the domi­ nant position is also expressed when persons follow norms or participate in practices or institutions that create or maintain status hierarchies (e.g., some have argued that pornography is a practice that subordinates women).13 To start to make our case that dependency relations are a central con­ cern for justice, we turn to Rousseau. His discussion of dependency and domination provides important insights for thinking about equality as a social relation and the centrality of equal standing to securing the moral status of persons as a fundamental imperative of justice. We acknowl­ edged previously that Rousseau’s sexism will surely make some suspi­ cious about why we would draw from his work, and here we note an additional ground for pause. Rousseau is one of the great social contract theorists, and social contract theories, in particular, have been criticized for failing to address the moral status, needs, and interests of individu­ als with impairments and illnesses and for failing to address the interests of those who care for dependents.14 Again, though, we attend to Rous­ seau’s extraordinarily rich and original account of the ways in which dependency relations can give rise to systemic inequalities. His account also highlights the fact that such inequalities are produced by the social contexts and institutional arrangements that organize human relations. Furthermore, he understands inequality in terms of hierarchy  – unjust relationships of domination and subordination  – and he argues that the demand for equal standing, including what we will call recognition respect, is central to addressing the problems of inequality that sustain patterns of unjust domination and subordination. Finally, though we do not develop his views on this point here, his own solution to the critique of inequality lies in defining a social contract in which the freedom and equality of citizens is guaranteed, and relationships of domination and subordination are incompatible with that guarantee.

Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality Rousseau is not a classical liberal in the sense that, say, Locke is recog­ nized to be, as a defender of individual liberties and limited state power.

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However, he is a social contract theorist from whom many liberals draw insights. Our concern is with Rousseau’s critique of inequality in connec­ tion with dependency. Central to his argument is the claim that human dependency can threaten both freedom and equality.15 Rousseau homes in on the way in which human dependency, in connection with particular social arrangements, can establish the conditions in which persons are subordinated relative to those upon whom they depend.16 Thus, Rous­ seau develops his critique of inequality, and the social arrangements that sustain such inequality, with the facts of human dependency in a wide sense at the center of the view. In his Discourse on the Origin and the Foundation of Inequality Among Men, Rousseau presents an account of the ways in which human dependence upon others can lead to systematic inequality, where inequal­ ity is defined in terms of relationships of domination and subordination (1997a).17 Rousseau understands subordination as submission to anoth­ er’s will. Among other things, such subordination is a denial of autonomy and a failure of respect for the equal worth and standing of those in the subordinated position. As we move to our view, we will rely on broader notions of domination and subordination that we think are congenial with Rousseau’s views even if he specified the concepts in a more narrow fashion as concerning the exercising of one’s will over another or being under the power of another’s will. For now, what is of importance is the connection between human dependency and inequality (understood as hierarchy). Rousseau’s critique remains a forceful statement of that connection. There is important disagreement among Rousseau scholars about how to understand Rousseau’s genealogy of human inequality. Some claim that he aimed to reconstruct an accurate historical picture of the origins of inequality, and others claim he offers a conceptual analysis of features of human relations that must be present for inequality to emerge (Neu­ houser 2014, 33).18 This dispute is important because depending upon how one reads Rousseau on this point, the assumption of human inde­ pendence carries different normative weight and impacts the plausibility of the view. We agree with Frederick Neuhouser’s reading of the text on this: Rous­ seau is not committed to the claim that as a matter of historical fact human beings were at some point fully independent such that they did not require the cooperation of others to satisfy their needs. Rather, Rous­ seau aims to identify the features of social relations that constitute the kinds of dependency that give rise to inequality and appeals to the idea of independence for conceptual contrast with the idea of dependence. The assumption of independence, then, is not a factual claim about how humans are or might have been. Rather, it serves as an analytical device to identify the features of social relations that give rise to inequalities that follow from dependence. Further, the assumption of independence

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serves to underscore the fact that the shape and structure inequalities take is contingent upon the ways in which social relations are organized (Neuhouser 2014, 52–55). An important feature of Rousseau’s account, as concerns our project here, is the way in which, as a social species, humans develop needs as a product of social arrangements. The kinds of needs Rousseau examines for their role in creating both dependence and inequality are (1) needs for resources and property that require others’ support and labor, and (2) the need for esteem and recognition of status from others. Neither of these needs can be met without the assistance and cooperation of others. Thus, such needs instantiate dependency relations among persons that can give rise to moral concerns, particularly concerns of inequality. Rousseau insists that we cannot escape our sociable nature and the needs it creates, nor can we escape the fact that dependency relations follow. However, we can come to understand those potential threats to equality. The emergence of particular forms of vice, such as knavishness and deception as a means to status and power, are a central focus of Rousseau’s critique (Rousseau 1997a, 171). In articulating these dangers, Rousseau offers a critique of social arrangements that produce certain forms of dependency. There are two aspects to this critique. The first is the just mentioned emergence of the conditions for vice, such as decep­ tion and dishonesty, that damage an individual’s moral character. The second concerns the establishment of hierarchical relations among per­ sons, or classes of persons, such that the powerful are able to dominate and subordinate the less powerful. A key feature of human sociability, according to Rousseau, is the pas­ sion he calls “amour propre” (self-love).19 This passion is the source of an important human need: recognition respect.20 Given Rousseau’s purpose of tracing and explaining inequality, he attends to many of the negative features of amour propre. In particular, he critiques the ways in which amour propre can lead to social practices of domination and subordi­ nation. Under certain conditions human self-love can become inflamed, drive humans to want more and more, and make them to seek to “raise one’s relative fortune less out of genuine need than in order to place oneself above others” (Rousseau 1997a, 171). Hierarchy and inequality derive from our sociable natures, producing “competition and rivalry,” “conflict of interest,” “and always the hidden desire to profit at another’s expense” (171). Rousseau aims to reconcile this feature of human rela­ tions with our full moral and political equality in On the Social Con­ tract (1997b). Thus, he does think that, in the right social conditions, the moral equality of persons can be affirmed. Amour propre underwrites the need for equal recognition – equal moral standing. One cannot provide recognition respect for oneself. It must come from others, and securing it is vital to securing the moral equality of persons. Thus, the fundamental

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human need for recognition respect places persons in dependency rela­ tions with others. We are also dependent upon others for material needs. Rousseau’s critique of inequality in the context of economic arrangements and the organization of private property provides key insights regarding the ways in which reliance upon others for material needs and resources can estab­ lish and constitute social hierarchies in which some are able to dominate others by taking advantage of their dependency. Rousseau emphasizes the emergence of metallurgy and agriculture, from which the division of labor followed, as creating the social conditions for dependence upon others for having basic needs met  – needs for food and basic goods. In conjunction with these innovations, private property, as an institu­ tion, emerged.21 As he reflects on the social institution of property, he argues that the division of resources, wealth, and exclusive rights to use of property, as a social practice, institutionalized inequality when the “rich” were able to trick the “poor” into a fraudulent (illegitimate) social contract (Rousseau 1997a, 180). The key insight we wish to draw from this argument concerns the way in which institutional arrangements can produce and cement relationships of inequality in which some persons are able to dominate others given their dependency. In effect, the les­ son is that through dependency relations in the wide sense – including, importantly, relying on others for resources – some persons, or classes of persons, are made vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and unjust exercises of power. As noted, the passion of amour propre is what Rousseau thinks under­ writes the human need for esteem and recognition respect from others. Neuhouser explains that Amour propre  .  .  . because it seeks standing in the eyes of others, provides humans with a permanent motivation  – an urge suffi­ ciently strong to be considered a need – to enter into relations with others. . . . Since its needs cannot be satisfied in isolation, the passion to count for something for others is a direct and permanent source of human dependence and sociality. (2014, 69) Our need to be recognized and treated as an equal by others is a rela­ tional need. Whether it is met depends on the social norms and beliefs that structure value judgments as well as the institutional norms and structures that facilitate and define our relations with others. When per­ sons are refused recognition respect, and with it acknowledgment of their equal standing as moral persons, they are subordinated. Such subordina­ tion takes the form of ranking them as lower than those who are given recognition respect as equal moral persons. Often persons are denied such

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recognition respect as members of groups, and this is subordination on the basis of group membership. Material inequalities between groups are often justified by the lower ranking of some groups to others, and narra­ tives are offered to explain, or naturalize, such rankings among groups. Material inequalities, then, both cause and are caused by rankings among groups.22 Again, Rousseau thought that whether the need for recognition respect is fulfilled depends on the social arrangements, norms, and insti­ tutions within which humans relate to one another. Institutional design, in conjunction with legal norms, can lead to the systematic denial of recognition respect for some persons and that failure constitutes a form of unjust subordination. In addition to Rousseau’s account of how dependency can lead to sub­ ordination, we also want to highlight some other features of Rousseau’s critique of inequality for our later discussion. First, he rejects the idea that moral and political inequality among persons is a “natural” condition of humanity.23 Thus, he offers a proto-account of what we would now call “the social construction” of inequality. A  central point of interest here is his claim that natural differences (which he sometimes refers to as “inequalities”) do not ground moral inequality. Rousseau dismisses the idea that “differences” per se can ground moral/political inequality, as he says that whether “natural inequalities” could ground inequalities of power and wealth is a question “which it may perhaps be good for Slaves to debate within the hearing of their Masters, but not befitting rational and free Men who seek the truth” (1997a, 131). Thus, on Rousseau’s account, physical differences, even ones that provide persons “better” relative abilities or “lessen” some abilities, are not themselves injustices or “any other kind of moral deficiency” (Neuhouser 2014, 23). He is concerned with the way in which natural differences are transformed into moral and political inequalities through social practices and institutions. Thus, Rousseau shifts the ground of the significance of differences  – including differences in bodily abilities – away from the supposed “natu­ ral” consequences of differences to the way in which social organization transforms difference into moral inequality. That is, Rousseau highlights that relationships of social hierarchy – relationships defined by unequal status, power, and privilege among persons – are not the result of natu­ ral differences among persons but are socially constructed. On his view, features of social organization – norms, practices, and institutions – con­ struct and cement hierarchical relations among persons, denying them equal status and esteem. The upshot of this insight is that inequality, understood as hierarchy, is produced by human social organization. Although he largely attends to the ways in which economic patterns and institutions function to instantiate and sustain social hierarchies between persons, the root of his concern is the way in which persons, who stand in a relation of inequality to others, are denied the necessary recognition

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respect required to affirm their moral equality, their equal moral value. We stress that those who are ranked lower in the relevant social hierarchy are subordinated to those ranked higher, where this means that they have a lower status. Again, material inequality (e.g., differences in income and wealth) can both cause and be the result of social hierarchies. Certainly, there are important limitations to Rousseau’s own analyses. Among them is his limited focus on what we might call now “class” relations, and with it, a fairly narrow focus on economic inequality as a primary, though not exclusive, form of social hierarchy that constitutes status inequality. The main thread of the argument and some of his key normative claims, however, are insightful for thinking about the relation­ ship between dependency, domination, and inequality.

Dependency and Domination: Disability and Caretaking Given both the social nature of human beings and facts about human development and basic needs, it is inevitable that human beings will stand in dependency relations. Furthermore, the way in which social relations are organized structures the forms of dependency present in a society and the ways in which persons’ needs are met. Social relations in which per­ sons depend on others can lead to social hierarchy, relationships of domi­ nation and subordination, rather than relationships of equality between persons and citizens. Given social hierarchies, those who are subordi­ nated can be made dependent or more dependent given social roles and social practices. Genuine social equality requires structuring social and political practices and institutions so that relationships of unjust domina­ tion and subordination do not result from human dependency. That is, while dependency relations of various sorts will be part of any society, dependency relations should not create or derive from domination and subordination. Certain kinds of dependency relations are not compat­ ible with justice as they are due solely to relationships of domination and subordination that deny persons status as equal moral person or as equal citizens. Other types of dependency relations are only just in social conditions that protect against social hierarchies that deny these statuses. Here we aim to extend Rousseau’s insights to the case of some persons with impairments and illnesses and to caretakers of others. These cases involve dependency and domination, though they are not the sorts of cases Rousseau had in mind. Our analysis extends and differs from Rousseau’s in some important ways. First, we draw on Rousseau’s insights concerning the need for rec­ ognition respect and the way in which social arrangements can create and sustain dependency. However, regarding social institutions, Rous­ seau’s critique culminates in explaining how economic arrangements and private property create conditions in which some persons are unjustly

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dependent on others; thus, economic arrangements occupy a primary place in his view. Our concern with social institutions and practices and their relation to dependency and domination will have a broader focus. Second, Rousseau conceptualizes subordination as being subjected to the will of another. There is an important historical context to his for­ mulation of subordination, yet it is too narrow. While subjection to the will of another captures an important form of subordination, social sub­ ordination – as a form of inequality – extends beyond being subjected to another’s will.24 One important form of social subordination concerns the ways in which persons as members of groups can be subjected to vari­ ous forms of social power, and this power is not always a direct function of some other will. The recognition that some persons are subordinated on the basis of group membership is not part of Rousseau’s critique with any depth. He does recognize the poor as a social class that is subor­ dinated vis-à-vis the rich, but he does not theorize social groups, and their status, beyond that. Subordinated groups are subjected to forms of power that are not always the product of intentions or wills (Young 1990). Indeed, social norms, practices, and institutions play a crucial role in the construction of social groups and social identities, and, sometimes, these norms, practices, and institutions can embody, cause, and sustain social hierarchies among persons. Third, we think it is important to recognize two ways in which unjust subordination manifests in social life. We understand the relationship of domination and subordination to be a status hierarchy in which those in the dominant position have greater power and authority than those in the subordinate position. The fact of status hierarchies is sometimes unjust, and when status hierarchies are based on group membership, they are almost always so. For example, status hierarchies based on race are always unjust, and, so, the manifestation of that status hierarchy itself is unjust. As we note in the introduction, we leave open the possibility that some forms of domination are not unjust. So, for example, it may be that teachers and students as well as supervisors and employees can be helpfully understood to occupy status hierarchies in which teachers and supervisors justly have more power and authority with regard to certain matters than students and employees. However, under just conditions, those hierarchies do not concern or affect persons’ status as equal moral persons or equal citizens. Rather, the status inequality concerns power and authority in a particular context in which the individuals occupy cer­ tain social roles. A full theory of unjust subordination is beyond our aims here; however, we draw on the rich insights of feminist theorists, critical race theorists,25 and others to note that group-based hierarchies based on sex or gender or sexuality or race or religion are, historically, primary instances of such subordination. Unjust subordination also manifests in material inequalities among persons (although we note that material inequalities can prompt the

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construction of status hierarchies, too) (Dworkin and MacKinnon 1988, 39). Such inequalities can include a lack of access to or possession of material goods or power, marginalization from important social prac­ tices and institutions, exploitation, cultural exclusion and imperialism, and violence.26 While the distinction between these two ways in which subordination manifests itself is conceptually useful, they are intimately connected. With these distinctions in mind, we show that (1) some persons with impairments and illnesses and (2) caretakers of others are often in depend­ ency relations that are unjust subordination. These arguments draw on Rousseau’s key insight that social arrangements, and not difference per se, produce dependencies that can result in unjust subordination. The way in which social norms construct relations of inequality, under­ stood as domination and subordination, can be illustrated by comparing models for understanding disability. In the 1970s, the medical model of disability was widely accepted by members of the medical community and the public, and this model was reflected in law and policy in various ways. According to the medical model, (1) an individual with a disability is not able to function at the level of the species norm in a given environ­ ment because of some persistent biological property of the individual, and (2) when it is possible, this should be corrected or prevented. On this view, persons with impairments and illnesses were disadvantaged because of their biological differences from others. Although this model is still influential, many disability scholars and activists rejected it in the 1970s and 1980s as part of the civil rights movement for persons with disabilities.27 Two concerns important for subordination, as we have characterized it, follow from this model. First, the model itself relies on assumptions and characterizations that rank persons in a hierarchy. The assumption that someone with a disability has a property that is to be corrected and prevented, as a deviation (an inferior property), functions to rank persons with disabilities (difference) as inferior. Such “inferior­ ity,” as it were, is a product of the ranking itself, not a product of dif­ ferences in properties. Second, in application, both in medical and other contexts, this model can serve as a basis for denying persons equal power and status and other goods. For example, if persons with disabilities are viewed as inferior, practices that marginalize or exclude persons with impairments and illnesses may be viewed as fitting and not unjust. Such practices may themselves make persons with impairments and illnesses dependent on others. Given the critiques of the medical model of disability, an alternative understanding of disability emerged: the social model.28 The social model of disability posits that (1) an individual with a disability has an atypical persistent biological property that, due to discriminatory social practices and institutions, results in impaired functioning, and (2) when possible and reasonable, discriminatory social practices and institutions should be

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reformed and inclusive accommodations for persons with atypical prop­ erties should be constructed. The social model makes important advances over the medical model, as we discuss in the following, but we do not think that the social model of disability or any model that reduces dis­ ability to a single dimension is plausible. A  mixed model of disability sensitive to the relationship between the biological properties of persons and social institutions and practices is needed. Importantly, however, those who defended the social model pointed to discriminatory institutions and practices in society as producing exclu­ sion, marginalization, and dependency for some persons with impair­ ments and illnesses. For example, when firms in the labor market are not required to make reasonable accommodations for persons with impairments, persons requiring such accommodations may be margin­ alized from some fields or excluded from the labor market altogether. Such marginalization and exclusion, while distinct from dependency and sources of injustice in their own right, can result in persons with impair­ ments being dependent on others  – such as family members or fellow citizens through government assistance – for the resources they need to meet some of their needs. Dependency in this context is not the result of difference. It is the result of social norms, arrangements, and institutions that organize social, political, and cultural life. Also, consider other features of the social world that, depending upon their arrangement, can lead to subordination and dependency for per­ sons with impairments. For example, when public transportation sys­ tems, places of public accommodation (such as parks, restaurants, stores, recreational areas, hotels, etc.), and places for education and employ­ ment are not accessible to persons who use wheelchairs, these persons are excluded or marginalized from important spheres of social life. They are denied opportunities and access to goods that others enjoy. And, they are made dependent on others. This exclusion, marginalization, and dependency make them subordinates; that is, it makes them second-class citizens who are not entitled to the same opportunities and access to goods as others. Their exclusion from public transportation, places of public accommodation, and sites of education and employment subordi­ nates them; it unjustly positions them as subordinates in a social hierar­ chy. Their subordination also manifests in material inequalities, as they are denied access to goods, and in their dependency on others for access to many goods. Further, their subordination by exclusion, marginaliza­ tion, and dependency results in others engaging with them in demean­ ing and paternalistic ways. For example, others fail to make eye contact with them, ask other adults about their needs and interests, and talk and interact with them as if they are children (using abridged and simplified language and paternalistic gestures). Such treatment is a denial of recog­ nition respect from others. Persons with disabilities are not given proper standing and authority as equal moral persons and equal citizens when

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they are denied the opportunity to express their needs and interests and when others are assumed to have standing and authority over their inter­ ests and experiences.29 Among the lessons of our discussion here is that differences as such do not justify inequality understood as subordination. Indeed, those who benefit from social hierarchy may follow social norms and participate in social practices and institutions that further create or maintain differ­ ences. Indeed, Catharine MacKinnon emphasizes that central to under­ standing women’s subordination is that social hierarchy is responsible for creating many of the differences between men and women we observe (1989). As she holds, when inequality is viewed as only (the result of) dif­ ference, it is usually in the context of profound injustice. Rousseau thought that the fundamental cause of inequality had to do with the relationship between dependency and domination and subor­ dination, but he also thought that some dependency is simply part of social life given the human condition. He is clearly right about both. The dependency relationships that are part of any society depend, in part, on the social structure, and the conditions of all dependency relationships in a society are a matter of how society is arranged. And, so, Rousseau offers us the incredible power to see that while those who are dependent on others in the narrow sense (i.e., rely on others for self-care activities) are often thought of as a special case or unique problem for theories of justice, we are all in dependency relationships and our dependency on others varies in degree and in kind and changes over time. Dependency is not a special problem for justice but fundamental to properly appreciat­ ing the problem of justice itself. An additional and important concern arises when appropriate weight and consideration are given to other facts of human dependency. This has been a central concern of many feminists in their discussions of dependency and justice. Namely, all persons at certain times in life and some persons throughout their life need material caretaking of various kinds and of varying degrees from others. Moreover, the work of pro­ viding material care to others is socially necessary work. Under current conditions, women perform much of that work, and much of it is not recognized as work, nor is it sufficiently remunerated, if it is at all. Thus, we now consider the ways in which caretakers, as providers of socially necessary work, are often made into dependents themselves. This sense of dependency is layered: persons who require material care are dependent upon others, and those who provide care can be placed into unjust dependency relations in light of the social arrangements in which caretaking occurs. Of special concern is that the labor market is structured such that most jobs assume that workers are not the primary caretakers of one or more individuals. That is, most labor market jobs are not designed in recognition of the fact that a worker may be the per­ son primarily responsible for making sure that, for example, a minor is

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adequately supervised, fed, clothed, and put to bed; receives routine and unexpected medical attention; receives care when sick; receives devel­ opmental or occupational therapy; gets to and from school; does her homework; and so on. Nor are labor markets structured to respond to the fact that workers might be primarily responsible for helping others, too, including a sibling with a profound cognitive impairment, a spouse or partner with a chronic illness, or an aging parent with various health problems. A problematic feature of the labor market is that most participants lack either paid leave, sufficient paid leave, or sufficient flexibility in their jobs to care for others. Many labor market participants are expected to be available to work late at the request of a superior, even if given no notice, or as workload demands to meet deadlines. Moreover, traveling and relocation are simply the expectation of many jobs, are necessary for building a career in one’s field, or are required as the demand for skills in a specific locale changes. Given the expense of paid care, some persons who are responsible for caring for others, especially women given gen­ der norms, reduce their labor market commitment; take less demanding, more flexible positions; or leave the labor market altogether. Again, the design and assumptions that structure employment condi­ tions and opportunities are not responsive to the fact that the work of providing material care to others is both common and socially necessary. Moreover, state-sponsored forms of assistance to reconcile, or ameliorate, the structural conditions of the labor market are not sufficient to prevent the exclusion and marginalization of those who are primarily responsible for providing care to others. As a result, many persons who are responsi­ ble for providing care to others become dependent on a partner or spouse for meeting their financial needs and the needs of those for whom they care. Caretakers may also be dependent upon their partners and spouses for social opportunities and community as well as opportunities for time for self-care or self-development, and a range of other important goods. Due in part to their financial dependency, caretakers also have a bargain­ ing disadvantage in their relationship with the individual on whom they financially rely (Okin 1989; Sen 1990; Cudd 2006). They often defer to the person on whom they financially depend when it comes to various household decisions, and in the worst cases, they tolerate emotional and physical abuse, adultery, and demeaning spending allowances. The situation is, in fact, much more complicated as, again, gendered social norms operating in the background culture suggest, for exam­ ple, that good women are caring and sensitive to others’ emotional and physical needs and are responsible for caring for others. Good men, by contrast, excel at rational, disinterested bargaining and provide for their families. The dependency of caretakers can constitute and lead to unjust forms of subordination. Such subordination may take the form of being subject

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to the will of the dominant partner, as Rousseau understands it. It can also constitute and lead to the broader understanding of subordination we have advanced. Insofar as the work of caring for others is not prop­ erly recognized as work, as caretakers are marginalized from significant aspects of the labor market as well as disadvantaged in their ability to participate in civil society and the political sphere, and as this results in their dependency, they are second-class citizens. This is a practice of sub­ ordination, a ranking of caregivers as inferior citizens, and it is a denial of recognition respect. Of course, just as not all of the injustices faced by persons with impairments and illnesses are matters of domination by dependency, so, too, not all of the injustices faced by caretakers are a matter of dependency. The fact that caretakers are excluded or marginal­ ized in the labor market because they perform the socially necessary work of caring for others is itself an injustice. That many caretakers become financially dependent on others because they take low-paying, flexible jobs, take part-time jobs, or take leave from the labor market is a fact of our social condition, and this dependency results in subordination. Justice requires that such institutions be restructured such that subor­ dinating dependency is eliminated. We cannot offer a full account of the institutional change that is necessary; we rather simply aim to point out that institutional design and the way that institutions function together is a matter of basic justice.

Relational Egalitarianism The kind of relational equality view we find in Rousseau, and which was developed and defended by Elizabeth Anderson (1999), is a par­ ticularly promising liberal approach from which to address the way in which dependency can lead to subordination. Indeed, Anderson’s origi­ nal defense of relational egalitarianism as a superior interpretation of liberal egalitarianism to luck egalitarianism, in particular, is animated by concerns about recognition respect for persons with impairments and illnesses and those who provide material care for others. Roughly, luck egalitarians hold that morally permissible inequalities are those that result from people’s voluntary choices as opposed to their undeserved bad luck; insofar as possible the state should address inequalities among individuals regarding the latter.30 Anderson argues that luck egalitarians fail to show equal concern and respect – the normative grounds of egalitarianism – for persons with impairments and illnesses and caretak­ ers of others (1999). In our work on political liberalism, we have tried to further establish and develop the promise of this view (Watson and Hartley 2018). A central feature of relational egalitarian views that makes them well suited to address dependency and domination is that questions of distrib­ utive justice are secondary to questions of equal recognition, standing,

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and authority. In other words, relational egalitarians point out that we care about questions of distribution as a means to securing an equal social position for persons in the domains relevant to justice. As such, they aim to offer an account of what citizens owe one another to secure their equal standing as members of a democratic, egalitarian society. When the social product is viewed narrowly, that is, in terms of dis­ crete, divisible goods, or when justice is thought to be about compensat­ ing people for undeserved misfortune, those who need more goods to have the same opportunities or capabilities as others are often viewed as making a special claim or as making costly, excessive demands on oth­ ers. Relational egalitarians, though, do not think of justice in this way. The social product is not simply the aggregate of discrete and divisible goods, but, rather, the social product’s central good is a relationship of recognition respect among persons as moral equals and as equal citizens. This good is not itself something that is distributable but is a relationship among citizens. Hence, by grounding their view in a substantive com­ mitment to equality, where securing equal standing is necessary for such equality, questions about distribution of the products of social coopera­ tion can be reframed. Rather than asking whether differences per se war­ rant inequalities of distribution, they are concerned with the social and political conditions that undermine and secure equal standing (including importantly patterns of social domination) for persons as moral equals and equal citizens. Persons’ enjoyment of moral equality and equal citi­ zenship is incompatible with certain social hierarchies. Mere difference among human beings is not itself relevant to moral equality. Further, insti­ tutions for the distribution of goods must be designed to eradicate mate­ rial inequalities and social hierarchies that undermine the equal standing of persons as citizens. Moreover, institutions must secure the bases for recognition respect as a necessary condition for equal standing.31 And, this means that in addition to considerations of distribution, social norms that manifest and instantiate the subordination of some relative to others with respect to moral equality and equal citizenship are a focal point of the relational egalitarian critique. Hence, insofar as dependency can result in unjust subordination, relational egalitarians are committed to redressing this to secure equality and the conditions needed for recognition respect. That is, the central tenets of relational egalitarianism make it well suited for addressing the sorts of problematic dependency that lead to subordi­ nation and for demanding that social institutions and practices be such that when dependency is inevitable or consistent with justice, persons in dependency relations are protected from risks of subordination. So, for example, when persons with impairments can avoid dependency rela­ tions that give rise to subordination given reasonable accommodations, this view requires it, and when persons with impairments have certain needs that they require the assistance of others to meet given reasonable

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social arrangements, they should be supported by others in a caretaking framework that respects their status as an equal citizen. Furthermore, those who do the socially necessary work of material caretaking for oth­ ers should not be made dependent and disadvantaged relative to other citizens as a result. That is inconsistent with their status as equal citizens. Following Rousseau: dependency is an inevitable part of human life. It has led – but need not lead – to social subordination. Living on terms of mutual respect with others requires that we understand our social condi­ tion as one of various kinds of dependency and that we only permit those consistent with the status of persons as equals.

Notes 1. We thank the editors of this volume for extensive and helpful comments. We also thank participants at a brown bag at Georgia State’s Humanities Research Center who offered helpful feedback on an earlier draft. 2. In the sentence after this quote, Rousseau continues that the state of mutual dependence “does not obtain in the state of Nature, leaves everyone in it free of the yoke, and renders vain the Law of the stronger” (159). We address how to read Rousseau concerning “independence” below. 3. See, for example, Okin (1989), Kittay (1999), and Nussbaum (2006). 4. See Kittay (1999). 5. Frank Lovett, a contemporary defender of republicanism, argues that social relationships of dependency are central forms of unjust domination. Thus, he argues that dependency relations are central to theorizing justice, understood as freedom from domination. See Lovett (2010). 6. This, too, is Lovett’s concern. 7. We have defended, at length, a particular version of political liberalism as a relational egalitarian view (Watson and Hartley 2018). We hold that such a political liberalism is a feminist liberalism. However, the argument we make in this chapter does not require that one accept or prefer political liberalism over some version of comprehensive liberalism. 8. For a discussion of various views of relational egalitarianism, see Fourie, Schuppert, and Walliman-Helmer (2015). 9. Although there are moments in Rousseau’s work where his views about women seem to have progressive potential, such as in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1997a), where he says sex differences are, primarily, due to social norms, his most sustained treatment of women suggests women are by nature subordinate to men. This discussion occurs in the “Sophie” portion of Emile (1979), where he argues that women should be educated so as to be deferent and pleasing to men. 10. Persons can be dependent on others not only for needs of various sorts but for wants, too, and we recognize that persons have various sorts of needs. Here our interest, though, is with needs relevant to justice and social equality. 11. Brake (2012) stresses both of these. 12. Rawls understands his account of social primary goods as a list of the needs of persons as free and equal citizens (2005, 180). Nussbaum’s list of central human capabilities is an account of the entitlements of all persons as a matter of minimal justice in which both caretaking and attitudinal care are centrally important (2006, 76–78).

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13. See, for example, MacKinnon (1993) and Langton (2009). 14. See, for example, Kittay (1999) and Nussbaum (2006). 15. Both Frederick Neuhouser and Christopher Bertram emphasize the impor­ tance of dependency relations for Rousseau’s critique of inequality and sub­ sequent defense of his particular account of political legitimacy. See Bertram (2004) and Neuhouser (2014). Neuhouser notes that the needs in question are not just “biological” or material but, also, include the need “to achieve recognized standing for others” (2014, 170). 16. Our aim here is to reconstruct those aspects of Rousseau’s view that high­ light the centrality of concern about the way human dependence can lead to inequality. There are different interpretations of Rousseau. Our aim is not to engage in a defense of our particular reading so much as to offer a defensible and plausible reading of the main threads of his argument. We rely, espe­ cially, on Neuhouser’s work for our understanding of Rousseau. For a full reconstruction and analysis of Rousseau’s critique of inequality, including the aspects of that critique aimed at forms of dependence, see Neuhouser (2014). 17. As Rousseau says, Looked at in another way, man, who had previously been free and inde­ pendent, is now so to speak subjugated by a multitude of new needs to the whole of Nature, and especially to those of his kind, whose slave in a sense he becomes even by becoming their master; rich, he needs their services; poor, he needs their help, and moderate means do not enable him to do without them. (1997a, 170) 18. Neuhouser cites Masters (1979) and Plattner (1979) as representative of the opposing view (2014, 133 fn. 15). Robert Wolker’s reading of Rousseau, which provides a proto-theory of evolution and represents an anthropologi­ cal account of human origins and society, is in keeping with the those who read Rousseau as giving an historical account of “the state of nature” (2012). 19. There are two senses of self-love that Rousseau distinguishes. Amour de soi­ même, which is a basic form of self-love, is expressed in self-concern for one’s basic needs and survival. It is noncomparative in character (Neuhouser 2014, 68). Amour propre is constitutively a comparative form of the passion of self-love. It is inherently social, and its being secured depends on the judg­ ment of others (Neuhouser 2014, 69). 20. Our use of the term “recognition respect” follows from our reading of Rous­ seau, as well as Neuhouser’s and Rawls’s reading on this point. Neuhouser emphasizes that Rousseau stressed the need for recognition of equal standing relative to others as the need for a kind of respect (Neuhouser 2014, 67–68). Rawls discusses the role that amour propre plays in Rousseau’s analysis of inequality in his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. He writes, In its natural, or proper, form (its form appropriate to human nature), amour-propre is a need which directs us to secure for ourselves equal standing along with others and a position among our associates in which we are accepted as having needs and aspirations which must be taken into account on the same basis as those of everyone else. (2007, 198) He further adds: Needing and asking for this acceptance from others involves giving the same to them in return. For, moved by this natural amour-propre, we

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are ready to grant the very same standing to others, and to recognize the rightful limits that their needs and rightful claims impose on us, provided – and this is essential – our equal status is accepted and made secure in social arrangements. (198–199) 21. It is important to note that for Rousseau the conception of private property is not something given or derivable prior to or apart from the particular social context in which it emerges. That is to say: the emergence of private property as a practice is historically contingent and variable depending on social arrangements. 22. For a relational theory of group inequality, see Anderson (2010). 23. Rousseau begins the Second Discourse by distinguishing between “physical” and “moral, or political inequality” (1997a, 131). The first, he says, is estab­ lished by nature, and he defines it in terms of differences in age, health, bodily strength, and intelligence. In contrast, moral or political inequality is a result of social norms, practices, and institutions. It is, in his words, established by “a sort of convention” that requires a form of human “consent.” He doesn’t mean by “consent” an actual, reflective, and deliberative agreement. He just means that such inequality is a product of some form of acceptance of social norms and practices from which the inequality follows. In other words, these forms of inequality require ongoing human participation. Even so-called physical inequalities (which he conflates with difference) manifest as inequali­ ties, and not simple differences, depending on various social arrangements. 24. Pettit (1997). 25. See, for example, Crenshaw et al. (1995). 26. Here we use Iris Marion Young’s account of the five faces of oppression (1990). 27. See, for example, Oliver (1990), Shakespeare and Watson (1997), and Silvers (1998, 74–76). 28. On the social model, see Oliver (1990). For a recent discussion of models of disability and the complexity of the concept, see Beaudry (2020). 29. For some persons with certain types of cognitive impairments, it may be necessary that the person’s needs and interests be represented by a trustee in some contexts. Trustees must be sensitive to the needs and interests of the persons they represent by considering both their communicated preferences and needs and an objective account of their interests. 30. The literature on luck egalitarianism is extensive. When initially making her critique of the view, Anderson had in mind the views expressed in work such as Arneson (1989), Cohen (1989), and Dworkin (1981). 31. Anderson stressed this in her work, and we have argued that it is a central tenet of political liberalism as well (Watson and Hartley 2018).

Bibliography Anderson, Elizabeth. 2010. The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press. ———. 1999. “What’s the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (2): 287–337. Arneson, Richard. 1989. “Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare.” Philosophical Studies 56 (1): 77–93. Beaudry, Jonas-Sebastien. 2020. “Theoretical Strategies to Define Disability.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, edited by Adam Cureton and David T. Wasserman, 3–22. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Bertram, Christopher. 2004. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rousseau and the Social Contract. New York: Routledge. Bhandary, Asha. 2010. “Dependency in Justice: Can Rawlsian Liberalism Accom­ modate Kittay’s Dependency Critique.” Hypatia 25 (1): 140–156. Brake, Elizabeth. 2012. Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality and the Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Cohen, G.A. 1989. “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice.” Ethics 99 (4): 906–944. Crenshaw, Kimberlé, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds. 1995. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. New York: The New Press. Cudd, Ann E. 2006. Analyzing Oppression. New York: Oxford University Press. Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect and Accountability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dworkin, Andrea, and Catharine A. MacKinnon. 1988. Pornography and Civil Rights: A  New Day for Women’s Equality. Minneapolis, MN: Organizing Against Pornography. Dworkin, Ronald. 1981. “What Is Equality? II. Equality of Resources.” Philoso­ phy & Public Affairs 10 (4): 283–345. Fourie, Carina, Fabine Schuppert, and Ivo Walliman-Helmer, eds. 2015. Social Equality: On What It Means to Be Equals. New York: Oxford University Press. Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Depend­ ency. New York: Routledge. Langton, Rae. 2009. “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts.” In Her Sexual Solip­ sism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification, 25–63. New York: Oxford University Press. Lovett, Frank. 2010. A General Theory of Domination  & Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. MacKinnon, Catharine. 1993. Only Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer­ sity Press. ———. 1989. “Sex Equality: On Difference and Dominance.” In Toward a Femi­ nist Theory of the State, 215–234. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Masters, Roger D. 1979. The Political Philosophy of Rousseau. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Neuhouser, Frederick. 2014. Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality: Reconstructing the Second Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books. Oliver, Michael. 1990. The Politics of Disablement. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism: A  Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plattner, Marc F. 1979. Rousseau’s State of Nature: An Interpretation of the Dis­ course on Inequality. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois Press. Rawls, John. 2007. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Edited by Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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———. 2005. Political Liberalism. Expanded ed. New York: Columbia Univer­ sity Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1997a. “Discourse on the Origin and the Foundation of Inequality Among Men.” In Rousseau: The Discourses and other Early Politi­ cal Writings, edited by Victor Gourevitch, 111–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997b. “Of the Social Contract or Principles of Political Right.” In Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Political Writings, edited by Victor Gourevitch, 39–152. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1979. Emile or On Education. Introduced and translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books. Sen, Amartya. 1990. “Gender and Cooperative Conflicts.” In Women and World Development, edited by Irene Tinker. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shakespeare, Tom, and Nicholas Watson. 1997. “Defending the Social Model.” Disability & Society 12 (2): 293–300. Silvers, Anita. 1998. “Formal Justice.” In Disability, Difference, Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy, edited by Anita Silvers, David Wasserman, and Mary B. Wahowald, 13–145. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Watson, Lori, and Christie Hartley. 2018. Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolker, Robert. 2012. “Perfectible Apes in Decadent Cultures: Rousseau’s Anthropology Revisited.” In Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment and Their Legacies, edited by Bryan Garsten, 1–28. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. “Five Faces of Oppression.” In Her Justice and the Politics of Difference, 39–65. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

2

Kantian Care Helga Varden

Introduction1 How do we care well for a human being: ourselves or another? NonKantian scholars rarely identify the philosophy of Kant as a particularly useful resource with which to understand the full complexity of human care. Kant’s philosophy is often taken to presuppose that a philosophical analysis of good human life needs to attend only to how autonomous, rational agents  – sprung up like mushrooms out of nowhere, without a childhood, never sick, always independent – ought to act respectfully and how they can be forced to interact rightfully. Questions involving aspects of human life captured by what Eva Kittay aptly phrased “the fact of dependency” (1999) – such as our vulnerable, fragile, and embod­ ied social natures, asymmetrical care relations, and deep systemic injus­ tices – are therefore commonly thought to be beyond the grasp of Kant and of Kantian philosophy. Against this historically prominent under­ standing of Kant’s practical philosophy, in what follows I  engage and draw upon recent Kant scholarship, which shows both the inadequacy of such rationalist readings and the fruitfulness of using Kant’s practical philosophy to enhance our understanding of human care relations. After situating my approach in the existing, relevant secondary literature on Kant’s human agent, I explore key features of Kant’s accounts of human nature and the highest good. I pay special attention to his proposal that our human nature comprises reflective and unreflective aspects and pat­ terns that we (ought to) strive to develop, transform, and integrate in wise ways through our faculty of desire. In addition, I  emphasize the dangers that our ineradicable propensity to do bad things (evil) poses for our projects of self- and other care. I proceed by outlining how Kant’s account of moral (ethical and legal) responsibility for self and others is developed through his theories of freedom, that is, through his theory of virtue (virtuous internal freedom with its account of perfect and imper­ fect duties) and his theory of right (rightful external freedom with its account of innate, private, and public right).

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On the conception I am advancing, we are pretty messy, fragile, and vulnerable beings whose projects of caring are difficult, ongoing, and complex. On the one hand, we (should) strive to care for ourselves (by striving to manage and heal badly functioning parts and by developing, transforming, and integrating immature or distinct parts of ourselves into good wholes) and for others (assisting them in their projects of manage­ ment and healing and of developing, transforming, and integrating them­ selves into good wholes) in ways that are both respectful and attentive to the particular people we are – people with lives of our own to live – and the kinds of relationships we share. On the other hand, we should, and can, be forced to interact rightfully, meaning interaction consistent with one another’s basic (innate, private, and public) rights and, hence, contribute to reform projects that improve our inherited, imperfect legalpolitical systems with regard to care relations. Bringing Kant’s philoso­ phy into dialogue with care theorists, I conclude, advances the insights of both traditions by showing one way to arrive at a multifaceted, yet unified account of human care relations where our embodied, social as well as our rational natures are given due consideration.

Recent Developments in Kant Scholarship on Human Nature and Agency In recent decades Kant scholarship has done much to help rectify the historically prominent misconception of the Kantian human agent as simply a rational, autonomous agent. In the 1980s and 1990s Kantian ethicists such as Marcia Baron, Barbara Herman, Thomas E. Hill Jr., Christine Korsgaard, Onora O’Neill, and Allen Wood paved the way with groundbreaking work on Kantian ethics and moral psychology in general, as well as on issues related to care and dependency relations in particular.2 The next generation of Kantians followed their lead and took the project further.3 In addition to making the Kantian agent less one-dimensional and more human (more embodied and more social), many of these interpretations argue that the morally responsible Kantian agent does not have to be as stringently law-abiding as Kant himself seems to think. For example, several argue that we can (or ought to) lie to the murderer at the door in order to save a friend hiding in our house or that we can (or ought to) save our loved one(s) over strangers.4 More generally, these Kantian ethicists tend to argue that we need not accept Kant’s account of absolute prohibitions (perfect duties), leaving much to be learned from Kant with regard to emotionally healthy, morally sound human psychologies, including as we face evil. More recently, there has also been an increasing amount of work on Kant’s writings on human nature and anthropology, such as by Alix Cohen, Patrick Frier­ son, Robert Louden, Susan M. Shell, and John A. Zammito,5 that, in

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part, seeks to make evident the inaccuracy of the historically prominent rational autonomy reading of Kant. Like the aforementioned Kantian ethicists (and those who follow their lead), these scholars tend to argue that concerns of happiness are important for Kant, even if morality is more important and happiness is ultimately subservient to it in that being happy is morally beneficial by making it subjectively easier for us to do what is morally required. My related work draws upon, yet also challenges, aspects of this existing work on Kant’s account of the morally good, emotionally healthy human life. For example, I have defended Kant’s claim that there is an absolute moral prohibition on lying to the murderer at the door (2010, Forthcom­ ing). More recently, I have developed (2020b) this account of absolute moral prohibitions further (in general and in consideration of issues of sexual and gendered violence) in part by drawing upon the work of Kat­ erina Deligiorgi (2012), who defends Kant’s general account of absolute moral prohibitions as situated at the heart of Kant’s practical philosophy and as something Kantians should not forego. Foregoing absolute moral prohibitions entails losing some of the distinctive character and philo­ sophical argumentative power of Kant’s practical philosophy.6 In addi­ tion, Kant’s argument regarding absolute moral prohibitions, Deligiorgi argues, is internally linked to central arguments regarding transcendental freedom, which address how it is that human beings – in virtue of being capable of the “ought” – have internal to them what it takes to be mor­ ally responsible for their capacity to set ends of their own spontaneously (2017, 2018). I argue, further, that holding this view is philosophically consistent with maintaining that human beings can face situations (such as when one opens the door to find the murderer) in which there is no morally good way out, in which all the available options involve doing a (formal) wrong or doing what Kant calls “wrong in the highest degree” (1996a, MM 6: 307f).7 Furthermore, like some of the existing literature on Kant and human nature, I  consider morality more important than happiness; practical reason must set the framework within which we pur­ sue happiness (1996a, CPrR 5: 110f). But, I continue, Kant doesn’t, as he shouldn’t, think that happiness is only or simply instrumentally beneficial or useful to morality. Indeed, although it is the capacity for personality (the capacity to act as motivated by a distinctively moral valuing) that gives human beings a pricelessness (dignity), the embodied and social parts of ourselves are sources of genuine value for us. They are constitu­ tive parts of flourishing human lives. Our highest human aim, therefore, is not to rid ourselves of concerns, desires, needs, and wants rooted in our pursuit of happiness but to strive to bring happiness and morality into as close a union as possible (1996a, TP 8: 279). This is not the place to engage the many relevant Kantian interpretive debates – I do that elsewhere8 – rather, the point is simply to acknowl­ edge these disagreements in the interpretive literature before proceeding

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to outline what I believe is the best Kantian conception of care. This con­ ception of care uses Kant’s philosophical ideas to take us beyond what Kant himself wrote on related themes. To do this, it is useful first to get a good grasp on Kant’s understanding of the structure of human phe­ nomenology, some features of which can be sketched through attending to his accounts of the predisposition to good and the propensity to evil in human nature. We can then appreciate the complementary nature of Kant’s account of (internal and external) freedom in giving us (respec­ tively) accounts of duties of virtue (ethics) and of right (justice) and how each analysis gives proper space for concerns rooted in distinctively human needs and concerns. In the next section, I  take the first step of outlining personal care relations, postponing the corresponding discus­ sion of justice in relation to care relations to the section on “Justice and Care Relations.” A strength of the overall resulting position, I propose, is its multifaceted analysis of care relations.

Personal Human Care Relations As mentioned earlier, I  believe it is mistaken to attribute to Kant the view that human beings are or should strive to be merely rational beings. Although this is how our philosophical practice often has presented Kant’s philosophy, it is not the account we find when we start looking more closely not only at his writings on freedom but at human nature generally. In fact, the overall picture we find in Kant’s philosophical writ­ ings is one that views a central challenge for us, that of developing an ability to care well for ourselves and for each other, in ways that are deeply appreciative of the astonishing fact that we can set ends of own responsibly, the incredibleness of our embodied sociality, and our very unruly and vulnerable human natures. And central to exploring these fea­ tures of Kant’s practical philosophy is his aforementioned accounts of the predisposition to good and the propensity to evil in human nature, which we, somewhat surprisingly, find in the Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Kant 1996b). In these sections of the Religion Kant proposes that our human nature should, in part, be understood in terms of a threefold “original predis­ position to good” (1996b, R 6: 26).9 The first constituent part – the pre­ disposition to “animality” – is taken to capture our natural, conscious drive to self-preservation, to have sex and care for our offspring, and to seek affectionate community with others. This animalistic predisposition is marked by being importantly unreflective in nature, which is why it is operative long before we can think about things and reason. Conse­ quently, we see these conscious drives revealed even in newborn babies – in how they seek to survive (self-preservation), how they respond to touch (sex drive), and how they are calmed by affective comfort from loved ones (community). The second predisposition – to “humanity” – involves

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both susceptibility to set ends of our own rationally (acting on univer­ salizable maxims) and a social sense of self enabled by comparative uses of reason (1996b, R 6: 27). Hence, this predisposition enables both the setting of our own ends (rational end-setting) and a type of self-love that is accompanied by the inclination “to gain worth in the opinion of others, originally, of course, merely equal worth” (1996b, R 6: 27) and an incentive to culture (1996b, R 6: 27). Although fully developing this ability involves reason (though not an ability to act as motivated by practical reason), we can see this longing to act freely, Kant correspond­ ingly argues in the Anthropology, in the fact that human babies are the only ones that scream when they are born, since in screaming, the babies reveal that they can represent in a way that non-human animals cannot, namely as being frustrated by our inability to act (set ends) (2007, A 7: 268). Moreover, we can see this social sense of self at play already very early in human lives too: it only takes a few months, for example, before a baby starts to interact with the caregivers through smiling and laugh­ ter, an activity that reveals that the baby is aware of and takes pleasure being seen by and in seeing the caregiver. If we realize these two natural predispositions – animality and humanity – together and in good ways, Kant argues, we will both be able to develop societies where healthy competition drives culture and progress and find ourselves in a condition where reciprocal love among emotionally healthy, grounded people is realizable (2007, A 7: 306). There is therefore nothing inherently wrong with being in the world with these dispositions; they are importantly unreflective and operate significantly on the affectionate, playful, and/or nonmoralizable emotional level. Indeed, upon reflection, there is a moral push to remain confident in these unreflective ways of being as long as they operate well; after all, they ground us and are central to giving our personal lives meaning. They are not, however, sufficient to account for human beings’ ability to be morally responsible for setting ends of their own; to explain this philosophically, Kant argues, the predisposition to “personality” must be added. The predisposition to personality concerns our susceptibility to moral­ ity’s commands (to be morally responsible for our actions), or what Kant calls “moral feeling.” Moral feeling is a susceptibility to act as motivated by thinking about whether or not what I am doing is right or wrong; that is, it enables the ability to do what is right (to follow the moral law, to obey my practical reason) just because doing so is the right thing to do (act from duty) (1996b, R 6: 27). Consequently, this third predisposition (personality) enables us to act upon or in response to the behavior related to the first two (animality and humanity). For example, when something I  am doing feels morally troubling, I  can consider it from a reflective point of view, meaning that I can stop and try to figure out what I am doing as well as whether what I am doing is respectful to and apprecia­ tive of myself and others, and I can act as motivated by this reflection

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(I can incorporate this motivation into the maxim and do something rather than something else just because doing so is the right thing to do). Being susceptive to moral feeling reveals that we are at least start­ ing to be able to be responsible for our moral actions – and, so, viewing practical reasoning as giving one reasons to do or not to do something – which is also why there is no evidence of it in babies (as they cannot do this yet). Correspondingly, Kant emphasizes in the Critique of Practical Reason that the kinds of self-love enabled by the first two predispositions are “natural and active in us even prior to the moral law,” whereas the third predisposition (to personality) enables us to “restrict” or “infringe upon” them when doing so is morally necessary, that is, when the moral law (our practical reason) demands it (1996a, CPrR 5: 73). Again, when this happens – when we restrict our inclinations in these ways, when we do something just because it is the right thing to do, when we act out of duty – then we act out of rational self-love (rather than simply in con­ formity with rational self-love) (1996a, CPrR 5: 73). Kant also argues that the third predisposition, which enables rational self-love, can never be used badly, since it provides an incentive to act simply as practical reason commands (1996b, R 6: 28). The other two, however, can be used and habituated in bad ways, although their orientation toward what is good cannot be eradicated. Trailing our predisposition to good is the propensity to evil, which comes in three degrees. At each level, there is a particular way in which it is tempting for us to do bad things and to develop inclinations that make it subjectively increasingly difficult for us to live lives that are truly good and morally justifiable. First, frailty is the temptation not to do what we know we ought to do (weakness of will); impurity is the temptation to act on bad motivations such that we have patterns of associations or ways of feeling that make it hard or are out of line with what is truly good for us; and depravity is the temptation to reverse the order of motivations so that rather than seeking to act in ways that are morally justifiable upon reflection, we use our reasoning abilities self-deceptively so as to seek to justify doing morally terrible things (do bad under the guise of the good) (1996b, R 6: 29–32). Switching now from the perspective of wrongdoers to the perspective of being wronged, when we are wronged our trust in others is challenged in three degrees: by someone committing a wrong against us (frailty); by someone being more generally unreli­ able or untrustworthy in that she is not able to act consistently from the right kinds of motivations in various situations (impurity); and, finally, by someone striving to do morally horrible things to us in the name of the good and generally feeling justified and content in doing them (deprav­ ity). That there are three degrees therefore reflects how seriously we can lose our way in life (as we move from frailty to impurity to depravity) and the increasing difficulty involved in working our way back to emo­ tional and moral health.

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Notice that because we have a predisposition to good that is threefold, evil can be aimed and experienced at all levels. As Susan Brison tells us in Aftermath (2011), the violent sexual assault she was subjected to affected her at all levels: at the level of animality, the aftermath included struggles to regain her ability to want to preserve herself and feel safe in the world, to enjoy sexual intimacy again, and to become able to want to have a child again; at the level of humanity, the aftermath included strug­ gles to recover the ability to set ends of her own as others’ equal and to overcome disempowering feelings of guilt and shame; and at the level of personality, the aftermath included the struggle to regain her subjective sense of having dignity. Correspondingly, in doing violent wrongs, per­ petrators can experience themselves at all three levels. They can feel ani­ malistic pleasures from their evil actions or feel socially empowered by subjecting others to their force. They may also be so utterly lost in their own life projects that they create a self-deceived reality in which others, as persons, no longer can demand their respect because, ultimately, the wrongdoer’s life is much more important for some alleged moral reason and disrespecting their victims is part of some self-deceived, moralized story of their hitherto unrecognized greatness and/or of the others deserv­ ing awful treatment.10 In sum, despite the fact that various Kantians will disagree with aspects of the earlier mentioned Kant interpretation,11 it should be obvious by now that he has anything but a simple “rational self” conception of the human agent; this interpretation – regardless of interpretive disagreements on details  – gives us a much more complex structure of our human phenomenology.12 Kant’s accounts of the pre­ disposition to good and of the propensity to evil aim to get into view both how what we take pleasure in, value, and find meaningful (what makes us happy as the particular people we are) is subjective in that it is different from person to person and how this subjectivity appears to be constituted by shared structures and patterns. It is also important to appreciate that this account of human nature is complemented by Kant’s account of perfect and imperfect duties. Because this part of Kant’s practical philosophy probably is the most well known, let me be very brief here. According to Kant, setting ends of our own rationally involves acting on maxims (subjective rules of action): when I  learn to set an end for myself in morally responsible ways, I  master the self-reflective ability to think about what I  am doing (including by mastering abstract concepts that enable me to be aware of what I  am trying to do or which end I  am pursuing), that I  am the one doing it (self-conscious), and to make sure that the ends I pursue are at least con­ sistent with respect for rational being (perfect duties) and insofar as pos­ sible furthering of a flourishing rational world (imperfect duties). Hence, establishing whether or not an action is morally good or at least morally permissible, we do not look to the content of our maxims (our particu­ lar ends) but to the form of the maxim: could we “think” or “will” the

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maxim as a law for rational beings (1996a, GW 4: 424). If we cannot even think the maxim as a law without contradiction, then we have a per­ fect moral duty not to do it, whereas if we can think it but not will it as a universal law, then we have an imperfect duty not to do it.13 Additionally, because we have moral feeling (personality), we can act as motivated by this reflection: as also explained earlier, we can do something just because it is the right thing to do or we can choose not to do something just because doing it is wrong. Finally, because we can choose and because we are embodied, social – human – beings (the predispositions to animal­ ity and humanity), the moral law is experienced by us as a categorical imperative, as something we must or ought to do – “act only in accord­ ance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (1996, GW 4: 429) – and not as something we will necessarily do. Notice too that this entails neither that we ought to try to act on universalizable maxims from duty at all times nor that the emotionally mature, morally good human point of view is the same as that of the independent, rational beings. Rather than identifying the highest good for human beings as always acting on universalizable max­ ims from the motivation of duty (virtue), Kant’s proposal is that we must seek to bring non-moralizable and moralized forms of self-love – happi­ ness and morality – into “close union . . . under the limiting conditions of practical reason” (1996a, MM 6: 426). Ultimately, insofar as it is within our powers of choice, what we choose to do must be something we can morally own – practical reason must set the framework within which our non-moralizable aspects function – but the aim is to realize them both in a harmonious union. This is why Kant proposes that human beings’ highest good must be understood as a “union and harmony” between “human morality” and “human happiness” (1996a, TP 8: 279, cf. CPrR 5: 110f.). Our highest aim as human beings is to use our faculty of desire to develop, transform, and integrate all the good aspects of our being – those that make us emotionally healthy embodied, social, morally responsible particular beings. In addition, of course, we need to strive to heal and manage those bits that function poorly, those that hold back both our happiness and our ability to act morally responsibly.14 Notice too that the earlier discussion helps us critique the fact that it seems impossible to grow up in any Western country today without having inherited some racist, sexist, and heterosexist pathologies. For the most part, these pathologies are at the impure level, meaning that they are patterns of associations and emotional reactions we have in rela­ tion to ourselves and to others that are based on racialization, gender, or sexual identity or orientation. Insofar as we live in such a family or soci­ ety, we will inherit either oppressed or oppressive identities. If we inherit oppressed identities – non-white, non-Christian (in the United States and in most of Europe), woman, polyamorous, member of the LGBTQIA community, and so on – we will have (at least remnants of) oppressed

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pathologies (irrational sadness, lack of self-esteem, strong anger at par­ ticular instances of wrong, etc.) that subjectively hold us back in impor­ tant ways. In contrast, insofar as we inherit oppressing identities (white, Christian, man, cis, monogamous, straight, etc.), we will have oppressive pathologies (numbness to effects of bad behavior, overinflated self-esteem in virtue of our identity, so-called “snowflake” anger at related criticism, etc.). Insofar as we inherit more than one of these identities (oppressed and/or oppressive), we experience how they interact with one another within ourselves  – what is often, thanks to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s pio­ neering work (1989), referred to as “intersectionality.” Of course, some try to repress these bad emotional patterns by transforming them into depravity, namely by telling themselves deeply self-deceived stories about the alleged correctness of their damaging or destructive behavior. Thus, they do aggressive things to themselves or others in the name of the good. People who uphold, for example, white supremacist stories tell deeply self-deceived stories about racialization, whereas hetero-sexist people often speak in the name of God to allegedly justify their violent behavior toward women (who don’t recognize their “proper,” subordinate place) or toward members of the LGBTQIA-community (who don’t recognize their “perverted” nature). These stories, on this Kant-based approach, reveal a “depraved heart.”15 Moreover, those who do take on the chal­ lenge of ridding themselves of the inherited, impure pathologies experi­ ence the deep challenges involved in so doing – exactly because it involves emotional and associational responses that are not simply within their reflective control  – and they can feel the temptation to yield to frailty (to sell out themselves or others) in moments when this is advantageous or when standing up for what is right has a real cost. Regardless, liv­ ing with oppressed identities at all times involves having to deal with learning which fights to take on and which to let pass; otherwise, one’s entire life easily becomes absorbed in dealing with other people’s wrong­ doing rather than also living a life of one’s own. Neither path is easy or morally unproblematic since every time you let a wrong pass, one lets somebody else wrong you without consequence – somebody wrongs you both materially and formally – whereas every time you take on the fight, you let somebody else’s bad ways be determining for the ends you set. Moreover, each time taking on the fight involves destructive violence against another, you do not wrong anyone materially (as they are trying to wrong you), but you do use force in a way that you are not morally authorized to do: you do formal but not material wrong.16 Managing inherited oppressed identities well is only possible, however, if we learn which fights to take on and which to let pass, since only by becoming emotionally and morally wise in these ways do we care for ourselves well, hold on to our dignity, and avoid living merely reactive and utterly exhausted lives.

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In addition to such societal pathologies, we inherit pathologies from and/or develop pathological responses to things that happen to us in our families, including the patterned pathological behaviors of our parents and other significant caregivers. These domestically rooted pathologies involve the same nexus of patterns regarding temptations to wrongly lower (demean or disrespect) oneself or others in hurtful and morally unjustifiable or irrational ways. In addition, bad things happen in life: people do bad things to us or bad things happen to them that affect us (people wrong and hurt us; they die, get sick, or lose their way and consequently cannot care for us any longer), and we mess up things too (sometimes seriously) – and all of this happens both as we grow up (when we are incapable of moral responsibility for our actions) and as adults. Again, we are pretty messy, fragile, and vulnerable beings whose projects of caring for ourselves and for others are difficult, ongoing, and complex. Indeed, the complexity of our projects of self- and other care makes it even clearer why a precondition of getting any of this right involves learning to master truthfulness  – something Kant considers a “sacred command of reason” (1996a, SRL 8: 427) – as a way of life and to do so as we learn to deal with our own and others’ propensity to evil. First and foremost, of course, we need to learn to be truthful with ourselves: we need to learn to attend to how we feel, what we want, what is good for us, what gets us into trouble, what is tempting but leads us astray, and so on – or what Kant sometimes calls to “know your heart” (1996a, MM 6: 441). If possible, doing some of this together with other trustworthy persons is better than doing so completely alone. Indeed, Kant’s ideal of moral friendship allows us to understand why one of the best things in life is finding someone with whom we connect and whom we can trust as we seek to live in increasingly good and wise ways. True moral friendships, Kant suggests, occur when we can and do trust one another completely as we share our thoughts, fears, hopes, regrets, confusions, considerations, and so on, and we can do this because we are right in believing that we are both being truthful and helping each other have a good sense of reality. We are not judgmental, we have each other’s back, and we are not drawn to betray each other’s trust by sharing the content of our conversations with third parties in unauthorized ways (1996a, MM 6: 472). Within the context of such moral friendships, we can grow and flourish – we can heal, improve, and develop new sides of ourselves in integrated, stabilizing ways. And as we do, our aim is not to rid our­ selves of our embodied, social selves, or of our own unique conceptions of happiness; nor is it to want for our friend anything but their flourish­ ing as who they are and are striving to become. Rather, our aim is to heal, develop, transform, and integrate the various parts of ourselves into good wholes, and to assist our friend to do the same, something that for human beings involves the use of abstract concepts, associative thinking,

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and playful imagination. Moreover, as we engage in this process, we strive to ensure that the actions we take and the particular temperaments we have are developing in as close a union with the demands of morality as possible, namely with our imperfect duties both to develop our talents and capacities and to assist others in their pursuit of happiness as well as with our perfect duties never to act in ways that wrong or damage ourselves or others. In other words, we must genuinely and truthfully seek to enable emotionally healthy and morally good being for each of us individually and for both of us as a “we.” We have seen some reasons why it is simply a mistake to attribute to Kant a conception of human agency as mere rational agency that has nothing to offer those of us – which should be all of us – who are con­ cerned with human care. We have also seen that consistent with much of the writing in the philosophy of care tradition, Kant too thinks that caring – for oneself and others – is a lifelong project that involves learn­ ing to be around our importantly fragile, vulnerable, and rather messy human natures in sustaining, trustworthy – and, so, truthful – ways, ways that ultimately also always involve treating each human being (no matter how young or immature or (temporarily or permanently) incapacitated) as having dignity. Even if one grants all the previous arguments, however, this is insufficient to speak to all the important complexities of care rela­ tions, since they involve legal-political issues as well. Let me attend to some important, general features of Kant’s legal-political conception of care relations before showing how the previous ideas concerning human nature complement this account and thereby yield a more complete Kan­ tian approach to rightful, human care relations.

Justice and Care Relations We may identify three distinct trends in the existing Kantian literature on justice and care relations. First, some important work – such as that by Carol Hay (2013) and Sarah Clark Miller (2012) – utilizes Kant’s ethics, and especially his account of imperfect duties, to explore Kantian approaches to care for others and for oneself (including under conditions of oppression). Second, some Kantian-influenced care theorists  – the pathbreaker being Eva Kittay (1999) – re-envision John Rawls’s Kantianism to explore issues of justice regarding dependency and care relations. Third, some – such as Barbara Herman (1993b) and myself (2007, 2012a, 2012b, 2020b)17 – argue that the starting point for a Kantian account of rightful care relations must be his account of right (justice), rather than his account of virtue (first-personal ethics). On this approach, justice con­ cerns enforceable rights. Virtue (maxims, including motivations) cannot be enforced; indeed, any attempt at enforcing virtue both necessarily fails and deprives persons of their innate right to freedom. That is to say, as noted earlier, to act virtuously according to Kant is to act only on maxims

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that can be thought or willed as universal laws for rational beings and that incorporate the moral motivation (duty). A  maxim is a subjective rule of action, meaning it is the principle that is governing how I – from my first-personal point of view – go about pursuing an end in the world. Now, no one external to me can make me set any particular end and act from a moral motivation: others can threaten me or make me act consistent with an end, but they cannot make me set a particular end, let alone set that end because it is the right thing to do (act from duty) (1996a, MM 6: 239). Which maxim I act on – what and why I do what I do – is, in other words, not within reach of coercion – and coercion is the legal-political means. Moreover, switching from the analysis of virtue to that of right, Kant argues that all rightful uses of coercion – that is, any uses of coercion that are just – must be consistent with each person’s innate right to freedom. The latter, in turn, is defined as their right to “independence from being constrained by another’s choice  .  .  . insofar as it [their exercise of freedom] can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law” (1996a, MM 6: 237). Hence, if somebody uses coercion or threatens me with coercion in an attempt to make me virtuous (set a particular end and act from moral motivation), not only will they necessarily fail (as trying to do so is metaphysically confused) but they will also thereby wrong me by threatening me or by committing battery. Hence, virtue cannot be enforced, and any attempt at doing so will fail and involve judicial wrongdoing, and these kinds of philosophical problems are major reasons why I  believe that Kant’s account of virtue cannot do the work of his account of right with regard to care relations either. Turning to Kittay’s revised Rawlsian account, I  believe that also it doesn’t work as a complete critique of rightful care relations. The main problem is that this type of account – so, a problem it shares with Rawls’s own account – is that it only provides an account of public right (of citi­ zens’ legal claims only on their public institutions) and not one of private right (of persons’ legal claims on each other as private persons), which is why it struggles to critique family law (as many feminists since Susan Moller Okin (1989) have pointed out in relation to Rawls’s theory).18 In other words, even if we accept that these accounts can justify the state’s right to redistribute resources to care-receivers and care-providers, it can­ not (as Rawls cannot) provide an account of family law (private law); the caregivers’ castle remains out of reach for these Rawlsian theories of justice. To account for family law, I argue in the following,19 we need to develop one of Kant’s core proposals, namely that the home requires its own private right (law) analysis, namely an analysis he calls “status right.” We will also see that once an account of innate right is combined with such an account of private right, an account of public right (sys­ temic justice) can complement them, yielding a more complete theory of rightful care relations. That is to say, as indicated earlier, a core proposal

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of Kant’s that I believe care theory can draw upon is that a sufficiently nuanced account of rightful care relations requires several distinct lenses of right: innate right, private right, and public right. Innate right is the right to freedom and some important rights that are analytically related to it, private right is an account of rightful private relations, whereas public right is an account of citizens’ claims on the public authority. An important aim in the following is correspondingly to show why it is a mistake to think that any one of these analyses can do all the philosophi­ cal work with regard to critiquing rightful care relations. To illustrate this latter regarding the need for a multifaceted analy­ sis of care relations, let me also briefly indicate how Kant’s philosophy can help us see some sources of the problems characteristic of much natural right or libertarian style analyses of legal guardianship, includ­ ing feminist analyses of this kind. To start, as is well known, natural right analyses that seek to explain all rightful relations as occurring between two agents struggle to make sense of legal guardianship, since guardianship involves someone (sometimes referred to in this literature as “patient”) who lacks exactly such agency. As emphasized by A. John Simmons (1994) in his attempt at providing a Lockean analysis of care relations involving anyone who cannot assume moral responsibility for their actions – due to immaturity or illness or disability – the problem is that the care-receiver cannot exercise rights and so is not an agent in this sense of the word. Hence, the special analysis needed is one that doesn’t fail to keep this fact in mind, and he thinks that this is where Locke fails since he argues that corresponding to parents’ rights to their children is the children’s duties to their parents. But children need special rights exactly because they are incapable of exercising rights or duties (obliga­ tions); hence, in some irreducible way, children cannot be agents insofar as they need special rights. Moreover, if children are not yet agents as they cannot exercise rights, how can they have rights at all? This, Sim­ mons concludes, is a philosophical problem Locke (and Simmons on his behalf) cannot solve because this kind of natural rights analysis requires two agents, but in the Lockean sense of an agent, there is only one here, and hence it is not possible to envision a rightful care relation as existing on this analysis. Correspondingly, if one follows the feminist natural right advocated by Virginia Held (2006), not only does it seem impossible to get into view an independent voice for dependents, since the only way to do so appears to go via their caregivers, in which case the relation between two agents collapses in similarly problematic ways. In addition, it seems impossible on these kinds of approaches to explain how the rights of, say, abused children correspond with the duties of particular responsible adults. Again, this is a problem you find already in Locke’s analysis of parentchild relations: Locke argues that abusive parents forfeit their rights and

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so foster parents become the rightful parents of abused children. He is unable to explain, however, who has an enforceable obligation to become foster parents – a problem that only becomes more intractable once you not only assume abusive but deceased parents. And to mention a final challenge often noted on this type of position, it appears impossible to make sense of any distinction between human care rights and non-human animal rights since insofar as we are so incapacitated that we cannot be agents, it seems our functioning levels are not different in kind and may even be lower than many non-human animals.20 Kant’s analysis of status right in combination with his accounts of innate and public right provides a solution to all these problems that is consistent with a basic philosophi­ cal commitment to each person’s innate right to freedom. Moreover, it is an account that shows a principled way of accommodating embodied, social concerns of nature that is worth taking seriously. Reasons of space makes it impossible to go into detail here, but let me sketch some of how this account goes – starting with innate right.21 Kant’s account of innate right – understood as rights analytically related to each person’s innate right to freedom – is ingenious. Kant argues that although we can distinguish between our person and our bodies from the point of view of virtue, from the point of view of right – a perspective that is inherently spatiotemporal as it concerns enforceable restrictions on interactions in space and time – there is no such distinction. Hence, from the point of view of right, the relationships between our bodies and our legal persons must be thought of as analytic: my legal person and my body must be regarded as coextensive (1996a, MM 6: 237f). So, if you take my money from the table, you steal from me, whereas if you wrench it from my hand, you commit battery (as you subject my legal person to violence). Moreover, anyone who, in acting on another’s behalf, physi­ cally handles their body when incapacitated – such as a physician caring for an ill person or a parent caring for a child – must be seen as exercising a right to legal guardianship over us (and, so, must act within the bound­ aries specified by relevant laws). In other work (2012b, 2020b), I dem­ onstrate how this analysis of innate right is also useful and important for understanding classical feminist issues such as women’s right to abor­ tion, rightful sexual interactions, and the seriousness of legal wrongs that deprive anyone of their right to bodily integrity, such as rape. Indeed, in my view, this is one of the places where the strength of Kant’s account of absolute moral prohibitions and the idea of doing wrong in the highest degree shows itself: because we are embodied beings, we can be trapped in situations from which there are no morally good ways out, where the choice facing us is either to let someone wrong us (materially and/ or formally) or to use violence against others that is inconsistent with treating them as having dignity (formally wronging them). People whose social (racialized, sexual, gendered) identities are severely oppressed run

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the real risk of having to face the kind of brutalizing violence that leaves them with no morally good way out; good self-care becomes impossible. Furthermore, if we follow Kant’s lead and recognize that an analysis of right must accommodate embodied, social human concerns (1996a, MM 6: 217), we can better explain why crimes that involve bodily wrongs, such as rape, are particularly heinous – with added heinousness tracking such violence within intimate relations of trust, such as spousal rape or incest  – and should be punished more severely than those that do not and why some kinds of bodily wrongdoing are more heinous than oth­ ers. Being subjected to bodily violence can unground human beings in fundamental ways, the aftermath of some of these acts are particularly hard to handle, and some bodily wrongs are more heinous than oth­ ers because of the ways in which the violence comes at us (cf. earlier discussion of Brison in relation to Kant’s account of the predispositions to good in human nature). Kant’s account of innate right together with the earlier account of human nature can therefore help us capture the importance of reforming how our legal-political and health-care systems respond to sexual assaults, for instance by changing how we conduct assault trials and how police and health-care personnel care for people who have been subjected to sexual assaults. We need, in other words, to reform these legal-political systems of care because they do not currently fulfil their intended function of providing a public means through which we – human beings – can pursue their rightful claims against one another in ways that are consistent with self-care. After all, if they did, it would simply not be the case that so many victims of sexual assault decide that they would rather not pursue justice than to go through the medical and legal processes that doing so entails. That is to say, some victims find that going through these medical and legal processes is within what they can responsibly put themselves through – indeed, some find it empowering to do it. From the point of view of our legal-political system, however, the fact that some can do it is insufficient. Insofar as we want a func­ tioning legal-political system, the fact that very many judge that going through the current processes is something they cannot responsibly do to themselves is of central importance. Institutional reform is therefore needed so that these institutions no longer continue to exacerbate the trauma undergone by those who have been subjected to violence and such that they can reasonably be trusted to be part of restoring rightful relations (and not as it currently is; it is statistically very unlikely that they will win) and facilitate healing for the victims. Again, the aim of a legal-political system must be reconcilable with our highest good being to bring happiness and morality into union: it must be possible, in other words, to go through these legal-political process with a reasonable hope that doing so will be a means through which to start the process of full emotional (embodied, social, and moral) healing.22

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In addition to his account of innate right, as mentioned earlier, Kant has a unique (private right) account of what he calls “status relations.” Kant rightly considers this account to be a novel contribution to the history of legal-political thought (1996a, MM 6: 282). Status relations involve rela­ tions where persons have claims not only against one another with regard to some object (as we do in private property and contract right) but to one another’s (legal) persons. These relations involve rights to shared homes (personal lives) and not to be abandoned. Moreover, such status relations are of three kinds: marital relations (between two equals who consent to forming a legal “us” involving a shared home); parent-child relations (between two unequal parties where one party  – the child  – has not consented to the relationship), which can be developed into a fuller account of legal guardianship; and relations between families and their servants (between two unequal parties where the one party’s con­ sent – the servant’s – is complicated by a lack of material independence). Kant proposes that in order to conceive of these relations as rightful – as consistent with each person’s innate right to freedom and not as involv­ ing unjustifiable dependency, including enslavement – we need laws that take into account the ways in which these relations involve (sometimes asymmetrical) dependencies and fusions into one, shared legally recog­ nized home. As we saw earlier, we cannot, for example, analyze relations between parents and children by assuming both to be morally responsible agents. After all, children are incapable of moral agency insofar as they need special rights and they have neither consented nor can they consent to be in the relationship; they did not consent to being born, and they cannot choose to take care of themselves instead of being cared for by a guardian. Similarly, Kant argues that we should not analyze relations between families and their servants through ordinary contract law – which much legal practice in the world (wrongly) does today – since such analyses fail to take into account the asymmetrical material dependency of the serv­ ant upon the family in whose home the servant lives without being a full, equal member of the household. Kant then argues that these dependency relations can be made rightful only through publicly posited status law (including family law) – thereby dismantling the so-called “man’s” (or the “caregiver’s”) “castle,” understood as the notion that the home is in principle beyond proper reach of the law. Although Kant’s writings are heterosexist, his philosophical ideas can also explain why it is important for same-sex couples and people in polyamorous relationships to have the right to marry; to have the right to marry is to be able to establish a legally recognized and protected home (Varden 2007, 2020b). In sum, then, Kant’s analysis of status relations shows why establishing a public authority  – a legal-political authority that represents everyone and yet no one in particular – that determines, applies, and enforces these laws

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is constitutive of making these dependency relations rightful, namely by giving all parties in the relationship a proper legal voice. The earlier analysis of the embodied and social aspects of human nature – good and bad – adds to this analysis of rightful care relations by explaining important features of law and by capturing how to reform legal-political systems so that they can become more suited for human needs. For example, the account of our embodied, social human nature can explain both why domestic emotional abuse and neglect can be tempting and why it is particularly damaging. Not being safe and cared for in our own homes stunts our projects of developing, transforming, and integrating our predispositions to good in human nature because when we are vulnerable, we often have to act primarily from the ani­ malistic attitude of survival. The earlier account of emotional health can also explain why being a parent or legal guardian of another human being requires taking into account the cared-for’s particular emotional patterns, and it also speaks to how any reasonable law recognizes that it is truly difficult to get all of this right (as we do not have direct access to another’s subjectivity). Moreover, given the complexity of human nature, improving our legal-political systems of care will include making these systems more flexible such that they are suited to the complexity of par­ ticular caring relations. For example, parents who are struggling with drug abuse may need relief only in periods when they are unable to manage their addictions. Hence, we may imagine that in more developed or well-functioning health-care systems, parents who manage their drug abuse, including by ensuring that their children are taken care of by authorized legal guard­ ians when their drug abuse becomes unmanageable, may not be required to forfeit their parental rights just because of their drug addiction. Fur­ thermore, according to this Kantian approach, a public authority can­ not view itself as authorized to deprive a child of access to their parents unless the parents have been proven (in court) to have committed a crime and the state provides legal guardians who will take good care of the chil­ dren. Being forcefully separated from our parents is extremely traumatic for human beings as it deprives us of the background conditions we need as human children to feel safe and to develop and integrate our animality and humanity as we strive to become morally responsible persons with good lives. Hence, such separations not only deprive children of some of their most basic rights but also exemplify particularly devastating failures of justice. Among the examples of such failures are the forced separation of many indigenous children from their parents by various states – such as the Sami children in Norway – throughout much of the 20th century. The United States is currently separating many children from their par­ ents in detention facilities for immigrant families. According to this Kan­ tian analysis, this aspect of Norwegian history with regard to the Sami

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people and U.S. history with regard to immigrants will be an irrevocable source of shame and its devastating impact will continue to be felt in generations to come, by those who have been subjected to it, by those who took or are taking part in it, by all of us who permitted it on “our watch,” and by all of those who have to live with the aftermath of these horrific failures of states with regard to status relations. In addition to his novel account of status relations, Kant has a rather complex account of systemic justice, or what he calls “public right.” In contrast to Lockean and other natural right theories, according to which the rights of the state are seen as co-extensive with the rights private indi­ viduals hold against each other, Kant argues that once the state establishes its law-governed monopoly on coercion (as it must), it must reconcile this monopoly with each citizen’s right to freedom through public right (law). The right to freedom is the right to be independent from subjection to anyone else’s arbitrary choices and to be dependent on universal law only (1996a, MM 6: 237). For Kant, this means that the state must assume special responsibility for many inherently systemic issues such as poverty, land use, the economy, and the financial system. For example, the state must ensure that all citizens always have legal access to means such that the possibility of freedom for any one citizen is not subjected to any other citizen’s private arbitrary choices, such as the decision to provide charity or employment.23 In addition, over time, the state must reform itself such that it rids itself of any notions of inherited authority and instead seeks to build an institutional, including educational, whole through which all citizens are taken care of and, insofar as their capacities allow, can work their way into beings able to participate in knowledgeable ways in public debate and public reason.24 From early on (Varden 2006), I  have argued that this systemic approach to poverty provides important arguments for why it is par­ ticularly troublesome for states that much of the hard care labor in the world is undertaken by poor persons (servants) and/or by women. The state is responsible for building a legal-political institutional whole, in which the labor of caring for dependents does not fall asymmetrically on people whose socioeconomic situation tracks historical oppression and in which caregivers receive insufficient payment, or even no payment at all. Moreover, the earlier account of human nature emphasizes the urgency of this point: it is of central importance for emotionally healthy human beings that they are not drowned in exhausting care for others and also are given time and space to care about their own personal devel­ opment. To fulfill its entrusted public function, the state must reform its legal-political institutional framework such that no one person or social group faces no real chance of working their way into an active, flourish­ ing condition. In addition, of course, states must ensure that no citizen or group of citizens can rightfully choose to make it impossible for another

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citizen or group to get out of situations in which caring for their own well-being is practically (materially) or emotionally impossible because their “proper” role is to care only for others. Providing legal-political conditions in which each and every citizen (whether capable of moral responsibility or not) is recognized as having a right to freedom (to set and pursue ends of their own) and can exercise their duty of demanding rightful honor (of being publicly recognized as honorable insofar as they haven’t deprived others of their rights) is to provide all citizens with legalpolitical conditions consistent with moral valuing, namely with human beings regarding themselves and each other as having dignity (a priceless­ ness) and, so, (ethical and judicial) rights. Finally, elsewhere (2020b), I use the earlier account of human nature to explain why the project of providing safe homes (and not just shelters) for all citizens is a project any minimally just state must undertake and prioritize early in its devel­ opment toward a more flourishing state. Although shelters suffice tem­ porarily, and could be adequate for some rational beings, human beings need access to a home, because homes are typically necessary for us to heal and to develop, transform, and integrate our predispositions to good in emotionally healthy ways. Finally, for the purposes of care relations, the following idea of Kant’s is particularly fruitful: as mentioned, all citizens have a claim on the pub­ lic authority (rather than only on other private persons) that they face conditions in which they are taken care of insofar as their capacities are insufficiently developed or (temporarily or permanently) impaired and in which they can work their way into an active condition insofar as their capacities allow. This right to rightful care is a basic right each person born on the territory of a state holds against everyone else as matter of public law (it is a public right claim against the public institutions). To put this idea differently: as a citizen, each person born on the territory of a state has an innate right to freedom that gives them a right (ultimately) to be dependent only on the public (and not a private) authority with its law-governed legal-political institutions as that citizen seeks to realize themselves as a free being insofar as their capacities allow. Insofar as their capacities do not allow, they have a right to be taken care of within the framework of laws constitutive of legal guardianship. Because the public authority is one that represents each person and yet no one in particular, to be so dependent on it is to be dependent upon ourselves – understood in terms of a representation of our general will – as we are cared for and seek to realize ourselves (insofar as possible). And as we become capable of participating in the public processes of the rule of law, we are not thereby subject to others’ private choices. Rather, we take active part in self-governance through public law by taking part in public discus­ sions in informed ways and by having the right to compete (based on merit) to be entrusted with public positions of authority (such as to hold public administrative offices, and to act as licensed professionals such as

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physicians, lawyers, or professors, etc.). The earlier account of human nature furthermore helps us envision how to reform the legal-political systems of right not only so as to ensure that everyone is secured their basic innate, private, and public rights but also to ensure that they are up to the task of providing legal-political solutions that work for us as the human beings we are. Our legal-political systems must work for those of us who are rational beings capable of moral responsibility and for those of us who are not. They must also work for all of us as embodied, social human beings who live in societies marked by serious (historical) oppression.

Conclusion Many philosophical positions ultimately want the question of what it is like to care for human beings to require only one analysis, such as an analysis of human emotions grounded on natural sympathy, or an analy­ sis of the maximization of (higher and lower) pleasures, or a vision of the human form (human flourishing), or an account of virtuous being, and so on. Part of what is fascinating about Kant’s practical philosophy is that there is, at the heart of the issue, no one answer to this question of what it is to care well for oneself and for others. One reason why there is no one answer to this question is simply that human beings don’t have any one natural emotion, or form, or set of pleasures with which all emotionally and morally good flourishing must be compatible or must involve since we set ends of our own. Of course, this idea was taken on and brought out in powerful ways by existentialists – such as in their slogan “existence precedes essence” and their various conceptions of “authenticity.” But as we have seen, Kant’s human agent is not reducible to the parsimonious existentialist notions of freedom (and so it avoids the problems of aliena­ tion and disembodiment associated with such accounts). Rather, Kant has a rich, multidimensional account of our embodied, social nature that is complemented by equally robust accounts of the human liability to act in evil ways and of our ability to exercise internal freedom virtuously and external freedom rightfully. Our highest good as individuals is to develop, transform, and integrate our pursuits of happiness and moral­ ity into as harmonious a whole as possible, giving primacy to morality. Relatedly, our highest (domestic) political good is to establish a legalpolitical institutional whole whose constitutive principles are principles of freedom (innate, private, and public right) but whose realization takes into account or accommodates our ever so human natures and histo­ ries. Overall, this account of human nature and of our highest (personal and political) good yields an interesting, complex, and unified account of emotionally healthy and morally (ethically and legally) responsible car­ ing human being. In addition, even if other philosophical approaches may not want to take on board all of the elements of Kant’s position, the

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proposed analysis can still bring Kant’s philosophy into dialogue with care theorists in a way that can move the discussion to a more interesting level, a dialogue that is not stunted by misinterpretations and misrepre­ sentations, by non-Kantians and Kantians alike, of important aspects of Kant’s practical philosophy. Instead, Kant’s philosophy can further our understanding of the complexity and challenges of human care.

Notes 1. Thanks to Ingrid Albrecht, Lucy Allais, Amy Baehr, Elvira Basevich, Asha L. Bhandary, Rachel Bryant, Katerina Deligiorgi, Takuya Saito, Sergio Tenen­ baum, and Shelley Weinberg for invaluable help with this chapter. 2. For example, see Baron (1995), Herman (1993a, 1993b, 2008), Hill (1991, 2002), Korsgaard (1996a, 1996b, 2009), O’Neill (1990, 1996, 2000), and Wood (2008). 3. For an overview of related Kantian feminist literature, see Varden (2018b). 4. For example, see Cholbi (2009), Hill (1991), Korsgaard (1996a), Shiffrin (2014), and Wood (2008). 5. For example, see Cohen (2009, 2016, 2017), Frierson (2003, 2013, 2014), Louden (2000, 2011), Shell (2009), and Zammito (2002). 6. This is a central argument in my Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Theory (2020b). 7. Throughout this chapter, I refer to all of Kant’s works by means of the stand­ ard Prussian Academy Pagination as well as the abbreviations listed in the bibliography. 8. Varden (2020b). 9. For a fuller interpretation of Kant’s account of human nature, see Varden (2020b). 10. In Varden (2014), I argue that this approach can capture moral psychological facts about serious wrongdoers like Anders Behring-Breivik, who performed the horrific terrorist attack in Norway in 2011. 11. To see some examples of this, notice how the account of our human nature discussed earlier contrasts with the readings mentioned in the introduction, according to which embodied, social aspects of our nature  – so, aspects intimately tied to our happiness  – are valuable only insofar as they make morality easier. On my reading here, happiness is valuable in itself, not only instrumentally, even though it involves a different kind of valuing than moral valuing. 12. More complexity is added by Kant’s account of the four human tempera­ ments, which aims to capture how there appear to be certain patterns to how we emotionally respond to various situations in terms of likes and dis­ likes. For reasons of space, I cannot go into Kant’s account of the tempera­ ments here. For more on this topic, see Cohen (2017), Zammito (2002), and Varden (2020b). 13. For more on this, see for example (1996a, GW 4: 420–425). 14. A more complete analysis would include an account of how our nature also is aesthetically informed, but reasons of space make it impossible to include this aspect here. See Varden (2020b) for more on this topic. 15. For relatively recent discussions of Kant’s own racism, see Lucy Allais (2016) and Charles Mills (2018); of his sexism, see Mari Mikkola (2011) and Varden (2015 [2017], 2020b); and of his heterosexism, see Varden (2018a, 2020b).

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16. This point connects back to the discussion in the Kant literature about abso­ lute moral prohibitions; cf. the introduction. 17. This chapter can be seen as complementary to my paper on rightful care in that it shows how a more complete Kantian analysis of care relations includes accounts of human beings’ embodied, social nature as well as an account of virtue (2012a). 18. I also argue (2012b, 2020b) that Kant’s account of innate right is particularly good at explaining the seriousness both of bodily wrongdoing and of failing to protect, of denying, or depriving people of, their bodily rights. 19. I originally developed this argument with regard to Kittay (and Held; see below) in 2012b; hence, in the following I only summarize some of its main points. 20. For more on this argument concerning Held and (Lockean) natural rights analyses of legal guardianship, see 2012b. For more on my take on the insuf­ ficiency of analyses of animal rights and care rights of thinkers like Peter Singer and Tom Regan, see Varden (2020a). 21. For more detail on the interpretive and philosophical ideas discussed earlier, see Varden (2020b). 22. Notice, too, that Kant’s account of the propensity to evil can help us under­ stand why it has taken so long for sexual violence to become a topic of proper discussion in society and in philosophy. After all, those of us who are most likely to be subjected to sexual violence are members of histori­ cally oppressed  – and, so, vulnerable  – social groups, such as women and members of the LGBTQIA community, and have not had a strong public voice (in society or in academia) until recently. In fact, because these groups’ dehumanization is commonly located at the level of impurity or depravity and often involves serious self-deception, changing these facts is emotionally hard for both them and their oppressors. 23. This type of argument is characteristic of Kant interpretations coming out of the University of Toronto in the 2000s. See, for example, Ripstein (2009), Varden (2006, 2010), and Weinrib (2003). 24. For my take on these concerns of reform, see Varden (2016). This article also provides an analysis of various interpretive approaches to Kant’s legalpolitical philosophy, and it shows how my interpretation fits into what I there call the “liberal, republican interpretive tradition.”

Bibliography Allais, Lucy. 2016. “Kant’s Racism.” Philosophical Papers 45 (1–2): 1–36. Baron, Marcia W. 1995. Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology. Ithaca: Cor­ nell University Press. Brison, Susan. 2011. Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cholbi, Michael. 2009. “The Murderer at the Door: What Kant Should Have Said.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (1): 17–46. Cohen, Alix. 2017. “The Natural and the Pragmatic in Kant’s Anthropology: The Case of Temperaments.” Early Science and Medicine 22 (2–3): 1–18. ———. 2016. “The Role of Feelings in Kant’s Account of Moral Education.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 50 (4): 511–523. ———. 2009. Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and His­ tory. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A  Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1: 139–167. Deligiorgi, Katerina. 2018. “The ‘Ought’ and the ‘Can’.” Con-Textos Kantianos. International Journal of Philosophy [S.l.] (8): 323–347. ———. 2017.  “Interest and Agency.” In German Idealism Today, edited by Markus Gabriel and Anders Moe Rasmussen, 3–26. Germany: De Guyter Verlag. ———. 2012. The Scope of Autonomy: Kant and the Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frierson, Patrick. 2014. Kant’s Empirical Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. Kant’s Questions: What Is the Human Being? New York: Routledge. ———. 2003. Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press. Hay, Carol. 2013. Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care. Personal, Political, and Global. New York: Oxford University Press. Herman, Barbara. 2008. Moral Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1993a. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ versity Press. ———. 1993b. “Could It Be Worth Thinking About Kant on Marriage?” In A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, edited by L.M. Antony and C.E. Witt, 53–72. Cambridge: Westview Press. Hill, Thomas E. Jr. 2002. Human Welfare and Moral Worth. Kantian Perspec­ tives. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1991. Autonomy and Self-Respect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 2007. “Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Robert B. Louden and Günter Zöller and translated by Mary Gregor, Paul Guyer, Robert B. Louden, Holly Wilson, Allen W. Wood, Günter Zöller, and Arnulf Zweig. New York: Cambridge University Press. In-text abbreviation: “A.” ———. 1996a. Practical Philosophy. Translated by and edited by Mary J. Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press. In-text abbreviations used for particu­ lar works: “CPrR” for Critique of Practical Reason; “GW” for Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; “MM” for The Metaphysics of Morals; “SRL” for ‘On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy’; “TP” for “On the Com­ mon Saying: That may Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice.” ———. 1996b. Religion and Rational Theology. Translated by and edited by Allen W. Wood and George de Giovanni. New York: Cambridge University Press. In-text abbreviation: “R.” Kittay, Eva F. 1999. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge. Korsgaard, Christine M. 2009. Self-Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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———. 1996a. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press. ———. 1996b. Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louden, Robert B. 2011. Kant’s Human Being. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2000. Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mikkola, Mari. 2011. “Kant on Moral Agency and Women’s Nature.” Kantian Review 16 (1): 89–111. Miller, Sarah Clark. 2012. The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation. New York: Routledge. Mills, Charles. 2018. “Black Radical Kantianism.” Res Philosophica 95 (1): 1–33. Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books. O’Neill, Onora. 2000. Bounds of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1990. Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philoso­ phy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ripstein, Arthur. 2009. Force and Freedom – Kant’s Legal and Political Philoso­ phy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shell, Susan Meld. 2009. Kant and the Limits of Autonomy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shiffrin, Seana V. 2014. Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Simmons, A. John. 1994. The Lockean Theory of Rights. Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press. Varden, Helga. Forthcoming. “On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy.” In The Cambridge Kant Lexicon, edited by J. Wuerth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2020a. “Kant and Moral Responsibility for Animals.” In Kant on Ani­ mals, edited by L. Allais and J. Callahan, 155–173. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2020b. Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Theory. Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Press. ———. 2018a. “Kant on Sex. Reconsidered: A  Kantian Account of Sexuality: Sexual love, Sexual Identity, and Sexual Orientation.” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 4 (1): 1–33. ———. 2018b. “Kant’s Moral Theory and Feminist Ethics: Women, Embodi­ ment, Care Relations, and Systemic Injustice.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Feminism, edited by Pieranna Garavaso, 459–482. Bloomsbury Academic. ———. 2016. “Self-Governance and Reform in Kant’s Liberal Republican­ ism: Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory in Kant’s Doctrine of Right.” Dois Pontos, Curitiba 13 (2): 39–70. ———. 2015 [2017]. “Kant and Women.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Elec­ tronic publication, 24 October 2015 98 (4): 653–694.

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———. 2014. “The Terrorist Attacks in Norway July 22, 2011 – Some Kantian Reflections.” Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift/Norwegian Journal of Philosophy 49 (3–4): 236–259. ———. 2012a. “A Kantian Critique of the Care Tradition: Family Law and Sys­ temic Justice.” Kantian Review 17 (2): 327–356. ———. 2012b. “A Feminist, Kantian Conception of the Right to Bodily Integrity: The Cases of Abortion and Homosexuality.” In Out of the Shadows, edited by S.L. Crasnow and A.M. Superson, 33–57. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. “Kant and Lying to the Murderer at the Door . . . One more Time: Kant’s Legal Philosophy and Lies to Murderers and Nazis.” The Journal of Social Philosophy 41 (4): 403–421. ———. 2007. “A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations: Sex, (Gay) Marriage and Prostitution.” Social Philosophy Today 22: 199–218. ———. 2006. “Kant and Dependency Relations: Kant on the State’s Right to Redistribute Resources to Protect the Rights of Dependents.” Dialogue  – Canadian Philosophical Review XLV: 257–284. Weinrib, Ernest J. 2003. “Property and Poverty in Kant’s System of Rights.” Notre Dame Law Review 78: 795–828. Wood, Allen W. 2008. Kantian Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zammito, John H. 2002. Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

3

Mill’s Liberalism,

The Subjection of Women,

and the Feminist Care Ethic

Wendy Donner

Introduction1 John Stuart Mill’s liberalism is probably best known through his clas­ sic essay On Liberty, which stands as a core text of the liberal canon (Mill, CW, 18: 213–310). However, liberalism permeates his entire cor­ pus of writings, and its themes and commitments are omnipresent. For the clearest and most complete statement of his liberal feminism, includ­ ing his views on care for dependent and vulnerable persons, I focus on his arguments in The Subjection of Women (Mill, CW 21: 259–332). This paradigm 19th-century historical treatise marks a turning point in the philosophical and activist battle for women’s emancipation. Its prominence in Mill’s corpus of writing on liberalism is well known. Mill’s utilitarianism and liberalism stand out for his careful and thoughtful arguments for promoting a proper balance of liberty and autonomy with sympathy, connection, and compassion. Here I set out how Mill’s views on the essential and indispensable need for education and development of the higher human capacities or virtues of self-development infuse his liberalism and create a prominent space for compassion and sympathy in his philosophy. He places at the center of life’s valuable pursuits those that involve caring for dependent and vulnerable humans. In The Sub­ jection of Women, Mill argues for a model of marriage governed by a “principle of perfect equality” (Mill, CW 21:261). Mill’s liberal feminist commitments are on full display, as the text is an extended argument for women’s liberty and autonomy. The dual activist projects of fighting for liberty and autonomy and of fighting against oppression and exploitation of women unfold in unison throughout the work, since Mill sees them as inextricable and interconnected. I examine Mill’s views on traditional women’s work in the home, in the light of the feminist care ethic and in the context of his distinctive form of liberalism. In so doing I highlight and show how Mill’s very distinctive versions of utilitarianism and lib­ eralism make space for the value of caring for dependent and vulnerable persons. My argument goes further: I  illustrate how Mill’s utilitarian­ ism and liberalism crucially make central the priority of education and

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practices in caring and compassion as core virtues essential to well-being and a good life. Such habitual traits of character and practice are no small part of underwriting reliable and stable care for those who need it. Mill’s conception of self-development relies upon a program of educa­ tion to cultivate and develop these excellences and virtues, and it is every human’s right to have the conditions for this education in place. Mill’s liberalism notably values core liberal values of autonomy and individu­ ality, and he wants to ensure women’s rights to the freedom that comes from overcoming patriarchal oppression. But in Mill’s view autonomy and individuality must also be in balance with sentiment, compassion, empathy, and sociality. The care work done by women in the home offers resources for exploring how the practice of caring for dependent and vulnerable persons is a promising route for cultivating compassion. The practice of compassion works to develop this virtue in the caregiver. The person receiving the care is offered a model and experience of loving care, and so this experience also serves to develop compassion in the recipient. It places at the center the recognition that human life begins in dependency, and care for children and other vulnerable humans is a core valuable pursuit. A central aspect of education in the virtues for Mill is that the virtues are developed through practice. In the case of the caring virtues, this means the practice of caring for persons, including children and other dependent and vulnerable persons. Mill’s framework raises questions for deliberation and also offers some resources for balancing the reality of care work as a burden and care work as a route for cultivat­ ing compassion and caring for dependents. Mill’s central arguments in Subjection of Women, calling for a revolu­ tion in the institution of marriage, overturning the command and obe­ dience patriarchal model, and transforming it into an institution based on equality and friendship, are compelling and enduring (Morales 1996, 147–179). He states the guiding principle of the essay: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes  – the legal subordination of one sex to the other  – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other. (Mill, CW 21: 261) The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation. (Mill, CW 21:336)

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However, as treatment of Mill’s arguments in Subjection has unfolded in the literature and discourse, the central positive points concerning the value of care work, as promoted by Mill, have become intertwined with the main objection posed to his arguments about its gender-based distri­ bution. Amid praise for his arguments for the emancipation of women, there is one persistent objection. Mill is criticized for his defense of the gendered division of labor within the home, or what he calls “the com­ mon arrangement.” He says, the common arrangement, by which the man earns the income and the wife superintends the domestic expenditure, seems to me in gen­ eral the most suitable division of labor between the two persons. . . . Like a man when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman mar­ ries, it may in general be understood that she makes choice of the management of a household, and the bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exertions. (Mill, CW 21: 297–298) He adds, If, in addition to the physical suffering of bearing children, and the whole responsibility of their care and education in early years, the wife undertakes the careful and economical application of the hus­ band’s earnings to the general comfort of the family; she takes not only her fair share, but usually the larger share, of the bodily and mental exertion required by their joint existence. If she undertakes any additional portion, it seldom relieves her from this. (Mill, CW 21: 297) This passage has produced a good deal of discussion concerning the importance and justification of Mill’s proposed division of labor between women and men and its significance and implications for his feminism. This proposal for the gendered division of labor is said to place an unjust burden on women and to interfere with their autonomy in life choices. Thus, in order to explicate and illuminate Mill’s commitment to and large space for compassion and caring, I must explore the role and strength of this persistent objection. Ironically, the very intensive focus in the literature on this objection to Mill’s views on care work, foregrounding the problems associated with the gendered division of labor within the home, has obscured or even buried the positive aspects of his theory vis-à-vis his endorsement of the value of care and compassion. It should be highlighted rather than bur­ ied that the objected to elements of Mill’s perspective are premised upon

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some very positive components of his views regarding care work. That Mill so highly values and appreciates care work, and the virtues of caring and compassion, can get lost in the debate over how this work is distrib­ uted. As well, the historical context of 19th-century activism can also be overlooked. Mill does not denigrate and devalue the care work that women occupy themselves with in the domestic sphere. Quite the con­ trary. He sees it as a highly valuable and meaningful choice of occupa­ tion. Moreover, he promotes the care and educational work that women do in the home as also valuable in the ongoing battle to reform and then abolish the patriarchal family of the 19th century. I  argue below that Mill’s views on moral progress make him a moral reformer and prag­ matist rather than a moral revolutionary. His extensive and voluminous writings on numerous activist campaigns of the 19th century illustrate his careful and meticulous pragmatist plans to bring about moral progress. In this case he argues for a method for progressing to the idea of marriage governed by a “principle of perfect equality” (Mill, CW 21:261). Mill’s focus on education motivates his agenda of seeing women as educators of children. Mill forcefully champions the essential nature of, and the high value and importance of, care work provided to children and depend­ ent vulnerable persons. Part of this work can be moral reform work to dismantle the patriarchal family from within. Women in occupations of caregivers and educators can and should, he believes, play a large role in training male children so that they do not grow up to become privileged tyrants but instead become willing participants in marriages based upon a model of equality and friendship. Although there are some dilemmas raised by Mill’s arguments about women’s care work, things are not as straightforward as the initial state­ ment of the objection regarding the distribution of care work makes it appear. Most prominently, Mill notably embraces the work that women do in managing the home and in caring for and educating children in the moral virtues. He is that rare historical thinker who recognizes the economic, moral, and social value of women’s work in the home; who argues that this work is essential; and who claims that care work is prop­ erly viewed as an occupation, and a worthy one, at that. Mill expresses his concern that the work of caring for children should be treated as essential, but also that women should not be expected to do more than their fair share of the work and thus be exploited. Thus in the overall scheme of things, Mill can be lauded not just for recognizing the value of caring for dependents and vulnerable persons but also for recognizing the injustice of a system in which women would be expected to do a “double day” of work (i.e., a full day of wage work outside the home and then a second stint of domestic and care work within the home) and for taking steps to mitigate its effects and impact. Mill exhibits keen foresight into a problem with women’s work and exploitation, which has continued

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to the present day without satisfactory resolution. Just as Mill feared, women are often expected to carry the double burden of work without adequate means and resources. This recognition of the value of care work dovetails with the larger framework and agenda of virtue ethics, which is prominent in Mill’s the­ ory. Mill’s theory, including his liberalism, is distinctive in many ways, but perhaps one of the most notable is that his theory has a large space for accommodating and incorporating elements of virtue ethics, as Julia Driver has recently noted (Driver 2014). Mill’s liberalism has no need to be transformed or indeed changed in any way to accommodate the fact and reality of care work. He recognizes and incorporates the need for and value of care for dependent and vulnerable persons. There is no need since this is already a prominent and featured core aspect of his liberalism and moral theory. I have argued previously in several writings that Mill’s conception of the good and human happiness and well-being is organized around a cluster of human excellences and virtues of self-development (Don­ ner 1991, 92–140; Donner and Fumerton 2009, 76–89). These excel­ lences and capacities do not arise fully formed by themselves, but they must be cultivated and nurtured by an educational process beginning in childhood and continuing as a lifelong pursuit. Nor must this be left to chance or good fortune. Mill is perhaps, above all else, an educational activist. In his moral philosophy all people without exception have a right to liberty of self-development. He argues that this right is funda­ mental to human well-being and happiness and the good life. Since this is a basic human right, it follows that people are wronged if they are denied the opportunity of development and self-development by their social circumstances, and thus families, societies, and governments have obligations to their members to ensure that such educative processes are actively in play (Donner 1991, 92–159; Donner and Fumerton 2009, 76–105). Self-development in a healthy flourishing life does not encour­ age lopsided training in the higher human capacities. Rather the ideal is advanced and realized by an educative and developmental process that quite naturally results in an appropriate balance of such virtues as reason/ individuality/autonomy, on the one hand, and emotion/sentiment/com­ passion/empathy, on the other. Mill’s conception of self-development relies upon a program of education to cultivate and develop these excel­ lences and virtues. Mill’s theory describes in detail, in numerous places, the necessity for and process of cultivation and education of a cluster of human capacities that he regards as virtues and as foundational for a good life and promoting happiness and well-being. These are the abili­ ties and habitual traits that encourage and allow for human flourish­ ing and the good life. The opposite scenario would be the situation of oppression and blocking of the good life. This value of the ability to

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lead the good life is promoted by liberalism in its many forms. Mill’s form is distinctive and marked out by his theorizing and activism in promotion of these human capacities and virtues as foundations of the good life and bulwarks against its undermining by systemic forces of oppressions of patriarchy. Mill’s views in The Subjection of Women should be read with his pro­ gram for education and cultivation of sentiment, sympathy, and compas­ sion in mind. The care work done by women in the home offers resources for exploring how this practice of caring for dependent and vulnerable persons is a promising route for cultivating compassion. These traits of compassion and caring, when they become stable features of character through education, cultivation, and habitual practice, are one of the reli­ able foundations for being able to count on ethical care of dependent vulnerable persons even in the face of the stresses and obstacles placed in the path of caregivers by social circumstances and by oppression and exploitation. Mill’s framework raises questions for deliberation and also offers some resources for balancing the reality of care work as a burden and care work as a route for cultivating compassion. Mill’s theory endorses the need for ensuring that social institutions, including the family, offer the requisite resources for training these higher human capacities so that they become habitual stable features of charac­ ter. He argues that society has obligations to provide the social institu­ tions and systems that underscore and guarantee the basic rights of its members. This prominently includes rights to education in the capacities that promote happiness in its most valuable forms (the “higher pleas­ ures” in classical 19th-century utilitarian language), namely those which involve the exercise of the higher human capacities of self-development (Donner 1991, 160–187; Donner and Fumerton 2009, 76–105). His lib­ eralism is grounded in his views that education and practice in caring and compassion are part of the essential tool kit of what is needed to ensure that dependents and vulnerable persons receive the loving care that is their right. Moreover, cultivation of compassion and caring are also essential elements for the happiness and well-being of caregivers themselves. This education in the virtues is doubly beneficial and looks in both directions, since it offers a key to well-being of those who provide care and are practiced in the art of compassion, as well as a guarantee that they will have the desire to provide loving care to those who need it. Such loving and caring relations are essential components of meaningful, value-filled lives. This commitment is built right into the ground level of his theory. His version of liberalism cannot be severed and separated out from his educational commitments, and the value of training the mind and character in compassion and care and sympathy is at its heart. Remove recognition and acknowledgment of these core commitments, and the liberalism is no longer Millian.

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The “Common Arrangement” Scrutinized: Objections, Responses, and Nuances Generally philosophical discussion proceeds with a statement of the main principles and arguments of a theory and perspective before turning to the major objections to that theory. Here, though, I  proceed with an exploration of the objection before I spell out further Mill’s theory. This permits a ready exploration of the historical context for Mill’s “com­ mon arrangement” proposal. The objection to the “common arrange­ ment” policy claims that Mill’s liberal feminism places an unjust burden on women. The objection contends that the burdens of care work within the home are not distributed fairly between men and women. Moreo­ ver, the objection claims that women’s autonomy is violated when they are not allowed the range of choices available to men. It should also be noted that the contention could be extended to claim that equity and men’s autonomy are interfered with when they are not freely allowed or encouraged to choose care work within the home as an occupation. The objection notes that this arrangement can deny women the opportu­ nity to cultivate the other components of self-development, notably their intellect and autonomy, since they were rarely in the 19th century offered the occasions and opportunities to cultivate and exercise these capacities. Thus, it is argued that the danger with this gendered arrangement can be that the balance among the capacities of self-development found in Mill’s theory is tilted out of proportion. I have some concerns about the ready acceptance of the objections to the “common arrangement.” Although there are obvious rewards and burdens that are part and parcel of loving care work, I believe that some recent work on Mill’s liberal feminism and the care ethic goes too far in the direction of emphasizing that care for dependent and vulnerable persons can be very burdensome. Objections to Mill’s feminism based on his proposal of the “common arrangement” are a common refrain in the literature, going back decades at least to the period of second wave femi­ nism. Indeed, I myself previously posed a muted version of this objection (Donner and Fumerton 2009, 120–124). While I think that there is some point to the objection, I claim also that its power is much dimmed when it is viewed within the larger context of Mill’s arguments and purposes. When we insist on looking at Mill’s proposal from the perspective of the 21st century, particularly in light of dramatic changes made since second wave feminism or women’s liberation of the 1960s and 1970s, it is not surprising that the common arrangement policy appears to be flawed. This is the case despite the fact that 21st-century women still do a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare and thus fall prey to the exploitation that worried Mill of women’s double day of work both inside and outside the home. This exploitative double workday is

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expressly one of Mill’s concerns and is one of the reasons he gives in support of the common arrangement. He remarks that if “she under­ takes any additional portion, it seldom relieves her from this. . . . The care which she is herself disabled from taking of the children and the household, nobody else takes” (Mill, CW 21: 297). In Mill’s time men would refuse to do this work and would have the power, legal and physi­ cal, to back up their refusal; sadly, this still to a great extent remains the case. Undoubtedly progress has been, and continues to be, made in how partners share care work and domestic labor, but the problem of women taking on a disproportionate share of the emotional labor within the home still continues, even though many advances in gender equality have been made. The salient question is whether it is fair to criticize Mill’s spe­ cific proposal from a present-day perspective and hold him to standards that only became feasible in recent decades. I claim that this expectation is unfair and is indeed uncharitable. I argue that moral and intellectual charity calls for 21st-century readers to consider this specific proposal within the framework of Mill’s ongoing activist agenda in his lifetime in the 19th century, which I briefly set out in the following. Viewed in this historical context, I argue that the objection is weak. Looking at the 19th-century context further illuminates Mill’s principles and plans for moral progress. Mill exhibits great faith in the tenet of liberalism that expects an ongoing process of extensive moral progress, and he is thus prone to look at the long-term effects of activist proposals rather than simply their immediate impact. There is a strong and ready-to-hand response to the objection that the gendered division of labor undermines Mill’s liberal feminism. Mill’s goal undoubtedly was to promote an education in the virtues of selfdevelopment resulting in appropriate balance of the capacities of selfdevelopment in both women and men. This would include autonomy and the ability to exercise self-determination in life choices. But in Mill’s long-range agenda and in his applications of his fundamental principles to particular questions, reality and pragmatism intervene. Mill knew his audience. His activist life was spent painstakingly calculating and then arguing for the appropriate policy means to effectively push forward his ends, short and long term. Mill was attempting to persuade men with oppressive and even brutal power over women to relinquish that power. In the 19th century, that was an overwhelmingly difficult task. Thus it is eminently reasonable to attribute to him a strategy that would move the agenda of women’s emancipation forward while avoiding extreme provocation of his male audience (as opposed to the provocation of sim­ ply arguing for unoppressive marital relations based upon friendship and equality) and arguing for a gradualist approach to the issue. His argu­ ments for moving beyond a model of marriage based on “command and obedience” toward one based on equality and friendship and including respect for women’s care work are premised on this strategy. This surely

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would have seemed a rational and prudent course for him to follow. One prime purpose of The Subjection of Women is activist and polemical. It is, of course, also an enduring philosophical work. Calculating the prospects for success of activist proposals is part and parcel of this. It is essential. Thus, some charity in allowing Mill the liberty to choose his battles carefully, taking the long view, undermines the power of this objection. Proposing a policy of promoting sharing of household work equally among men and women, Mill could see, would have little chance of being accepted and a high chance of backfiring and making things worse and in the course of things setting back the activist agenda. The brutal patriarchal family institution featuring violence and oppression of women would continue as it was. So Mill chooses to emphasize his core agenda. Mill’s core agenda is to revolutionize the “command and obedi­ ence” model of marriage to change it from being a remnant of slavery and a site of violence against women and children into becoming a more just institution. In The Subjection of Women, Mill claims that patriarchal marriage is a form of slavery. He does not mince words. He is not merely comparing the patriarchal family to slavery in a metaphorical sense. Mill clearly puts the patriarchal family into the category of institutions of slavery. In his words, patriarchal marriage is the primitive state of slavery lasting on, through successive mitiga­ tions and modifications occasioned by the same causes which have softened the general manners, and brought all human relations more under the control of justice and the influence of humanity. It has not lost the taint of its brutal origin. (Mill, CW 21: 264) He speaks of “the legal slavery of the woman” (Mill, CW 21, 289). Although The Subjection of Women is a polemical as well as a philo­ sophical work, Mill is here merely speaking plainly about brutal facts. From a 21st-century perspective, his words might seem to be over­ blown rhetoric, but Mill means to make a realistic point. The claim occurs as part of Mill’s examination of the history of moral change and progress. Mill also was involved in the abolitionist movement, and slavery was alive in America and elsewhere. It was an all-too-present evil, and Mill could observe its vestiges living on within the institution of patriarchal marriage. Also all too present was the brutal domestic violence, including still legal marital rape, which was enshrined as part of men’s oppressive power over women. Mill was all too aware that a husband could claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to

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Mill is unsparing in his harsh appraisal of marital relations and institu­ tions in his time. The background assumption of the objection against Mill’s policy is that all or most women, given a range of reasonable options, would choose marriage. This is an overly romanticized view of marriage in Mill’s orbit. In fact, as The Subjection of Women’s argument unfolds, it is clear that Mill has a very jaundiced view of the institution of marriage and he would not necessarily see it as a prize that most women of his day would want, if they had other options. Why choose to be a slave, subjected to tyranny and violence if one had genuine options? Mill takes on, as one of his and his partner and wife Harriet Taylor’s major projects, bringing to light the brutality of domestic violence and abuse in his day. The subtly conveyed message is that the idea that all women want to marry is questionable in Mill’s mind, although he is quite cog­ nizant of the fact that many women of his time had no choice and were coerced into marriage. Given his views about the institution of marriage as a form of slavery, it is reasonable to take the step to acknowledging that a significant group of women would choose not to marry, if they were presented with other reasonable options. Mill devotes considerable space in The Subjection of Women to argu­ ing that, if there were fair opportunities and fair competition, women would likely succeed well at many occupations outside of the home and thus would not automatically choose marriage and care for children as their occupation. But if marriage were an equal contract . . . and if she would then find all honourable employments as freely open to her as to men; it would not be necessary for her protection, that during marriage she should make this particular use of her faculties. (Mill, CW 21:298) He argues for equality of opportunity in all public domains. He expects experience will show women’s success in many of these pursuits and vocations. Now, the most determined depreciator of women will not venture to deny, that when we add the experience of recent times to that of ages past, women, and not a few merely, but many women, have proved themselves capable of everything, perhaps without a single excep­ tion, which is done by men, and of doing it successfully. (Mill, CW 21: 292–293)

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Time has proven the wisdom in this. Women who choose public pursuits might well choose not to marry. Women who chose marriage might well choose to make other arrangements for caregiving, as men and women who work outside of the home in the 21st century often do. It is thus reasonable to assume that Mill does not believe that all women would choose to marry, if it meant assuming the attendant care responsibilities, if society offered them other options. Mill’s educative goal undoubtedly is to promote the model of balance of the virtues, of the intellectual and the public with the caring, sympa­ thetic, and compassionate. However, the question he grapples with is what to do in the historical circumstances in which men had enshrined in law oppressive and even brutal power over women, and they had the power to refuse to take any responsibility for caregiving. In this setting, Mill’s strategy and arguments in favor of recognizing the value of car­ egiving as work, and as socially and economically necessary, embedded in his larger plan of promoting moral progress and well-being, seem to be astute. This policy can be viewed as a transitional proposal (as were many of his specific proposals, according to the methodology he outlines in Book VI of A System of Logic, CW 8: 834–952) to value women’s care work rather than devalue the opportunities that were in that historical moment pragmatically open to them, while at the same time working to change the institution to broaden the opportunities in order to bring more balance into the holistic cluster of virtues in women and men (Mill, CW, 8: 943–952). This dovetails with his educative program, which places the virtues of compassion and sympathy at the core of the virtues and sees caring for dependent and vulnerable children as a prime form of this education. Overstating, and making too much of, the objection raised to the gendered division of labor brings with it the risk of denigrating and undervaluing care work. And, I  argue, this has happened. Susan Okin is a prominent proponent of the objection to Mill’s gendered division of labor proposal. She says that Mill thought that it was essential that all the careers open to men should be made equally accessible to women. Only then would the choice of whether to marry or not be a meaningful one, rather than the only means of escape from the despised dependency of “Old Maidhood.” (Okin 1979, 212) Okin is partly right in depicting Mill’s views, for she understands that Mill “asserts that women should have a real choice of career or mar­ riage” (Okin 1979, 226). The problem, according to Okin, is that Mill “assumes that the majority of women are likely to continue to prefer marriage, and that this choice is equivalent to choosing a career” (Okin

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1979, 226). In other words, Mill is critiqued for recognizing that care of children is work, that it is a meaningful choice of occupation, and that it is essential work. Okin’s language in posing the objection pretty clearly illustrates her negative appraisal of domestic care work. She critiques Mill for “his refusal to concede that the tiresome details of domestic life should be shared by both sexes” (Okin 1979, 229). That Okin displays this atti­ tude of devaluing women’s care work in the course of stating the objec­ tion in itself creates further problems. The objection should be posed more neutrally if it is to be fairly scrutinized. Mixing in disdain for care work in the course of discussing questions of equity in distribution is not helpful to the dialogue or to sorting through the issues. Surely the value of care work is not captured by the words “tiresome details,” and the use of this language adopts a negative stance with regard to this occupation and vocation. Finally, Okin adds that Mill did not grasp the injustice in a system that offered men opportunities for a life with both career and home life and children while in practice denying women this same com­ bination. Instead, Mill “forced a woman to choose between the two” (Okin 1979, 230). However, Okin falls prey to the tendency to ignore historical circumstances and to require availability of choices that were not then pragmatic or even possible. Her statement of the objection does not take into account or even consider the historical framework and whether Mill’s policy proposal is a result of his reasonable pragmatic assessment of argumentative and activist strategies. As I  have argued earlier, Mill’s arguments and strategies are cogent and reasonable in the context of his times. With this overview of the historical and theoretical context for Mill’s “common arrangement” proposal, I  return to an exploration of Mill’s views on self-development and education in the virtues, including most saliently compassion and sympathy.

Mill’s Philosophy of Education in the Virtues: Care and Compassion as Essential Aspects of Self-Development Mill’s liberalism offers a positive model for how liberals can and should put forward an appreciative analysis of traditional women’s care work within the home. Mill’s arguments exhibit obvious respect for women’s care work in the home. This is apparent from his arguments clarifying the value of this work in The Subjection of Women. But the full force of his arguments comes to life when placed in the context of his philosophy of education, specifically his views on the right of all people to participate in an educa­ tive process in childhood and adulthood that results in self-development. Mill’s voluminous writings display his fundamental conviction that edu­ cation in the higher human capacities or the virtues underlies and enables a meaningful and happy life. Thus, it is not surprising to observe the

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extension and reach of his writings and plans for education in the virtues. It is surely a mainstay of liberalism in all forms that education opens up the prospects for a good, happy, and purposeful life. Where Mill sets himself apart from some other liberals is in his analysis of education in the larger sense, beyond mere schooling, education in the process of selfdevelopment, or in the higher human capacities, or in the virtues. It is this kind of education in particular that equips people to appreciate and value the higher forms of happiness. Mill’s own intellectual curiosity, added to his own life experience, leads him to appreciate the value for a good life of such basic components as sympathetic connections, depth of emotion, deep human ties, strong and loving relationships, and belonging to communities. All these elements are vital components of his philoso­ phy of education and motivate, especially his views on how to cultivate the human excellences in all spheres of life. Mill’s wide-ranging writings on education and self-development canvass the prospects of numerous spheres of human life and activity as potential sites for education in the virtues of self-development. Many spheres of life can offer circumstances for deepening emotions; for expanding compassion, empathy, sympathy, and fellow feeling; and for taking people beyond narrow self-interest and self-absorption (Donner 2011). These are the very capacities that reliably underpin the ability of care workers to stay the course in the face of inevi­ table obstacles and stresses of care giving, including ones that can seem like overwhelming burdens. Mill argues in The Subjection of Women that domestic spheres of home and family are prime sites for childhood education in the virtues of care, friendship, and equality. This might intuitively seem to point to plans for educating children in these positive attributes of love and compassion, leading them to develop empathy and sympathy as a basis for treating others kindly and fairly. For caregivers, these attributes are invaluable aids motivating the willingness to make sacrifices that are sometimes needed in caring for dependent vulnerable people. This ele­ ment is certainly present. What Mill also has in mind is proposing means for undermining the patriarchal family from within by getting in early in the process of childhood education in the virtues. His remarks also point out the importance of training children, especially male children, in these virtues in order to move them beyond becoming little tyrants who embrace the command and obedience patriarchal family. Pointing to both sets of positive and negative prospects and possibilities, Mill says, If the family in its best forms is, as it is often said to be, a school of sympathy, tenderness, and loving forgetfulness of self, it is still oftener, as respects its chief, a school of wilfulness, overbearing­ ness, unbounded self-indulgence, and a double-dyed and idealized selfishness. (Mill, CW 21: 283)

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Mill’s plans include hopes that loving care work will promote the first and undermine the second of these sets of possibilities. Mill offers an argument in favor of the value of care work for its salu­ tary effects upon the caregivers as well as its recipients. In Mill’s time, this meant primarily the mothers of the children. Perhaps this point is overlooked or muted because this is taken to be obvious in a time when the ideal for women was to offer a moralizing example, which is not problematic in itself but only is so when taken to excess. In the literature objecting to Mill’s “common arrangement” this model of women as car­ egivers is often linked to and emphasizes the imbalance in aspects of selfdevelopment (Donner and Fumerton 2009, 57–125). Mill himself seems inclined to view the problem this way, arguing strenuously that women as they were then socialized were deficient in some of the intellectual and public virtues. Their self-development, he says, is out of balance. Indeed, he argues this point about imbalance so strenuously that his expressed underlying appreciation of the care work that women do in the home is dimmed. In The Subjection of Women, Mill is arguing for an expan­ sion of women’s opportunities for liberty of self-development. Since selfdevelopment crucially includes the excellences of care, sympathy, and compassion, it is a misreading to claim that he sees their care work sim­ ply or even primarily as a burden or an obstacle. It is more accurate to say that for women in his time and society, he thinks that care was out of balance with other virtues in the cluster of self-development. He says, If women are better than men in anything, it surely is in individual self-sacrifice for those of their own family. But I lay little stress on this, as long as they are universally taught that they are born and created for self-sacrifice. I believe that equality of rights would abate the exaggerated self-abnegation [emphasis mine] which is the present artificial ideal of feminine character. (Mill, CW 21: 287) Mill links this imbalance to the pernicious effects of patriarchy and women’s oppression. So, it can be lost in the shuffle that he does see women’s care work as crucial to cultivating virtues and excellences. Mill’s philosophy of education in the virtues of self-development is front and center to understanding the value Mill places on women’s work as caregivers in the home. Critics do not always keep this model of holis­ tic balance of the components of self-development in mind. It is perhaps implicitly assumed that if women are compassionate and caring, then this in and of itself and of necessity undermines their development of reason and the public virtues. But it is the imbalance that Mill seeks to over­ turn. That was the part of women’s oppression that needed challenging. Using the Millian model of self-development as an appropriate balance

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of the virtues, this loses force and becomes less compelling as an objec­ tion. In Mill’s theory of the good, it is a constant that the virtues of selfdevelopment form a holistic cluster. None of them should dominate, and if they are out of balance in any person, female or male, they should be rebalanced. In such cases the person should then be encouraged to engage with and train in the underdeveloped excellences. Mill thus argues in The Subjection of Women that women’s education in his time produced an out-of-balance emphasis on the emotional, at the expense of the rational. This point is well-taken and sound. From here it is a short but illicit step to the view that women’s care work within the home itself is the locus of a problem. But this does not follow and is mistaken. Women’s care for children and dependent and vulnerable persons remains a prime source of the value and meaningfulness of human existence within Mill’s theory. It would be the parallel to argue that men’s education that cultivates reason, at the expense of the emotions, produces a similar imbalance, which should be redressed by emotional cultivation. Mill himself could attest to the deleterious effects of such a one-sided education. In his own life this led him to a major episode of depression, which in turn motivated him to appreciate the value of internal culture or emotional depth and development. His discussion and dissection of the causes of this depres­ sive episode in the Autobiography are well known and widely discussed as a turning point in his life and in his conceptions of the good and happi­ ness. He says that the “maintenance of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed” (Mill, CW, 1:147). After this period of depression, Mill would never again neglect the importance of “the internal culture of the individual” as the basis of the capacities of caring, benevolence, and compassion and as the proper balance for the capacities of reason and individuality (Mill, CW, 1: 147). Mill’s Autobiography is the place that commentators turn to first when thinking about the reasons for his focus on the importance of developing the internal cultivation of the emotions. And often the discussion stays focused on the specific proposals for developing emotions that he pro­ pounds there. In recovering from his own serious bout of depression (a malady far less well understood in his time than in ours), he contends that his encounters with the poetry of the Romantics, especially Wordsworth, as well as his encounters with the beauty of the natural environment were the key elements of his recovery from depression (Mill, CW,1: 137–155). However, the actual list of Mill’s strategies for cultivating the spectrum of emotion, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, compassion, and so on is quite a bit longer. For example, we can point to his systematic and per­ vasive treatment of the importance of participation in the public politi­ cal and economic sphere as sites for cultivating and educating people in

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sympathetic connection and fellow feeling (Donner and Fumerton 2009, 90–105). This moves people away from excessive self-interest and selfabsorption and toward benevolence, solidarity, and social cooperation and community spirit. Mill’s writings on education promote the essential projects of moving beyond narrow self-regard and egoism, of identifying with something larger, of habitually identifying with the suffering of oth­ ers, and of habitually acting to alleviate the suffering of others. The role of virtue ethics in Mill’s version of liberalism and utilitarian­ ism is a promising topic calling for further examination. Driver takes up and discusses Mill’s perspective on cultivation of virtue as part of his commitment to moral sentimentalism. Driver says that Mill promoted sympathetic interaction “through both information and imaginative engagement with other possibilities. The exercise of putting oneself in the place of another – be it through history, documentary, or fictional litera­ ture, helps individuals position themselves in situations that encourage self-improvement” (Driver 2014, 51). She looks at this as part of Mill’s project of moral education and his analysis of moral progress. A feeling for one’s fellow creatures can arise through society and cooperation with others, learning to view their ends as making claims on one, and over time this social feeling, which I think of as a kind of benevolence (concern for the well-being of others) “takes on a life of its own. (Driver 2014, 53) Driver here foregrounds Mill’s insight that public participation and engagement are educative tools for cultivating sympathy, fellow feeling, empathy and compassion. Mill’s appreciation of participation in the public domain as an educa­ tive tool for cultivating sympathy alongside reason is well documented (Donner 2007, 250–274). In tandem with these arguments about pub­ lic arenas as sites for self-development, it is natural to understand his high esteem for women’s care work in the home as vehicles and mecha­ nisms for cultivating love and compassion, both in caregivers and care recipients. Caring for dependent and vulnerable others is not simply or primarily a burden, as it is so often treated as being, when it is not entirely ignored. The family has a central place in moral education. Mill adds that his ideal of marriage based on equality is “the only means of rendering the daily life of mankind, in any high sense, a school of moral cultivation” (Mill, CW 21: 287–288). This is the circumstance in which justice will be grounded “on sympathetic association” (Mill, CW 21:288). Mary Lyndon Shanley’s enduring analysis of Mill’s hoped-for model of marriage based on friendship also includes an insightful view of Mill’s repudiation of patriarchal marriage. Shanley says that “Mill’s

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reconstruction of marriage on the basis of friendship was preceded by one of the most devastating critiques of male domination in marriage in the history of Western philosophy” (Shanley 2005, 165). Shanley fol­ lows with her very astute exploration of Mill’s aspiration for an ideal of marriage based on friendship and equality (Shanley 2005, 172–177). The values underpinning this model of marriage Mill hopes would diminish and ultimately remove marital slavery and replace it with a domestic and family sphere of “a school of sympathy in equality, of living together in love” (Mill, CW 21: 289). If this model of marriage based on friendship and love would be adopted by the parents, then it would be “a model to the children of the feelings and conduct,” which would become habitual through this process of moral training (Mill CW 21: 289). This is one of the educative tools by which mothers can diminish patriarchal feelings in their sons and move them toward appreciating equality and friendship as models of marriage and family. In the previous section I laid out Susan Okin’s classic statement of the objection to Mill. I set out some of its weaknesses based on its diminution and undervaluation of care work. Asha Bhandary also objects to Okin’s portrayal of Mill’s perspective. She disagrees with Okin’s analysis, which sees caregiving simply as burdensome. Bhandary also properly praises Mill for his recognition of the social need for care – that it is work that must be done. Bhandary clearly is on track in her recognition of the value of care work and its central place in Mill’s system. She precisely zeroes in on the weakness of Okin’s presentation of Mill. Bhandary says that Okin “argues for the genders to equally share domestic responsibilities through an analysis that theorizes the burdens that accompany care-giving. Her related criticism of Mill implies a negative view of domesticity and care” (Bhandary 2016, 158–159). Bhandary points to Okin’s language of the “tiresome details of domesticity” as signaling an unsympathetic appraisal of care and emotional labor. Bhandary takes issue with this and claims that this is a disproportionately negative picture of care work. Okin ignores the positive elements, for “nowhere in Okin’s corpus is there a sustained treatment of the ways that care-giving can be enriching, mean­ ingful, and a source of value for the care-giver” (Bhandary 2016, 159). Bhandary says that the literature has moved forward. There was perhaps a time when Okin’s analysis filled a need to reorient the discussion. Although this strain of liberal feminism was a valuable cultural cor­ rective to overly halcyonic visions of maternal bliss despite unsup­ portive conditions, a concept of care-giving that solely theorizes its burdens is incomplete and inadequate when it pairs these claims about the financial burdens of familial care-giving with a concept of care as purely burdensome. (Bhandary 2016, 161)

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Bhandary believes that there was some importance to the moment in the feminist literature that solely emphasized the problems of care work, but that moment has now passed. “The burdens of care-giving was needed to counteract an overly sentimentalized concept of care in traditional forms of liberalism that theorized only its motive of love and occluded its labor” (Bhandary 2016, 161). As I  have argued, I  also see Okin’s treatment of Mill, and her words describing “the tiresome details of domestic life,” as an example of the out-of-balance approach that does not sufficiently appreci­ ate the value of women’s care work in the home and that devalues it. The fact that emotional care work and responsibilities and practices are often difficult and challenging does not remove them as sources of value. Virtuous living is often challenging. Indeed, the central aspect of education in the virtues for Mill is that the virtues are developed through practice. In the case of the caring virtues, this means the practice of car­ ing for persons, including children. There is a risk that the centrality of love and care work in developing compassion can be lost in the shuffle if we narrow our focus to women’s work as a burden, and an unjust one at that. Since Mill’s moral and political theory regards benevolence and compassion as core virtues, which commentators can overlook, it should be made note of when these virtues are downplayed, perhaps uncharita­ bly. I would like to do more to bring into focus Mill’s perspective that women’s care work in the home is actual work, is an actual occupation, is something to be appreciated and lauded. It should not function mainly as a locus for an objection to his liberal feminism. Mill is sometimes praised, sometimes criticized, for propounding a philosophy that is geared to liv­ ing a good life, to engaging in the Art of Life (Mill, CW 8: 943–952). His Art of Life is crafted to give guidance to reasonable and well-meaning people navigating the shoals and dilemmas of actual life. In such real life, one of the first things that would come to mind of someone thinking about how to overcome self-absorption and develop and express loving care for others, in particular, dependent and vulnerable others, would be activities and commitments of parenting and caring for children. It is only when it is carried to an out-of-balance extreme of “excessive self-abnegation” (in Mill’s own words) that it becomes a problem. That is perhaps why parenthood is so regularly experienced as an existential shock, and why it is seen as a life changer, when parents must of necessity put the needs of others first and set aside their self-interest and self-absorption. In the midst of all of the attention given to Mill’s proposed “com­ mon arrangement,” it is reasonable to keep asking as discussion evolves whether Mill’s proposal would be evaluated differently, namely, more sympathetically and positively, if the activity of women’s care work in the home were itself more appropriately highly valued. Given the dra­ matic shift of the last few decades, which has seen women move out of the home and into the public sphere as Mill hoped, it is also reason­ able to raise questions about the lack of attention given by critics to a

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parallel objection. Why is Mill’s “common arrangement” not also more frequently seen to be flawed because it deprives men of opportunities to engage with childcare? Surely if care work in the home to children were appropriately valued, then critics would raise the point that until recently men were deprived of the opportunity to engage in this most valuable and meaningful occupation. Among the class of the crucial activities and pursuits of the good life, few such pursuits rise to the high value of intimate caring for depend­ ents and vulnerable members of our communities. While this would not remove the objection based on barriers to free choice, or questions about distribution, it would elevate the choice of women’s occupations if those occupations were appropriately valued as essential. In fact, one of Mill’s reasons is precisely to note the essential nature of the care for children in the domestic sphere. In other words, the bite, and sharpness, of the objection posed to Mill’s “common arrangement” itself partly rests upon and crucially depends upon systematic devaluation of care work both in Mill’s time and persisting into the present time. I conclude that Mill should be appreciated for recognizing that caregiv­ ing is a valuable human activity. His liberalism puts liberty and care and compassion on equal footing through his model of balance of the virtues. Although questions remain about the rationale and reasonableness of Mill’s proposals for distributing this work in his own lifetime, yet its value remains intact and undiminished as a supreme component of the good life and the Art of Life. Furthermore, my argument clarifies how Mill’s liberalism and utilitarianism showcase the centrality of liberal edu­ cation and practices of care and compassion. These are key virtues that are essential to human happiness, well-being, and the good life. These habitual character traits serve to ground stable and reliable care for the vulnerable and dependent people who require it.

Note 1. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the ISUS-XIV Conference, Lille Catholic University, Lille, France, July 5, 2016, and the Western Cana­ dian Philosophical Association Conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, October 29, 2016. I thank the audiences at those conference sessions for their questions and comments.

Bibliography Bhandary, Asha. 2016. “A Millian Concept of Care: What Mill’s Defense of the Common Arrangement Can Teach Us About Care.” Social Theory and Prac­ tice 42 (1): 155–182. Donner, Wendy. 2011. “Morality, Virtue and Aesthetics in Mill’s Art of Life.” In John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, edited by Ben Eggleston, Dale E. Miller, and David Weinstein, 146–165. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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———. 2007. “John Stuart Mill on Education and Democracy.” In J.S. Mill’s Political Thought: A  Bicentennial Re-Assessment, edited by Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras, 250–274. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. The Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill’s Moral and Political Philoso­ phy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Donner, Wendy, and Richard Fumerton. 2009. Mill. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Note: Donner is the sole author of Part I: “Mill’s Moral and Political Philoso­ phy.” Chapters 2–8, 15–143. Driver, Julia. 2014. “Mill, Moral Sentimentalism, and the Cultivation of Virtue.” In Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives From Philosophy, Theology, and Psychol­ ogy, edited by Nancy E. Snow, 49–61. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mill, John Stuart. 1963–1991. The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by John M. Robson, 33 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Morales, Maria. 1996. Perfect Equality: John Stuart Mill on Well-Constituted Communities. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Okin, Susan Moller. 1979. “John Stuart Mill, Liberal Feminist.” In Women in Western Political Thought, 197–230. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 2005. “Marital Slavery and Friendship: John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women.” In Mill’s The Subjection of Women: Critical Essays, edited by Maria Morales, 52–70. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Part II

Individualism

and Autonomy

4

Care Ethics and Liberal Freedom Daniel Engster

Liberal freedom or liberty is usually defined in atomistic terms.1 Although liberal political theorists generally acknowledge the relational nature of social or political freedom, involving as it does social interactions among human beings, they do not usually conceive of human relationships as themselves sources of freedom. Rather, freedom for liberals generally means freedom from coercion by others or the ability to govern one’s life according to one’s authentic preferences without undue outside influence from others. One of the oldest and still most powerful accounts of liberty in the liberal tradition, for example, is negative liberty theory. Negative lib­ erty theorists define freedom as an absence of barriers or constraints to one’s choices. Individuals are free from this perspective to the extent that they are not obstructed or coerced by other human beings from choosing among opportunities they would otherwise have (Berlin 1969; Steiner 1994; Kramer 2003). The more individuals are left alone by people who might interfere in their choices, on this account, the freer they will be. Some liberal theorists endorse a positive concept of liberty rooted in autonomy.2 Whereas negative liberty requires only an absence of obsta­ cles in the way of a person’s potential choices, autonomy is an “exer­ cise concept,” requiring that individuals reflect on their choices, have the capacity to change their choices after reflection, and ultimately choose based on values or desires they consider their own (Taylor 1985, 213). Despite this important difference between negative liberty and autonomy, liberal theorists have historically defined autonomy in similarly individu­ alistic terms, as feminist critics and others have highlighted (Nedelsky 1989; Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000). The autonomous person is usually understood to be a self-determining agent who stands apart from outside environmental influences, including other human beings, and chooses according to their own authentic preferences.3 In this chapter, I aim to balance out this individualistic approach of lib­ eral theories of negative and positive liberty with a relational perspective based in care ethics. My purpose is not to overturn or discard existing concepts but instead to amend and improve them by showing how caring

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human relations contribute to them. By my account, negative liberty and autonomy theories are incomplete without a relational care perspective. Inasmuch as the “criterion of oppression” in negative liberty theories is the “part played by other human beings” in generating obstacles “to possible choices and activities” (Berlin 1969 xxxix, 123), I  argue that the long-term blights or scars left on individuals by harmful, neglect­ ful, or otherwise deficient care should count as obstacles or impediments to their freedom. Likewise, inasmuch as certain forms of good enough care are necessary for a secure sense of self capable of autonomy, I argue that they do not just represent general background conditions for auton­ omy’s development but are constitutive of it. The important implication of these arguments is that a society committed to promoting negative liberty and autonomy should do more than protect individual rights and provide general support for the development of autonomy. It should also support some specific caregiving programs for both children and adults. Liberal societies that fail in this regard fall short not just of supporting the “worth” of liberty, as John Rawls (2001, 149) might say, but also of supporting liberty per se (formal or otherwise). They thus fail to meet some of the most basic commitments of liberalism. A free society ultimately requires, by my estimation, support for both negative liberty and autonomy – as well as other background conditions. This is the important link connecting the three parts of this chapter. In the first section, I discuss in general how good care can contribute to the conditions of a free society. I also note why negative liberty and auton­ omy theorists usually discount these contributions. In the second section, I outline the integral connection between care and negative liberty. In the third section, I then build on the work of relational autonomy theorists in order to highlight care’s constitutive role in a self capable of autonomy. Although care ethics is not usually thought to have much to offer liberal theories of freedom, its insights are profound. Care ethics fills out impor­ tant gaps in liberal theories and provides a richer understanding of what makes us free. It also highlights the fundamental importance of support­ ing good personal care as part of any liberal society’s basic commitment to freedom. A caring liberalism is not a new breed of liberalism but rather a better – because fuller and freer – liberalism even by the standards of liberalism itself.

Some Preliminary Thoughts on Care and Liberty Care may be defined as (1) helping individuals to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, and other essential goods as well as support­ ing them emotionally; (2) facilitating the development of individuals’ physical, emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and other capabilities; (3) assisting individuals in learning important survival and social skills; (4) helping individuals to recover from illness or injury; (5) mitigating

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individuals’ pain and suffering; and (5) supporting individuals’ ability to function in the world.4 So defined, care can arguably make some impor­ tant contributions to human freedom – at least where freedom is defined as having opportunities to make choices and pursue one’s preferences unobstructed by others. Most generally, care supports the development of the physical and mental conditions that can enable individuals to make choices and exercise their autonomy. Unless children receive adequate care from parents, teachers, and others, they will not develop their rea­ soning, emotional, social, and other capabilities sufficiently to be able to make meaningful choices. Medical care, physical therapy, and the like similarly help individuals to maintain or recoup the physical and mental powers necessary for free choice and the exercise of autonomy. Long­ term care and personal assistance can further help disabled and elderly individuals to carry out their choices and pursue their preferences in ways they otherwise would not be able to do. In all these respects, care can be said to contribute to the conditions of a free society. This perspective on care, development, and freedom has not, of course, gone entirely unnoticed by liberal political theorists. John Locke, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and other classical liberal theorists all recognized the importance of good parental or tutorial care and a proper education for developing individuals’ capacities for freedom. In contem­ porary theory, Amartya Sen (1999), Martha Nussbaum (2000, 2006), and others have likewise highlighted the importance of the development of capabilities for freedom. As critics have argued, however, most lib­ eral theorists have overlooked or neglected the contributions of care to freedom (Hirschmann 2003; Kittay 1999; Nedelsky 1989; Tronto 1993). Negative liberty and autonomy theorists often take for granted the fully formed, adult, rational agent without attending adequately to the “rela­ tionships – with parents, teachers, friends, loved ones – that provide the support and guidance necessary for the development and experience of autonomy” and free choice (Nedelsky 1989, 12). Good care can further contribute to liberty in other ways besides capa­ bility development. Good-enough care is generally considered necessary, for example, for helping children to develop impulse control, emotional intelligence, and empathy – all qualities considered important for helping individuals to understand social situations, control their behaviors, and not aggress against others (see, e.g., Renkin et al. 1989). Insofar as nega­ tive liberty depends on a lack of coercion by others, it thus would seem to play an important role in supporting a free society. To the extent that individuals receive better care, they will be less likely to interfere coer­ cively in one another’s affairs, which will provide a wider scope of liberty for all and require less state policing. Care can also contribute to positive liberty in some often-overlooked ways. As relational autonomy theorists have argued, a person’s ability to form and pursue preferences depends in large part on the context or

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environment in which they live. A social environment marked by good care can facilitate individuals’ opportunities while an environment marked by bad care can constrain it. Eva Kittay (1999, 67–68) uses the phrase “nested dependencies” to describe the embedded nature of car­ egiving: caregivers always depend on others for the resources they need to care for others. One might similarly talk about the nested quality of autonomy. Our autonomy will be greater to the extent that we live among people who have received and are receiving better care. The more devel­ oped, capable, and well-off the people around us are, the more likely we will be able to enjoy a wider range of choices and opportunities from new technologies and a wider and deeper pool of knowledge and skills.5 Highlighting or just bringing back into focus the important role that care can play in supporting the background conditions that contribute to negative liberty and autonomy is significant. It fills out our under­ standing of the prerequisites for freedom and highlights some strategies for expanding the scope of people’s liberties. Even so, these arguments fail to establish a direct link between care and liberal freedom. Some accounts of negative liberty theory, for example, discount the importance of capabilities for freedom altogether. Isaiah Berlin famously wrote in his classic defense of negative liberty: “If a man is too poor or too ignorant or too feeble to make use of his legal rights, the liberty that these rights confer upon him is nothing to him, but it is not thereby annihilated” (Berlin 1969, liii). By Berlin’s account, liberty consists in opportunities not abilities.6 Opportunities can exist even where abilities do not. Care is therefore in no way important, on his account, to negative liberty. What matters is leaving people alone and respecting their self-ownership rights. A similar point can be made about autonomy. Relational autonomy theorists have made a powerful contribution to our understanding of autonomy by highlighting the fundamental role that personal and social relationships play in supporting the “background requirements for the development of autonomy” (Christman 2004, 158). The connection between care and autonomy nonetheless remains general and vague in these theories, and the particular ways in which care contributes to autonomy are underspecified. This has led to the charge that caring rela­ tionships support autonomy only in a secondary or indirect way (Christ­ man 2009, 21–23). Obviously, a person needs food and water to be able to exercise autonomy since otherwise they might be too weak or sick (or dead) to make any meaningful choice, but this does not mean food and water are constitutive of autonomy. They are supportive or background conditions for it (much like peace and security). The same has been said about care: it supports autonomy in a general way but is not an essential component of it. In the following two sections, I demonstrate the integral link between care and negative liberty and autonomy. My point is to show that good care not only provides the necessary background conditions for the

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exercise of liberty but also should be a central concern for anyone con­ cerned to protect or promote negative liberty and autonomy themselves.

Care Ethics and Negative Liberty Negative liberty theory remains one of the most important conceptions of liberty in the liberal tradition. Although Isaiah Berlin’s original defini­ tion of negative liberty has been widely challenged, the concept remains the starting point for many discussions of liberal freedom (Baum and Nichols 2013; Carter 2016; Hirschmann 2003). Moreover, newer, more sophisticated accounts of negative liberty have emerged to supplant Ber­ lin’s original definition (e.g., Carter 1999; Kramer 2003; Steiner 1994), and in the popular discourse of many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, negative liberty remains closely associated with freedom itself (Tully 2013). Good care is not usually thought to have much to do with negative liberty. On the contrary, they are often thought to be antithetical. Care entails attentive and responsive engagement with others, whereas nega­ tive liberty rests on noninterference or leaving a person alone. My argu­ ment in this section challenges this assumed opposition between these concepts. By my account, good care is essential to negative liberty. My point of departure is Matthew Kramer’s discussion of negative lib­ erty in the Quality of Freedom (2003). Although Kramer’s theory is not a distillation of negative liberty theories, it overlaps in large part with other negative liberty theories and represents, at least according to some reviewers, one of the clearest and best philosophical discussions of this concept (Kramer 2003, 15–16; Carter 2005). I  will therefore use it as my touchstone in this exploration of the relationship between negative liberty and care. Kramer argues that the key consideration for determining whether or not a person is free or unfree from a negative liberty perspective is whether or not they are impeded by the actions of other human beings (2003, 41–46). If a person is unable to do something as a result of at least one action by another person, then their inability represents an unfree­ dom. In determining whether another person has impeded our freedom, Kramer continues, some distinctions that are sometimes made should not apply. For example, the remoteness or smallness of a person’s causal con­ tribution to a reduction in some other person’s liberty is never a reason per se for ignoring it (313–314). If a hiker A throws a rock at a squirrel, causing the squirrel to scramble over some rocks and start a landslide that traps another hiker B far down the mountain in a cave, then hiker B may be said to be unfree because of hiker A’s actions. At least as long as we can reasonably infer a but-for connection between actions and conse­ quences, remoteness or meagerness in themselves should not matter. Sim­ ilarly, the intention of the person who performs the actions is irrelevant

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for determining if they caused a loss of freedom, though we might (and probably should) take it into account when assigning blame or respon­ sibility (133–135). Perhaps most importantly, Kramer argues that the often-made claim that negative liberty rests on a distinction between internal or external sources of unfreedom is also misguided (42–46). “If Tony’s conduct inflicts damage on Jack’s brain of such severity that Jack is unable to learn how to read,” Kramer writes, “then the incapacity is an instance of unfreedom” (43). The locus of Jack’s inability to read is, of course, his internal brain damage. If other human beings have caused this brain damage, however, Kramer seems right to say that it should count as a source of unfreedom under a negative liberty theory. The internal/ external distinction is not useful in this regard. What matters for identify­ ing something as an infringement on freedom is that one person has done something that in some way limits the opportunities of another, specifi­ cally, opportunities that they otherwise would have had. Based on Kramer’s definition of negative liberty, care can be seen as an important source of freedom and unfreedom. Kramer himself does not pursue this implication, but it would seem to follow logically from his theory. The clearest example of this claim follows from the conse­ quences of poor care, especially the abuse and neglect of children. Physi­ cal, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect of children not only inflicts immediate pain and suffering on them but also often contributes (par­ ticularly when untreated through therapy or other relational support) to a variety of long-term harms, including significant physical and mental health problems, cognitive difficulties, antisocial attitudes and behaviors, poor impulse control and emotional regulation, substance abuse, inter­ personal difficulties, poor academic attainment and achievement, and low motivation and self-esteem (Child Welfare Gateway 2013; Hunter 2014). To quote a recent study, “exposure to adverse life events in child­ hood has not only been linked to an increased susceptibility for a number of psychiatric disorders, but also to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic lung disease, possibly via long-term influences on the immune system” (Mehta et al. 2013, 8302). Individuals who as adults cannot fin­ ish school, hold a job, maintain relationships, or stay sober due in part to mental or physical health problems, emotional difficulties, or low esteem caused in part by childhood abuse or neglect are quite similar to Jack in Kramer’s example, discussed earlier, who suffers brain damage as a result of some unspecified action by Tony. The violence and neglect done to children physically and mentally limit their ability to pursue various opportunities that they otherwise would have had. Recent brain scan technologies have, in fact, demonstrated that abuse and neglect cause permanent changes in children’s brain structure and chemical composition not so different from brain damage. Three-year­ old children who have suffered extreme neglect, for example, have brains roughly half the size of average, healthy children who have not suffered

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neglect (Heckman 2013, 23). Physical abuse, early neglect, and mate­ rial deprivation have likewise been associated with decreased amygdala and hippocampus development – the regions of the brain responsible for socio-emotional functioning  – smaller cerebral and cerebellar volumes, decreased levels of serotonin and oxytocin, and numerous other neurobi­ ological effects (De Bellis and Zisk 2014; Hanson et al. 2015). Common effects of these physical changes include increased behavior problems, lower cognitive performance, increased anxiety and depression, and per­ sonality disorders and other mental health problems.7 Behaviorally, victims of childhood abuse and neglect may suffer depression and anxiety or other behavioral or mental health issues to such a degree that they are unable to attend classes or hold a job or stay out of trouble. While causation is complex, making it difficult to draw a direct line from childhood trauma to the impaired capabilities and limited opportunities of adults, if we follow Kramer, even small and remote sources of later life problems should still count as obstacles to negative freedom as long as “we can judge with confidence that some particular consequences are highly likely to ensue” from some actions (Kramer 2003, 416). A large body of research demonstrates the connec­ tions between abuse and neglect and brain and biochemical changes and adverse life outcomes that limit individuals’ choices. Childhood abuse and neglect should therefore count as obstacles to negative freedom under a consistent negative liberty theory. Childhood poverty and deprivation generate similar obstacles to chil­ dren’s long-term liberty. Children who grow up in poverty are at greater risk for chronic illnesses and poor health, behavioral and conduct dis­ orders, poor impulse control and emotional regulation, poor sociabil­ ity, learned helplessness, low motivation and perseverance, impaired physical growth, cognitive difficulties, and lower academic achievement (Brooks-Gunn and Duncan 1997; Emerson 2009; Evans and Cassells 2014; Hanson et al. 2015). Again, it seems not implausible in this respect to compare sustained childhood poverty to a brain injury. Although there is some debate about why exactly childhood poverty contributes to long-term disabilities – poor nutrition, stressful environments, learned behaviors from parents, poor schools – all these factors stem from human actions and therefore represent sources of unfreedom under negative lib­ erty theories. Who should be morally responsible for these obstacles  – parents, society – is not at issue here, but merely that children who grow up in poverty are likely to experience more limited opportunities than they otherwise would likely have had (based on the opportunities avail­ able to children who do not grow up in poverty) due to human actions – and conditions that are rectifiable through human actions.8 Although abuse, neglect, and poverty provide the clearest examples of how substandard care can create impediments to people’s negative lib­ erty, they are far from the only instances of liberty-blocking-care. A child

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may grow up in relatively advantaged conditions without overt abuse and neglect but still suffer impaired capabilities and lost opportunities due to cold and distant parents, narrow-minded and intolerant parents, cruel teachers and peers, and so forth. Any blight that can be traced back to the actions of another human being – no matter how remote or small – can be counted as an obstacle to freedom under this theory. Even so, it is important to note that not all adult obstacles are due to poor care. Limitations caused by one’s choices or natural limits do not count as obstacles to liberty under this theory but only those due to the actions (in this case, deficient care) of others (Kramer 2003, 6, 12). Our choices may limit our future opportunities, but they do not create other-imposed obstacles to our freedom, and natural limits may restrict what we can do, but as long as they were not caused by others, they do not represent obstacles to social and political freedom under negative liberty theory. If abuse, neglect, and indifference can create obstacles to freedom under a negative liberty theory, then it follows that good-enough care should be seen as necessary to it. Unless children receive at least good-enough care, they will predictably face (preventable) obstacles in the way of their choices. Indeed, at least up to a certain point, the more love and care that children receive and the less abuse, neglect, and indifference they experience, the fewer obstacles they can be expected to have in their lives and more opportunities they are likely to enjoy. This is not to argue for a perfectionist account of human development; care can come in many forms. A highly ordered, deeply religious, traditional family can be very loving and caring but so also can be a communal, atheistic, unconven­ tional one. The children of loving, caring, empathic parents may further grow up to do and be any number of things. The main claim here is sim­ ply that, below a certain level of care (which might vary somewhat for different children based on their temperaments, circumstances, and other factors), children will begin to show signs of distress that over time will predictably form into obstacles to their choices and opportunities. A free society cannot tolerate in this regard poor care any more than it can rov­ ing bands of coercive thugs. The argument so far has focused on the importance of love and care for enabling children to develop into relatively free adults, but care is also relevant to the liberty of adults. Most obviously, professional or personal therapeutic care can function to remove humanly caused obstacles from a person’s opportunity range – much as the police might remove a thug who is blocking a person’s exit from a building. Through therapy or a close personal relation, a survivor of abuse might develop greater trust in others and higher self-esteem, which opens to them choices that they otherwise would have had had they never been abused. Remedial educa­ tion programs can likewise open up opportunities for individuals whose development was neglected during their childhoods, and medical care

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can restore opportunities to individuals who have suffered illness or inju­ ries particularly due to human actions. A pure negative liberty theorist might contend that these arguments stretch the theory too thin and that only immediate acts of external coer­ cion or interference should count as impediments to freedom. This argu­ ment is, however, untenable. According to this logic, clubbing a skater’s knee would represent an impediment to her next few steps but not to her competing in the next day’s skating competition. Involuntary lobotomies would represent only temporary restrictions on a person’s liberty – last­ ing only during the period of the procedure – while the long-term loss of opportunities would not matter for their liberty. Kramer (2003, 42–46) persuasively makes the case for understanding coercion in the extended manner discussed here. The argument might also be challenged on the grounds that it counts omissions, such as neglect and indifference, as sources of unfreedom. For his part, Kramer (2003, 324–357) suggests that only acts but not omis­ sions (not doing something that one has the ability to do) should be con­ sidered sources of unfreedom. Without this distinction between actions and omissions, he argues, everything that anyone could have done to prevent any limitation on freedom, even self-inflicted limitations, would count as a source of unfreedom (Kramer 2003, 350–351). Based on this argument, it might be suggested that, even if obstacles to freedom rooted in abuse should be counted as a source of unfreedom (since abuse is an action), obstacles rooted in mere omissions of care (the failure to feed or shelter or protect) should not. This distinction between acts and omissions is complex, and some phi­ losophers deny its force when considering the effects one person might have on another’s liberty (e.g., Miller 1985). Even accepting it, Kramer (2003, 341) provides reasons to think many forms of substandard care, such as neglect, should still count as a source of unfreedom. If a per­ son pledges to do something for someone else, and then does not do it, Kramer argues that the omission should count as an action since others were counting on the person to do the action. In a similar vein, it can be said that when parents agree to raise a child, they effectively pledge to the child and others that they will do their best to provide adequate care for them. Parents who are not willing to make this pledge are generally given the opportunity to give up their child for adoption and forced to do so if they do not provide adequate care for them. Parents are allowed to raise children in most societies only under the assumption that they will fulfill certain responsibilities such as feeding, protecting, nurturing, and otherwise caring decently for the child (Goodin 1985, 109–144, 1995, 280–287). As such, not feeding a hungry child in one’s care or reasonably protecting them from harm may be considered an action – a failure of an assigned responsibility – rather than a mere omission. Failing to do these

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things is different from omitting to, say, make a donation to the commu­ nity food bank or volunteer at an orphanage. By casting abuse, neglect, and indifference as possible obstacles to free­ dom and care as a potentially liberating force, it might finally be objected that this argument supports an absurdly expansive definition of how humans might obstruct others’ freedom. Any deficiency of care that lim­ its others’ opportunities might be seen as an obstacle to liberty. I might claim that my parents’ failure to enroll me in piano lessons at age three obstructed my opportunity to become a world-class pianist. Their failure to push me harder at math limited my opportunity to become a physics professor. Everything that I cannot do as an adult that can be traced in some way to the manner in which my parents, teachers, or others raised me might be labeled an unfreedom. A couple of points might be made in reply. First, there is nothing inher­ ent in the nature of care that requires parents, teachers, or others to push children toward excellence in any particular field. Indeed, some parents might regard such behavior as uncaring or excessively paternalistic. My parents’ omissions in the cases outlined earlier cannot in this respect be reasonably labeled as substandard care. They simply did not do some­ thing that they did not have a responsibility to do (at least given exist­ ing parenting norms). These sorts of omissions really are omissions and should not count as sources of unfreedom. One might plausibly argue that parents nonetheless do have some responsibility to provide a basic music and mathematics education to their children in order to facilitate the development of their capabilities. If my parents intentionally deprived me of all music and mathematics education – knowing full well that some basic knowledge of these activi­ ties is considered valuable in most societies and possibly necessary for some basic tasks – then my inabilities could be counted as obstructions. But this was not the case for me. I did receive a basic music and math­ ematical education in public schools and even had the opportunity to take accelerated classes in these topics. Moreover, even though small chil­ dren cannot be held responsible for most of their choices, older children do become increasingly responsible for the decisions they make and the capabilities they choose to develop or not develop. When I was 12, 15, 19, or 23, I might have chosen to take piano lessons or learn advanced mathematics. I had at least the basic knowledge of these subjects neces­ sary to understand what they were and to develop them further. That I chose to spend my time on other pursuits means my limitations are my own responsibility. They were not obstructions imposed on me by oth­ ers. This argument about care and liberty therefore does not open up the speculative floodgates in a way that would allow individuals to identify any deficit they currently have in opportunities or choices as an unfree­ dom based in deficient care. Only deficits that result from substandard

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care based on widely accepted social standards of childrearing responsi­ bilities should count as such. The argument of this section has accepted Berlin’s claim that liberty can be meaningfully distinguished from the conditions of its exercise (Berlin 1969, liii). If, as Kramer (2003, 73–75) argues, this distinction does not hold up to critical scrutiny, then the case for including care in a theory of negative liberty becomes even stronger. Without good care, individuals will lack many of the conditions necessary to exercise their freedom, including health and basic capabilities. Even maintaining the controversial distinction between liberty and its exercise, and thus hold­ ing to a starker definition of negative liberty, however, it is clear that care is important to this concept. Deficient care is the source of many physical and mental blocks that prevent individuals from having opportunities or choices they would otherwise have. The main implication of this argu­ ment is that, in addition to protecting traditional negative rights, a soci­ ety committed to negative liberty should support a variety of caregiving programs, including those protecting children against abuse and neglect, ensuring their material well-being, and broadly promoting their capabil­ ity development. They should also support remedial mental health and other programs for individuals whose capabilities have been blighted due to deficient care or other causes. Although care ethics and negative lib­ erty theories might seem on the surface opposed, they are actually quite complementary. Negative liberty requires at least a threshold of adequate care for all.

Care Ethics and Autonomy Whereas negative liberty theorists suggest that individuals need only enjoy an absence of obstacles in the way of their choices to be free, autonomy theorists suggest that freedom involves reflecting on one’s choices and preferences, having the capacity to change one’s choices or preferences, and living according to one’s own preferences or beliefs. Although autonomy theorists offer different definitions of how exactly individuals must choose in order to be considered autonomous, this general definition captures at least the core of most theories (Christ­ man 2018). Some negative liberty theorists, such as Isaiah Berlin, have seen auton­ omy theories as forms of positive liberty and thus as potentially danger­ ous (1969, 131–132, 136). When liberty is associated with “self-mastery” or “self-realization” and acting according to a “real” or “true” self, a justification becomes available for the state or other authorities to inter­ vene in people’s lives, limit their choices, and possibly even coerce them in the name of freedom – that is, to force them to be free (131–136, 153, 162–172). Berlin therefore attempted to steer the liberal tradition away

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from autonomy to a narrower focus on negative liberty. By his account, autonomy theories allow despots to masquerade as friends of liberty. Even if some autonomy theories may lend themselves to debased applications, many guard against these abuses by, for example, eschew­ ing substantive principles and defining autonomy in strictly procedural or content-neutral ways (e.g., Christman 2009). In procedural theories, autonomy is not equated with any substantive goals or choices. Rather, autonomy occurs when individuals choose or act in certain ways, such as endorsing desires or wants that they have self-reflectively embraced and really care about (Friedman 2003, 5). When defined in this more modest way, autonomy is not necessarily opposed to negative liberty but can be seen as complementary to it. To be free may be said to consist of making reflective, self-directing choices in environments relatively free from obstacles or coercion. No doubt, negative liberty can exist without autonomy, but unless individuals make some sort of reflective or selfdirecting choices, its value would seem to be greatly diminished. A per­ son who mindlessly does whatever others suggest might enjoy negative liberty if no obstacles are placed in the way of their choices but hardly represents an inspiring vision of what it means to be free. As noted in the introduction, communitarian and feminist critics have criticized traditional liberal autonomy theories for portraying human beings as unrealistically independent, self-sufficient, and unencumbered (Fineman 2004, chapter 1; Kittay 1999; Sandel 1984). As with Berlin’s critique of autonomy, these critiques have sometimes been overstated. Some mainstream autonomy theorists do acknowledge the importance of history, relationships, and context to autonomy – and increasingly so in recent years (Friedman 2003, 87–91; see, for example, Christman 2009). From the vantage of critics, however, most autonomy theories do not cap­ ture the rich and deep sense in which individuals are enmeshed in social and historical relationships (Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000). Theories of relational autonomy have emerged to address this perceived deficiency. Relational autonomy theories start out from the social embeddedness of human beings and highlight the potentially enabling and oppressive nature of their relationships, context, and history. The self in these con­ ceptions is not posited as prior to or separate from society and culture but instead as being constituted or caused by them (Mackenzie and Stol­ jar 2000, 22). Subjects are understood as “second persons” who become persons or agents only through their relations with other agents or per­ sons (Code 1987). Relationships, culture, and history are said to be ena­ bling from this perspective inasmuch as they help individuals to develop the capabilities and preferences necessary for self-direction and self-rule. They are said to be oppressive insofar as they prevent individuals from developing the capabilities necessary for autonomy or instill in them dis­ torted, demeaning, or subordinate self-images malleable to manipulation.

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Relational theorists tend to cast their nets widely in thinking about the impact of social relations on autonomy, focusing on the role of cul­ ture, gender norms, and values such as recognition. The specific contri­ bution of relationships to autonomy – how exactly they make autonomy possible  – nonetheless remains undertheorized. One valuable contribu­ tion that care ethics can make to relational autonomy theories is to pro­ vide a more finely detailed account of how personal relationships help to constitute autonomy – something John Christman (2009, 21–24) claims is necessary for establishing a distinctly relational theory of autonomy. By highlighting this connection, the integral role that relationships can play in the existence of the autonomous self can be clarified and some of the problems that have haunted relational autonomy theories – such as how thoroughly socialized, and potentially subordinated, persons might ever find the resources to stand up against their conditioning  – can be addressed. The key for linking personal care to relational autonomy is attach­ ment theory. Despite the importance of care for attachments, attachment theory has received relatively little attention from care theorists. Carol Gilligan (1982), for example, developed her classical theory of care ethics based on object relations theory rather than attachment theory. Attach­ ment theory is related to object relations theory but suggests that children form their initial identity not in relation to (or separation from) an objec­ tified image of their primary caregiver, usually the mother, but instead through the security of attachment they forge with their primary caregiv­ ers. Although this is not the place to discuss the complex relationship between object relations theory and attachment theory, there are grounds for thinking that attachments precede and are more primary than the gender socialization that Chodorow (1978) and Gilligan describe using object relations theory (see, for example, Ainsworth 1969). The human drive for attachment appears to be a universal instinctual drive in human beings, apes, and many other higher mammals, for instance, and early attachment experiences shape the basic wiring of the brain (Cozolino 2014, chapter 10; Engster 2015). Although attachment behaviors have been systematically observed in a variety of human societies with dif­ ferent patterns of child rearing and family life, researchers have further found no gender differences in the distribution of major attachment clas­ sifications (Howe 2011, 210–211; Marris 1996, 41). All of this suggests that the need for attachment is independent from cultural and gender socialization and more fundamental to the development of a sense of self. As will be seen in the following, this has important implications for a theory of relational autonomy. Attachment theory rests on the claim that children are born with an innate drive to bond with their caregivers and seek them out as a secure base during times of danger, distress, or need (Ainsworth et  al. 2015;

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Bowlby 1969). When children experience their primary caregivers as sen­ sitive and responsive to their needs and as reliable sources of comfort and security, they tend to develop secure attachments. Secure attachments, in turn, facilitate the development of self-confidence, exploration, and independence – in other words, the psychological basis for autonomy. The more confident and secure children feel in the availability of a responsive attachment figure to be there at times of need, the more independent and playful they can be. Caregivers who provide a secure base allow their children to be autonomous, curious, and experimental. (Howe 2011, 19) By contrast, “children and adults who lack a secure base feel much more anxious about engaging with the world on their own.” They are likely to remain closer to their caregivers but also resistant or ambivalent to their attempts to sooth them. Whether or not children develop a secure attachment has important consequences for their later development (Howe 2011, 213). Securely attached children tend to develop an internal working model of them­ selves (or emergent personality) as lovable, effective, competent, and independent and are more likely to view the world as trustworthy and reliable (Howe 2011, 34, 43, 71; Thompson 2016). They tend to have better long-term relationships with their parents, better peer relation­ ships, enhanced social problem-solving skills, lower attribution of hos­ tile motivations to others, better emotional health, higher self-esteem and self-confidence, a stronger sense of their own efficacy and agency, greater emotional regulation, deeper emotional understanding of them­ selves and others, and greater social competence (Thompson 2016). Above all, they develop much better capacities for mentalization, mean­ ing they can reflect on their thoughts and choices and better understand themselves and others (Thompson 2016, 340). Children who lack secure attachments, by contrast, are more likely to see themselves as unloved, worthless, and ineffective and other people as insensitive, unpredictable, or even frightening. They tend to develop their social, emotional, and cognitive capabilities less quickly and less fully than securely attached individuals, to have more trouble developing the ability to mentalize, and are at increased risk for various mental health problems, including depression, borderline personality, and anxiety disorders (Bateman and Fonagy 2010; DeKlyen and Greenberg 2016; Lyons-Ruth and Jacobvitz 2016). Accordingly, they tend to have less confidence in themselves and their environments and are less likely to make deliberate choices and pursue them in resilient ways. Secure attachments come in degrees and insecure attachments tend to fall into a number of different patterns: avoidant, ambivalent, and

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disorganized (Howe 2011, chapter  4). Children and adolescents who form and maintain secure attachments tend to become “autonomous adults,” capable of independently identifying their own preferences, reflecting on their choices, and taking charge of their lives even in the face of adversity (70–73, 81–83). Insecurely attached children generally do not lack autonomy altogether – except in the most extreme cases of dis­ organized attachments. Individuals who form avoidant attachments, for example, generally appear to be “able and competent” (106). Based on their early perceived experiences of their caregivers as cold or rejecting, however, they tend to develop an internal working model of themselves that inclines them to avoid showing too much emotion or dependency on others. In an effort to avoid close relations, strong emotions, or revealing too much of themselves, they may put up false façades, downplay their needs, avoid challenges or demanding tasks that might expose them to criticism or ridicule, or adopt “chameleon-like responses” to social situ­ ations in an effort both to hide their feelings and to please others (Howe 2011, 107–112). Ambivalently attached individuals, in turn, are likely to lack independence and self-confidence and to want to cling to others (Howe 2011, 128–139). Although these individuals retain some capaci­ ties to reflect on and choose their own ways of life, their autonomy is compromised in important ways. They will nonreflectively sacrifice their own preferences to conform themselves to the views of others. People’s internal working models of themselves tend to remain rela­ tively stable across their life spans but can change based on later close relationships, therapy, or environmental changes (Howe 2011, 82, 85, 214–217). While parental care is central to the formation of a person’s original internal working model, other close relationships throughout a person’s life, such as with a romantic partner or good friend, can help to change an initial attachment style. In all cases, core aspects of our sense of self remain deeply interrelational, reflecting the quality of care we have received in our closest personal relationships. To summarize this brief discussion of attachment theory: we form core aspects of our sense of self based on the care we receive from others and the attachments we form with them, initially in childhood but then also later in life. These core aspects of our sense of self determine in large part the degree to which we are autonomous. Some people are quite comfort­ able reflecting on their choices and asserting their preferences even in the face of opposition, while others shy away from expressing themselves or fear asserting their independence. These differences can be related to different internal working models that reflect different attachment styles rooted largely in different experiences of care. It might be argued that this discussion shows only that relationships contribute diffusely to the development of autonomy but are not con­ stitutive of it. If this is the case, Christman (2009, 21–24, 167, 182), at least, claims it fails to establish a distinctly relational theory of autonomy.

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Inasmuch as some measure of a secure attachment is necessary for an efficacious, confident, reflective self, however, this objection understates the significant ways in which relationships make up autonomy. Relation­ ships do not just contribute to qualities that support autonomy; they forge a person’s fundamental sense of self. Individuals internalize their closest relationships and then interact with others and the world based on them. Individuals without a sense of efficacy and self-worth, who are incapable of self-reflection, and who lack a settled, internal sense of self, which marks many people with disorganized attachment styles, are by definition incapable of autonomy (Bateman and Fonagy 2010; Howe 2011, chapter 12). Such individuals will lack the ability to see themselves as self-authenticating sources of valid claims and will be largely if not wholly reactive to their circumstances  – awash in the world without a fixed compass. The autonomous self is in this sense fundamentally thor­ oughly relational. But for some measure of secure attachment, autonomy cannot exist. Attachment styles are not, of course, all there is to our sense of self. The gendered childrearing experiences described by Nancy Chodorow (1978) represent another important source of our sense of self and how we relate to others. Culture, religion, and our parents’ tastes and prefer­ ences further shape our self-conceptions. Attachment styles are nonethe­ less fundamental to our personalities, emerging out of our need for secure attachment and providing the basic patterns for how we interact with people and the world. This attachment-based theory of the self addresses one of the central conundrums of relational autonomy theories: if agents are socially and relationally constituted, how can individuals raised in oppressive envi­ ronments ever develop into autonomous selves? How can we explain the rebellious slave or, in highly sexist social environments, the strong-willed daughter? Where does individuation enter into a relational theory of self? (Hirschmann 2014; Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000, 17; Christman 2018, section  3.3). One answer lies with the attachment styles that precede other forms of socialization. A  securely attached person will be more likely to regard herself as valuable (lovable) and capable (efficacious) and thus more likely to feel a sense of dissonance between her self-conception and the strictures of an oppressive environment. A less securely attached individual, by contrast, will be more likely to acquiesce to existing social norms, seek approval, and/or avoid painful conflicts with others. Atten­ tive, responsive caregiving might in this way breed a rebellious spirit in the children of even highly traditional and conformist parents. Attach­ ment theory asserts the possibility for the development of an independ­ ent – efficacious, high-esteem, reflective – sense of self existing somewhat apart from other social influences forged through sensitive and respon­ sive care or, in a word, love. Individuals who form secure attachments will go through the world feeling loved and are likely to retain a capacity

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for autonomy, reflecting on their choices and believing their wants and desires matter, even under oppressive social conditions. This theory of relational autonomy is similar to and perhaps even sub­ sumes elements of the theories of Trudy Govier (1993), Diana Tietjens Meyers (1989), and Paul Benson (1994), who argue that self-trust, selfrespect, and self-worth are necessary conditions for autonomy. Govier argues, for example, that if one lacks “self-trust in core areas” – such as “a lack of any sense that one is fundamentally a worthy and competent person – one could scarcely function as a person.” With the self in default, something else would take over. Perhaps one would be governed by others  – a parent, husband, or charismatic leader. Or The Party.  .  .  . Perhaps one would conform blindly to convention. Perhaps one would swerve with every external sugges­ tion and bend to every passing fad. Absence of core self-trust will make procedural autonomy, as described by Meyers, completely impossible. (1993, 108) Meyers makes a similar argument about the importance of self-respect to autonomy, and Benson makes a case for the importance of self-worth. What my argument adds to Govier’s, Meyers’s, and Benson’s is a more solid psychological (and even neurological) grounding. I locate what they identify as self-trust, self-respect, and self-worth in the well-established psychological disposition for secure attachment. This grounding provides a richer and deeper basis for thinking about how a person’s sense of self develops and changes through their relationships with others and why some people have higher levels of self-trust, self-respect, and self-worth – and thus fuller capacities for autonomy – than others. This care ethical approach to relational autonomy nonetheless remains, like Govier’s, Meyers’s, and Benson’s theories, procedural or weakly substantive. For a decision to count as autonomous from this perspective, a person need not choose certain substantive goods – rejecting, for example, a traditional gender role or seemingly oppressive cultural tradition. Although some relational autonomy theorists argue that conformity to seemingly oppressive roles or traditions is reason enough to consider a choice nonautonomous, their position problem­ atically devalues traditional ways of life as well as the individuals who may choose them. Paradoxically (and Berlin might add potentially dan­ gerously), it also suggests that freedom excludes commitments to cer­ tain values and choices (Benson 1994, 665; Christman 2009, 167–177; Stoljar 2015). All that individuals need to do to be autonomous from this perspective is reflect on their choices when making important deci­ sions and count themselves and their preferences as matters worthy of consideration.

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Carol Gilligan’s (1982) notion of self-care in many ways exemplifies this ideal. In In a Different Voice, Gilligan (66–67) first details how many women she interviewed found it hard “to take a stand” on important issues and doubted their right “to make decisions” about important mat­ ters in their lives. Then, due to various relational crises such as unwanted pregnancies, some of these women came to see taking control of their lives as morally imperative and care of self as an important factor to consider in their decisions (1982, 95, 133–136). Their choices remained diverse. Some chose to have babies, while others choose to have abor­ tions; some chose to end close relationships, while others sacrificed career opportunities to stay close to home. Many nonetheless reflected on their choices and took account of their own needs and preferences and made deliberate decisions based on both their own and others’ interests. Inspired in part by Gilligan’s work, Andrea Westlund (2014) has suggested that “self-care” can be seen as central to the achievement of autonomy. Although I  agree with much of Westlund’s argument, she characterizes self-care in a more complex way than Gilligan herself does  – as caring about one’s reasons and being willing to answer for oneself in shared deliberation. Gilligan more basically suggests that selfcare involves including one’s self and preferences as worthwhile con­ siderations in one’s decisions (Westlund 2014, 192–193). Even though Westlund’s concept of self-care captures a higher degree of autonomy than Gilligan’s, Gilligan’s description represents to my mind a sufficient threshold level. It represents the moment at which the women she inter­ viewed rediscovered and embraced a valued and efficacious self that had lain dormant under a largely other-oriented self-concept. One of the main criticisms of procedural autonomy theories is that they do not take seriously enough the deep and damaging ways in which oppressive social environments can distort a person’s preferences and choices (Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000; Stoljar 2015). This concern was already partially addressed earlier. A person’s internal working model is forged through personal relationships that can provide the basis for an autonomous self even under oppressive social conditions. Under highly oppressive conditions such as slavery, of course, even the opportunity for secure attachments may be undermined through the disruption of parent-child relations; and even where secure attachments are possible, an autonomous individual may still have to lower her expectations and settle for the best available options. The solution here, however, is not to build potentially stigmatizing substantive constraints into a theory of autonomy but, as Nancy Hirschmann (2014) suggests, to couple a theory of autonomy with a theory of negative liberty. To be free means to be autonomous in a social environment with a wide scope of negative lib­ erty. The ground for criticizing an oppressive social environment is not so much autonomy theory as the concept of negative liberty. Oppres­ sive social environments expose individuals to coercion and limit their

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choices. They can thus be aptly criticized from a negative liberty perspec­ tive without resorting to substantive autonomy theories. Just as auton­ omy underlies the value of negative liberty, negative liberty can be said to make available a fuller exercise of autonomy. Both are important for freedom.

Conclusion Good care is essential to liberal freedom. It not only supports children through their early years and helps them to develop their reasoning and other capabilities but also contributes directly to negative liberty and autonomy in important ways. Deficient or harmful caregiving represents an impediment to negative liberty by the very terms of neg­ ative liberty theory itself. Sensitive and responsive care supports the development of the secure attachments that constitute autonomous selves. Good care is therefore not just a contributing background fac­ tor to a free society. Both negative liberty and autonomy theories are incomplete without it. One important implication of this argument is that a society commit­ ted to liberal freedom should promote good care for children and various forms of remedial care for adults – just as it should provide protection against coercion and manipulation. In order for individuals to avoid obstacles to their negative liberty, they need at the very least to be pro­ tected from abusive, neglectful, and other harmful forms of care and pro­ vided opportunities to develop the basic capabilities most people enjoy in a given society. In order for individuals to be able to exercise autonomy, they likewise need to receive the care supportive of secure attachments. This is not the place to outline specific care-related policy proposals sup­ porting negative liberty and autonomy, but they are not hard to imagine: parent-training classes and programs, child cash subsidies and tax cred­ its, job-protected and subsidized paid-parenting leaves, mental health programs for children and adults, and so forth. The main point of this chapter can be put as follows: if liberal societies are concerned to protect and promote freedom, they should care about care. Liberalism without care is deficient by the standards of liberalism itself. A caring liberalism provides the fuller realization of liberalism’s fundamental commitments to negative liberty and autonomy.

Notes 1. Freedom and liberty are used interchangeably in this chapter, which is consist­ ent with most contemporary theorists’ usage. 2. I follow Carter (2016) and others who place collectivist, positive liberty theo­ ries outside the mainstream liberal tradition. 3. A third, republican concept of liberty as nondomination is not addressed in this chapter.

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4. Care or caring may apply to other persons or oneself. Eating, resting, exercis­ ing, and learning may all count as forms of self-care. 5. This is in general true. Much also depends on the distribution of resources within a society. 6. Matthew Kramer disagrees and argues that Berlin’s distinction between lib­ erty and the conditions of its exercise rests on a confusion between two dif­ ferent understandings of liberty: one normative (based on moral and legal rights) and the other non-normative (liberty in itself). It makes sense to say that a person enjoys moral and legal freedoms even if they cannot exercise them, Kramer argues, but it does not make sense to maintain the same dis­ tinction between conditions for freedom and non-normative liberty. Nonnormative liberty, he contends, is “an ability rather than a permission” (2003, 75). Although Kramer is correct to note some confusion in Berlin’s argument between normative and non-normative definitions of liberty, his distinction might still stand up if he also intended here to distinguish between opportuni­ ties for action and abilities for action itself (Berlin 1969, xlii). In this case, a person who lacked some ability (say, to run up the side of a hill due to weak­ ness) might still be said to enjoy the opportunity in a non-normative sense if no one was blocking them from doing so. The case for the importance of care to negative liberty theory is strengthened if we follow Kramer’s argument rather than Berlin’s here. For the sake of argument, however, I will argue that, even if we accept Berlin’s distinction here, good care can still be said to play an integral role in negative liberty theory. 7. Kramer argues that some phobias, compulsive habits, addictions, and other mental illnesses represent limits on people’s freedom but does not relate these conditions to earlier life traumas (2003, 268–271). 8. Kramer (2003, 322–323) gestures at this latter point.

Bibliography Ainsworth, Mary. 1969. “Object Relations, Dependency, and Attachment: A Theoretical Review of the Infant-Mother Relationship.” Child Development 40: 969–1025. Ainsworth, Mary, Mary Blehar, Everett Waters, and Sally Wall. 2015. Patterns of Attachment: A  Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. New York: Routledge. Bateman, Anthony, and Peter Fonagy. 2010. “Mentalization Based Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder.” World Psychiatry 9 (1P): 11–15. Baum, Bruce, and Robert Nichols. 2013. “Introduction.” In Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom: ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ 50 Years Later, edited by Bruce Baum and Robert Nichols, 1–20. New York: Routledge. Benson, Paul. 1994. “Free Agency and Self-Worth.” The Journal of Philosophy 91 (12): 650–668. Berlin, Isaiah. 1969. Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bowlby, John. 1969. Attachment and Loss. New York: Basic Books. Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne, and Greg Duncan. 1997. “The Effects of Poverty on Children.” The Future of Children: Children and Poverty 7 (Summer/Fall): 55–71. Carter, Ian. 2016. “Positive and Negative Liberty.” In The Stanford Encyclope­ dia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Spring 2016 Edition. http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/.

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———. 2005. “Reviewed Work: The Quality of Freedom by Matthew Kramer.” The Philosophical Review 114 (4): 551–553. ———. 1999. A Measure of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Child Welfare Information Gateway. 2013. Long-term Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau. www.childwelfare.gov/pubpdfs/long_term_conse quences.pdf. Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. Christman, John. 2018. “Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Spring 2018 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/autonomy-moral/. Christman, John. 2009. The Politics of Persons: Individual Autonomy and Sociohistorical Selves. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christman, John. 2004. “Relational Autonomy, Liberal Individualism, and the Social Constitution of Selves.” Philosophical Studies 117: 143–164. Code, Lorraine. 1987. “Second Persons.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17: 357–382. Cozolino, Louis. 2014. The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. De Bellis, Michael, and Abigail Zisk. 2014. “The Biological Effects of Childhood Trauma.” Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 23 (2): 185–222. DeKlyen, Michelle, and Mark Greenberg. 2016. “Attachment and Psychopathol­ ogy in Childhood.” In Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clini­ cal Applications, edited by Jude Cassidy and Phillip Shaver. 3rd ed., 639–666. New York: Guilford Press. Emerson, Eric. 2009. “Relative Child Poverty, Income Inequality, Wealth, and Health.” JAMA Pediatrics 301 (4) (28 January): 425–426. Engster, Daniel. 2015. “Care in the State of Nature: The Biological and Evolu­ tionary Roots of the Disposition to Care in Human Beings.” In Care Ethics and Political Theory, edited by Daniel Engster and Maurice Hamington, 227–251. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans. Gary, and Rochelle Cassells. 2014. “Childhood Poverty, Cumulative Risk Exposure, and Mental Health in Emerging Adults.” Clinical Psychological Sci­ ence 2 (3): 287–296. Fineman, Martha. 2004. The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency. New York: The New Press. ———. 2003. Autonomy, Gender, Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goodin, Robert. 1995. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press. ———. 1985. Protecting the Vulnerable. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Govier, Trudy. 1993. “Self-Trust, Autonomy, and Self-Esteem.” Hypatia 8 (1): 99–120. Hanson, Jamie, Brendon Nacewicz, Matthew Sutterer, Amelia Cayo, Sta­ cey Schaefer, Karen Rudolph, Elizabeth Shirtcliff, Seth Pollak, and Richard

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Davidson. 2015. “Behavioral Problems After Early Life Stress: Contributions of the Hippocampus and Amygdala.” Biological Psychiatry 77 (4): 314–323. Heckman, James. 2013. Giving Kids a Fair Chance (A Strategy That Works). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hirschmann, Nancy. 2014. “Autonomy? Or Freedom? A Return to Psychoana­ lytic Theory.” In Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender, edited by Andrea Velt­ man and Mark Piper, 61–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003. The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Howe, David. 2011. Attachment Across the Lifecourse: A  Brief Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hunter, Cathryn. 2014. “Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect for Adult Survivors.” CFCA Resource Sheet, Australian Institute of Family Studies (January). https:// aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/effects-child-abuse-and-neglect-adult-survivors. Kittay, Eva. 1999. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge. Kramer, Matthew. 2003. The Quality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lyons-Ruth, Karen, and Deborah Jacobvitz. 2016. “Attachment Disorganization from Infancy to Adulthood.” In Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, edited by Jude Cassidy and Phillip Shaver. 3rd ed., 667–695. New York: Guilford Press. Mackenzie, Catriona, and Natalie Stoljar. 2000. “Autonomy Refigured.” In Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, edited by Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, 3–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marris, Peter. 1996. The Politics of Uncertainty: Attachment in Private and Pub­ lic Life. New York: Routledge. Mehta, Divya, Torsten Klengel, Karen Coneely, Alicia Smith, Andre Altmann, Thaddeus Pace, Monika Rex-Haffner, Anne Loeschner, Mariya Gonik, Kris­ tina Mercer, Bekh Bradley, Bertram Muller-Myhsok, Kerry Ressler, and Elis­ abeth Binder. 2013. “Childhood Maltreatment is Associated with Distinct Genomic and Epigenetic Profiles in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” Proceed­ ings of Nation Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110 (20): 8302–8307. Meyers, Diana Tietjens. 1989. Self, Society, and Personal Choice. New York: Columbia University Press. Miller, David. 1985. “Reply to Oppenheim.” Ethics 95 (2) (January): 310–14. Nedelsky, Jennifer. 1989. “Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Pos­ sibilities.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 1 (1): 7–36. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge: Belknap Press. ———. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness: Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Renkin, Bruce, Byron Egeland, Denice Marvinney, Sarah Mangelsdorf, and Alan Sroufe. 1989. “Early Childhood Antecedents of Aggression and PassiveWithdrawal in Early Elementary School.” Journal of Personality 57 (2): 257–278.

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Sandel, Michael. 1984. “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self.” Political Theory 12 (1): 81–96. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Books. Steiner, Hillel. 1994. An Essay on Rights. Oxford: Blackwell. Stoljar, Natalie. 2015. “Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2015 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/feminism-autonomy/. Taylor, Charles. 1985. “What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty?” In Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2, 211–229. Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press. Thompson, Ross. 2016. “Early Attachment and Later Development: Refram­ ing Questions.” In Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, edited by Jude Cassidy and Phillip Shaver. 3rd ed., 330–348. New York: Guilford Press. Tronto, Joan. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A  Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge. Tully, James. 2013. “ ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in Context.” In Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom: ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ 50 Years Later, edited by Bruce Baum and Robert Nichols, 23–51. New York: Routledge. Westlund, Andrea. 2014. “Autonomy and Self-Care.” In Autonomy, Oppres­ sion, and Gender, edited by Andrea Veltman and Mark Piper, 181–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

5

Individualism, Embeddedness, and Global Women’s Empowerment1 Serene J. Khader

Narratives about empowering women in the global South often exploit intuitive connections between feminism and individualism. In familiar media depictions, women develop new senses of self through entrepre­ neurship that enable them to contravene patriarchal gender roles.2 Now that a poor woman has received a goat or a sewing machine, the con­ ventional narrative tells us, she is empowered to leave her husband or criticize sexist cultural beliefs. A description of the UN-sponsored Wom­ en’s Empowerment Week encapsulates the familiar intuitive associations: “empowering a woman in business means that she will gain financial stability and help address poverty;” a woman entrepreneur “might be less likely to allow men to make decisions for her” (Price 2015). But intuitions on their own do not establish that individualism is a feminist value, and there are independent reasons to be skeptical of the idea that Western3 intuitions about Southern women tell us much about what feminism is. Westerners, like members of all cultures, are subject to ethnocentrism. Westerners are also subject to epistemic habits associated with dominance, habits that filter information about the global South in ways designed to preserve the view that Northerners exert a positive, moralizing effect on the inhabitants of poor countries.4 Moreover the value of individualism in particular has been accused by feminists who study women in the global South of being parochial (see Archambault 2011; Abu-Lughod 2013; Mahmood 2005; Goodman 2017) and harm­ ful (see Abu-Lughod 2013; Mahmood 2005; Karim 2011; Wilson 2011; Cornwall, Gideon, and Wilson 2008). All of this indicates that the relationship between feminism and indi­ vidualism and its implications for development policy require deeper philosophical investigation. I suggest in this chapter that the link between feminism and individualism is more tenuous than is often thought. I argue that the form of individualism that Westerners assume will empower women in the global South (which I call “independence individualism”) is (1) not conceptually related to feminism and (2) worth jettisoning because of how it motivates political action that undermines feminist aims. Some of the reasons that feminists should reject this particular form

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of individualism are not just reasons to rethink development policy but also deep challenges for liberal feminism. For example, I  contend that no form of normative individualism is conceptually necessary for femi­ nism; if this is true, it is incumbent on liberal feminists with universalist aims to explain why normative individualism is context-independently necessary for reducing sexist oppression. I  also claim that the form of individualism I am criticizing exacerbates the oppressive distribution of caring labor and unacceptably exposes women to loss of the goods they attain through relationships. This claim suggests that feminists who wish to retain individualist commitments need to find ways of doing so that do not exacerbate the gender division of labor or overlook the goods women stand to lose through changes to their existing relationships. These claims about care and relationship intersect with, and precissify, existing femi­ nist philosophical claims that liberalism is too individualistic to promote gender justice. My ultimate position is that independence individualism, the form of individualism I  am criticizing, undermines the pursuit of global gender justice and that even personhood individualism, a form of individualism liberal feminists often see as foundational to feminism, is conceptually unnecessary for it.

Two Concepts of Individualism I began this chapter by invoking a narrative that has captured the Western imaginary about how development programs are supposed to empower women. The details vary: a woman may make artisanal jewelry or raise a goat she was gifted by a Northern NGO, and she may become the head of her own household or become a fierce advocate of girls’ education. But the key elements of the narrative remain the same: being able to earn an income allows women to reject sexist gender roles. Individualist com­ mitments color the narrative in a couple of ways. First, the quotations from the women that make it into Western popular media emphasize the idea that earning an income gives women a sense of self and self-value. Second, rejecting patriarchal gender roles is cast as separation from a grouping, usually a family or a “culture.”5 In addition to arguing that this narrative is appealing because of colo­ nial epistemic habits, critics argue that this narrative is harmful and based on distortions of the facts. Though this is not the place to discuss the empirical literature at length, it is worth noting that the ability of these interventions to produce empowerment is mixed at best.6 Argu­ ments that the interventions are harmful with a more philosophical bent suggest that individualist commitments are a vehicle for justifying harm. According to critics, the emphasis on income, and on loosening attach­ ments to family and culture, ignores the costs so-called “empowerment” interventions impose. For example, women’s entrepreneurship may erode the communal relationships on which the poor are known to depend for

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survival, as Lamia Karim (2008) has documented in the case of micro­ credit.7 Or women can see little change in their household status, or even see their status within households decline as a result of increased income, because men reduce their household contributions and expect women to act in ways that confirm men’s rights to superior status (see Adato et al. 2000; Chant 2008; Mayoux and Lacoste 2005; Molyneux 2009; Vaessen, Rivas et al. 2014). Cloaking such interventions in individualist rhetoric encourages Westerners to see the interventions as good. As Saba Mahmood famously put the worry that liberal values desensitize West­ erners to the costs of interventions in Southern contexts: will we “ever run up against the responsibility [we] incur for the destruction of life forms so that ‘unenlightened’ women could be taught to live more freely” (Mahmood 2005, 198)? The conflict between the conventional empowerment narrative and the critiques may seem to leave feminists in a bind. The critics appear to be claiming that there is something wrong with weakening group affiliations and relationships. But feminists know that sexist oppression is frequently enacted through relationships and justified by appeals to familial love, cultural preservation, and religious adherence. We also know that indi­ vidual women’s interests are routinely subordinated to the interests of groups. The only genuine feminist response may thus seem to be to bite the imperialist bullet and accept that affiliations are the collateral damage of feminist change. After all, how is it possible to criticize sexist practices perpetrated in the name of affiliation and relationship without resorting to claims about the value of the individual? But this defense of a connection between feminism and the form of individualism embraced in the conventional development narrative moves too fast. It is of course true that feminists cannot approve practices like rela­ tionship violence or harmful cultural practices that are sexist. However, it is unclear that the reason that feminists must oppose these practices is that they fail to treat the individual appropriately. One of Martha Nussbaum’s early works on the capability approach offers an argument that opposing sexist practices that prioritize groups requires individualist commitments. She argues that women in the global South who criticize practices like intimate partner violence are engaged in using the “terms of the liberal Enlightenment” (1999, 56). “Individualism seems to be a good view for feminists to embrace” because it allows us to object to the fact that “women have rarely been treated as ends in themselves” (1999, 63). If her point is merely that liberals should oppose forms of gender-based violence defended in the name of group cohesion, she is obviously correct. But her point seems to be more than this – namely that feminists have to be, or should be, liberals because opposing such practices requires individualism.

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But it is possible to oppose oppressive practices that subordinate women to groups without defending individualism. To see how, it will be useful to have an explicit definition of feminism in hand. bell hooks (2000) defines feminism as opposition to sexist oppression.8 Oppression, on Marilyn Frye’s classic definition, involves experiencing systematic dis­ advantage because of one’s social group membership (Frye 1983). I take both of these definitions to be relatively uncontroversial. An important upshot of them is that feminism opposes a certain relationship between gender groups. Because of this, feminism does not imply commitment to individualism in the way Nussbaum supposes. The feminist reason to oppose violence against women and cultural practices that treat women as vehicles for group cohesion is how these practices position women relative to other gender groups. The specific wrong of gender-based vio­ lence is that it targets women, girls, and members of other marginalized gender groupings and exerts and reinforces power against them. Indeed, commitment to the idea that individual persons have worth often fails to motivate the judgment that something is wrong with oppression, per se. As Lisa Schwartzman puts it, “focusing on individuals as individuals may prevent one from noticing that individuals are not regarded by society as mere individuals, and that various sorts of injustice, power, and privilege stem from group-based identities” (2006, 181). This is not to deny that individual women are harmed by gender-based violence or even to deny that one can be an individualist of some kind and a feminist but rather to emphasize (1) that the role of feminism is not to explain all possible wrongs and (2) that feminism is compatible with a variety of moral worldviews. Feminism hones its focus on a certain type of intragroup wrong (sexist oppression) and does not on its own provide a view of what the other possible wrongs are or why they are wrong. So, it may be the case that violence against women is also wrong because it treats the individual persons it harms as means. But it may also turn out to be the case that violence against women is wrong for reasons that are nonderivative of individualism, such as that it fails to acknowledge the fundamental interrelatedness of all human beings or violates a divine command. To put my point in terms that will be familiar to liberals, neither is feminism what Rawls (1993) would call “a comprehensive doc­ trine” nor is feminism required to be an outgrowth of the comprehensive doctrine that is feminism.9 Commitment to individualism on its own neither generates opposition to sexist oppression nor is required for it. Widely held beliefs in the con­ temporary United States, for example, say that everyone has an individ­ ual interest in living as they choose, cast women’s situation as a result of their choices, and thus deny that the social relations constitutive of sexist oppression are a problem.10 Moreover, it is theoretically possible to imag­ ine societies where counting as an individual, or leading an individualistic

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form of life, does not confer advantage on persons. Feminism on its own does not provide a reason to object to societies that do not value indi­ vidual status or fail to permit people the capacities associated with living an individualistic form of life. I hasten to add that counting as an indi­ vidual does seem to be a currency of advantage in most actual societies, even in ones that are often taken to be communitarian.11 But this does not undermine the fact that feminism does not logically entail any views about the normative status of individuals; feminism is a view about the relative status of groups. The upshot of this very theoretical discussion for whether feminists need to embrace the form of individualism that undergirds the conven­ tional development narrative is that there is no conceptual reason they must. I just showed that there is no conceptual reason for feminists to be any type of normative individualist. But might there be a practical reason for feminists to embrace some form of normative individualism? I have admitted that counting as an individual in the way that liberal feminists are concerned with is a currency of advantage in most actual societies. I  also concede that this status is systematically denied to women. So, is there a practical reason for feminists to embrace individualism? To answer the question about a practical relationship between feminism and individualism, it is worth stating outright what many readers will have already noticed: I have been using the term “individualism” vaguely up to this point. There is a reason for this, and it is that I am echoing the usage in the conventional development narrative – a narrative that I see as deriving much of its appeal from equivocating about what individual­ ism is. The narrative ties together three different values that are all plau­ sibly described as individualism: economic self-sufficiency, devaluation of inherited relationships, and counting as a distinct and separate inviolable person. It is part of liberal and Western self-understandings that the last (distinct, separate personhood) is sacrosanct. If earning an income and leaving one’s family and culture are just what it means to count as a separate person, it is hard to object to the interventions the conventional development narrative supports. If, on the other hand, these forms of individualism do not cause one to count as a separate person, the conven­ tional development narrative can be severed even from liberal feminism and other feminisms that place women’s distinct, separate personhood at the center. For an example of the conflation of various forms of individualism at work, we can consider the way the work of modernization theorists in development influenced the Women in Development (WID) paradigm, which continues to motivate many development interventions.12 Modern­ ization theory was an early development paradigm, according to which industrialization would allow countries in the global South to reduce poverty and achieve other social markers associated with modernity,

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such as greater levels of education. In her (1994) assessment of the WID paradigm, Naila Kabeer (1994) argues that ostensibly feminist theorists uncritically adopted the view that improvements in women’s status would be a by-product of capitalist change. For example, the early develop­ ment theorist William Arthur Lewis argued that women earning incomes would allow women to cease to be third-world men’s “beasts of burden” and be acknowledged in their “full personhood” (see Kabeer 1994, 19). Here we see the assumption that one form of individualism (not being someone’s “beast of burden”) is supposed to come about as a result of another (achieving economic self-sufficiency and loosening one’s attach­ ments to men). To draw a clearer philosophical distinction between the two forms of individualism in play, let us define each. The first form, which I call “personhood individualism,” consists in the view that peo­ ple have interests of their own that are not reducible to the interests of others. I call the second form of individualism “independence individu­ alism.” Independence individualism is the view that individuals should meet their own economic needs and that only chosen relationships are of value. This last idea that only chosen relationships are of value may seem to entail value commitments that no one would embrace. After all, find­ ing oneself in unchosen relationships with family and culture is just part of human life. What seems to animate the conventional development nar­ rative is a racialization of the notion of choice, whereby the relationships Westerners find themselves in count as chosen. Western marriages are typically thought of as the products of individual freedom and contrasted with arranged ones.13 Furthermore, as many postcolonial and decolonial thinkers have noted,14 Westerners tend to think of themselves as lacking a culture, whereas Southern individuals are seen as victims of cultures that constrain.15 Is either of these forms of individualism practically necessary for femi­ nists to embrace? I affirmed earlier that counting as a separate person was a currency of advantage in most societies, one that is gender-differentially distributed. This suggests not that feminists must embrace personhood individualism but that there are indeed feminist reasons to promote it in many practical contexts. Independence individualism is another story. Once we distinguish it from personhood individualism, it is far less clear why promoting it would serve feminist ends at all. The conventional development narrative presents a woman who earns an income and leaves relationships of custom as one who is empowered. Why economic selfsufficiency and relationships of choice go together, and why they would promote feminist change in the first place, needs to be explained, but the conventional development narrative presents them as intertwined. In my view, the most plausible explanation of why these ideas flow together so seamlessly in the Western imaginary is an idealization of the modern period.16 The idea that the practical upshot of economic

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independence for women in the global South will be a reduction in relationships of custom that produces feminist change stems from the assumption that the moral progress that capitalism ostensibly brought to the West will occur through similar means elsewhere. The popular Western understanding of history emphasizes the idea that modern socie­ ties freed people from the bonds of tradition and family. Naila Kabeer offers a clue to how Western ideas about modernization link economic independence to freedom to choose one’s relationships, as well as how the combination of these becomes linked to feminism: “pre-modern soci­ eties” needed to be transformed so that a variety of differentiated roles were available and statuses associated with them should be “achieved as a consequence of purposeful individual effort rather than ascribed by custom” (Kabeer 1994, 16). In other words, in the popular Western self-narration, the modern period was one where moral progress and capitalism drove one another. Shifts from agrarian to industrial societies, and to transnational global economies, require mobile workforces  – ones where people are less attached to roles dictated by tradition. The notion that economic inde­ pendence is possible offers a narrative about how it is possible for indi­ viduals to meet their needs under capitalism and deflects responsibility for ensuring people’s survival from communities, kin, and the state. As Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon (1994) note, the valorization of inde­ pendence was historically linked to industrialization in the West; inde­ pendence only became a property of individuals in the eighteenth century and was only valued positively when used to describe the condition of the wage laborer in the nineteenth. Those who see independence individual­ ist change as delivering feminist change seem to hold that the cause of women’s oppression is relationships characterized by custom and a high degree of consideration for the needs of others. If this is what the cause of women’s oppression is, then economic self-sufficiency looks like the required escape. Sexist oppression is an artifact of premodernity and will ostensibly disappear once the trappings of modern capitalism allow peo­ ple to move from “traditional” to market-dictated roles. A potential alternative explanation of the ascent of independence individualism is the familiar one from Western feminist philosophers in the care and dependency traditions. These philosophers argue that inde­ pendence is an androcentric ideal that obscures the value of dependency in human life (see Baier 1995; Kittay 1999; Friedman 2013; Fineman 2005). I am sympathetic to this view, and in the last section of the chap­ ter, I will adopt one of their key insights: that the ideal of economically independent citizens impedes feminist change by refusing to offer a vision for gender-just allocation of dependency work. However, androcentrism on its own cannot explain either (1) why economic self-sufficiency and opposition to relationships of custom become fused together in a single

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ideal (this fusion seems to require background commitments about the value of choice and specific empirical assumptions about the context in which the ideal is to be pursued) or (2) why independence individualism seems not merely morally desirable but also capable of causing femi­ nist change. The idea that economic independence is supposed to erode the hold of “backward,” traditional practices, and not merely increase women’s ease of exit from bad relationships – and the idea that this in turn will constitute women’s liberation – draws on the colonial idealiza­ tions about modernity I described earlier. To put the point differently, the idealizations that make independence individualism seem required for feminist change are imperialist, and not merely androcentric. But perhaps it seems that feminists should promote independence indi­ vidualism because personhood individualism is genuinely important in most contexts, and it seems that independence individualism is the best way to operationalize personhood individualism. Recall that independ­ ence individualism is the view that individuals should be economically self-sufficient and that all relationships should be chosen; personhood individualism is the view that persons have separate and inviolable worth. To begin to question the idea promoting the former is the best way to promote the latter; we can note that the fact that personhood individual­ ism is gender-differentially distributed in many real-world contexts does not make it the case that increasing respect for it is the most urgent form of feminist change in those contexts. More importantly, the idea that promoting independence individual­ ism promotes personhood individualism misses the fact that what pro­ motes personhood individualism is likely context-variant. Note that the idea entails an empirical claim about means-end effectiveness. The effectiveness of means for achieving desired ends varies from context to context. Just as a boat is a better means for achieving the end of mobil­ ity in a society built around waterways than one built around roads, means to increasing respect for women’s personhood individualism vary to some extent from context to context. In a defense of something like independence individualism, Marilyn Friedman argues that much of the value of economic independence for women is prudential; its importance derives from how it allows specific goods to be pursued within specific contexts (2013, 118).17 The most plausible way of linking economic self-sufficiency and decreases in relationships of custom with respect for women’s personhood individualism is the familiar story about how economic independence can allow women to exit abusive relationships – that is, relationships where their status as persons in their own right is denied by their abusers. But it is unclear that economic self-sufficiency is the only or best way to provide exit from relationship violence. In some contexts, access to income seems to increase women’s vulnerability to abuse and control, as in cases where men manipulate women to be able

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to gain access to microcredit from organizations that only give loans to women (see Ahmed 2008).18 In others, the way to reduce women’s sub­ jection to abuse seems to be to strengthen their ties to certain relation­ ships of custom besides the relationship with the abuser. For example, family violence interventions with some Aboriginal Australian women focus on strengthening their ties to the cultural community (Karahasan 2014), given that the idea of striking out on one’s own is seen as lacking moral value and given that it means “striking out” into a violent-settler society (Blagg 2008, 149). Perhaps it seems unfortunate that relationships of custom are such important routes to respect for women’s personhood in these contexts. This may sometimes be so, but valuing inherited forms of relationship is not tantamount to oppression. The fact that people rely on one another is not itself obviously unfortunate; the problem for feminists is that some societies, communal and not, expect women to sacrifice more than men or be subordinate to them in other ways. Moreover, even if independ­ ence individualism has allowed women to increase recognition of their personhood individualism by leaving oppressive relationships, it is not as though independence individualism has been a recipe for ending sexist oppression in the societies that value it. I will discuss this at more length in a moment, but, as a number of feminist thinkers have argued, eco­ nomic self-sufficiency does little about, or exacerbates, the gender divi­ sion of labor. Women in the United States, for example, find themselves working the famed “second shift” after they engage in paid labor and seem to find themselves engaging in more household labor the more eco­ nomically successful they are (Bertrand, Pan et al. 2013).19

Against Independence Individualism So far, I hope to have shown that no form of normative individualism is conceptually related to feminism (since feminism is opposition to sexist oppression and oppression is a group-afflicting phenomenon) and that intervention based on independence individualism is neither the path to ending sexist oppression nor even the path to actualizing respect for per­ sonhood individualism. The upshot of my argument so far may seem to be that feminists should support individualism in many contexts, particu­ larly Western capitalist ones. In fact, as I suggested in my remarks about the gender division of labor in the West, I think the prospects for independ­ ence individualism as a feminist value are even more limited. To see why, we need to foreground a certain view that the role of normative transna­ tional feminisms is a nonideal, or justice-enhancing, project.20 Nonideal, justice-enhancing projects aim not at envisioning a gender-just world but at attempting to reduce or end gender injustice. Thus, as with all nonideal theoretical concepts (see Sen 2009; Anderson 2010; Mills 2005),

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feminist normative concepts should encourage us to act in ways that reduce injustice. Independence individualism actually gets in the way of struggles to achieve gender justice, in both Western and “other” contexts – or so I want to suggest. The reasons it does so have to do with both care and relationship.

Independence Individualism Worsens Gendered Labor Burdens One reason independence individualism is likely to produce political strategies that fail to reduce women’s oppression stems from the way it individualizes economic responsibility. Part of the independence individ­ ualist ideal is the notion that each person can and should meet their own economic needs. This individualization of responsibility, adopted under the gender-unjust conditions we actually inhabit, is likely to worsen, or do nothing to change, the disadvantageous gendering of labor burdens. As feminists have pointed out for generations, women in most societies are assigned labor that is not only unpaid but also low-status, unseen, or not considered to be labor at all (Davis 1983; Glenn 1992; Waring 1988; Beneria and Sen 1981). The clearest example is the work of caring for dependent people, such as children, the ill, and people with disabilities (Kittay 1999). However, other related tasks, such as cooking – a role that is demanding and cross-culturally intransigent – may also fit the bill (Sen 1990). Some typically gendered but low-status and invisible tasks that may be less known to Northern audiences include the cultivation of food, the collection of fuel (such as firewood and dung) and water, and care of the natural environment (Desai 2002). The low-status character of this labor, which is mostly associated with women, is a source of women’s oppression across many contexts. To acknowledge this does not require committing to the claim that role differentiations are inherently oppressive or that gender roles are crossculturally identical. Instead, it seems clear that imperialism and racism spread oppressive gender divisions of labor and that militarism and neoliberalism contemporarily add to feminized labor burdens. Evelyn Nakano Glenn (1992) shows that the notion of the household as a space of nonlabor has been promoted in the West through the shifting of many forms of household labor from white women onto women of color. The idea that African women were harmed by having to work in the fields or by having to engage in trade reduced the power associated with women’s role in many cases (Mikell 1997; Nzegwu 2006). More contemporarily, neoliberal cuts in social spending on items like childcare and healthcare, and environmental degradation brought about by deregulation of cor­ porations, are often compensated by women’s labor (Desai 2002) and attach new burdens to labor that might otherwise not have resulted in

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oppressive outcomes (see Whyte 2013). As Chandra Mohanty argues, neoliberalism as a transnational economic system continues to produce new forms of gendered and racialized labor (Mohanty 2003). But the gendering of labor burdens will seem to some like a reason to support independence individualism: is the solution to the devaluation of feminized labor not simply to make women independent from men? Two nonideal theoretical considerations can help us see why independ­ ence individualism will not solve the problem of unjust gendered labor burdens. First, normative ideals that are useful under nonideal condi­ tions should be consistent with the limitations of human nature and facts about the world. But the independence individualist ideal assumes some­ thing impossible – that it is possible for all of us to meet our own eco­ nomic needs. As Eva Feder Kittay rightly points out (1999), all human beings require care from others because we are all dependent. A  large chunk of the labor with which women are disproportionately charged, and that causes them to have poorer opportunities and welfare outcomes than men, is ineluctable because human dependency is itself inelucta­ ble. In fact, the popularity of the idea that anyone is capable of meeting their own economic needs over a lifetime seems causally related to the social invisibilization of the labor of marginalized, typically feminized, but often also racialized, others. This is often observed about men’s gains from the oppression of women, but the ability of the affluent Northern woman who is able to work a full-time job outside of the home is typi­ cally subsidized by people of color and immigrants (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007; Salazar Parrenas 2000). Though dependency work is particularly ineluctable, other goods, such as environmental protection, produced by feminized labor are also likely to consistently need to be performed and unlikely to get produced through individual economic self-sufficiency. But an ideal might be unrealistic while still being worth approximat­ ing. A second nonideal strike against individualizing economic responsi­ bility is that attempting to adopt the ideal would likely worsen women’s lot. Because neoliberalism is our contemporary global reality, we do not need to look very far to see what the results of attempting univer­ sal individual economic independence are. One is increased vulnerabil­ ity to poverty and rise in the amount of unpaid labor done by women. The assumption that individuals can be economically self-sufficient has meant economic deregulation and cuts to social spending. The services that are cut through such policies end up being compensated by women’s unrecognized work (see Desai 2002). For example, cuts in healthcare expenditures mean women must spend more energy caring for the sick, and environmental degradation means that women have to travel farther to collect water and fuel. Another effect of neoliberalism on women is what Sylvia Chant has called “the feminization of responsibility and obli­ gation” (see Chant 2008), wherein development interventions increase

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women’s labor burdens by expecting them to do economically recog­ nized labor in addition to feminized labor, without increasing women’s household or social bargaining power. So long as societies embrace inde­ pendence individualism under background conditions where women are disproportionately tasked with labor that the ideal assumes does not need to be performed, women are likely to continue doing the feminized labor without supports, or to find supports for it removed. The fact that the independence individualist ideal does not have any views about gender written into it is besides the point. Nonideal theoreti­ cal considerations call us to evaluate how moral and political ideals do when adopted in this world, not an imagined one. Given existing gender relations, the fact of human dependency, and the fact that much of the relevant labor is not assigned a market value, we can expect the valori­ zation of individual economic self-sufficiency to result in more devalued work from women and their lower status relative to men. None of this means that women do not benefit from incomes of their own or that feminists must reject markets altogether. But it suggests very strongly that societies that successfully end sexist oppression will be ones that visibilize and support dependency work and other forms of feminized labor, rather than ones that expect each individual to support herself.

Independence Individualism Neutralizes the Transition Costs of Feminist Change A second reason independence individualism is an undesirable ideal under gender-unjust conditions has not received much discussion in femi­ nist philosophy. It is that it conceals the transition costs of proposed feminist change. Changes from any set of social conditions to another, the kind of changes that feminism requires (in some cases, tragically), impose costs on those invested in the existing order. Even though genderbased oppression harms women as a group, many of those who benefit from investments in the existing order are individual women. Feminists should care about the costs women have to bear as parts of transitions to greater gender justice for several reasons. Though this is not the place to list them, we can note that strategies for change that ask women to make major well-being sacrifices are unlikely to be effective, that there are moral reasons not to expect women to sacrifice their basic well-being for changes that are risky and long-term, and that transferring the costs of change disproportionately onto vulnerable women when they could be borne by others can itself constitute an injustice. One way Western feminist interventions often go wrong is by ignoring the costs of change. For example, drawing on Homa Hoodfar’s work, Narayan (2002, 426) argues that policies from a pro-Western government that coerced Turk­ ish women into unveiling in the 1930s had harmful and oppressive

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impacts on women of the working classes. Since these women could not be accepted going about in their communities unveiled, they became more likely to stay home. Since it became illegal to hire veiled women in a variety of desirable jobs, they lost out on employment opportunities and faced increased impoverishment. Bracketing the question of whether such a ban would be desirable from a feminist perspective, we can note that the ban was not crafted by people who were interested in avoiding costs for those it was intended to help. Independence individualism is unhelpful in drawing attention to transi­ tion costs for reasons of both form and content. Formally, independence individualism shares a feature with all theoretical ideals; it offers a vision of what the world should look like but no notion of how to get there. It thus says nothing about what the costs of transition to greater justice might be and how to manage them. More troubling than silence, how­ ever, is the fact that the content of independence individualism actively neutralizes transition costs by suggesting that losses to relationships of custom are not losses at all. The idea that such relationships can simultaneously be genuine sources of value for women and be appropriate targets of feminist change may need some explaining. To see how they can be both, we must recognize two facts about how relationships, especially relationships to kin and culture, operate in the world in order to see what is at stake in recom­ mending changes to them. First, such attachments have a nodal quality. They have intrinsic value, but they are also sites of expression of, and have instrumental value for the attainments of, other goods constitutive of well-being and social status. Consider a person’s membership in a reli­ gious grouping. By participating in its practices with its members, she can experience goods such as love, friendship, and artistic and intellectual expression. The religion likely provides some of the meaning-creating goods typical of culture, such as a framework within which to attrib­ ute meaning to, and value or disvalue to, opportunities (see Raz 1988, 307–313; see also Kymlicka 1991). Assuming practices that mark reli­ gious membership exist across domains of life, a person may also experi­ ence goods such as nutrition, play, and education in religiously inflected ways. Declaring one’s membership in the religion may allow access to social status, friendship, and other goods. Second, the nodes that bundle relationships with goods are often tied together by forces that are out of the control of individuals (Narayan 2002) and gender-differentially structured. Narayan illustrates part of the point with an example about Pirzada women who engage in body veil­ ing and seclusion. The women say these practices offer benefits, like the ability to move in public unseen and the social status that comes with being seen as morally pure. The practices also expose them to losses, ranging from being sweaty to having limited access to education. Accord­ ing to Narayan, these women want certain elements of the practices and

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reject others, but they “lack the power to undo the bundle.” A woman who wants not to be sweaty cannot make it the case that nonveiling will communicate superiority to women of other classes and religions. This inability to undo bundles of goods with relationships and affiliations is not specific to “other” women or conditions of oppression; it is a general feature of living in a social world. I want to emphasize that the issue is not merely inability to undo the nodes (this affects all persons living in complex social structures) but rather the frequent gender-differential stakes of maintaining the relation­ ships as they are. Oppressed individuals will generally find their societies structured so that the terms on which they must interact to access benefits are unfair to them. Women in particular are likely to find that access to many goods depends on participation in forms of relationship that render them vulnerable to men, or worse off as a group than similarly situated men. This means that participating in sexist forms of affiliation may be the most genuinely self-interested thing women can do. Many of the cases in the first section involve this kind of situation; women’s existing attach­ ments have sexist elements, but participating in them in their current forms is also women’s best available course of action. Consider women’s nonexit from relationships in which responsibility is feminized, in which their work burdens are greater than men’s, and their bargaining power is low. Women who do not exit are often simply expressing the realistic judgment that their prospects for well-being would be worse without male partners – even as it would be better for women as a group for some different, more egalitarian, type of kinship to exist.21 The upshot – and the tragedy – of this is that feminist change is typi­ cally going to require changes to relationships women are invested in for genuinely self-interested reasons. In other words, strategies for femi­ nist change present women with transition costs. Confronting this reality raises important moral and political questions that are relevant to choices among potential feminist strategies. Among these are questions about who has to bear the costs and whether they accrue disproportionately to vulnerable people, whether the costs to women’s well-being can be offset, and what time horizon feminist change should happen in. To ask any of these questions, we need to be able to see the losses that women stand to incur through changes in the relationships in which they find themselves. Unfortunately, independence individualism encourages the opposite. It asserts that elements of relationships women (or at least “other” women whose relationships are all cast as unchosen) stand to lose as a result of proposed feminist change were never really of value at all – and so that there are no reasons to worry about eliminating them, and that women’s objections to losing them are motivated by confusion or false conscious­ ness forms of adaptive preference.22 Lack of attention to the nodal qual­ ity of relationships under nonideal conditions causes “other” women, to borrow Narayan’s image, to appear as either “prisoners of patriarchy”

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chafing at the bit to escape or dupes who value the oppressive character of relationships for its own sake. Losses to two particular types of interests are especially likely to disap­ pear from the scope of independence individualist analysis: identity inter­ ests (interests women have in the preservation of a cultural grouping) and kinship interests. In many cases, goods experienced through cultural attachments are irreplaceable or extremely costly for the people who inhabit them to replace; as Will Kymlicka puts it, changing one’s cul­ ture is not like changing one’s job (1995, 84). For members of culturally dominated groups, beyond the intrinsic and instrumental value typical of cultural attachments, there are symbolic and community resources for managing and resisting the experience of domination. In societies where members of certain races or cultural groupings are subordinated, being absorbed into majority cultures or Western culture may be impossible and undesirable and place one at risk for subjugation and abuse. For an example of how independence individualism obscures transition costs to identity interests, we can return to the case of family violence interven­ tions for Australian Aboriginal women described earlier. Independence individualist feminists encouraged women to exit the community, seeing cultural attachments as causes of harm to be superseded. Organizations that have recognized women’s identity interests have produced strategies that allowed feminist change while preserving the elements of well-being added by cultural membership. Krushil Watene argues that developing a cultural infrastructure for healing is central to strategies for justice for indigenous people (Watene 2016). Aboriginal groups have sought ways of reducing family violence that simultaneously build up Aboriginal cul­ ture and women’s attachments to it. Aboriginal community organizations in Australia have developed programs for survivors that connect them to services noncoercively through the sharing of stories during crafts, like beading or weaving, and through retreats in culturally significant loca­ tions (Karahasan 2014). But such strategies are unavailable to those who can only see the negative effects of existing relationships with patriarchal elements. A similar point can be made about kinship interests. Strategies for fem­ inist change that propose simply abandoning existing forms of kinship risk worsening women’s lives or recommending changes that women do not see as worth investing in, but if relationships of custom or economic dependence were never worth having in the first place, we cannot see this. An example from Lila Abu-Lughod’s work that criticizes Western feminist interventions can illustrate the ways independence individualism effaces kinship interests. Women often have interests in maintaining their existing kinship relations because families are where women’s work is (imperfectly) recognized, where much of their social status comes from, and where they are most likely to be able to access care when they need it. Abu-Lughod describes an older Bedouin woman named Gateefa, whose

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husband has died, and whose daughters-in-law left the multigenerational household. Abu-Lughod expresses puzzlement when this woman who, at a younger age, stood up to her husband in favor of her own equal rights laments the new generation and reports “you need a man who knows how to rule” (Abu-Lughod 2013, 204). After wondering whether Gateefa is more supportive of patriarchy than she had thought, AbuLughod lands on the explanation that she is nostalgic for the love, care, and mutual support that a multigenerational household would provide – and the status that would come from being an elder woman in such a household. And it is likely true that the best shot for care in old age and social status that Gateefa will have access to in her lifetime is through preservation of the existing kinship structure. Abu-Lughod argues that Western feminist attempts to bring about gender equality often fail to apprehend the realities of women’s lives in societies that value “relationality and mutual concern above individual­ ism, and where gender is closely tied to social power” (Abu-Lughod 2013, 208). But I think the upshot is broader than this; it is not merely in societies that are more communal that women are likely to have their fates bound up in loving and caring attachments and that a failure to understand the value of such attachments can impede feminist politics. Women’s lives across contexts are particularly likely to be affected by changes to kinship forms because of their common roles as dependency workers and in cementing communities through marriage. Strategies for feminist change that refuse to imagine relationships of custom as losses – that is, the types of strategies independence individualism recommends – can increase their vulnerability in unnecessary or morally unacceptable ways. The challenge for feminists in such situations is of course to fig­ ure out how the sexist elements of the relevant kinship forms (includ­ ing, in Gateefa’s case, polygamy without polyandry, lack of household decision-making power and access to income, and unilateral emphasis on sexual purity) can be reformed in ways that minimize costs to the women affected or that make the costs ones actual women are willing to bear.23 But this type of change is impossible from the independence individualist perspective  – which denies that costs to relationships of custom are even costs.

Conclusion: Lessons About the Relationship Between Feminism and Liberalism The independence individualist narrative seems to many to describe the right path to feminist change in the global South. My arguments in this chapter suggest that independence individualism is not even the path to feminist change in the global North. The conceptual relationship between feminism and individualism is tenuous, and the practical results of promoting independence individualism are in tension with feminism.

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More specifically, independence individualist policies exacerbate the gender division of labor and invisibilize costs of feminist change that are borne by women. Though the bulk of my discussion has focused on global South contexts, I conclude by making explicit some of the impli­ cations of my discussion about the relationship between feminism and liberalism. First, and perhaps most obviously, support for independence indi­ vidualism is inconsistent with feminism, even liberal feminism. Though liberal feminism does require support for personhood individualism, dis­ tinguishing personhood individualism and independence individualism is crucial for any feminism that wishes to avoid exacerbating women’s vulnerability or exacerbating the oppressive gender division of labor. Unless the form of individualism that is required for liberal feminism is distinguished from independence individualism, liberal feminism is vul­ nerable to becoming a smokescreen for neoliberal interventions that do nothing about gender inequality. The subset of liberals who treat equal­ izing access to economic self-sufficiency as a feminist imperative miss the fact that those who cannot be economically self-sufficient will need care and that women, and often members of minoritized racial groups, will be socially conscripted into providing it. Liberals who treat relationships of custom as needing to be transcended – as Susan Moller Okin seemed to many to do when she wrote that some women “might be better off if their cultures did not exist”24 – risk imposing unacceptable costs on women who depend on these relationships for access to care. Additionally, in multicultural liberal societies characterized by historical injustice, oppo­ sition to relationships of custom risks not just enacting cultural domina­ tion but denying women important resources for combatting the effects of racial justice in their lives. Second, my analysis here suggests that feminism need not, and per­ haps should not, be thought of as a subspecies of liberalism. One reason for this is that there is no conceptual relationship between personhood individualism and feminism. Feminism is opposition to a certain type of relationship among groups, namely gender-based oppression. Liberals are required to be normative individualists, but they are not required to view sexist oppression as wrong.25 The lack of a conceptual relationship between individualism and feminism suggests that doctrines do not need to take the protection of individual liberty as a central political goal in order to count as feminist. Another reason that feminism need not be thought of as a subspecies of liberalism my analysis suggests is that it is unclear that liberalism pro­ vides sufficient resources for redistributing caring labor and recognizing the harm done to women by eroding their existing relationships. Though feminists directly engaging the liberal tradition, most notably Eva Feder Kittay (1999), have argued for a less oppressive distribution of care, lib­ eral reasons to oppose a refiguring of care relationships abound. After

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all, redistributing care fairly would undoubtedly require restrictions on individual liberty and arguably require reference to a comprehensive doctrine.26 The tendency of many liberals to overlook the importance of relationships seems to stem partly from the individualistic social ontol­ ogy27 that dominates the Western tradition and partly from the tendency of liberals to engage in ideal theorizing – that is, theorizing that does not take into account what the effects of adopting liberal ideals would be. It may of course be possible to imagine a nonideal liberalism that was not committed to an individualistic social ontology but endorsed personhood individualism. But it may also be the case that nonliberal theories can do better at recognizing the value that even oppressive relationships can import into the lives of real-world women. Finally, my analysis here suggests that looking at liberal political phi­ losophy’s role in justifying imperialism – and not just its role in justifying sexism – can serve feminist ends. My criticism of independence individu­ alism dovetails with the existing body of literature on how liberalism, at least in its predominant form, fails women because of unacknowledged androcentrism. At the same time, my criticism highlights ways in which liberal concepts are used to paint the relationships of women in the global South as impediments to their self-realization and to make exploitative forms of labor appear liberatory. I have argued that liberal commitments make it possible to paint relationships of custom as impediments to choice, as well as to paint increased labor burdens as enhancing of it. It is incumbent on advocates of liberal feminism to attend to the relationship between liberal values and imperialist harm to “other” women. Once we recognize the ideological character of the use of liberal language to make interventions that harm and oppress “other” women appear feminist, we will be better able to imagine a transnational feminism that is worthy of the name.

Notes 1. The second section of this chapter is reprinted from Decolonizing Universal­ ism (Oxford 2018). 2. See Wilson (2011) for a discussion of how popular media depictions of women in the global South emphasize work and the need to separate from family and culture. 3. “Global South” refers to the poor living in economically disadvantaged countries. I  use the term “Southern” to refer to poor women from these countries, as well as women in rich countries with origins in the South. I use the term “Western” rather than “Northern” for rich country inhabitants to highlight the ways in which exploitation in the global South is supported by cultural beliefs and images associated with modernity and the European Enlightenment. 4. See Khader (2018, 28–36) for a discussion of these epistemic habits. 5. See Narayan (1997) on how the term “culture” works in Western discourses to perpetuate a “colonial stance” toward the peoples of the global South and

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6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

Serene J. Khader undermines third world feminist struggles. See Wilson (2011) for an example of development discourses that cast women and girls as needing to be liber­ ated from families and cultures. See Batliwala (2007), Cheston and Kuhn (2002), Ibrahim and Alkire (2007), Batliwala and Dhanraj (2007), Karim (2011) and Mayoux (2007) for critical discussions of the evidence on women’s empowerment. See Goodman’s (2017) ethnography for a case where women resist the ero­ sion of communal relationships through microcredit and are seen as “bad” microcredit recipients as a result. hooks later changed her definition of feminism to include all intersecting oppressions. I support the concept of intersectionality but elect not to build intersectional concern into the definition of feminism to avoid defining away the possibility of conflict between women’s gender and race interests. See Khader (2018, 17–18, 37–41) for more extended discussion of this. For an argument that feminism can be the topic of an overlapping consensus addressed to a very different feminist disagreement, see Baehr (2004). For arguments for why the claim that women have chosen to participate in oppressive practices do not validate them, see Chambers (2007) and Khader (2011, 2013). Chambers’s argument focuses on how this argument about chosenness involves a misunderstanding of liberalism. Arguments that feminism is alien to certain cultures because it is “too indi­ vidualistic” often miss the fact that these cultures seem to grant individual status to men but not women. WID has officially been replaced with newer paradigms, including Gender and Development (GAD) and gender mainstreaming, but it is widely argued that GAD in practice has retained the neoliberal focus of the WID paradigm (see Jahan 1996; Chant and Sweetman 2012; Wilson 2015). See Khandelwal (2009) for a discussion of the continuities between contem­ porary Western marriage practices and arranged marriage. Bhabha (1999) calls the idea that the West has transcended traditional “lib­ eralism’s sacred cow.” See Phillips (2007, 100–133) for a discussion of how culture is thought to constrain differently from other identities. I refer to this idealization elsewhere as the “Enlightenment teleological nar­ rative” (see Khader 2018, 5, 25). Though Friedman allows that the value of economic independence is pru­ dential, she argues that women in the global South are in particular need of economic self-sufficiency. I take the needs of women in the global South to be much more context-variant than Friedman suggests. Friedman (who is not an independence individualist) claims that economic independence is valuable because it allows women to wrest some level of control of their lives from men who dominate them; I suggest that economic self-sufficiency often fails to have this effect and that, in some cases, other changes would be more likely to reduce sexist oppression. It may seem that more independence individualism and not less is the solu­ tion to this problem. However, Naila Kabeer (2011) argues that women in cultural contexts where a high value is placed on family membership are able to achieve “divorce within marriage” wherein women renegotiate their household role without exiting the household. See Chant (2008) and Khader (2019) for a discussion of this phenomenon in third-world contexts. I borrow the term “justice-enhancing” from Amartya Sen (2009) and use “nonideal” in Charles Mills’s (2005) sense.

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21. See Sen’s (1990) discussion of cooperative conflicts for an explanation of why it can be self-interested under unjust conditions for women to remain in marriages where their interests and contributions are treated as inferior. 22. See Jaggar (2005), Kandiyoti (1988), and Khader (2011, 2012, 2013) for discussions of the Western feminist tendency to overestimate the extent to which “other” women are motivated by false consciousness. 23. This idea is not incompatible with the idea that radical change can be a femi­ nist strategy; collective action reduces transition costs, and women’s wanting to bear the costs increases their moral acceptability. 24. Though I do not believe it was Okin’s intention to argue that relationships of custom should be rejected, this quotation was unfortunate at best, and many of the responses in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? emphasize it. 25. Of course, many liberal feminists have argued that all liberals should see sex­ ist oppression as wrong (see Nussbaum 2001; Brake 2004; Chambers 2007) but the path from concern about individual rights to intragroup inequality is not clear, especially given the fact that interventions to change these things might violate individual rights. 26. For an argument that dependency concerns can be incorporated into the liberal tradition, see Bhandary (2020). 27. For a sophisticated discussion of the relationship between liberalism and the individualistic social ontology that is often associated with it, see Schwartzman (2006).

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Bhabha, H. (1999). “Liberalism’s Sacred Cow.” In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women, edited by J. Cohen, M. Howard, and M. Nussbaum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bhandary, Asha. 2020. Freedom to Care. New York: Routledge. Blagg, Harry. 2008. Crime, Aboriginality, and the Decolonization of Justice. Annandale, New South Wales: Hawkins Press. Brake, Elizabeth. 2004. “Rawls and Feminism: What Should Feminists Make of Liberal Neutrality?” Journal of Moral Philosophy 1 (3): 293–309. Chambers, Clare. 2007. Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice. Univer­ sity Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Chant, Sylvia. 2008. “The Feminization of Poverty and the Feminization of AntiPoverty Programs.” The Journal of Development Studies 44 (2): 165–197. Chant, S., and C. Sweetman. 2012. “Fixing Women or Fixing the World? ‘Smart Economics’, Efficiency Approaches, and Gender Equality in Development.” Gender and Development 20 (3): 517–529. Cheston, Susy and Lisa Kuhn. 2002. “Empowering Women Through Microfi­ nance.” UNIFEM. Cornwall, A., J. Gideon, and K. Wilson. 2008. “Introduction: Reclaiming Femi­ nism: Gender and Neoliberalism.” IDS Bulletin 39 (6): 1–9. Davis, Angela. 1983. “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework.” In Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage. Desai, Manisha. 2002. “Transnational Solidarity: Women’s Agency, Structural Adjustment, and Globalization.” In Women’s Activism and Globalization, edited by Nancy Naples and Manisha Desai, 15–34. New York: Routledge. Fineman, Martha. 2005. The Autonomy Myth. New York: The New Press. Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon. 1994. “A Genealogy of Dependency.” Signs 19 (2): 309–336. Friedman, Marilyn. 2013. “Independence, Dependence, and the Liberal Sub­ ject.” In Reading Onora O’Neill, edited by Deveaux Archard et al. New York: Routledge. Frye, Marilyn. 1983. “Oppression.” In The Politics of Reality. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1992. “From Servitude to Service Work.” Signs 18 (1): 1–43. Goodman, Rachael. 2017. “Borrowing Money Exchanging Relationships.” World Development 93: 362–373. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierette. 2007. Domestica. Berkley: University of California Press. hooks, bell. 2000. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Cambridge, MA, South End Press. Ibrahim, Solava and Sabina Alkire. 2007. “Agency and Empowerment.” Oxford Development Studies 35 (4): 370–403. Jaggar, Alison. 2005. “Saving Amina: Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dialogue.” Ethics and International Affairs 19 (Fall): 55–75. Jahan, Rounaq. 1996. “The Elusive Agenda.” The Pakistan Development Review 35 (4): 825–834. Kabeer, Naila. 2011. “Between Affiliation and Autonomy: Navigating Pathways of Women’s Empowerment and Gender Justice in Rural Bangladesh.” Devel­ opment and Change 42 (2): 499–528.

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———. 1994. Reversed Realities. New York: Verso. Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2 (3): 274–290. Karahasan, Barbara. 2014. Evaluation report of the Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria’s Early Intervention and Prevention Pro­ gram. Melbourne: Aboriginal Family Violence and Prevention Legal Service. Karim, Lamia. 2011. Microfinance and Its Discontents. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2008. “Demystifying Micro-Credit.” Cultural Dynamics 20 (1): 5–29. Khader, Serene J. 2019. Global Gender Justice and the Feminization of Responsi­ bility. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 5 (2): Article 8. ———.2018. Decolonizing Universalism. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013. “Identifying Adaptive Preferences in Practice: Lessons from Postcolonial Feminisms.” Journal of Global Ethics 9 (3): 311–327. ———. 2012. “Does Theorizing About Adaptive Preferences Deny Women’s Agency?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (4): 302–317. ———. 2011. Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment. New York: Oxford University Press. Khandelwal, Meena. 2009. “Arranging Love.” Signs 34 (3): 583–609. Kittay, Eva. 1999. Love’s Labor. New York: Routledge. Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1991. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mayoux, Linda. 2007. Not Merely Reaching but Empowering Women. ADA Dialogue 37: 35–60. Mayoux, Linda, and Jean-Paul LaCoste. 2005. “Saving for Sustainability? SelfHelp Foundation Zimbabwe.” http://www.genfinance.info. Mikell, Gwendolyn. 1997. “Introduction.” In African Feminism, edited by Gwendolyn Mikell, 1–52. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mills, Charles. 2005. “Ideal Theory as Ideology.” Hypatia 20 (3): 165–184. Mohanty, Chandra. 2003. Feminism Without Borders. Durham: Duke University Press. Molyneux, Maxine. 2009. Conditional Cash Transfers: A Pathway to Empower­ ment. Institute for Development Studies Working Paper, Sussex. Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and ThirdWorld Feminism. New York: Routledge. ———.2002. “Minds of Their Own: Choices, Autonomy, Cultural Practices, and Other Women.” In A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, edited by Louise M. Antony and Charlotte E. Witt. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Women and Human Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Sex and Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nzegwu, Nkiru. 2006. Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture. Albany: SUNY Press. Phillips, Anne. 2007. Multiculturalism without Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Price, Susan. 2015. “Making the World a Better Place by Empowering Women.” Forbes. 18 November  2015. file:///Users/SJKhader/Zotero/storage/CMSB­ JB6X/making-the-world-a-better-place-by-empowering-women-entrepreneurs. html#62fe9efd7e0d. Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Raz, Joseph. 1988. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salazar Parrenas, Rhacel. 2000. “Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor.” Gender and Society 14 (4): 560–580. Schwartzman, Lisa. 2006. Challenging Liberalism. State College: Penn State Press. Sen, Amartya. 1990. “Gender and Cooperative Conflicts.” In Tinker I Persistent Inequalities. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2009. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vaessen, Jos, Anna Rivas, et al. 2014. “The Effects of Microcredit on Women’s Control Over Household Spending in Developing Countries: A  Systematic Review and Meta‐analysis.” Campbell Systematic Reviews 10 (1): 5–184. Waring, Marilyn. 1988. Counting for Nothing. Wellington, New Zealand: Allen Urwin. Watene, Krushil. 2016. “Indigenous Peoples and Justice.” In Theorizing Justice, edited by Krushil Watene and Jay Drydyk, 133–53. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Whyte, Kyle. 2013. “Indigenous Women, Climate Change Impacts, and Collec­ tive Action.” Hypatia 29 (3). Wilson, Kalpana. 2015. “Towards a Radical Reappropriation: Gender, Develop­ ment, and Neoliberal Feminism.” Development and Change 46 (4): 803–832. ———. 2011. “Race, Gender, and Neoliberalism: Challenging Visual Represen­ tations in Development.” Third World Quarterly 32 (2): 315–331.

Part III

Working With Rawls



6

Interpersonal Reciprocity An Antiracist Feminist

Virtue for Liberal Care

Arrangements

Asha Bhandary

Caregiving arrangements in broadly liberal societies lack transparency.1 Structured by the invisibility of people of color, and shrouded in myths about naturally feminine caring dispositions and the independence of white men, the societies where liberalism is endemic have failed to identify how a just society should look when care is provided freely and transparently. Corresponding social norms ascribing caregiving roles by gender and race make material caregiving an intractable locus of social inequality in the absence of theoretical scrutiny and ameliorative norms. Therefore, to remedy these foundational flaws in broadly liberal socie­ ties, liberal theorists should learn from societies where care is explicitly recognized as a vital purpose of social cooperation. By identifying the variety of practices that are in place to secure care for dependent persons in different societies, we can better grasp possibilities for these practices. Care has been placed beyond the lens of justice due to liberalism’s reli­ ance on a division between public and private spheres, paired with the semi-official linking of caregiving to the private family and its encoding as feminine labor.2 However, gender is not the only ethically salient group category with which to evaluate care. In the United States, care arrange­ ments intersect with racialized understandings about whose needs for care are legitimate and who benefits from social esteem for caregiving.3 For instance, when nonfamilial women of color supply caregiving for white families, credit for caregiving may accrue to the white mother rather than to the hands-on caregiver. Race and class also influence how caregiving responsibilities impact the life of women caregivers – if black or brown, the caregiver may be overburdened and undervalued, so that her work to care for others is appropriated by them. Moreover, positive attributions of credit for the white woman may be paired with the view that the woman of color is neglecting her own children.4 Perversely, if the mother employing the woman of color is white, the white mother may be viewed as an ideal of femininity, with her caregiving activities correspondingly praised and highly esteemed. These phenomena illus­ trate how understandings of legitimate needs, and social assignments of responsibility to meet these needs (see Walker 2007), are influenced by

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a country’s history and global distributions of labor (see Gould 2008; Hochschild 2000), including, for the United States, slavery, indigenous peoples’ displacement, and policies surrounding immigration and domes­ tic work. Women do not occupy a uniform social position relative to caregiving. On the contrary, the increased freedom of white women is often dyadi­ cally connected to the increased exploitation of women of color. Because the social position of women of color in Western, broadly liberal, socie­ ties is informed by the invisibility of caregivers, tracking the status of women of color is a way to gauge the level of injustice of a broadly liberal society, generally, as it reflects on the injustice of its caregiving arrangements. Due to the significance of broader patterns of racialized expectations for care, an assessment of the injustice of caregiving arrangements cannot assume that internal familial distributions of care are the only, or pri­ mary, justice-related concern. Therefore, in Bhandary (2020), I include caregiving arrangements in the basic structure in a way that conceptu­ alizes them in their general form, rather than in the form of the family or as any other particular practice for caregiving. In thus modifying the basic structure, I eschew the assumption that the sole caregiving unit is the particular form of the heterosexual Western nuclear family. Moreo­ ver, I  argue that conceptualizations about who provides care and who receives it must be flexible enough to track how different individuals, and individuals as members of varying social groups, fare.5 The resultant theory of distributive justice is the theory of liberal dependency care, and it is Rawlsian in spirit, adopting the original posi­ tion device with selective changes. The Rawlsian idea of the original position defines fairness as a thought experiment that asks what people would agree to, if they were to decide on distributive principles without knowing the social position they would occupy in the resulting society. A  modified Rawlsian form of hypothetical acceptability has theoreti­ cal power to reject oppression because it enables critical distance from what an individual cares about, by encouraging the act of imagining what other people – people occupying different social positions – would find acceptable. Retaining this form of critical distance from our actual preferences is also a way to mitigate the effects of oppression on the preferences of the person who is engaged in the thought experiment (Bhandary 2020).6 However, to better respond to the effects of oppres­ sion at the level of the design of the contract device, I ground the opera­ tion of hypothetical acceptability in the real world, where oppression exists. The resultant theory is what I call “two-level contract theory,” which adds to the first level of theory – the aforementioned Rawlsian original position modified to include the fact that we all need to receive care – a second level of theory, which includes the claim that the phi­ losophers identifying what it is that rational persons would agree to are

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real people, located in a social world with a history. I, then, argue that these real people need to cultivate autonomy skills because the capac­ ity to criticize existing norms and practices is essential when living in a society in which a person is marginalized or subordinated. When people use their autonomy skills to make their voices heard, the resulting social context in which a theorist lives becomes one in which they can have better epistemic standing (Bhandary 2020, 5). Thus, liberal dependency care defends a form of constructivism that includes the idea of hypo­ thetical acceptability but tethers the thought experiment to the world to better address the effects of social inequality on our preferences and on the actual articulation those preferences and values. The outcome is an anti-oppression contract theory. It is from the vantage point of the theory of liberal dependency care that I claim that existing caregiving practices in the United States must be reformed. However, one need not accept the entirety of the theory of liberal dependency care to grant that care practices in the United States must be remedied. Instead, the need for reform depends on only two claims. First, many caregiving practices in the United States are invisible, thereby violating the condition of transparency, and thus, fairness.7 And, second, being assigned a social role in virtue of one’s race, ethnicity, gender, sex, or sexuality cannot be a structuring principle for the basic structure in a just liberal society. This second principle follows from the Rawlsian con­ struction that representatives of parties in the original position are mod­ eled to know they could be anyone when the veil of ignorance is lifted. They also know that people are individuals with a wide range of inter­ ests, abilities, and commitments, and therefore they will not accept an arrangement that is unduly prescriptive about the content of a person’s life’s work. In addition, distributive justice for caregiving must also incor­ porate the facts of moderate scarcity (Bhandary 2016, 44–45) and the complexity of excellent caregiving (Ruddick 1989; Bhandary 2020, 132). One of the consequences of making these domains of labor vis­ ible is that the way of life typical of white men is not the appropriate model for legitimate expectations in an egalitarian society (Bhandary 2020, 86–87).8 Although the theory of liberal dependency care builds on Rawls’s idea of hypothetical acceptability, in this chapter, I rely on a more minimal premise in the form of Rawls’s earlier formulation of the idea of justice as fairness, where he specifies the idea of hypothetical acceptability in relation to the “system of practices”: It is the system of practices which is to be judged, and judged from a general point of view: unless one is prepared to criticize it from the standpoint of a representative man holding some particular office, one has no complaint against it. (Rawls 1958, 169, emphasis added)

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Because Rawls’s early idea of justice is about the system of practices, thereby not relying on the family as the basis for a division between public and private spheres, it is congenial to the program of develop­ ing novel caregiving practices for a just liberal society and to looking to social forms with constructions of practices that differ from those that are dominant in liberal understandings of the institutions that comprise the basic structure of society.

A Learning Framework for Liberalism Liberals working to develop a just basic structure should not remain wed to practices that are implicated in gender and racialized subordination. Instead, we need to consider new practices for caregiving to end the invis­ ibility of the caregiving labor of women of color and immigrant com­ munities. However, in doing so, the way people in broadly Anglo-Saxon societies engage with a range of other cultures and societies should be a process of learning that attempts to avoid the habits of appropriation and acquisition that are linked to Western colonization (Sullivan 2006). Learning in a deferential mode can temper some habits of appropriation. Every existing society utilizes some set of practices to meet their care needs, and there are, correspondingly, many possible lived forms of car­ egiving practices. These arrangements cross public, private, and commer­ cial domains. For example, in the private sphere, gender norms assigning caregiving to girls and women serve as internal organizing principles within families, which then shape expectations about who will care for whom. The private nuclear family is a core caregiving institution in the United States (Fineman 2004), and the idea that women will render care appears in many cultural narratives, norms, and tropes (Meyers 2002). It is therefore unsurprising that literature about gendered inequality in mar­ riage has dominated feminist discussions about care. However, because feminist articulations of liberalism have largely focused on assessments of the internal fairness of the heterosexual, white nuclear family, we need concepts that stand apart from those assumptions to identify and evalu­ ate the range of existing practices that secure the care needs of a society.9 This chapter expands upon the idea of “customary care practices” (Bhandary 2020, 159). The customary care practice is a concept with which to describe the public and private practices that secure care within a given social form, and it is therefore a concept for cross-cultural under­ standings of caregiving arrangements. Customary care practices are com­ prised of (1) principles that specify who is in the right kind of relationship with each another to count as persons in a caring unit, and (2) norms and values that shape expectations within the actual practice, thereby specifying the division of labor within that unit. For instance, customary care practices include marital practices shaping entry conditions and the meaning of the family, such as arranged marriage versus romantic love

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marriage, as well as conceptualizations of family units as nuclear fami­ lies, extended families, or other alternatives. Customary care practices also include more diffuse structuring principles for care such as gendered and racialized norms of care. Finally, customary care practices include explicitly designated institutions of care, such as daycare and elder-care institutions and in-home care, state-provided care, and communes. The customary care practice, when understood to be a subject of justice, directs the political philosopher’s attention to micro-level practices of care in ways that make these practices’ functional role their most salient feature. For instance, for the purpose of assessing the justice of the soci­ ety as it secures the primary goods that are the proper subject of distribu­ tive justice, a particular form of the family, like a nuclear family, may be redescribed as a customary care practice rather than an association for romantic love. Of course, this functional analysis does not supply an exhaustive assessment of the meaning and value of these practices. The customary care practice concept should be used to grasp a wide range of existing and possible practices that serve the functional role of meeting care needs. To assess whether a particular customary care prac­ tice is just requires identifying how care is provided at a micro-level and whether some individuals within the practice are exploited or disadvan­ taged. However, the local assessment is not exhaustive of its standing in relation to justice. Instead, the justice of the practices is informed by widespread patterns that require a bird’s-eye view. For instance, if mem­ bers of a particular racial group are caregivers at much higher rates than other members of other racial groups, that fact is a presumptive indicator of injustice.

Anderson’s Account of Native Systems of Care Kim Anderson is a feminist indigenous historian from whom liberal care theorists should learn because she has written extensively about Native practices in ways that clearly identify how care was provided. Anderson’s analyses of indigenous practices and life employ a feminist framework that is grounded in the value of community well-being. Her writings about indigenous practices and life stages suffuse descriptions of practices with normative content. Correspondingly, my description of Anderson is not an attempt to give a veridical description of practices for any particular Native community during a prescribed time. Instead, my subject of discussion is Anderson’s account of Native practices, and not Native practices themselves. In addition, readers should note that I am not advancing proposals for indigenous communities, nor am I evaluat­ ing Native practices in situ through a Rawlsian lens. Instead, the project of this chapter is to learn from Native caregiving practices as described by Anderson. My concept of customary care practices further frames my interpretation of Anderson’s work.

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Anderson’s account of Native life is structured by the idea that a story “works like an arrow” (2011, 19), which means that the stories are shaped by normative considerations about the future direction of the community. The narrative frames the description of what has happened in a way that also sets a trajectory into the future. Anderson’s stated aim in her book Life Stages and Native Women (2011) is to report on Canadian First Nations’ community practices in ways that build on their sources of power and heal these communities from the violence of colo­ nization,10 which then informs what she includes and excludes from her descriptions. Life Stages and Reciprocity Within a Social System Anderson’s description of the life stages of Native11 women yields a pic­ ture of social arrangements in which each life stage has a purpose. She depicts these life stages with a diagram consisting of a set of concentric circles, in which infants and children are at the center, surrounded by elders, then women, and then men (2011, 99). The idea of life stages is linked to the roles and types of work that community members perform. The resultant patterns of care, which are society-wide distributions that track ascriptive identity groups, may be understood in terms of broadly based trends and patterns by gender, generational status, and community roles. An internal principle that structures the care practices Anderson describes is a principle of reciprocity between youth and elders in which the care takes place within a relationship: One of the most important teachings shared between grandpar­ ents and their grandchildren was the principle of reciprocity in relationships. Youngsters were not simply passive recipients of care and teaching. They were often helpers to their grandparents and were given tasks and responsibilities that facilitated their learning. (Anderson 2011, 73) For instance, oral history participant Gertie explains that her grand­ mother was responsible for the tanning of hides. Gertie’s grandmother would call the children over to stretch the hide, thereby teaching them this vital skill. Like Gertie, Maria pointed out that her great-grandmother super­ vised all manner of chores and tasks, but “most of the time it was us that did the work.” Maria also often acted as a “runner”/helper to her grandmother, and she learned a lot from this experience. (73)

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Children thus learned how to do vital work, which included but was not limited to direct forms of dependency care, where dependency care is the intensive hands-on care without which a person will not survive (Bhandary 2020, 2). Maria said, “In the case of my Cheechum, I was also her eyes and sometimes I chewed her meat for her. Her name for me was Ni cheechee, which means ‘my hand’ ” (Anderson 2011, 74). Making food digest­ ible so that it can nourish an aging person is a form of dependency care because it sustains the basic functions of that person’s life. Thus, the grandchild cared for her grandmother while her grandmother taught her. In addition, the interviews reveal a grandchild-and-grandparent rela­ tionship that was not limited to biological relationships, for the idea of the grandparent extended beyond the biological parents of one’s own biological parents to include many elders within the community. Ander­ son writes that interviewee Elsie had a grandchild-grandparent relation­ ship with many elders “and this meant that as the recipient of their care she was accountable to them” (71). The idea of reciprocity Anderson intimates here encompasses hands-on caregiving and moral development through interpersonal accountability.12 Children learn to be responsible in virtue of being held accountable for their actions by the particular elders who care for them.13 Furthermore, care practices are embedded in the transfer of knowledge, education, and relationships. Anderson writes, “Childcare on the part of grandparents suited the labour require­ ments of land-based societies, but this arrangement was also important because it facilitated traditional education” (72). Therefore, it appears from Anderson’s descriptions that dependency care was rarely rendered or received as an isolated good  – for identity and accountability were also cultivated through relational interactions. Dependency care and the material and emotional caregiving people supply others who are not in stages of physical dependency, such as support to a friend during a dif­ ficult time, are prime moments for strengthening relationships and teach­ ing lessons based on a community’s norms and values. The intertwined system of childcare and eldercare described by Ander­ son includes a form of reciprocity that is linked to specific people in one’s life. It also includes the expectation that everyone should contribute to society, where the contributions and particular responsibilities are struc­ tured by particular practices. Finally, care needs are met through prac­ tices that entwine care with other types of necessary labor. Function, Meaning, and Justification According to Anderson, the meaning and purpose of practices of care are not simply about “looking after the health of the infant, they were also

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about life force” (63). Children are considered joyful members of the community. She writes, If we look at the Anishinaabe teachings of Mosom Danny, Basil Johnston, and others, it becomes clear that infants and toddlers were seen as bringing hope, happiness, and a sense of potential to families and communities. The teachings tell us that new life was cherished, and at one time pregnant women, infants, and toddlers were nur­ tured and cared for in that spirit. (2011, 38). In addition, community members care for new mothers and pregnant women in recognition of their vital roles caring for infants. In addition, the continuation of a line of ancestors has metaphysical importance serv­ ing as a component of the justification of the practice. Consequently, it is plausible to claim that one of the Native justifications to care for children is based on the value of the family line. I am not claiming, here, that the function can be separated from mean­ ing in the Native community, but rather that the function some of the practices provide is a caregiving function, among other things, and liberal societies should look to them as a possibly better way to arrange care. Although some may argue that doing so commits the error of incom­ mensurability (Welch 2013, 205), individuals with multiple cultural backgrounds frequently combine aspects of different cultures in ways that may be intimately tied to our very identities. A society structured by Rawlsian liberalism that learns from other cultures will not necessarily import the meanings that are associated with these forms of care. Instead, the meanings that are connected to practices in liberal societies will blend with new practices of care.

Varieties of Reciprocity: Interpersonal Reciprocity, Rawlsian Reciprocity, Exchange Reciprocity, and Doulia Interpersonal Reciprocity The kind of reciprocity intimated by these practices is a familiar one in non-Anglo-American contexts. I think it is also familiar to people from nonaffluent socioeconomic contexts. In fact, it may be foreign only to the social milieu shaped by affluence and white racial privilege.14 Nonetheless, because there may be features of the value of reciprocity in relationships that are unique to the societies Anderson describes, I pro­ pose a new term, “interpersonal reciprocity,” to designate a virtue that is necessary for liberal societies seeking to be antiracist and antisexist. Interpersonal reciprocity is relationally specific and bound to a particular other.15 The impulse toward reciprocity is motivated by a kind of regard

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for the other. This animating regard is contrasted, therefore, with the desire to get something from the other person. Nor is it akin to grateful­ ness. Instead, it is a form of recognition of the other as a particular and concrete other person, and it arises from real interactions with them. In addition to this particular form of bounded responsibility, which is a value that requires the cultivation of a virtue to be employed in the appropriate contexts, interpersonal reciprocity should also serve as a structuring principle that becomes a social norm.16 As a social norm, interpersonal reciprocity has a generalized nature because it is a value a person brings into their interactions with others. The value must be taught and, as it is taught, it becomes instantiated as a virtue in real peo­ ple in communities. What interpersonal reciprocity is not, though, is an impartial and a broadly based disposition to care for everyone. When a person develops an understanding of the value of interpersonal reciprocity, that person develops a disposition to contribute as a response to receiving generosity and care from others. The person with interper­ sonal reciprocity thinks, “How can I  return the care that was shown to me?” As discussed previously, practices that cultivate interpersonal reciprocity counteract the processes by which some people’s subjectivi­ ties become deeply affected by privilege and entitlement. In our current sexist/racist world, people who are privileged by these dimensions expe­ rience a world that is oriented to their needs as a social world toward which they owe no debts of gratitude. Practices that cultivate interper­ sonal reciprocity simultaneously cultivate what I call other-directedness, which I have defined as “an attitudinal, motivational, and perceptual ori­ entation toward the needs and perspective of another person” (Bhandary 2020, 77). It is a disposition to be oriented toward the needs of others through observation, attention, and activity. Moreover, interpersonal reciprocity is better than a generally aimed account of kindness, for it requires something of the person with whom one interacts and thereby prevents exploitation within instances of par­ ticular relationships. When taught the value of interpersonal reciprocity, the person seeks to return care to the people who have cared for them or to care for people in their community who occupy the relevant position. For instance, a child who is taught the importance of community, with a strong community of elders, should take on that role as they get older, as well. A student in a discipline like philosophy who receives strong men­ torship should not simply continue to absorb the mentorship from others but should identify what it is to be a strong mentor at their stage in life. Nonetheless, interpersonal reciprocity is not a universal and impartial responsibility, like the value of being caring and kind toward all other people. In the next sections, I explain how Rawlsian reciprocity operates at a different level, thereby expanding on my discussion of the Rawlsian back­ ground for the theory of liberal dependency care. I then further clarify

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the nature of interpersonal reciprocity by contrasting it with exchange reciprocity. Finally, I differentiate interpersonal reciprocity from Kittay’s foundational thinking about reciprocity and dependency care. Rawlsian Reciprocity For Rawls, the idea of reciprocity is simply the idea of hypothetical acceptability, which requires that parties in the original position give rea­ sons that are acceptable to others (Rawls 2001, 6–7). It is not reciprocity indexed to particular individuals. Therefore, it is a concept for evaluat­ ing the fairness of a system of social cooperation as a whole, but it does not stipulate precisely how the benefits and burdens should be distrib­ uted within a practice. Rather than requiring that each practice be fair when evaluated on its own, a person’s role in the distribution of benefits and burdens should be acceptable to deliberators in the original position when evaluated as part of the overall scheme. Correspondingly, Rawls’s account of reciprocity is not a guide to individual behavior within reallife situations and social practices. The theory of liberal dependency care, with its adapted Rawlsian device for hypothetical acceptability, retains the Rawlsian idea that reciprocity applies to the overarching scheme, where doing so requires a method of abstraction (Bhandary 2020, 58). In contrast, interpersonal reciprocity plays a different role, which is that it applies to real people in the real world, and it is a virtue. This virtue is therefore a part of the theory of liberal dependency care’s nonideal theory, whereas my neo-Rawlsian account of reciprocity has the abstract nature of ideal theory, and is what I  call “nonideological ideal theory” (Bhandary 2017, 5) – ideal theory that seeks to undo sexist and racist ideologies. Exchange Reciprocity Unlike both interpersonal reciprocity and Rawlsian reciprocity, exchange reciprocity is the idea that I will do things for you because you did things for me. Let us call pure exchange reciprocity a kind of reciprocity in which the idea of exchange guides the agents’ motives. In pure exchange reciprocity, the motivation to participate in the exchange is a selfinterested one. A trade or an actual contract are examples of this kind of exchange. In contrast, when a person possesses the virtue of interpersonal reci­ procity, they are moved to act as a response to the giving of the other. Practices that are embedded in communities teach children this idea from a young age, where children learn the practice of interpersonal reciproc­ ity from the existing people in the community.17 For example, if a child sees their parent respecting and caring for grandparents and sees the

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grandparents caring for the parent, that child learns that this is an appro­ priate pattern of behavior. Therefore, whereas exchange reciprocity is a conditional calculation, interpersonal reciprocity is a disposition to feel and respond in a cer­ tain way as a kind of respect that is also particularized and particular to the people with whom one lives in community. Consequently, exchange reciprocity is a case-by-case transaction based on an instrumental regard for the other, whereas interpersonal reciprocity is more stable and it is grounded in respect. Interpersonal reciprocity is a virtue that serves as part of the response to the questions: which norms and values should govern our lived engagement with one another with respect to our needs for care? And how should those norms and values be embedded in broader practices and arrangements? When we explore which customary care practices could be part of a just society, we must attempt to predict the experience of living in the society with these new practices, and of evaluating how they will shape the tenor of interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal reciprocity is a partial answer to the prediction that exploitation and inequality can occur in a wide range of societies, and this virtue can be a safeguard against extreme exploitation. Kittay’s Principle of Doulia and Reciprocity-In-Connection Eva Kittay has proposed that a just society will satisfy the principle of doulia, which requires that the value of receiving care and giving care would be publicly acknowledged; that the burdens and cost incurred by doing the work of caring for dependents would not fall to the dependency worker alone; and that the commitment to preserving caring relations would be assumed by the society. (Kittay 1999, 109) In fact, doulia is an end-state principle requiring that dependency rela­ tions be fulfilled in a way that does not disadvantage either dependency worker or dependent charge.18 On the desirability of this state of affairs, Kittay and I agree. I depart from Kittay, though, on the idea that embedded dependencies, or “nested dependencies,” do not give rise to an obligation to recipro­ cate. For Kittay, as well, doulia brings with it no moral requirements on vulnerable parties to reciprocate to the person who has cared for them.19 Although there are some situations in which it is appropriate to sus­ pend a moral requirement for reciprocation, such as, for instance, in the case of profound cognitive disabilities, in the vast majority of cases, the

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receipt of care should give rise to a desire to care for the caregiver as well or to – in some other way – communicate appreciation through a genuine attempt at reciprocation. My theory of liberal dependency care insists on the relevance of con­ tributing to the benefits and burdens of social cooperation, and the social norm variant of interpersonal reciprocity encodes this value. For exam­ ple, the social norm of interpersonal reciprocity is instantiated when a younger person cares for an elder while the elder teaches that child, and this is present in Anderson’s theorizing about her community, and identi­ fying that elders are known to contribute knowledge to the community, such that their physical dependency is only one aspect of their status as community members. It follows, therefore, that on Anderson’s account, most elders are not entirely dependent. On my view, too, it is crucial that knowledge count as a social contribution, thereby solidifying the social value of elders. The expectation to reciprocate is a safeguard against sedimented behaviors with varying degrees of entitlement. Consider, for instance, an affluent woman who seeks help with her children in a time of duress from a neighbor. She should experience herself as “on the hook” to do some­ thing for that neighbor, which might merely have value as the expression of gratitude. She should also consider herself positively disposed to help someone else in an emergency. A passive verbal statement to the effect that her neighbors are very kind is inadequate. If a theory of justice bases entitlement solely on need, the theory will permit free-riders without even identifying that they are free-riders. Peo­ ple who are socioeconomically affluent or socially privileged in racial terms have behaviors that result from becoming shaped by interactions with others who are solicitous toward their wants. My account of inter­ personal reciprocity secures at least some resources with which to guard against such a scenario. The recipient of care should almost always feel a responsibility to reciprocate in a way that they are able. Interpersonal reciprocity is an ameliorative virtue for racist/sexist hierarchical liberal Western societies in part because it undermines the required deference that is a feature of white-black racism, for instance.20

Customary Care Practices Although the virtue of interpersonal reciprocity is one of the necessary changes for a just society, it is not sufficient to secure justice. In addition to this virtue, new customary care practices are needed. Recall that cus­ tomary care practices include social norms that delineate both (1) who is in a care relationship with each other and (2) the division of labor within that unit. Interpersonal reciprocity has the latter role by ruling out the social position of a person who receives care without reciprocating it.

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Interpersonal reciprocity can arise more easily and naturally in the context of caregiving practices that are designed to include long-term relationships, which yields a prima facie reason to prefer those practices. In addition, though, liberal societies need to balance the demands of socially necessary labor  – which includes care  – with autonomy of its members (see Bhandary 2020, 160 for the trimetric analysis). Extended families are a possible customary care practice for a liberally just society (Bhandary 2018). However, the design of extended families has customar­ ily included internal hierarchies and inequalities that treat some members of the family as nonclaimants. Therefore, if extended families are to serve as customary care practices within a broadly liberal contractarian soci­ ety, they also must pass an internal test of fairness. Moreover, even the extended family can result in what I call the “remainder of care,” which are the care needs left unmet in a society even with universal adherence to its customary care practices (Bhandary 2020, 134–136). The form of minimal marriage Elizabeth Brake proposes can be under­ stood as a customary care practice that respects individuality in the domain of family decisions while also recognizing the need to secure care and the value of some form of family. Brake describes minimal marriage as “marital pluralism or disestablishment. . . . [A] liberal state can set no principled restrictions on the sex or number of spouses and the nature or purpose of their relationships, except that they be caring relationships” (2012, 158). Minimal marriage broadens the definition of marriage and the legal benefits that result from it. Minimal marriage can help to secure caregiving relationships and to meet a society’s remainder of care needs, but it will likely result in departures from the multigenerational ties that characterize a more traditional family model. A third promising model exists in the form of the local organizations that allow people to volunteer when they are in their 50s or 60s to help older adults in their 80s and 90s with groceries and other errands such that they log in time and then can call upon that time when they age, in turn. This kind of organization is built on an inverted exchange reci­ procity, according to which a person contributes now so that they can receive later, and it thereby requires a foundation of trust because the person contributes first, before receiving anything. It is another valuable contribution to support aging in one’s own home, but it does not include the idea of long-term relationships and knowledge transfer that were included in Anderson’s model of Native care systems.21 Fourth, a Care Corps, a program aimed at providing caregiving to people who need it, is another alternative. According to the version of this program proposed by Brake, the program would focus on bringing caring relationships into homes for people who are housebound, such as the elderly and people with some kinds of disabilities.22 It could oper­ ate like the Peace Corps or Teach for America and thereby increase the

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prestige of caring activities. For Brake, the state “could employ or coor­ dinate” home visits, which could be funded through taxation or, if that is politically infeasible, could be volunteer based or connected to workstudy programs, although voluntary care would likely perpetuate care as gendered labor (2017, 144–145). Policy design must balance the dual desiderata of meeting vital care needs and respecting individual autonomy, and therefore policy mak­ ers should evaluate the consequences that would result from each of the following possible models of a Care Corps. The first possible model is a mandatory year of service after high school that encompasses a broad range of options, among which youth could select, for which the care corps could be one option. This first model would avoid perpetuat­ ing racialized patterns of caregiving, but its mandatory nature poses a prima facie challenge to autonomy. A second possible option would be to encourage and incentivize a year of service through, for instance, loan forgiveness programs for college, but this option must be evaluated for its possibility of perpetuating economic and racial subordination. Third, the care corps might simply be one of the well-known possibilities for high school graduates to pursue prior to college or another vocational training path. For any of these models, there must be some mechanisms in place to prevent the care corps from falling into a form of indentured servitude on behalf of the required caregiver, and one of the necessary conditions to avoid that outcome is that any particular caregiver must be able to exit their particular post, even if the vulnerable person needs to have another person supply care for them. If a care corps for elder care were to become a customary care prac­ tice in a society, it would teach the members of a society that we have a responsibility to care for others in tandem with the cultivation of aware­ ness that we will receive this care later in life, thereby supporting a gener­ alized form of the social norm variant of interpersonal reciprocity. However, the model of a care corps, on its own, will not secure out­ comes that guard against racism, sexism, and their many effects on the individual psyche. Consider the following scenario: An elderly white woman, Bitsy, receives care from an intelligent Asian man, Adrian, a recent graduate from an elite university. His care corps assignment is to care for her daily for one year, which he does during a year prior to beginning a graduate degree. Bitsy finds it quite congenial to receive care from him, and it amplifies her sense that she is one who is cared for and whose needs are deferred to. Gradually, a tyrannical nature emerges in her, during these private interactions. But she justifies her petty tyranny, refusing to include it in her sense of self, instead nursing a sense of injury over what has felt like a lifetime of delaying her own needs while raising her own

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children, two boys, and with the sense that it really is about time she became the one who receives care. Her tyranny includes outbursts when the tea he makes for her is too cold, as well as the withholding of appreciation. Her fragility and acute sense of her own interper­ sonal wounds and injuries weigh heavily on her, which she expresses through frequent sighs. The problem with this care practice is that it capitulates widespread patterns of racial privilege. When one person has the charter to be ori­ ented toward the needs of another, such that they must epistemically lean toward them (see Bartky 1990 on the gendered “epistemic lean” and its relationship to deference displays), while the other person keeps their own needs in view at all times, the recipient of attention is likely to develop an amplified sense of entitlement. But let us now modify this example with the virtue of interpersonal reciprocity. With interpersonal reciprocity, Bitsy will notice how Adrian is doing, where the purpose and scope of her noticing will not be limited to questions about what he can do for her. When he tells her his father is ill, she responds with sympathy to discuss his father’s well-being. Therefore, although the relationship remains fundamentally asymmetrical due to her physical dependence on him, interpersonal reciprocity bends it back toward equality. This exam­ ple illustrates that revising who is in caregiving relationships or practices (the first aspect of the customary care practice) is not sufficient to secure a just society in the absence of changes to individual attitudes, disposition, virtues, and relational interactions. Instead, it is vital that societies also cultivate the virtue of interper­ sonal reciprocity to serve as a safeguard against the human propensity to create new arrangements that offer unjustified advantages to some at the cost of the subordination of others. The endeavor of attempting to locate new practices should include responses to the nonideal realities of human behavior, such as abusive relationships and cruel people at any age. For these reasons, no one family member should be required to care for an aging family member, even if they are operating within an extended family model, and supportive connections for people who are mistreated or psychologically abused as caregiver or recipient of care are vital. One form of support is to reduce the isolation of the caregiver and care-recipient dyad, for the ugly underside of human nature thrives when hidden from the eyes of others. Finally, the elder should not be viewed solely as a recipient of care, for they can contribute knowledge and work about a range of activities in life. The elder’s contributions should be rec­ ognized without erasing significant physical and material requirements of care, for to erase them is to make the dependency worker’s labor invis­ ible and to thereby exploit them. There will be varying degrees of need and contributions, and therefore theorizing about dependency and need

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must take on suitably specific approaches. Therefore, the role that a care corps should play in the design of liberal caregiving institutions is to sup­ plement a range of other practices that may include extended familial systems of care as well as community-based systems of care that build on pre-existing relationships.23 Liberal societies should consider extended family networks, minimal marriage, organizations for care trading in the long term, and a care corps as additional caregiving practices to augment and partially supplant the nuclear family model. The idea that some care should occur within the community should be promoted in tandem with the elimination of the subordination and abuse of caregivers. Proposals for institutional design must keep in view the fact that the care that occurs in the private sphere has always had signifi­ cant overlap with gender oppression. Therefore good institutional design must avoid gender oppression and oppressive social roles. The designers of institutions must also be cognizant of the fact that oppressive social roles can emerge slowly and become masked by alternative narratives that justify or naturalize the arrangement. Jurisdictions as the Terrain of Individual Choice Liberal theory that seeks to learn from caregiving arrangements in other societies should differentiate between a gendered division of labor and different domains of authority and jurisdictions. A  jurisdiction, which is a domain of authority, also delineates the practical domain for an indi­ vidual’s autonomy. Cautioning readers against the Western reading that gendered division of spheres is necessarily a form of patriarchy, Anderson describes a system of gendered jurisdictions, whereby gender roles and life stage responsibilities are linked to authority over different spheres of activi­ ties.24 She explains an indigenous idea of gender as a matter of comple­ mentarity that does not require strict conformity with a gendered binary. Furthermore, gendered differences were not linked to female subordination but, instead, to the authority of elder women.25 Moreover, according to Anderson’s account of jurisdictions, exceptions are allowed to the social roles defined by different jurisdictions. For example, there have always been Native women who act as warriors. In this way, a valve for the expression of individuality seems to be present in the Native societies Anderson describes. Liberals should conceptualize jurisdictions as the practical domain for activity choice. That our options in life are informed by socially recog­ nized possibilities is uncontroversial (Raz 1986; Kymlicka 1989). Visions of just societies – where a just society must be just with respect to care – will be intertwined with other features of the system of social coopera­ tion that together constitute a social form, or form of life. It follows that we exercise autonomy in a social environment with some constraints, where the constraints are informed by what is strictly necessary for survival and the culturally variable meanings of our actions.

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Therefore, there will always be some constraints on our activities, but these constraints should not be arbitrary, nor should they be asserted unfairly. Constraints will be informed, as well, by the degree of necessity of the activities required for the functioning of a society and for the survival of its members. If, for example, people live off the land without access to other resources, then many forms of labor will share the strict necessity that characterizes dependency care – defined by the relative immediacy of the harm that befalls the dependent charge if the caregiver does not render care within a suitable time frame. In economies and systems of social cooperation like the non-tribal United States, necessary activities include those related to the food supply, dependency care, and medi­ cal care. However, the complexity and interconnected nature of global economies means there may be more latitude for individual choice for any one person, despite the fact that the goods these activities provide remain necessary. Is Interpersonal Reciprocity an Appropriate Virtue for a Society Like the Dominant Society of the United States? Ceteris paribus, it is good when social practices related to children cul­ tivate character, teach the skills of practical life, and meet care needs at the same time. However, meeting these plural goals may not be feasible in social forms with capitalist economies that are highly globalized and characterized by frequent mobility. In these social forms, it will be a chal­ lenge to delimit the scope of a community as well as to keep extended family members in close geographic proximity. Moreover, when caregiv­ ing is one among few in-person interactions included in these economies, the idea that caregiving should take place in the context of other forms of work is also more difficult to apply to these economies. In Western liberal societies with capitalist economies, many commodi­ ties are produced far from the people who use them. When our lives occur among the passage of mass-produced commodities traveling great distances, it is more challenging to enact personally reciprocal relation­ ships. In contrast, the Native communities in Canada that Anderson describes were smaller and land-based, features hospitable to an arrange­ ment that entwines care work with other forms of labor and knowledge transfer. Because interpersonal reciprocity may have more traction in smaller communities, this may be one reason to defend the value of small communities and decreased global mobility.

Conclusion I have argued that broadly liberal societies should look beyond a few dominant cultural traditions to seek models of caregiving practices that

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are transparent. John Rawls’s early conceptualization of justice as the acceptability of the entire system of practices is a fitting cornerstone for liberalism that devises new practices for care. When these practices become embedded in a society in ways that shape and enliven our under­ standings of self and others, they become “customary care practices.” By making needs and contributions for care more specific, customary care practices respond to more specific notions of vulnerability and dependence rather than the idea of generalized neediness. A lesson liberal care theory should embrace from Kim Anderson’s work is that social arrangements need not rely solely on the middle-aged adult generation as caregivers. Vulnerable persons in need of care can also contribute as they are able. An elderly person with limited mobility can tell stories to small children, teach later generations the details of their profession, and impart knowledge of specific skills for life. A middle-sized child can do housework, such as folding laundry and making weekend lunches. Even a preschool-aged child can set the table for dinner. When people learn the virtue of interpersonal reciprocity, one of the things they learn is what they should not do – they should not receive care and generosity from others without reciprocating in some way. A person who has this virtue can avoid damaging others through his entitlement. Although the community basis for interpersonal reciprocity may be rare in the white cultures that still hold a dominant position in the United States, it is present in many other societies and within a number of com­ munities within the United States. This virtue should be taught in Western liberal societies as a way of making genuine the commitment to equality, and it can be taught even in the absence of further changes to customary care practices. For instance, parents can teach the virtue of interpersonal reciprocity to their children by teaching them accountability to others and skills for self-care. They can also make explicit that the child has these responsibilities in relation to everyone, including a paid caregiver. When the child has this virtue, they will demonstrate interpersonal reciprocity to a nanny by thanking the nanny and acting respectfully toward them and acting in ways that recognize the nanny is a person, by, for instance, maintaining a low voice if the nanny has a headache on a particular day. A child- and elder-care system structured by the value of interpersonal reciprocity can meet some of the remainder of care needs in liberal soci­ eties and in ways that foster a sense of identity and belonging.26 The liberally just society should include a combination of customary care practices, where these practices may include extended families to sustain multigenerational connections, a care corps, and some additional profes­ sional paid care. When these practices become “customary,” they will be viable options for a wide range of individuals.27 Ultimately, a liberal society that meets its care needs must remain perpetually vigilant about

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gendered and racialized patterns of entitlement to receive care. The virtue of interpersonal reciprocity is one crucial way to counteract the human tendency to dominate in the opaque domains where care occurs.28

Notes 1. I use the term “broadly liberal” to describe social forms where liberal politi­ cal theory originates and informs its members’ self-understandings. My description of these social forms as “broadly liberal” is not an evaluation that they in fact satisfy liberal principles. 2. See Held (2006). 3. See Fraser (1983) for a critical account of legitimate needs and Bhandary (2020, 92) for the claim that legitimate needs are system-relative. 4. See Patricia Hill Collins’s (2000, 72) account of the mammy as a “controlling image” in the lives of Black women. 5. The “arrow of care map” serves this functional and abstract purpose (Bhandary 2020, 61). 6. On contract theory’s potential for feminism, see also Hampton (2002), Baehr (2004), and Cudd (2006). 7. See Annette Baier’s (1994) requirement that the account books must be open as well as Margaret Urban Walker’s (2007) articulation of transparency as a moral foundation for social practices. 8. See also Mills (2017) and Lebron (2013) for antiracist liberalisms engaging with Rawls. 9. For additional approaches to care that forego the assumption that the family is necessarily the core caregiving unit, see Tamara Metz’s (2010) argument that the state should confer legal status to all “intimate caregiving unions” rather than to marriages and Elizabeth Brake’s (2012) arguments for “mini­ mal marriage.” See also Martha Fineman (2004), who clearly identified the family’s functional role as provider of care. 10. The violence has not ended. On ongoing violence against Native peoples, see Anderson, Campbell, and Belcourt, eds. (2018). On resistance in mothering, see Marsden (2014). 11. Anderson uses the term “Native women” as a broad category. She writes, about her sources, “this book is based on medicines that I  have dug up through listening to the oral histories of Michif (Metis), Nehiyawak (Cree), and Anishinaabek (Ojibway and Salteaux) elders” (2011, 3). 12. For important work on the concept of reciprocity in Native philosophy in relation to feminism, see Welch (2013) and Mayer (2007). 13. Shame may play an important motivating role for moral development, as well. I  am indebted to Jacki Thompson Rand for pointing out to me the important role of shaming, in forms that are “gentle, often with humor” in certain Native communities, where children are shamed by elders for wrong­ doing. According to Rand, It’s a look or a rather minimal verbal cue. It depends on the circumstances. It might mean being on the receiving end of a ‘talking lesson.’ The point is that the concept of shame exists in our communities. It’s a consequence of poor behavior. (email communication 20 May 2020) I cannot fully explore here the role of moral emotions and their connection to interpersonal reciprocity, but I find it highly plausible that the constructive

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14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

Asha Bhandary concept of shame Rand describes could motivate children to develop the virtue of interpersonal reciprocity. I am indebted to Dobin Choi for pointing out that reciprocity is also a core Confucian idea, as established in the Analects 15:24 and 4:15 (Ni 2017). See Benhabib (1985) on the distinction between a generalized and a concrete other. Here, I adopt Elizabeth Anderson’s definition of a social norm as “a standard of behavior shared by a social group, commonly understood by its members as authoritative or obligatory for them” (Anderson 2000, 170). The virtue of interpersonal reciprocity, on its own, does not include a basis for rejecting the obligations that result from unsolicited and unwanted gifts. However, as a virtue, interpersonal reciprocity should be exercised in appropriate contexts, and the agent who possesses this virtue should discern when what appears to be the generosity of another is the initiation of an embroilment. The particular person with whom one interacts matters, where it is valuable to have knowledge of them beyond the specific action. In earlier work (Bhandary 2010), I evaluated Rawlsian reciprocity in relation to Eva Kittay’s alternative accounts of nested dependencies and doulia. Kittay rejects exchange reciprocity in favor of “nested dependencies,” which is the idea that the mother is dependent on others because she is caring for a vulnerable baby. She explains an alternative to exchange reci­ procity as “reciprocity-in-connection” (1999, 67–68), which is illustrated by the idea that a daughter (D) should care for her mother (M) because her mother (M) cared for her mother (G). Interpersonal reciprocity may share features with Kittay’s concept of reciprocity in connection in that both of them can include standard exchange reciprocity, but they are not strictly limited to it. See Mills (1998, 77) on racialized required deference. See TRAIL of Johnson County (https://trailofjohnsoncounty.org/) as a model based on exchange reciprocity within a group that does not involve the rela­ tionships or moral authority between youth and elders that characterize the kind of interpersonal reciprocity occurring within the practices Anderson describes. Martha Nussbaum, too, encourages the use of a national youth service for care work (2006, 213). My proposal may be contrasted with the view that care should be moved from the private realm to the public realm (see Tong 2014; Tronto 2005). On the colonial origins of Western ideas of masculinity, see Morgensen (2015). The following passage gives us a summary of the culture and social system that she describes in her book Life Stages and Native Women: What I have provided for the reader are glimpses and threads of a world in which identity and belonging are fostered and nurtured in childhood; where women had authorities that were rooted in cultures that valued and respected equity; and in which “old ladies” ruled. (2011, 19)

26. For an account of identity investments in caregiving arrangements, see Bhandary (2020, 186). On identity and Native womanhood, see Anderson (2016). 27. See Bhandary (2018) for an autonomy-based analysis of the normative dimensions of opting out of culturally customary practices.

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28. For valuable comments on a written early version of this chapter, I  thank Elizabeth Brake, Amy Baehr, and Richard Fumerton. I  am grateful to the University of Iowa philosophy graduate students in my seminars for their thoughtful engagement with this chapter, and to probing comments and questions from my colleagues and an interdisciplinary audience at the March 2020 UI Philosophy Colloquium.

Bibliography Anderson, Elizabeth S. 2000. “Beyond Homo Economicus: New Develop­ ments in Theories of Social Norms.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 29: 170–200. Anderson, Kim. 2016. A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Woman­ hood. 2nd ed. Toronto: Women’s Press. ———. 2011. Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teaching and Story Med­ icine. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Anderson, Kim, Maria Campbell, and Christi Belcourt, eds. 2018. Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Baehr, Amy R. 2004. “Feminist Politics and Feminist Pluralism: Can We Do Feminist Political Theory Without Theories of Gender?” Journal of Political Philosophy 12: 411–436. Baier, Annette. 1994. Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Har­ vard University Press. Bartky, Sandra. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenol­ ogy of Oppression. New York: Routledge. Benhabib, Seyla. 1985. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The KohlbergGilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory.” Praxis 5 (4): 402–424. Bhandary, Asha. 2020. Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture. New York: Routledge. ———. 2018. “Arranged Marriage: Could It Contribute to Justice?” The Journal of Political Philosophy 28 (2): 193–215. ———. 2017. “The Arrow of Care Map: Abstract Care in Ideal Theory.” Femi­ nist Philosophical Quarterly 3 (4): 1–27. ———. 2016. “Liberal Dependency Care.” Journal of Philosophical Research 41: 43–68. ———. 2010. “Dependency in Justice: Can Rawlsian Liberalism Accommodate Kittay’s Dependency Critique?” Hypatia 25 (1): 140–156. Brake, Elizabeth. 2017. “Fair Care: Elder Care and Distributive Justice.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (2): 132–151. ———. 2012. Minimizing Marriage. New York: Oxford University Press. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Cudd, Ann. 2006. Analyzing Oppression. New York: Oxford University Press. Fineman, Martha. 2004. The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency. New York: The New Press. Fraser, Nancy. 1983. “Women, Welfare, and the Politics of Need Interpretation.” Hypatia 2 (1): 103–121.

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Gould, Carol C. 2008. “Recognition in Redistribution: Care and Diversity in Global Justice.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 46: 91–103. Hampton, Jean. 2002. “Feminist Contractarianism.” In A Mind of One’s Own, edited by Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt, 227–256. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. New York: Oxford University Press. Hochschild,  Arlie. 2000. “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value.” In On the Edge: Living With Global Capitalism, edited by A. Giddens and W. Hutton, 130–146. London: Jonathan Cape. Kittay, Eva. 1999. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependence. New York: Routledge. Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lebron, Christopher J. 2013. The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time. New York: Oxford University Press. Marsden, Dawn. 2014. “Indigenous Principles for Single Mothering.” In Moth­ ers of Nations: Indigenous Mothering as Global Resistance, Reclaiming and Recovery, edited by D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Kim Anderson. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. Mayer, Lorraine F. 2007. “A Return to Reciprocity.” Hypatia: 22 (3): 22–42. Metz, Tamara. 2010. Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for Their Divorce. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Meyers, Diana Tietjens. 2002. Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery and Women’s Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mills, Charles W. 2017. Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Lib­ eralism. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1998. Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Morgensen, Scott L. 2015. Indigenous Men and Masculinities. Edited by Rob­ ert Alexander Innes and Kim Anderson. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Ni, Peimin. 2017. Understanding the Analects of Confucius: A New Transla­ tion of Lunyu With Annotations. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A  Restatement. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press. ———. 1958. “Justice as Fairness.” The Philosophical Review 67 (2): 164–194. Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press. Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press. Sullivan, Shannon. 2006. Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Tong, Rosemary. 2014. “Vulnerability and Aging in the Context of Care.” In Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy, edited by Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, and Susan Dodds. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Tronto, Joan. 2005. “Care as the Work of Citizens.” In Women and Citizenship, edited by Marilyn Friedman. New York: Oxford University Press. Walker, Margaret Urban. 2007. Moral Understandings. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Welch, Shay. 2013. “Radical-cum-Relational: Bridging Native Individual Auton­ omy and Feminist Ethics.” Philosophical Topics 41 (2): 203–223.

7

Moral Desert, Rawls’s Justice as Fairness, and the Gendered Division of Labor Cynthia A. Stark

The gendered division of labor as it exists in liberal democracies1 is unjust. By gendered division of labor (GDL), I  mean the social arrangement wherein women provide a disproportionate amount of unpaid domestic care work, relative to men, regardless of whether they also labor outside of the home (Folbre 2008, 107–108; Gornick and Meyers 2009, 3–16; Robeyns 2012, 164–168; Hirschmann 2016, 658; Watson and Hartley 2018, 189–191). By care work I mean the meeting of the needs of one person by another person where face­ to-face interaction between carer and cared for is a crucial element of the overall activity and where the need is of such a nature that it cannot possibly be met by the person in need herself. (Bubeck 1995, 127) Care work, as I am understanding it, then, involves caring for depend­ ents.2 The GDL is unjust because it is contrary to the following principle of reciprocity, which serves as a minimum criterion of distributive justice: those who contribute to a scheme of social cooperation are owed a fitting share of the social product (Rawls 1996, 16–17; Rawls 2001a, 6, 49). Those providing care work in current actual arrangements are not given an appropriate share of the social product: their work is exten­ sive, demanding, and vital to society, yet they receive no income of their own for their work, they must forgo opportunities for paid work, and their work is often invisible and, when visible, not prestigious (Bryson 2007, 43); indeed, their work is sometimes seen as not work at all but rather as leisure or an activity that cannot be work because it is its own reward (White 2003, 109–110; Folbre 2008, 99–101). The work of car­ ers is not confined to shifts but rather takes place day and night, week­ days and weekends, including when families are on holiday from the breadwinner(s)’s paid work. Further, care workers often must relinquish the social power and influence that accompanies prestigious work and they have insufficient social support (in the way of, e.g., parental leave or government/employer subsidized child and elder care) to allow them

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to minimize their losses of opportunity and/or power (Okin 1989, 136; Crompton 2007, 228–229).3 My main objective in what follows is to show that there is no place for an institutionalized GDL in Rawls’s theory of justice. The basic structure of society may not be arranged so that it induces men to do public work and women to do domestic caring work. This is because, I claim, such an arrangement, insofar as it is founded upon on doctrine of prescriptive natural sex differences, invokes an ideal of sex-specific moral desert. But precepts of moral desert, Rawls says, are incompatible with justice as fairness. My case depends on an interpretation of Rawls’s remarks about desert that challenges the received view. Outlining that interpretation is my second objective. The third is to describe what the basic structure might look like in the absence of an institutionalized GDL and explain why such an arrangement is demanded by what Rawls calls a “property­ owning democracy.”

An Outline of Justice as Fairness Justice as fairness offers principles of distributive justice for governing the basic structure of a liberal democratic society. The basic structure includes such institutions as the government, the market, and the fam­ ily (Rawls 1971, 7; Lloyd 1994; Okin 1994; Rawls 2001a, 162–168; Neufeld 2009; Cohen 1997). The principles are justified by appeal to hypothetical consent: just principles are those that idealized agents delib­ erating in idealized circumstances would choose (Rawls 1971, 17–21). In justice as fairness, the choosers are unaware of their native abili­ ties, social starting position, and conception of the good (Rawls 1971, 136–140). They are mutually disinterested, perfectly rational, and desire terms of cooperation that allow them to exercise their two moral pow­ ers: their capacity for a conception of the good and their capacity for a sense of justice (Rawls 1971, 142–145). They aim to devise principles to distribute what Rawls calls “primary social goods.” These include rights, liberties, opportunities, powers, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect (Rawls 1971, 90–95). The principles that would be cho­ sen, Rawls argues, are, first, a principle of equal liberty and, second, a principle stating under what conditions inequalities in wealth and income are just. Wealth inequalities are just so long as there exists substantive equality of opportunity and so long as the inequalities benefit everyone and at the same time maximally benefit the least wealthy, compared to other unequal arrangements. This second constraint on wealth inequality is called “the difference principle” (Rawls 1971, 60–64). These principles are just, Rawls says, because they are chosen in circumstances that are fair (Rawls 1971, 136). Rawls’s theory rests on a presumption in favor of wealth equality – inequalities must be justified. The difference principle, which dictates

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which inequalities are permitted, presupposes that an equal division of wealth may not be Pareto efficient (Rawls 1971, 67–69).4 In other words, it might be possible to increase everyone’s share of wealth if inequalities are permitted as these might incentivize people to do certain types of work, for example, jobs that are especially challenging (Cohen 2008, 27–86). When people undertake these activities, the argument goes, the economy is more productive and hence the social pie is larger. Typically, those able to garner higher wages in a market arrangement are those with scarce talents. So, those able to garner higher wages are either those who have an uncommon natural ability – for instance, a beautiful singing voice – or those who have means to gain specialized training  – for instance, a graduate education. Natural talents and family wealth, then, are advantages. For Rawls, however, these factors are “morally arbitrary,” which is to say that they should not bear upon the issue of what share of goods one is owed, and so their influence on people’s life prospects should be minimized (Rawls 1971, 72–75). The difference principle minimizes the influence of scarce talents on individuals’ life prospects by allowing the uncommonly talented to have more wealth than others only when their having more increases everyone’s wealth and maximizes the wealth of the least wealthy (compared, again, to other unequal arrangements, such as laissez-faire). This approach, Rawls says, treats scarce talents as a com­ mon asset (Rawls 1971, 101). A society governed by the principles of justice as fairness, Rawls says, would not be a welfare state. Rather it would be either a propertyowning democracy (POD) or a liberal socialist regime (Rawls 2001a, 133–140; Thomas 2017, 178–205, 216–253; O’Neill and Williamson 2012, 1–14). Which of these two regimes would be best in practice should be determined by the historical circumstances of particular socie­ ties (Rawls 2001a, 139). Rawls discusses in detail only the first of these, contrasting it with welfare state capitalism (WSC).5 There is essentially one main difference between these two regime types, which has significant ramifications (O’Neill and Williamson 2012, 3–5). The difference is that POD is dedicated to a wide distribution in ownership of both physical and human capital – that is, in the possession of natural resources, means of production, and training. Under WSC, by contrast, capital is concentrated in the hands of few and the worst excesses of the free market are mitigated by a tax and transfer system ensuring a decent minimum standard of living. POD, then, prevents a small group from controlling the economy and, indirectly, politics. The ramifications are as follows. First, welfare dependency and its stigma are essentially eliminated. All citizens are equipped with sufficient productive means so as to not depend on the state or charities.6 Under WSC, there is widespread economic inequality and there tends to develop a disenfranchised underclass whose members are chronically dependent

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on the state’s welfare programs. The least advantaged under POD are not, as they are in WSC, seen as objects of compassion or pity but rather as fellow citizens who are owed reciprocity for doing their full share (Rawls 2001a, 140). Second, because capital is widely dispersed and eco­ nomic inequality minimized, POD, unlike WSC, ensures the fair value of the political liberties – citizens are genuinely equal in their opportunity to hold public office and to affect the outcome of elections (Rawls 2001a, 141). Third, substantive equality of opportunity is guaranteed under POD, but not under WSC. In the latter, the powerful wealthy are able to hoard opportunities for themselves and their descendants and ensure that safeguards for formal equality of opportunity are not converted into policies of substantive equality of opportunity. This, too, contributes to the existence of an underclass of people who lack the means to escape poverty (Rawls 2001a, 138).

Rawls on Desert The received view of Rawls on desert is that he believes there is no “pre­ institutional” or “pre-justicial” notion of desert and that, therefore, desert has no role to play in assessing the design of political institutions (Scanlon 1986 188–189; Scheffler 2001, 173–196; Lister 2017, 54–59). On this interpretation, Rawls is making a claim about the concept of desert. He is arguing that desert cannot ground principles of distributive justice because what share of the social product people deserve can, as a conceptual matter, be ascertained only within already existing political arrangements. This is because desert bases, in matters of distribution, must be institutionally determined: what share one deserves cannot be established without reference to, for example, principles governing labor or property. I believe the received view is mistaken. Rawls’s remarks about desert are much less ambitious: they are primarily meant to forestall a certain misinterpretation of the difference principle that takes it to be a princi­ ple of moral desert in disguise.7 Why is Rawls worried that the reader might make such a mistake about the difference principle? There are two reasons, one historical and one relating to the content of the principle. The historical reason is this: In the mid-twentieth century, defenders of laissez-faire disagreed as to whether that system should be justified by appeal to desert. Some proponents saw the marginal productivity theory of wages8 as a theory of justice that assigns to each the share of the social product that he deserves: each person has a desert claim to the wage she or he can garner in the market with her or his particular skills (Lister 2017, 50–53). Proponents of the desert justification of laissez-faire did not necessarily regard the desert basis – one’s labor – as a moral virtue: their aim was to answer the socialist charge that workers under capitalism

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are robbed of the fruits of their labor. Nevertheless, the idea that exerting oneself through labor is a moral virtue was common in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: it is implied in the socialist critique of the idle rich and the social Darwinists’ condemnation of the poor, whom they regarded as indolent (White 2003, 54; Fleischacker 2004, 86–94). This history may be behind Rawls’s assertion that “[t]here is a tendency for common sense to propose that incomes and wealth, and the good things in life generally, should be distributed according to moral desert” and to worry that this tendency might cause readers to misunderstand his view (Rawls 1971, 310). That some might see the difference principle as a principle of desert due to its content has to do with the idea that inequalities should benefit everyone (and in particular the worst-off). Rawls worries that the prin­ ciple might be seen as rewarding those with scarce talents for using their talents in ways that benefit their fellow citizens (especially the worst-off), where their doing so is judged virtuous. On this reading, the uncom­ monly talented morally deserve the greater wealth permitted them by the difference principle. To deflect the anticipated misinterpretation of his view, Rawls makes three points. The first is methodological: principles of moral desert would not be chosen, Rawls says, in the original position. The second is concep­ tual: the difference principle, Rawls explains, provides no desert basis for differential shares of wealth. The third is substantive: the “common sense precepts of justice” that would arise under justice as fairness would not reward moral virtue because any precept rewarding moral virtue, Rawls claims, would conflict with the ideals of justice as fairness. There are two reasons that principles of moral desert would not be chosen in the original position. The first is that the veil of ignorance pre­ vents the parties from determining candidate desert bases: views about which virtues should ground a principle of moral desert (effort? inge­ nuity?) are aspects of individuals’ conceptions of the good, which are concealed from them in the original position. Second, even if the parties could establish a desert basis, they would still not choose a principle of moral desert. This is because they want to pursue their individual concep­ tions of the good and hence desire an institutional framework designed for that purpose, which is incompatible with the purpose of rewarding moral virtue. It follows that the difference principle is not a principle of moral desert because the original position is incapable of generating a principle of that type. Rawls’s argument that the difference principle does not provide a desert basis for wealth inequality is as follows. The claim to a larger share of wealth possessed by those with scarce talents, Rawls says, is not grounded in some property the talented possess, which it must be if it is to qualify as a desert claim; persons can be said to deserve something

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only on the basis of something about them (Feinberg 1970, 58). Rather, this claim is grounded in the fact that their having a larger share benefits everyone. In other words, under the difference principle, what entitles those with scarce talents to more wealth is not that they use their talents to benefit everyone, and thereby exhibit virtue, but rather that their get­ ting more wealth for using their talents benefits everyone. Hence, Rawls says, the uncommonly talented may legitimately expect to be paid more under justice as fairness, but they do not morally deserve to be paid more (Rawls 1971, 310–311). Rawls’s third point against seeing his view as a theory of moral desert concerns not the difference principle per se, but, as I stated earlier, the “common sense precepts of justice.” These are the various local norms of justice that would emerge under the difference principle (Rawls 1971, 303–310). They are too specific to serve as principles governing the basic structure, Rawls says. Nevertheless, they are appropriate to and would arise within institutions and practices internal to that structure (Anderson forthcoming, 2017). Roughly the same precepts, Rawls says, would be generated by different liberal conceptions of justice, although different conceptions will weight them differently (Rawls 1971, 306; Krouse and McPherson 1988, 92). These precepts include such ideas as “to each according to his effort,” “to each according to his contribu­ tion,” “to each according to his training,” “to each according to his need,” and so on. Rawls wishes to dispel the idea that moral desert might be introduced into his theory via the precepts of justice. Therefore, he asserts: “none of the precepts of justice aims at rewarding virtue” (Rawls 1971, 311).9 To explain why, he makes two arguments. First, he examines precepts that might seem like norms of moral desert and shows that they in fact are not. Second, he argues that precepts rewarding moral virtue are incom­ patible with the ideals of justice as fairness. To make the first case, Rawls focuses on the precepts of contribution and of effort. Consider the first of these. One might think that this precept dictates that those who contribute more to a scheme of social cooperation deserve a greater share of its product. However, this is not the case. Under justice as fairness, Rawls says, the principle of marginal productivity, proposed, as we saw earlier, by some economists as a general desert-based principle of distributive justice, in fact fulfills the precept of contribution. Under this principle, workers are paid the full market value of their labor, which depends largely on the scarcity of their talents. This practice is fair, Rawls says, because it expresses the traditional idea that people have a right of property in the fruits of their labor (Rawls 1971, 308). To think that the wage differentials resulting from this practice track moral desert commits one, Rawls says, to the absurd view that a person’s virtuousness increases or decreases whenever there are changes in her or his abilities or in the

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demand for them (Rawls 1971, 311). Moreover, people’s abilities, which are determined by a combination of nature and initial social position, cannot serve as a moral desert basis for wage differentials because they are – Rawls has established earlier10 – arbitrary from a moral point of view. Morally arbitrary factors cannot serve as moral desert bases. Now consider the precept of effort. Though it might seem as though conscientious effort is a moral virtue, in fact, what effort a person is able to make depends in large part upon natural capabilities. “The better endowed are more likely, other things equal, to strive conscientiously,” Rawls says, “and there seems to be no way to discount for their greater good fortune” (Rawls 1971, 312). So, effort does not, at the end of the day, qualify as a virtue; it is more akin to a natural asset. Therefore, prac­ tices that allocate goods in proportion to people’s efforts – for instance, paying higher wages for strenuous jobs – do not thereby reward moral virtue (Rawls 1971, 306). The second reason that no precepts of moral desert would emerge under justice as fairness is that such precepts would in fact demand a flatly equal division of goods, which is incompatible with other aspects of justice as fairness, such as the difference principle and the precept of con­ tribution. Rawls’s reasoning is as follows. A society governed by justice as fairness is, Rawls stipulates, a well-ordered society. A  well-ordered society is one in which, among other things, all citizens have a sense of justice and so desire to comply with the rules. Citizens’ virtue, or moral worth, on this picture consists in their exercising this sense of justice. It follows that all citizens, in a society governed by justice as fairness, are equal in virtue. So, precepts of moral desert would demand an equal division of goods. “To each according to his moral virtue” would in fact produce equality. However, justice as fairness does not endorse equality; it allows, for example, the inequalities in wages that result from giv­ ing workers the marginal product of their labor. It follows that precepts of moral desert would be contrary to the inequality in wealth allowed by justice as fairness, so they would not arise under that system (Rawls 1971, 312).

Gender Essentialism and Moral Desert The GDL has historically been justified  – and indeed continues to be justified today – by the idea that women and men have different natures and those natures are such that women are well-suited for the domestic sphere (where care work, among other tasks, takes place) and men for the public sphere of government, commerce, manufacturing, and the military (Cashdan 1998, 214; White 2003, 109; Browne 2006, 148–150; Croson and Gneezy 2009 467; Colarelli, Spranger, and Hechanova 2006, 167; Hakim 2007; Baron-Cohen 2007). These different natures also signal a

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sex hierarchy (Aristotle 1977, 20–30; Rousseau 1977, 42–47; Goldberg 1977, 196–204). Women are viewed as inferior to men insofar as their capabilities are confined to family support and nurturing. Moreover, his­ torically, this sex hierarchy has been malleable in the sense that it has adapted to other social hierarchies. So, for instance, although enslaved women in the United States often did domestic work in the slaveowner’s home, they also worked the fields alongside enslaved men. Likewise, during the Industrial Revolution, immigrant women worked long hours doing arduous mill work. What women were largely excluded from – for­ mally until the 1970s in the United States – were relatively high-status, high-paying jobs outside of the home, including such things as the trades, the professions, and academia (Crompton 2007, 229). The natural differences argument for the GDL goes like this: because women are naturally better at domestic tasks – in particular care work – and men naturally better at business, politics, war, and the like, women should do, and should be encouraged, indeed, coerced, to do, domestic work (Mill 1977, 57).11 Men should do, and be encouraged to do, public work. In some cases, the “should” in this argument is understood pru­ dentially: work is done more efficiently when people do what they are good at (Trebilcot 1977, 127–128). This argument makes little sense, however, because it generalizes to an argument against freedom of occu­ pational choice. Few who support the GDL on efficiency grounds are disturbed by men choosing occupations that are poorly aligned with their native abilities. Typically, the “should” in this argument is understood morally: women (and men) ought morally, and hence should be encouraged, to confine themselves to what they are naturally inclined to do. Many have observed that this line of reasoning contains flaws in its internal logic: it is quite mysterious as to why people morally ought to do, and need to be encouraged to do, what they will do anyway, given that it is in their natures to do it (Mill 1977, 57; Antony 1988, 65). Surely such oughts and encouragements are superfluous. If the mystery is solved by claim­ ing that natures are not completely deterministic – that people can act against their natures – then the appeal to natures is superfluous: the view reduces to the claim that women should do domestic work, and indeed should be coerced to do so by institutional design, whether driven by their natures to do it or not (Trebilcot 1977, 126; Antony 1988, 65). What might justify such coercion? One possibility is the alleged fact that women (and men) who act against their natures are committing a moral wrong (Antony 1988, 65). The idea that people morally should do what it is in their natures to do turns out, then, to be a prescription to refrain from acting against their natures (Antony 1988, 65).12 Our sex-specific natures, then, are simultaneously descriptive and (morally) prescriptive (Pierce 1977, 131–136; Rousseau 1977, 43, 45). This idea

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may be what explains the fact that aspects of people’s alleged sex-specific natures are often referred to as virtues (Antony 1988, 66). Courage, com­ petitiveness, and acumen – the allegedly natural traits of men that enable them to perform well in the public domain – are conceived of as mascu­ line virtues. Men who fail to display these traits are judged morally defi­ cient. Likewise, the allegedly natural traits that enable women to perform well in the domestic sphere – empathy, nurturance, responsiveness – are thought of as feminine virtues. Women who fail to display these traits are likewise considered morally deficient. Society should be organized, the reasoning goes, so that people are channeled into occupations and activi­ ties that correspond to their sex-specific virtues. As we saw earlier, Rawls argues that no precepts of moral desert would arise within a basic structure governed by his two principles. It follows from this, I claim, that an enforced division of labor based on the doc­ trine of natural sex differences described earlier would not likely arise within that basic structure. This is because to assign education and work on the basis of people’s sex-specific virtues is to invoke an ideal of moral desert: it is to reward people with opportunities for particular types of work for displaying and for cultivating their particular, sex-specific vir­ tues. The idea is that men have a moral desert claim to opportunities for paid work in the public realm due to possessing the competitive vir­ tues necessary to perform well in that domain and women have a moral desert claim to opportunities for caring work in the domestic realm due to possessing the caring virtues necessary to perform well in that domain. Moreover, women lack a moral desert claim to public work. To claim a priori that women are “unfit,” due to their natures, for public work is to say that they do not deserve such work given their feminine natures/ virtues, which they are under a moral obligation to cultivate. Indeed, the justification for withholding opportunities, by means of social design, for women (and men) to do work judged contrary to their natures is that it encourages them to fulfill their moral obligation to refrain from acting against their natures. This justificatory story is ruled out by justice as fairness because that system precludes any institutions or practices within the basic structure from rewarding moral virtue: people may not be given opportunities based upon their moral virtue, nor can they be encouraged by social institutions to cultivate moral virtue. My argument just discussed assumes that Rawls’s principle of fair equal­ ity of opportunity is compatible with a fairly extensive GDL. That princi­ ple demands that those with the same talents and willingness to use them have the same chance at various offices and positions (Rawls 1971, 73). It therefore demands that similarly talented and/or motivated people have the same access to education to develop their talents and requires that employers hire people on the basis of qualifications alone. The principle of fair equality of opportunity governs the basic structure as a whole and does not govern particular practices within the basic structure or

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particular ideologies circulating within the background culture of soci­ ety. It is these practices and ideologies, however, that primarily influence people’s ideas about the following sorts of things: which types of work are prestigious or lowly; which types of people deserve which types of work; what attitudes toward laboring are morally worthy; what attitudes toward motherhood or fatherhood on the part of workers are morally worthy; what makes someone a good worker, boss, employer, mother, or father; which types of people are capable of being good workers, bosses, employers, or parents; and how different types of people should interpret their own talents and make choices about cultivating and using them (MacDonald 2009). So, although the principle of fair equality of opportunity demands that men and women have the same educational opportunities, it does not prevent them from, for instance, judging domestic work less valuable than paid work or from seeing mothers, but not fathers, with careers as neglecting their children. Hence, that principle cannot by itself prevent the GDL from taking hold within a society. The presence or absence of particular “common sense precepts of justice,” however, can do this, because those precepts govern more local practices and institutions and therefore influence people’s ideas about, for example, the nature and value of work, motherhood, domesticity, and so on.

A Gender-Just Basic Structure In the absence of an institutionalized GDL, we can surmise that the basic structure would look something like this: first, girls’ and boys’ educations would be equal in ways that go beyond the demands of fair equality of opportunity. Boys and girls would not merely expe­ rience similar curricula but also equal treatment in the hallways and on the playground. Moreover, they would have access to the same, or similar, extracurricular activities, including sports. Second, jobs would not be designed on the assumption that the worker has a wife who cares for young children, older disabled children, and/or aging parents (Boushey 2016, 5–11). Third, the public world of work would not be regarded and treated as a male domain, in which women are essentially interlopers or mere helpmeets; women would not be seen as usurping jobs that men deserve due to their role as breadwinner. Hence women’s capabilities and authority in that domain would be fully recognized. This means that sexual harassment, discursive injustice, and epistemic injustice on the job would be uncommon (Kukla 2014; Fricker 2007). Fourth, women would not be paid less as group than men (Crompton 2007, 229). Fifth, women would not be channeled into care-oriented paid occupations or discouraged by public institutions, such as schools, from doing paid work. Likewise, men would not be discouraged from doing paid or unpaid care labor.

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How would this arrangement of the public domain affect the GDL in the home? Naturally not all families would consist of a man and a woman and their offspring. So, some families would avoid the GDL in virtue of their structure. However, families consisting of a man and a woman and their offspring would be permitted to divide care labor according to their own conceptions of the good. So, couples who affirm some ver­ sion of the doctrine of natural sex differences described earlier would be free to abide by it (Rawls 2001b, 599). This follows from Rawls’s claim that individuals’ personal choices are not governed by the principles of justice as fairness (Cohen 1997). Nevertheless, couples’ choices about the division of labor in their households would be influenced by the fact that social institutions would be prohibited from enforcing or sustaining, either directly or indirectly, the notion that men and women should be assigned different types of work. The following three features of a gender-just basic structure would affect how people divide labor within the household: the fact that formal education would not encourage women to do care work nor discourage men from doing it, the fact that men as a group would not earn more than women as group, and the fact that jobs would not be structured on the assumption that the worker has few caregiving responsibilities. The first of these might weaken, though surely would not eliminate, the grip of the ideology of natural sex differences and its prescriptions. Some men and women would, therefore, feel less moral pressure to make traditional choices about how to distribute caring labor in their private lives. The second of these features – no disparity in income between women and men as groups – would do two things: first, it would alleviate the economic pressure to forgo the woman’s job that is currently exerted on straight couples who want a one-breadwinner family structure. Second, it would lessen the economic incentive for women to take work leave available to new parents. The third of these factors – the assumption that workers have few caregiving duties – would also do two things. First, it would make women less willing to accept an inequitable division of care labor in the home and men less inclined to expect it. This is because insti­ tutionalizing the assumption that workers have caring responsibilities (even though some in fact do not) would make care work more socially visible and hence more socially vaunted. This, in turn, would help break the cycle whereby low-status individuals, that is, women, are assigned care work and such work retains its low status because it is done by lowstatus individuals. Unfastening care work from gender hierarchy would remove its stigma, encouraging men to share in it and women to insist that they share in it. (This would, in turn, probably damage that very hierarchy.) Second, eliminating the assumption that the worker has no caring responsibilities would reduce the amount and the difficulty of unpaid care work required of parents. This would diminish conflicts over who

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in the household is to be assigned that work, at least to the extent that men would be less motivated to take advantage of their social permis­ sion to shirk. A decrease in caring work (or in its demandingness) would result from removing this assumption because, as Okin points out, the assumption ramifies to affect many aspects of the basic structure. It “lies behind the hours and locations of paid work and political activity, the location and types of housing, the hours and vacations of schools, and the (lack of) provision of child care” (Okin 2005, 244). Imagine that the school day matched the work day, there was onsite day care at the workplace, and people preferred smaller homes close to their workplace, instead of large suburban homes, because private space for children to play was not as important. The time and effort spent caring for children, including getting them to and from school and then getting them to their various activities, or appointments, would decrease. At the same time, parents could be sure that their children are receiving excellent care, for those children would be in the hands of trained professionals. Further, they would have the comfort of being near their babies and toddlers and would have regular breaks to visit them or (in the case of [nonadopting] mothers) to nurse them. Surely the resulting decrease in stress, effort, and logistical challenges associated with caring for children would make men less inclined to exercise the privilege they currently have to be excused from it.

Care Work and Property-Owning Democracy “Since property-owning democracy,” Rawls says, aims for full equality of women, it must include arrangements to achieve that. If a basic, if not the main, cause of women’s inequality is their greater share in the bearing, nurturing, and caring for chil­ dren in the traditional division of labor within the family, steps need to be taken either to equalize their share or compensate them for it. (Rawls 2001a, 167) These steps, as we saw earlier, cannot be to mandate a particular divi­ sion of labor within the family because the standards of justice appropri­ ate for the internal workings of associations (labor unions, universities, churches, families) are determined by those associations’ particular char­ acters, aims, and purposes (Rawls 2001a, 11). What I have sketched pre­ viously is an account of the basic structure that would either generate rough gender equality in the division of care work, in both the economy and the home, or ensure that any gender-specific inequalities in that division, and any associated gender-based disadvantages, are genuinely voluntary. This result is achieved primarily by removing incentives for women to choose care-related employment and for families to allocate

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more care work to women, in particular mothers.13 This arrangement of the basic structure is, I claimed, likely to result from Rawls’s explicit exclusion of standards of moral desert, which prevents the entrenchment within the basic structure of prescriptions emanating from the doctrine of natural sex difference.14 I contend that the gender-just basic structure that I have described is in fact demanded by the norms of POD, and so my account is consistent with Rawls’s endorsement of that system. Under POD, recall, physical and human capital are widely dispersed, rather than possessed by a small, elite group, and economic inequality is minimized ex ante. An exten­ sive social safety net is therefore unnecessary, and all participants in the economy can regard their contributions as worthwhile and are viewed by others with respect, whether they are cleaning hotel rooms or writing computer code. Under this arrangement, as noted earlier, all citizens have, first, ade­ quate means to support themselves and their dependents. In order for all citizens to have such means, women must have such means. So, individual women must be given, and have control over, whatever physical capital is guaranteed to citizens, such as a means for self-sufficiency. Furthermore, women must be equipped with marketable training. These two demands require the equality in public education described earlier: in school, girls must be presumed to be fully capable of, and entitled, to own capital and to engage in paid employment that reflects their preferences, rather than a prescribed gender role. Second, under POD, the value of the political liberties, Rawls says, is the same for all citizens. For the value of women’s political liberties to be the same as the value of men’s, men cannot have inordinate power as a group to influence elections or to run for public office. Hence women as a group must be roughly equal to men as a group in both social status and wealth. This requires the policies alluded to in the earlier discussion: equal pay for equal work, high-quality on-site childcare, parental leave that is available to both men and women, a better match between school hours and work hours, and so on. Finally, according to Rawls, POD guarantees substantive equality of opportunity; as we saw previously it is not sufficient, on his view, for all who are qualified to have legal access to various offices and positions. Rather, people need equal access to the education necessary to become qualified for those offices and positions. Rawls is concerned that in a class-stratified society, many talented and/or ambitious lower-class indi­ viduals will be effectively excluded from high-paying or otherwise desir­ able careers, for they cannot afford the training and will tend to imagine such careers as beyond their reach. POD’s wide distribution of human and physical capital militates against this stratification. As I  noted earlier, the presence of substantive equality of opportu­ nity with respect to class is compatible with a rather extensive GDL.

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However, this GDL, as we have seen, prevents women from having equal opportunities with men. It thus allows many talented and/or ambitious women to be effectively excluded from high-paying or otherwise desir­ able careers. While some may be able to afford the training, they will tend to see those careers as incompatible with their aspirations to have a family and will adjust their sights accordingly (Okin 1989, 142–146). Furthermore, when women do achieve such careers, their extra care labor frequently threatens their job performance and requires them to sacrifice career goals. Hence, in order for women to have genuine equal­ ity of opportunity with men, the GDL must be removed from all aspects of society within the legitimate purview of the precepts of justice. Hence, POD requires that removal, which in turn requires the education and employment policies I enumerated earlier.

Summary I have argued, first, that justice as fairness requires eliminating the GDL to the extent that is entrenched within the basic structure and to the extent that it is justified by the doctrine of natural sex differences. This conclusion follows, I have claimed, from Rawls’s argument that precepts of moral desert are incompatible with the ideals of justice as fairness: no precepts of justice that would arise under justice as fairness, for regulat­ ing various features of the basic structure, would reward moral virtue. It follows that no precepts of justice would reward men and women for exhibiting or cultivating their alleged sex-specific virtues by confining, formally or informally, their opportunities for employment, education, and so on to those that correspond to those virtues. I have argued, sec­ ond, that Rawls’s vision of POD suggests that such a system would be devoid of an institutionalized GDL, given that in a POD all citizens – men and women – possess adequate means to support themselves and their dependents, enjoy the fair value of the political liberties, and have sub­ stantive equality of opportunity.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Amy R. Baehr and Asha Bhandary for their helpful feed­ back on earlier versions of this chapter.

Notes 1. This is not to imply that division is just in other societies; I confine my dis­ cussion to these societies because the Rawlsian framework I will deploy is designed for those societies. 2. Domestic work that is not care work (such as housework) raises different issues of justice as does care work that women provide to nondependent men. See White (2003, 108–113) and Bartky (1990, 99–119).

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3. In characterizing the injustice of the GDL, I am understanding it to be con­ trary to distributive justice broadly construed. For a critique of this approach, see Schouten (2016). 4. A Pareto efficient distribution is one in which it is not possible to make any­ one better off without making someone worse off. 5. He focuses on POD because it is less familiar than liberal socialism and because it has in common with welfare state capitalism the private owner­ ship of the means of production. Hence its differences from welfare state capitalism might be harder to discern. “Property-owning democracy” is a system advocated by Meade (1965). 6. Those citizens not fully capable of social cooperation are arguably provided for through a social minimum (Stark 2007). 7. This is why Rawls says, “The principles of justice that regulate the basic structure and specify the duties and obligations of individuals do not men­ tion moral desert and there is no tendency for distributive shares to corre­ spond to it” (1971, 311). This assertion is mysterious on the received view, which sees Rawls as arguing against a desert-based theory rather than argu­ ing against interpreting justice as fairness as a desert-based theory. 8. The marginal productivity theory says that in a perfectly competitive mar­ ket, the equilibrium wage rate is equal to the equilibrium value of the mar­ ginal product of labor. The marginal product of labor is the increase in output produced by the last unit of labor employed in a particular labor market. The value of the marginal product of labor is the marginal product of labor multiplied by the price per unit of output. The marginal productiv­ ity theory says that when a particular labor market is in equilibrium – that is, when all workers are employed and all employers who need workers have them – the wage rate earned in that field is equal to the market’s equi­ librium value of the marginal product. It is equal, that is, to the value of the marginal product of the last worker hired in that market (Krugman and Wells 2013, 539–551). 9. “Nor,” Rawls says, “does the basic structure tend to balance the precepts of justice so as to achieve the requisite correspondence [between moral worth and distributive shares] behind the scenes” (1971, 312). 10. In the argument for the democratic equality interpretation of the difference principle, or, what Cohen calls, the “Pareto argument for inequality” (Rawls 1971, 65–83; Cohen 2008, 87–115). 11. Contemporary versions of the natural differences argument are explana­ tory rather than prescriptive: they claim not that women and men should be encouraged by social design to do work that corresponds to their natures but rather that what explains the gendered division of labor is that women and men tend to choose the types of work associated with traditional gen­ der roles: their natures determine their preferences (Hakim 2007; Crompton 2007). I  see the two approaches (prescriptive and explanatory) as related in this way: the historical prevalence of an enforced gendered division of labor has reinforced socially constructed gender differences and has created a gendered incentive structure that together guide women and men to choose work that corresponds to their alleged natural differences. Those choices are then interpreted as evidence for the existence of those natural differences. For a critique of arguments with this structure, see Haslanger (2003). This is not to deny outright that there exist natural sex differences in, for example, pref­ erences for care work, but rather to make the Millian point that there is little warrant for inferring the existence of such differences from women’s choices when women have historically been trained and coerced to do such work

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(Mill 1977, 57). A critique of the soundness of scientific views of women’s nature prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries can be found in Klein (1971).Thanks to Amy Baehr for pressing me on this point. 12. Antony quotes Kant here: “Laborious learning or painful pondering, even if a woman should greatly succeed in it, destroy the merits that are proper to her sex” (Kant 1994, 103). 13. In contrast, Susan Okin’s proposal of a split paycheck aims to compen­ sate women for their disproportionate responsibility for care work (1989, 180–181). See also Bojer (2002, 402–406), Hirschmann (2016), and Fergu­ son (2016). 14. For a different approach to the issue of POD and gender justice, see Robeyns (2012). POD is often contrasted with a universal basic income (UBI). Femi­ nists disagree as to the usefulness of the UBI as a way to combat the GDL. See, for example, Elgarte (2008), Gheaus (2008), and Robeyns 2008. For a general discussion of the merits of UBI versus POD, see Ackerman, Alstott, and Van Parijs (2006).

Bibliography Ackerman, Bruce, Anne Alstott, and Philippe Van Parijs, eds. 2006. Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as Cornerstones for an Egalitarian Capitalism. New York: Verso. Anderson, Elizabeth. Forthcoming. “Rawls’s Difference Principle.” In The Cam­ bridge Companion to a Theory of Justice, edited by Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2017. “Thomas Paine’s ‘Agrarian Justice’ and the Origins of Social Insurance.” In Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy, edited by Eric Schliesser, 55–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Antony, Louise. 1988. “ ‘Human Nature’ and Its Role in Feminist Theory.” In Philosophy in a Feminist Voice, edited by Janet Kourany, 63–91. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Aristotle. 1977. “Politics, Book 1, Excerpts.” In Sex Equality, edited by Jane English, 20–30. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Baron-Cohen, Simon. 2007. “Does Biology Play Any Role in Sex Differences in the Mind?” In The Future of Gender, edited by Jude Browne, 77–97. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press. Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenom­ enology of Oppression. New York: Routledge. Bojer, Hilde. 2002. “Women and the Rawlsian Social Contract.” Social Justice Research 15: 393–407. Boushey, Heather. 2016. Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Browne, Kingsley R. 2006 “Evolved Sex Differences and Occupational Segrega­ tion.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 27 (2): 143–162. Bryson, Valerie. 2007. “Perspectives on Gender Equality: Challenging the Terms of the Debate.” In The Future of Gender, edited by Jude Browne, 35–53. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press. Bubeck, Diemut Elisabet. 1995. Care, Gender and Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Cashdan, Elizabeth. 1998. “Are Men More Competitive Than Women?” British Journal of Social Psychology 37: 213–229. Cohen, G.A. 2008. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1997. “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice.” Philoso­ phy & Public Affairs 26 (1): 3–30. Colarelli, Stephen M., Jennifer L. Spranger, and Ma. Regina Hechanova. 2006. “Women, Power, and Sex Composition in Small Groups: An Evolutionary Per­ spective.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 27 (2): 163–184. Crompton, Rosemary. 2007. “Gender Inequality and the Division of Labor.” In The Future of Gender, edited by Jude Browne, 228–249. Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press. Croson, Rachel, and Uri Gneezy. 2009. “Gender Differences in Preferences.” Journal of Economic Literature 47: 448–474. Elgarte, Julieta. 2008. “Basic Income and the Gendered Division of Labor.” Basic Income Studies 3 (3): 2–7. Feinberg, Joel. 1970. Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibil­ ity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ferguson, Michaela L. 2016. “Vulnerability by Marriage: Okin’s Radical Femi­ nist Critique of Structural Gender Inequality.” Hypatia 31 (3): 688–703. Fleischacker, Samuel. 2004. A Short History of Distributive Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Folbre, Nancy. 2008. Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gheaus, Anca. 2008. “Basic Income, Gender Justice and the Costs of GenderSymmetrical Lifestyles.” Basic Income Studies 3 (3): 2–8. Goldberg, Steven. 1977. “The Inevitability of Patriarchy, Excerpts.” In Sex Equality, edited by Jane English, 20–30. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, Inc. Gornick, Janet C., and Marcia K. Meyers, eds. 2009. Gender Equality: Trans­ forming Family Divisions of Labor. London: Verso. Hakim, Catherine. 2007. “The Politics of Female Diversity in the Twenty-First Century.” In The Future of Gender, edited by Jude Browne, 191–227. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press. Haslanger, Sally. 2003. “Social Construction: The ‘Debunking’ Project.’ ” In Socializing Metaphysics: The Nature of Social Reality, edited by Frederick F. Schmitt, 301–325. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Hirschmann, Nancy J. 2016. “The Sexual Division of Labor and the Split Pay­ check.” Hypatia 31 (3): 651–667. Kant, Immanuel. 1994. “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sub­ lime, Excerpts.” In Philosophy of Woman, edited by Mary Briody Mahowald, 116–125. Indianapolis: Hackett. Klein, Viola. 1971. The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Krouse, Richard, and Michael McPherson. 1988. “Capitalism, ‘Property-Owning Democracy’ and the Welfare State.” In Democracy and the Welfare State, edited by Amy Gutmann, 79–106. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Krugman, Paul, and Robin Wells. 2013. Economics. 3rd ed. New York: Worth Publishers. Kukla, Rebecca. 2014. “Performative Force, Convention and Discursive Injus­ tice.” Hypatia 29 (2): 440–457. Lister, Andrew. 2017. “Markets, Desert, and Reciprocity.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16: 47–69. Lloyd, S.A. 1994. “Family Justice and Social Justice.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 75: 353–371. MacDonald, Cameron. 2009. “What’s Culture Got to Do With It? Mothering Ideologies as Barriers to Gender Equity.” In Gender Equality: Transforming Family Divisions of Labor, edited by Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers, 411–434. London: Verso. Meade, J.E. 1965. Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property. Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mill, John Stuart. 1977. “The Subjection of Women, Excerpts.” In Sex Equality, edited by Jane English, 54–65. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Neufeld, Blain. 2009. “Coercion, the Basic Structure and the Family.” Journal of Social Philosophy 40 (1): 37–54. Okin, Susan. 2005. “Forty Acres and a Mule for Women.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 4 (2): 233–248. ———. 1994. “Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender.” Ethics 105 (1): 23–43. ———. 1989. Justice, Gender and the Family. New York: Basic Books. O’Neill, Martin, and Thad Williamson, eds. 2012. Property-Owning Democ­ racy: Rawls and Beyond. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Pierce, Christine. 1977. “Natural Law Language and Women.” In Sex Equality, edited by Jane English, 130–142. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Rawls, John. 2001a. Justice as Fairness: A  Restatement. Edited by Erin Kelly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2001b. “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” In John Rawls: Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman, 573–615. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ versity Press. ———. 1996. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robeyns, Ingrid. 2012. “Care, Gender and Property-Owning Democracy.” In Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond, edited by Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson, 163–179. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. ———. 2008. “Introduction: Revisiting the Feminism and Basic Income Debate.” Basic Income Studies 3 (3): 1–6. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1977. “Emile, Excerpts.” In Sex Equality, edited by Jane English, 42–47. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Scanlon, T.M. 1986. “The Significance of Choice.” In The Tanner Lectures in Human Values VIII, edited by Sterling M. McMurrin, 151–216. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Scheffler, Samuel. 2001. Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schouten, Gina. 2016. “Is the Gendered Division of Labor a Problem of Distribu­ tion?” In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, edited by Peter Vallentyne, David Sobel, and Stephen Wall. Vol. 2, 185–206. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Stark, Cynthia. 2007. “How to Include the Severely Disabled in a Contractarian Theory of Justice.” Journal of Political Philosophy 15 (2): 125–147. Thomas, Alan. 2017. Republic of Equals: Predistribution and Property-Owning Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trebilcot, Joyce. 1977. “Sex Roles: The Argument from Nature.” In Sex Equal­ ity, edited by Jane English, 129–212. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Watson, Lori, and Christie Hartley. 2018. Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, Stuart. 2003. The Civic Minimum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

8

Political Constructivism and Justice in Caregiving1 Amy R. Baehr

John Rawls explores how it could be possible for citizens of a constitu­ tional democracy characterized by a plurality of comprehensive moral doctrines to have, nonetheless, a shared normative basis on which to justify to one another their “shared institutions and basic arrangements” (Rawls 1980, 305). The explanation Rawls proposes is this. It would be possible for there to be such a shared basis if we could present a concep­ tion of justice as “freestanding,” that is, as applying only to the basic structure of society, and not relying on a particular comprehensive moral doctrine; if such a political conception of justice could become subject of an overlapping consensus of the reasonable comprehensive doctrines citizens hold (2005, 140); and if it could gain the “reasoned allegiance” of those who grow up and live under it (142). Rawls proposes we think of a freestanding conception as one that would be chosen in a suitably designed initial choice situation – his “procedure of construction” (90) – “worked up,” as he puts it, from normative conceptions of society and the person implicit in the public political culture of a constitutional democracy (2001, 19). He presents his two principles of justice as the content of a conception constructed in this way. And he speculates that an overlapping consensus on his principles might be possible, and that his conception might gain the relevant allegiance. In this chapter, I  accept a great deal of this framework. I  accept the task as Rawls understands it, namely to find a shared normative basis. I  accept the basic solution Rawls suggests, namely that a shared basis can be had if we can present a freestanding political conception of justice on which overlapping consensus of reasonable doctrines develops and which generates its own support over time. I accept also the idea that a freestanding conception may be understood as one chosen in a suitably designed initial choice situation worked up from ideas in the public polit­ ical culture of a constitutional democracy. I part company with Rawls here, however, in that I draw on additional ideas from the public political culture. Thus I “work up” a somewhat different initial choice situation and propose a somewhat different political conception of justice.

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I begin by sketching Rawls’s presentation of his political conception of justice. I then describe Rawls’s failure sufficiently to appreciate the fact of human dependency. I proceed to “work up” a different initial choice situation  – a different “procedure of construction” – from normative ideas concerning dependency implicit in the public political culture. In this initial situation parties are aware of two facts Rawls fails to include: the fact of human dependency and the fact of past group-based injustice. I then show that parties in this situation would choose a political concep­ tion of justice that includes justice in caregiving and is alive to the fact of past injustice, and I suggest institutional arrangements such a conception might underwrite. Finally, I show that it is reasonable to hope that the political conception of justice presented here could become subject of an overlapping consensus of reasonable doctrines and offer a reason for thinking it may fare better than Rawls’s on this score.2 The point of the chapter is not to defend Rawls’s framework; it is rather to show what we can do with it. As Rawls explains, political phi­ losophy has no special authority, but it “may contribute to how a people think of their political and social institutions as a whole, and their basic aims and purposes as a society with a history” (2001, 2), by presenting to them a “well-articulated conception of a just and reasonable society” derived from ideas in their public political culture (3). I  do that here, drawing attention to how human dependency figures in our political and social institutions, and in our understanding of their aims and purposes. There is a growing literature exploring how a basically Rawlsian framework might help us to combine thinking about gender justice with thinking about justice in caregiving.3 While this literature shares basic Rawlsian commitments, it includes a variety of distinctive approaches – it does not, by any means, speak with one voice. I owe a great deal to the insights and strategies in this literature. While I lack space for a compre­ hensive discussion of how my approach relates to the many others in the literature, I endeavor to indicate a few important debts and to highlight a few ways in which my approach differs from others.

Rawls’s Political Conception of Justice Rawls begins by identifying the system of basic institutions and social arrangements that “taken together as one scheme . . . define [individuals’] rights and duties and influence their life prospects” in a constitutional democracy. Calling it “the basic structure,” Rawls tells us it comprises “the political constitution and the principal economic and social arrange­ ments” (Rawls 1999, 6). Among the latter, Rawls includes the “family” (1999, 6) as the institutional arrangement through which society is repro­ duced “from one generation to the next” and through which children as future citizens are raised to have “the political virtues that support

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political and social institutions” (1997, 595–596). Rawls proceeds to ask whether there might be, implicit in the public political culture, a concep­ tion of the purpose or aim of the basic structure as a whole. Out of an account of the purpose or aim of the basic structure, he then constructs an initial choice situation. The initial choice situation serves to clarify what “requirements . . . must be fulfilled in order for [the basic structure] to achieve [that] goal or aim” (James 2005, 301). Following Aaron James, we put Rawls’s account of “the aim of the basic structure of a modern constitutional democracy” this way: it is “to create primary social goods, and to do so as a cooperative scheme . . . for mutual or reciprocal advantage” (James 2005, 300; see also Rawls 2005, 16). To be sure, Rawls notes that the “public culture is not unambiguous: it con­ tains a variety of possible organizing ideas” (2001, 25). Whether the one he chooses is, all told, the right idea to begin with depends on whether “the political conception of justice to which it . . . leads when worked out . . . coheres with our considered convictions of political justice” (26). Rawls explains that this idea of the aim of the basic structure is “worked out in conjunction with [the] companion . . . idea of citizens . . . as free and equal persons” – an idea also gathered from the public politi­ cal culture (2001, 5). We think of persons as free insofar as they have what Rawls calls two moral powers: the ability “to understand, to apply, and to act from  .  .  . principles of political justice that specify the fair terms of social cooperation” (19), and the capacity “to have, revise, and rationally pursue a conception of the good” (19). We think of persons as equal insofar as they have “these powers . . . to the requisite minimum degree . . . to take part fully in the cooperative life of society” (20). That is, on Rawls’s view we conceive of persons as “engaged in social coopera­ tion, and . . . as fully capable of doing so . . . over a complete life” (18). Rawls’s initial choice situation – which he calls the original position – is designed to model how individuals would reason were they as the political conception of the person describes them (2005, 26). For example, Rawls has parties choose principles behind a veil of ignorance that obscures “the particular comprehensive doctrines of the persons they represent,” as well as the particular social positions they inhabit. So, parties “do not know persons’ race and ethnic group, sex, or various native endowments such as strength and intelligence,” although with respect to the latter, Rawls stipulates that they know they will be “within the normal range” (2001, 15). Also, parties to the original position choose principles for the distribution of what Rawls calls primary social goods: “basic rights and liberties, . . . freedom of movement and free choice of occupation, . . . powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of authority and respon­ sibility, . . . income and wealth, . . . [and] the social bases of self-respect” (2001, 58–59). Primary social goods are not “things it is simply rational to want or desire, or to prefer” (58). Nor are they “a kind of average of

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what . . . comprehensive doctrines actually found in society . . . demand by way of institutional rights and claims and all-purpose means” (188). They are, rather, “various social conditions and all-purpose means, . . . things needed and required by persons seen in the light of the political conception of persons” (58). Parties to the original position are aware of what Rawls calls “the cir­ cumstances of justice”: that there is moderate scarcity and that a “decent standard of living” requires social cooperation; as well as that people hold different systems of value, and that this is not avoidable, except through oppression (2001, 84). Parties aim to secure “the conditions ade­ quate for the development and exercise of their moral powers.” Rawls stipulates that in doing so, parties “take no direct interest in the interests of persons represented by other parties”; this “reflects an essential aspect of how citizens are quite properly moved when questions of political justice arise about the basic structure” (85). Aiming to secure, for the persons they represent, that the worst out­ come is as good as possible, parties in the original position choose two lexically ordered principles for the distribution of primary social goods. 1. Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; and 2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under con­ ditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle) (2001, 42–43). Rawls explains that the first principle ensures the fair value of the polit­ ical liberties – that is, that citizens have an equal chance to influence the political process (2001, 46). The first principle, he explains, is “preceded by a lexically prior principle requiring that citizens’ basic needs be met, at least insofar as is necessary for citizens to understand and to be able fruitfully to exercise those rights and liberties” (Rawls 2005, 7). Also, Rawls explains, his conception of justice “is incomplete” until additional principles for individuals are “accounted for” (1999, 293). He mentions the duty “to support and to comply with just institutions” (1999, 99), as well as a principle of “mutual respect.” The latter is the duty to show a person the respect which is due to him as . . . a being with a sense of justice and a conception of the good . . . [This] duty would be acknowledged [because persons’] self-respect and . . . confidence in the value of their own system of ends cannot withstand the indifference much less the contempt of others. (297)

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The principles of justice determine what Rawls calls “social positions” from which society’s institutional structure must be justifiable. Since the first principle of justice assigns to each the same wide array of rights and liberties, we can point to the social position of the equal citizen. To justify society’s basic arrangements to equal citizens is to show that they secure the relevant rights and liberties. Since the second principle allows ine­ qualities in wealth and income, we can point to the position individuals inhabit vis-à-vis income and wealth. In this case, society’s basic arrange­ ments must be justifiable to individuals who are the least advantaged. Rawls adds that people will, of course, occupy other social positions, but these should be conceived as the result of persons’ “voluntary actions in accordance with the principle of free association” and are not relevant to the evaluation of the justice of a society’s basic structure (1999, 82).

The Dependency Critique4 Consider the fact of human dependency. By “the fact of human depend­ ency,” I mean that to survive and thrive5 each of us needs constant and loving caregiving for more than a decade as infants and children; and many of us need intermittent, and some of us constant, caregiving after that. I mean also that those who provide caregiving often become depend­ ent on others because providing caregiving can reduce one’s ability to see to their own basic needs (Kittay 1995, 10). The political conception of the person on which Rawls draws gives no hint that society’s members need caregiving to survive and thrive, no hint that society’s members have dependents in whose receipt of caregiving they have an interest, and no hint that some members of society are not fully cooperating. The politi­ cal conception of society Rawls draws on does not include satisfying these interests among the aims of the basic structure of a constitutional democracy. But the point of political conceptions is not descriptive accuracy. They are normative; they are accounts of how society and the person are to be regarded from a political point of view (Rawls 1985, 395). Rawls tells us what to do if we want to evaluate political conceptions. We look to whether “the conception of political justice to which [they] eventu­ ally lead  .  .  . coheres with our considered convictions of political jus­ tice” (Rawls 2001, 26). We follow that advice now. What we find is that Rawls’s principles of justice fail to cohere with an important set of considered convictions of political justice. Note that considered convictions (or judgments) of political justice are not moral fixed points ascertained with the help of some moral sense. They are convictions formed under conditions favorable to making good judg­ ments in which we have a great deal of confidence. As examples, Rawls offers (quoting Lincoln), “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” (2001, 29), and that justice requires religious toleration (1985, 393).

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Despite our confidence in them, considered convictions held by one per­ son may conflict with one another, and they are subject to revision upon reflection. Considered judgments can also differ across persons, and no one person’s or group’s convictions are authoritative. Considered convic­ tions are a place to begin thinking about how society and persons are to be conceived from a political point of view and about principles of justice we construct in light of them. I propose we begin with the following considered judgments, which I  have gathered from political movements of women (especially poor women and women of color) and people with disabilities.6 1. It is unjust when society’s basic institutions and arrangements leave some persons bereft of the caregiving they need to survive and thrive. 2. It is unjust when some persons (who are willing and otherwise able) are rendered, by society’s basic institutions and arrangements, unable to provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need. 3. It is unjust when society’s basic institutions and arrangements dis­ advantage persons who, and because they, provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need. 4. It is unjust when society’s basic institutions and arrangements express that some persons are unworthy of having their caregiving needs satisfied or are unworthy of satisfying the caregiving needs of their dependents. 5. It is unjust when society’s basic institutions and arrangements force individuals to provide caregiving to, or procure caregiving for, par­ ticular others. Rawls says several things that, taken together, cohere with some of the content of the first considered judgment (about the importance of receiv­ ing caregiving when needed to survive and thrive). It is clear that children who will be fully cooperating, and those who have been but are no longer (due to injury or illness, or old age) are entitled to having their basic needs met (2005, 7). Since caregiving is among the basic needs, receipt of caregiving is called for by the basic needs principle. Also, Rawls notes that receiving caregiving as children is necessary for the development of a sense of justice (1999, 405), and, arguably, for the development of self-respect (1999, 386). We may observe in addition that adequate car­ egiving is necessary for the development of talents, and thus for enjoying fair equality of opportunity. However, Rawls stipulates that principles of justice concern arrangements among human beings who are, were, or will be “fully cooperating members of society over a complete life” (2005, 18). They do not apply to human beings whose disabilities render them wholly non-cooperating. This means that failure of such human beings to receive the caregiving they need to survive and thrive is not, in itself, a political injustice. To be sure, Rawls writes: “I take it as obvious,

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and accepted as common sense, that we have a duty towards all human beings however severely handicapped” (2001, 176, n. 59, see also 2005, 21, 183). But “Rawls does not tell us whether these are duties of justice” (Stark 2007, 130, n10). And even if they are, Rawls’s political conception of justice is not their normative foundation. The difference principle addresses some of the content of the sec­ ond considered conviction (about the ability to provide or procure the caregiving one’s dependents need). We may assume that the economic resources the difference principle affords would suffice for families to see to the caregiving needs of their members, as long as they are in the nor­ mal range. Also, caregivers and their dependents are disproportionately represented among the least well-off, so the difference principle ensures that social and economic inequalities are to their benefit. But Rawls’s principles do not recognize the inability to provide or procure caregiv­ ing for one’s dependents (if one is willing and otherwise able) as unjust in itself. His conception of justice gives us no choice but to conceive of the interest people have in providing or procuring the caregiving their dependents need to survive and thrive as merely one preference among the many persons may have.7 Rawls addresses part of the concern in the third considered conviction (about disadvantage to caregivers). He explains that caregiving work is socially necessary labor (2001, 162) and insists that “steps need to be taken to either equalize [women’s] share [of caregiving work] or to com­ pensate them for it” if their disproportionate share is “a basic, if not the main, cause of women’s inequality” (2001, 167). But Rawls provides no reason to object to inequalities tracking caregiver status apart from gen­ der. The mere fact that caregiving is socially necessary does not mean, for Rawls, that its distribution must be guided by principles of justice. We have to conclude that, from the perspective of Rawls’s political concep­ tion of justice, the social position of someone disadvantaged (vis-à-vis primary social goods) because they provide or procure caregiving should be regarded as attributable to “voluntary actions in accordance with the principle of free association” (1999, 82), and thus not relevant to the evaluation of the justice of a society’s basic structure. Rawls says a few things that capture some of the concern in the fourth considered conviction (about society’s basic arrangements expressing the unworthiness of some persons to receive and give caregiving). The basic needs principle calls for each (fully cooperating) person to receive needed caregiving; this might be thought sufficient. But inequalities above the threshold of sufficient caregiving could still track historical patterns and thus express inequality in worthiness to receive it.8 Perhaps Rawls’s prin­ ciple for individuals calling for mutual respect kicks in here. But we are looking for a principle for the institutional structure. Also, as we have seen, while Rawls’s conception of justice does not recognize as unjust in itself the inability (due to the institutional structure) to provide or

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procure caregiving for one’s dependents, the difference principle calls for resources sufficient for families to see to the caregiving needs of their fully functioning members. But historical patterns of injustice could still deter­ mine who clusters at the floor set by the difference principle. Finally, Rawls’s liberty principle addresses some of the concern in the fifth considered conviction (about forced caregiving). The liberty prin­ ciple does not permit legally forcing individuals to provide or procure caregiving for particular others. Nor does it permit private actors to force others to do so. And the fair equality of opportunity principle rules out arrangements that leave some persons no opportunities beyond caregiv­ ing. However, while some philosophers hold that socialization to the dis­ crete social role of caregiver amounts to forced caregiving (Okin 1989; Kittay 1999),9 Rawls is quite clear that the liberty principle conflicts with uses of state power that aim directly at ensuring that girls not be so socialized (Rawls 1997, 599, see also 2001, 165). Rawls explains that when principles derived from initial situation rea­ soning fail to accommodate our considered judgements of political justice we have two choices. “We can revise [our convictions] . . . conforming them to principle,” rendering them “duly pruned and adjusted;” or “we can . . . modify the account of the initial situation” (1999, 18). The dis­ cussion in this part shows what duly pruning amounts to; it amounts to excising the content that does not cohere with Rawls’s political concep­ tion of justice. It amounts to giving up the conviction that it is a political injustice when society’s basic institutions and arrangements: fail to pro­ vide caregiving to the not fully cooperating; render some people unable to provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need; disadvan­ tage those who, and because they, provide or procure caregiving for their dependents; allow receipt of caregiving and ability to provide it to track historical injustices; and socialize some to the discrete social role of car­ egiver. Of course, as has been said, considered judgments are not moral fixed points. It might turn out that giving up these judgments of political justice is warranted. I pursue this further below in the section on political constructivism. But more needs to be said about these considered convictions. They are inextricably linked to, indeed arise out of, a particular experience, a particular point of view. It is the experience of, the point of view of, per­ sons immersed in, and who understand themselves to be charged with, attending to caregiving needs. From this point of view, it is quite clear that society’s members require caregiving (sometimes a great deal of it) to survive and thrive and that some of society’s members do not become fully cooperating. From this point of view, it is quite clear that there is no neat distinction between a member’s interests and the interest that mem­ ber’s dependents have in receiving adequate caregiving (Kittay 1999, 90, 94), and thus that among members’ fundamental interests is being able to provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need.10 This point

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of view directs attention to the basic institutions and social arrangements through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied; it counts the full array of such institutions and social arrangements as part of the scheme of basic institutions and social arrangements that comprises the basic structure.11 The family is certainly one institution through which soci­ ety’s caregiving needs are satisfied. But, as this point of view lays bare, the institutional and associational infrastructure through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied extends well beyond the family. It includes, for example, health-care facilities, daycare centers, schools, as well as the many informal social arrangements people establish to manage depend­ ency needs. From this point of view, the aim of the basic structure of a constitutional democracy has something to do with (among other things) making it possible for people needing caregiving, including the noncooperating, to receive it and making it possible for individuals with dependents to provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need while also seeing to their other interests. Rawls’s political conceptions of society and the person – and thus his political conception of justice – reflect a different point of view. From this point of view, the basic institutional and social arrangements through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied are obscured.12 It is as if a curtain has been drawn around some aspects of the basic structure that concern caregiving; it is as if they’ve been cordoned off. This blinkered point of view is that of a traditional head of household.13 In traditional society, the caregiving needs of heads of household, and the caregiving needs of their dependents, are taken care of by others whose supposed natural or God-given role is to attend to them. From this point of view, then, the institutions and social arrangements through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied appear to be nonpolitical, and justice appears to concern merely the conditions for fair cooperation between fully functioning individuals. The point of view of traditional heads of household has been dominant in our constitutional democracy. Most of the works of political philosophy as well as the major political tracts and speeches through which our public understands itself politically were penned by people with this point of view. Our public political culture is awash in ideas that reflect it. Political philosophy written before the influence of feminism tends to couple the cordoning off of much of the basic structure that concerns society’s caregiving needs with an explicit delegation of caregiving to women as per their natural or God-given role. Breaking with this sexist past, Rawls rejects the idea that persons should be regarded as male from a political point of view, thus rejects idea that a well-ordered society has women fulfilling a natural or God-given role. Rawls also explicitly states that persons are to be conceived of as individuals and not as heads of household, thus making clear that justice applies as much to relation­ ships between individuals within families as it to relationships within

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other associations (1997, 468). But Rawls did not fully shake off the point of view of the traditional head of household. He retained the cor­ doning off – the hiding from political consideration – of some aspects of the institutions and associational arrangements through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied. To be precise, Rawls’s political concep­ tion does not cordon off all matters of dependency. It cordons off these: whether the not-fully cooperating receive adequate caregiving; whether (otherwise willing and able) individuals are able to provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need; whether individuals who provide or procure caregiving are disadvantaged because they do so; whether receipt of caregiving, and ability to provide it, tracks historical injustice; and whether some are socialized to the discrete social role of caregiver. To be sure, Rawls does not assert that natural or God-given roles have jurisdiction over the matters cordoned off. To assign such social roles would make his view a comprehensive doctrine and not freestanding as he intends it. The matters cordoned off are to be understood, from a political point of view, as voluntary (1997, 472). Whatever arrangements society’s members manage to cobble together to deal with them are nei­ ther just nor unjust. Of course, we know what our society’s members manage to cobble together: arrangements that disadvantage caregivers and are gendered; arrangements that are often less than fully voluntary; arrangements that afford insufficient caregiving to many, in part by ren­ dering some unable to provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need; and arrangements that track past injustice. One might think Rawls is tacitly endorsing this state of affairs. But that would be too strong. As I’ve said, because these matters are, from a political point of view, voluntary, Rawls must say that they are neither just nor unjust, that justice does not pass judgment on them. Perhaps Rawls’s view is that we should be reconciled to the caregiving arrange­ ments people in our society manage to cobble together.14 Rawls does note that one role of political philosophy is to calm our “frustration and rage” at arrangements to which we object but which the political con­ ception of justice cannot remedy (2001, 3). But Rawls has in mind the frustration and rage we experience when society’s basic arrangements fail to conform to the requirements of our comprehensive doctrine. As I explain in the section on political constructivism below, the problem the dependency critique identifies in Rawls’s political conception of jus­ tice is not that it fails to give expression to some preferred comprehensive moral doctrine. Nor, I should say, is the complaint that Rawls’s politi­ cal conceptions of society and the person are descriptively inaccurate. As I  explain, the dependency critique is best understood as targeting Rawls’s claim that his political conception of justice is freestanding, and thus targeting his claim that it is a good candidate for providing the needed shared normative basis.

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Alternative Political Conceptions Recall Rawls’s political conception of the person as having a fundamental interest in exercising two moral powers. What happens if we add addi­ tional interests that come into view when we take seriously the point of view of people immersed in, and who understand themselves as charged with, caregiving?15 These are the interests in receiving caregiving when it is needed to survive and thrive (whether fully cooperating or not),16 and being able to provide or procure the caregiving one’s dependents need (so long as one is willing and otherwise able). We end up with the idea that, from a political point of view, persons are to be regarded as: 1. needing caregiving to survive and thrive, on occasion, for longer peri­ ods, and sometimes over life’s entirety; 2. capable of providing or procuring the caregiving their dependents need;17 3. capable of a degree of species-typical functioning, ranging from (1) perception and desire to (2) having, revising, and rationally pursuing a conception of the good, and (3) understanding, applying, and act­ ing from principles specifying terms of association that are in every­ one’s interest. From this political conception of the person we derive an expanded list of primary social goods. To Rawls’s list laid out earlier we add: 1. Receipt of caregiving needed to survive and thrive.18 2. The ability to provide or procure caregiving for one’s dependents (if one is willing and otherwise able).19 And we put the aim of the basic structure this way: The aim of the basic structure of a modern constitutional democracy is to produce (the expanded list of) primary social goods, and to do so as a scheme of cooperative and non-cooperative arrangements that is to everyone’s benefit. Recall Rawls’s approach is to draw on political conceptions of soci­ ety and the person that are “implicit in the public political culture of a democratic society” (2005, 13). I noted earlier that that culture is replete with ideas that reflect the point of view of traditional heads of household. But these ideas don’t exhaust what can be found there. The political con­ ceptions of society and the person just presented are also implicit in the public political culture.20 Consider that the United States’ Declaration of Independence suggests “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as

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the aims of the basic institutional structure of a constitutional democ­ racy. Surely the “pursuit of happiness” is commonly understood to mean (among other things) the ability to see to the caregiving needs of one’s dependents and for society’s members (fully cooperating and not) to receive the caregiving they need to survive and thrive.21 There is disa­ greement concerning who should provide hands-on caregiving and who should shoulder its cost. Some hold that individual families should both shoulder the cost of caregiving for their dependents and provide needed hands-on caregiving. Some hold a gendered view: husbands should earn money to provide financial support for wives to provide hands-on car­ egiving at home. Some hold that society generally should shoulder some, or even all, of the cost of satisfying society’s caregiving needs and that needed hands-on caregiving should be provided in the variety of ways recommended by families’ comprehensive doctrines. But the fact that there is disagreement about what arrangements are preferable for the sat­ isfaction of society’s caregiving needs is consistent with the idea, implicit in the public political culture, that one aim of society’s basic structure is to make it possible for them to be satisfied. With our alternative political conceptions of society and the person in hand, we can work up an initial choice situation. Following Rawls, we stipulate that parties in an initial situation are aware of the facts of reasonable pluralism and moderate scarcity. But we add two facts Rawls does not include.22 First, we add the fact of human dependency.23 Recall that by “the fact of human dependency” we mean that to survive and thrive, each of us needs constant and loving caregiving for more than a decade as infants and children; and many of us need intermittent, and some of us constant, caregiving after that. We mean also that those who provide caregiving often become dependent on others because provid­ ing caregiving can reduce one’s ability to see to their own basic needs. The addition of this fact affects parties’ appreciation of both pluralism and moderate scarcity. For example, parties now appreciate that caregiv­ ing is among the primary social goods that are moderately scarce; that how caregiving is provided and procured will be inflected by individuals’ comprehensive doctrines; and that providing or procuring caregiving for dependents could be a source of scarcity of material means and opportu­ nities, as well as threaten the fair value of the political liberties. The second fact we add is the fact of past group-based injustice.24 This is the fact that the distribution of primary social goods in any consti­ tutional democracy has been shaped by past group-based injustice and that, in any such society, past group-based injustice can exert ongoing influence. As Erin Kelly suggests, “Rawls doesn’t really reckon” with the fact of past injustice (Kelly 2017, 76; see also 77). This leaves us with the impression that Rawls conceives of a just society as either one with no unjust past at all or – as Charles Mills puts it – one with “an unjust history that has now been completely corrected for” and thus has lost

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the power to influence the distribution of primary social goods (Mills 2017, 140; italics in the original). Still, adding the fact of past groupbased injustice is not entirely out of keeping with Rawls’s framework.25 First, note that Rawls intends to present what he calls a “realistic utopia” (2001, 4). By “realistic,” Rawls means possible for us; he means a society we may reasonably hope for.26 Obviously, we can’t reasonably hope for a society with no unjust past – because our society has one. Also, atten­ tive as we are to the lessons of history and social science, we appreciate the power the past generally exercises over the present. It is extremely unlikely that we could manage a true break with the past through which past patterns of group-based injustice cease, once and for all, to have the power to influence the distribution of primary social goods. So it isn’t reasonable for us to hope that we could. Adding the fact of past groupbased injustice is a way to acknowledge that one of the fundamental problems of justice is how to manage the fact that the past generally has this power. What is reasonable is not the hope that we can eradicate the power of our unjust past once and for all but rather the hope that we can recognize it and address it when it threatens. A second reason for why adding the fact of past group-based injustice is not out of keeping with Rawls’s framework is that the influence of past injustice is not unlike the influence of other contingencies to which Rawls draws our attention. Rawls points to three forces with the poten­ tial to influence the distribution of primary social goods, even in a just society. These are the social class “into which [individuals] are born and develop,” “native endowments,” and “good or bad luck” (2001, 55). In a just society, these contingencies can influence the distribution of primary social goods; so, Rawls explains, they are addressed continually – not in a one-off way fashion – by “regulations necessary to preserve background justice” (56). This suggests that Rawls does not conceive of a just society as a static one in which the influence of class, native endowments, and luck has been eradicated once and for all. Rawls’s just society is, rather, a dynamic one, characterized by basic institutions and arrangements that meet and counter these forces where and when they arise (2005, 267). Take, for example, Rawls’s fair equality of opportunity and fair value of the political liberties principles. These principles call for mechanisms that address the way, in any real society, greater economic resources can afford individuals greater opportunities and political power.27 To add the fact of past group-based injustice is merely to highlight another poten­ tial source of distributive injustice any real society must be concerned to address in an ongoing way.28 Addition of the fact of past group-based injustice informs parties’ appreciation of the facts of pluralism, moderate scarcity, and depend­ ency. For example, parties are aware that – in societies like the one they’ll emerge into – one’s membership in a particular social group can affect one’s share of material means and opportunities, as well as the value of

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the political liberties. Parties are aware that one’s group membership can affect how much caregiving one receives, as well as one’s ability to pro­ vide or procure the caregiving one’s dependents need. And parties appre­ ciate that one way unjust distributive patterns are perpetuated is through the voluntary actions of individuals – for example, those enjoying offices and positions of authority and responsibility – in accordance with psy­ chological tendencies and systems of value that direct social goods like opportunities, material resources, and the social bases of self-respect, to members of favored groups.29 Following Rawls, we situate parties behind a veil of ignorance. In doing so, we model how persons would reason if they were as the political con­ ception of the person presented earlier describes them. Behind this veil, parties do not know what sort of caregiving the person they represent needs to survive and thrive, and whether that person is fully cooperating. They do not know which particular others’ interest in receipt of caregiv­ ing will be not neatly distinguishable from the interests of the person they represent; nor do they know how much caregiving that person’s depend­ ents need and whether those dependents are fully cooperating. In addi­ tion, they do not know how the person they represent, or the person(s) in whose caregiving the person they represent takes an interest, is situated vis-à-vis group-based injustice. Parties in this initial situation will insist that: 1. each person receive caregiving needed to survive and thrive, scaled to the species-typical functioning to which they are capable; 2. each person be able to provide or procure the caregiving their dependents need to survive and thrive (should they choose to do so and otherwise be able); 3. inequalities (in primary social goods) not track caregiver status; 4. inequalities – including those with respect to receipt of and ability to provide or procure caregiving  – not track historical patterns of injustice; 5. caregiving arrangements be voluntary, that no one be forced to pro­ vide or procure caregiving for particular others, including that no one be socialized to the discrete social role of caregiver.30

Justice in Caregiving Parties, as we have described them, would choose this list of lexically ordered principles: 1. Each person (cooperating and not) has the same indefeasible claim to the satisfaction of basic needs, including the need for caregiving to survive and thrive.

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2. Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all. (Among the liberties is being free of forced caregiving for particular others, including socialization to the discrete social role of caregiver.) 3. Each person has the same indefeasible claim to being able to pro­ vide or procure the caregiving their (cooperating or non-cooperating) dependents need to survive and thrive (so long as they are willing and otherwise able). 4. Social and economic inequalities satisfy these conditions: a. They are attached to offices and positions open to all under con­ ditions of fair equality of opportunity. b. They do not track caregiver status. c. They do not track historical patterns of injustice.31 d. They are to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society. I lack space to explore each of these principles and how they relate to other sets in the literature.32 I will highlight one contrast, however. Asha Bhandary argues that parties would choose a principle that would rec­ ognize, as an injustice, when members of an historically disadvantaged group are over-represented among those providing caregiving (Bhandary 2020, 90). The principles I have presented here don’t capture that as an injustice. Instead, they suggest what is unjust is when receiving less care when one needs it, and being able to provide less care to one’s dependents (as long as one as willing and otherwise able), tracks being a member of an historically disadvantaged group. Bhandary argues also that parties would choose a principle that requires that providing caregiving is spread broadly through the population, so that no one group comes to special­ ize in caregiving (91). The principles I have presented here don’t capture that as an injustice. Instead, they suggest that a just society could include groups that specialize in caregiving, so long as their doing so is fully vol­ untary and not disadvantaging. This conception of justice is presented as a freestanding view. First, to use Rawls’s words, it is “a moral conception  .  .  . worked out for a specific subject, namely . . . for the basic structure of a democratic soci­ ety” (2001, 26). On this account, as we have seen, the basic structure includes the full array of institutions and social arrangements through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied. (It does not cordon off some of this structure, the way Rawls’s conception does.) Including in the basic structure the institutional and associational framework through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied is not to propose principles of justice as an ethic to govern the internal workings of institutions and associations involved in caregiving. For example, it is not proposed as

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an ethic to govern the internal workings of family life. To be sure, all political conceptions of justice have implications for the internal work­ ings of institutions and social arrangements. But these implications apply to institutions and associations insofar as they are parts of a system of institutions and associations that make up the basic structure. Second, this conception does not rely for its grounding on any particular com­ prehensive moral doctrine. It is “formulated . . . solely in terms of funda­ mental ideas familiar from, or implicit in, the public political culture of a democratic society” (2001, 27). What arrangements might allow our society to comply with these prin­ ciples? To ensure receipt of needed caregiving, measures may be neces­ sary to support the supply of caregiving. Caregiver allowances could free individuals from remunerative work so (if they choose to) they could be available to provide hands-on caregiving. Affordable or free replacement caregiving could ensure that dependents receive the caregiving they need when their loved ones are unable to provide it or choose to pursue other activities. Educational institutions and workplaces could be regulated to allow the combination of education and paid work with caregiving. And, as Bhandary argues, schools might teach caregiving skills to boys as well as girls, in a way that validates the public and nongendered value of providing and receiving caregiving (Bhandary 2020, 138–156). To ensure the voluntariness of caregiving, family planning services are necessary. Access to replacement caregiving could ensure that those with dependents are not forced to provide all needed caregiving. Nongendered instruction in caregiving in schools could undermine the association of women with caregiving, freeing up boys and men to take on caregiving. This, in turn, could reduce any tendency of families to raise girls to the discrete social role of caregiver. Caregiver allowances could free persons up to choose caregiving and could protect those who might otherwise become vulnerable to domination by a partner on whom they are eco­ nomically dependent. How to secure caregiver nondisadvantage? To avoid disadvantage visà-vis income and wealth, adequate pay for those employed as caregiv­ ers, but also a caregiver allowance for those providing caregiving for their own dependents, whether full- or part-time, might be called for. Free replacement caregiving services could ensure that those who choose education or paid work full-time do not carry caregiving’s financial cost. Nondisadvantage could also be served by adequate pay and benefits for part-time work by policies that facilitate the combination of caregiving with education or remunerative work and by on-ramps for caregivers entering or re-entering paid work. Replacement caregiving services could serve to promote the fair value of the political liberties by freeing up car­ egivers for political participation, and representative bodies could take steps to ensure representation of caregivers on party slates or propor­ tional representation in elected bodies.

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How to ensure that arrangements don’t track historical patterns of injustice? The measures described earlier would go a long way toward addressing this and thus communicating the equal worthiness of each person to receive and give needed caregiving. But additional measures may be necessary to avoid the clustering of members of historically disad­ vantaged groups among the least well-off with respect to caregiving. What measures are likely to be effective will be highly contextual, respond­ ing to social and historical specificity.33 We can imagine something like the Head Start program, where members of historically disadvantaged groups receive an extra helping of caregiving. Some have proposed a care corps (Brake 2017). Principles of justice in caregiving insist that whatever measures are undertaken support the caregiving capabilities of caregivers in historically disadvantaged communities and not replace them. The point is not that justice requires these particular arrangements and institutions. Presumably, a society could satisfy principles of jus­ tice, including justice in caregiving, in a variety of ways. Precisely what arrangements we should have is a matter for constitutional and legisla­ tive deliberation.

Political Constructivism Let us return to Rawls’s instruction that, when principles of justice derived from initial situation reasoning fail to accommodate our con­ sidered convictions, we must either revise the convictions or modify the initial situation (Rawls 1999, 18). Earlier, we saw what revising the set considered convictions of political justice gathered from women’s and disability movements looks like. We also explored modifying the initial situation. How are we to proceed? Rawls provides instruction. He explains that the ultimate test of a political conception of justice is public justification. “Public justification happens when all the reasonable members of a political society carry out a justification of [a] shared political conception by embedding it in their several reasonable comprehensive views” (1995, 387).34 By “reason­ able members,” Rawls means members committed to living on a shared normative basis together with others who hold different comprehensive moral doctrines. When this is accomplished, there is what Rawls calls “overlapping consensus” (2001, 29, 193, also 192–195).35 When genera­ tions of people who grow up under a political conception of justice justi­ fied in this way develop allegiance to it, there is a “mutually acceptable point of view,” a “shared basis for citizens to justify to one another their political judgments” (2001, 27, see also 192–195). Rawls explains that public justification is ultimately a practical matter (1985, 394). We will know that a political conception of justice – Rawls’s conception, the conception presented in this chapter, or some other  – is publicly justified when it is. There is no guarantee that any political

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conception of justice could achieve reasonable overlapping consensus in our, or any other, constitutional democracy. One obstacle would be if citizens fail to be or become reasonable in sufficient numbers. Another obstacle to overlapping consensus would be if there were no freestand­ ing political conceptions of justice on offer in civil society for the people to consider. There is work here for political philosophy. A philosopher can lay out a freestanding political conception of justice in a more or less complete way, including its normative grounds in the public political culture, and present it to “civil society for its citizens to consider” (1995, 384, see also 390). This is what Rawls understood himself to be doing. That has been my aim here as well. Political philosophy has a second – call it a critical – role, which is to provide “educated conjecture” about the likelihood of this or that politi­ cal conception of justice achieving public justification (2005, 15, see also 2007, 10–11). A philosopher can inquire, for example, into whether this or that proposed political conception of justice is genuinely freestanding. In the introduction I  said that by free-standing Rawls means applying only to the basic structure of society and not relying on a particular com­ prehensive moral doctrine. But there is an additional, deeper, sense of freestandingness at work in Rawls’s political philosophy. Rawls explains that a political conception of justice must stand free of particular social positions.36 But, as I have argued, Rawls’s political conception of justice fails to be freestanding in this deeper sense because it reflects a particular social position, namely that of heads of household. To appreciate the force of this argument, we need to invoke a third – also critical – role for political philosophy, which Rawls discusses only briefly. He writes that “from time to time, we must ask whether justice as fairness, or any other view, is ideological . . . in Marx’s sense,” that is, whether it is a “defense of an unjust and unworthy status quo” (2001, 4 n. 4).37 Is Rawls’s political conception of justice a defense of an unjust and unworthy status quo  – a defense of the current institutional and associational caregiving arrangements that disadvantage caregivers, leave many unable to provide sufficient caregiving, leave many with insuffi­ cient caregiving, track past injustice, and are insufficiently voluntary? I  argued earlier that we should not understand Rawls to be justifying these arrangements; I  argued that we should say that on Rawls’s view political justice simply has nothing to say about them. And I floated the possibility that Rawls’s view is that we should reconcile ourselves to these institutional and associational arrangements. Then I explained that Rawls intends that recommendation for those whose frustration and rage derives from wanting the basic structure to satisfy the requirements of their own comprehensive doctrine, and that is not the source of the rage behind the dependency critique. In any case, Rawls’s political conception of justice expresses a sort of fairness for persons inhabiting a particular social position, namely that of heads of household. In so doing, it fails to

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illuminate a great deal of caregiving injustice. It hides it from our view. As a result, Rawls’s political conception of justice throws us off the trail of caregiving injustice. This seems sufficient ground for calling Rawls’s political conception of justice ideological.38 How might we correct for the ideology? The proposal here has been to include the point of view of individuals who are immersed in, and understand themselves as charged with, attending to caregiving needs. So we begin with a set of considered convictions of political justice that arise from this point of view, and with political conceptions of society and the person informed by it. The initial choice situation worked up from these political conceptions has been purged of the point of view of heads of household. In this way, it more faithfully realizes the promise of the veil of ignorance. When we include this point of view, light is shed on the full array of institutions and associational arrangements through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied  – we appreciate them as part of society’s basic structure. This broader account of the basic structure is a com­ panion idea to our political conceptions of society and the person. As I argued earlier, before the influence of feminism in political philosophy, the failure to include aspects of the basic institutions and associational arrangements through which society’s caregiving needs are satisfied was coupled with the idea that caregiving is women’s work. Rawls explic­ itly rejected this idea, to his credit. But he retained the limitation of the basic structure, arguably to worse effect. Now rather than saying that the well-ordered society has women tending to society’s caregiving needs, and husbands and fathers supporting wives and daughters, Rawls’s view seems to be that a society can be well-ordered even if significant portions of its caregiving needs are not satisfied or even if they are satisfied only because there are droves of volunteers who do it to their disadvantage. At this point we need to inquire about the prospects of the political conception of justice that includes justice in caregiving becoming subject of a reasonable overlapping consensus and generating its own support over time. Unfortunately, space is lacking for anything like an adequate response to either question. I  will have to leave the second question entirely unaddressed, deferring its consideration to future work. To the first question I suggest this. There is no such overlapping consensus now. Achieving it might seem unlikely any time soon “given the actual com­ prehensive views existing in society” (Rawls 2001, 37, see also 136). But, as Rawls explains, we should think of overlapping consensus as develop­ ing – if at all – over time (2001, 193) and involving the adjustment of doctrines in light of an attractive political conception of justice (2005, 246, 193). To be sure, overlapping consensus on the political conception of justice presented in this chapter is not possible unless it is out there in civil society for people to consider. So there is a role for political phi­ losophy. But political philosophers take a backseat to activists and the

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many people who have suffered caregiving-related injustice. Their strug­ gle has produced, and their sense of justice is reflected in, the considered convictions at the root of this inquiry. Their point of view informs the political conceptions of the person and society with which philosophers concerned with justice in caregiving, like this writer, must begin. Their struggle will put justice in caregiving on the political agenda and slowly bend extant comprehensive doctrines toward it. That, at least, is what we may hope.

Conclusion The aim of this chapter has not been to defend Rawlsian constructivism. It has been to show what we can do with it. The chapter presented a political conception of justice – which includes justice in caregiving and is alive to the fact of past injustice – as one that would be chosen in an initial situation worked up from political conceptions of society and the person implicit in our public political culture. According to this political conception of justice, in a just society, individuals (fully cooperating and not) receive the caregiving they need to survive and thrive, while those with dependents needing caregiving are able to provide or procure it (and are able to do so voluntarily and without being disadvantaged), under conditions of equal recognition of the caregiving needs of each. This con­ ception of justice in caregiving is part of a larger political conception of justice that includes Rawls’s liberty, opportunity, and difference princi­ ples. Because the political conception of justice presented in this chapter has been purged of the point of view of heads of households  – which infects Rawls’s conception  – it may have a better chance of achieving public justification. Whether it does so remains an open question and is ultimately a practical, political task.

Notes 1. Thanks are due to Asha Bhandary, Christie Hartley, Cindy Stark, and Lori Watson for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2. Due to space constraints, I defer exploring the prospects of this conception developing its own support over time. 3. Among the most important are the following: Alstott (2004); Bhandary (2020); Bojer (2002); Brake (2012); Chambers (2019); Eichner (2010); Hampton (1993); Kittay (1999); Lloyd (1994, 1995, 1998); McClain (2006); Okin (1989, 1994); Schouten (2019); Stark (2007); Thompson (1993); and Watson and Hartley (2018). 4. Eva Kittay was the first – in several papers in the mid-1990s – to develop the dependency critique of Rawls’s theory of justice. Those papers appear in revised form in her book Love’s Labor (1999). 5. By “thrive” I mean achieve the “species-typical functioning” of which one is capable (see Daniels (1985, 28); also Kittay (1999, 76)).

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6. For examples of the movements I have in mind, see Sherwin and Fox-Piven (2019); Piepzna-Samariasinha (2018); Jor (2019). See also the National Domestic Workers’ Alliance (www.domesticworkers.org/about-us). 7. Compare Kittay (1999, 91–92, 98). 8. Rawls’s view is that it wouldn’t be to their advantage for inequalities to track past patterns in this way (Rawls 1999, 85). I  claim that such tracking is unjust even if it satisfies the difference principle. 9. As Kittay writes: “If means by which a society distributes responsibility for dependency work is not guided by principles of justice, then coercive meas­ ures – often in the guise of tradition and custom, sometimes in the guise of merely apparent voluntary life choices – are the predictable response” (1999, 99). 10. By “provide caregiving” I mean the hands-on satisfaction of needs. By “pro­ cure caregiving” I mean supporting the provision of caregiving, for example, by financially supporting a caregiver. 11. For an early articulation of this point, see Baehr (2004; relying on Thompson 1993). 12. Bhandary refers to “the invisibility of caregiving arrangements” (Bhandary 2020, 53). 13. Compare Okin (1989, 92). 14. The expression “caregiving arrangements” is due to Bhandary (2020). 15. For early discussion of this question, see Thompson (1993) and Baehr (2004, 424–425). 16. Some hold that adding “whether fully cooperating or not” is a clear depar­ ture from Rawls (see Bhandary (2010), Stark (2007) and Hartley (2009)), but Henry Richardson, drawing on Hampton (1980), suggests that it is not (2006, 427–428). 17. See Kittay (1999, 92–93, 102). Note that adding this interest to the political conception of the person – from which an initial choice situation is worked up  – is not universal among philosophers who use a basically Rawlsian framework to develop conceptions of gender justice or justice in caregiving. Jean Hampton, for example, presents parties in an initial situation as “moti­ vated solely by self-interest” (Hampton 1993, 240). And Asha Bhandary argues that rather than building “other-directedness” into the initial situation (2020, 78), we should “assume that no one cares deeply about anyone else” (83). Both Hampton and Bhandary are quite understandably moved by the way other-directedness contributes to exploitation. My own view is that the principles of justice (including justice in caregiving) presented in the follow­ ing – derived from an initial situation worked up from a political conception of the person that includes other-directedness – protect against just the kind of exploitation and marginalization that worries Hampton and Bhandary. Bhandary expresses the additional concern that building other-directedness into the initial choice situation amounts to counting “some people’s care needs . . . twice” (83). I do think my model amounts to counting care needs twice, and appropriately so, since on my view someone’s care needs are both their own concern and the concern of someone who feels responsible for see­ ing to it that they are satisfied. 18. Compare Bhandary (2020, 23). 19. Compare Kittay (1999, 102). 20. Compare Baehr (2004, 428–429). 21. Compare Eichner (2010, 30); also Kittay (1999, 104). 22. Note that Rawls explains: “the parties are presumed to know whatever gen­ eral facts affect the choice of the principles of justice. There are no limits on

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

Amy R. Baehr general information, that is, on general laws and theories .  .  ., there is no reason to rule out these facts” (1999, 119). Compare Kittay (1999, 84, see also 90 and 105); see also Bhandary (2020, 33; 2016, 44–46; 2010, 148) and Richardson (2006, 442, 448–449, 452). In Freedom to Care (2020), Asha Bhandary presents the first broadly Rawl­ sian exploration of the racial dimension of caregiving injustice. Kelly presents it as a friendly amendment (Kelly 2017, 76–77). Compare Mills (2017, 171). “A  political conception must be practicable, fall under the art of the pos­ sible” (Rawls 2001, 185). Compare Kelly (2017, 82–83). Charles Mills holds that adding the fact of past injustice takes us out of ideal theory and into nonideal theory. On his view, it shifts parties’ focus to principles for the dismantling of an “existing unjust basic structure” (Mills 2017, 213, see also 76, 140, 87, 171). My view is that ideal theory itself must be concerned with addressing sources of injustice that are likely to arise in a just society – otherwise ideal theory is not about realistic utopia. In this way, ideal theory does not “abstract away from social oppression” (Mills 2017, 207). Rawls suggests that unreasonable comprehensive doctrines will endure in a just society, but that the trick is for them to “not gain enough currency to compromise the essential justice of basic institutions” (2001, 187). Parties would insist that those who take on caregiving responsibilities be held to standards of adequate care. Also, being free of the responsibility for caregiving for particular others doesn’t mean being free of the obligation to share the overall costs of society’s caregiving needs (compare Bhandary 2016, 49–50). Compare Bhandary (2020, 14). Clearly there is much more to be said here about the parties’ reasoning; space is lacking for a full discussion. Readers might want to compare these principles to sets proposed by Bhandary (2020, 89–92, 145), Kittay (1999, 113; 2015, 62–64), and Mills (2017, 215). Compare also Brake (2017, 144). Parties who know that historically entrenched group-based injustice threat­ ens would not forbid measures that are not race and sex blind (see Mills 2017, 87, 175; but see Scheffler 2007, 90; Nagel 2003 (quoted in Mills 2017, 140, 169)). The alternative to this nonfoundational approach is to derive principles of political justice from a particular moral doctrine, but this is, for Rawls, a nonstarter (2005, 90, 93; see also James 2014, 256–257). Overlapping consensus is, on Rawls’s view, “the deepest and most reason­ able basis of social unity available to us in a modern democracy” (1995, 391, see also 388, 2001, 26). Rawls tells us that “publicity ensures that . . . the political order does not . . . depend on historically accidental or established delusions, or other mistaken beliefs resting on the deceptive appearances of institutions that mislead us as to how they work” (2005, 68). Bhandary’s two-level contract theory suggests that ensuring that a conception of justice is not a “defense of an unjust and unworthy status quo” (Rawls 2001, 4 n. 4) requires a citizenry fortified with the “autonomy skills” neces­ sary to talk back to the theorist (and the politician) and to articulate what is important to them (Bhandary 2020).

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38. So, despite his clear attempts to do otherwise, Rawls has constructed a politi­ cal conception of justice that is, in his words, “political in the wrong way” (2001, 188).

Bibliography Alstott, Linda. 2004. No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents. New York: Oxford University Press. Baehr, Amy R. 2004. “Feminist Politics and Feminist Pluralism: Can We Do Feminist Political Theory Without Theories of Gender?” Journal of Political Philosophy 12 (4): 411–436. Bhandary, Asha. 2020. Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care and Cul­ ture. New York: Routledge. ———. 2016. “Liberal Dependency Care.” The Journal of Philosophical Research 41: 43–68. ———. “Dependency in Justice: Can Rawlsian Liberalism Accommodate Kittay’s Dependency Critique.” Hypatia 25 (2010): 140–156. Bojer, Hilde. 2002. “Women and the Rawlsian Social Contract.” Social Justice Research 15: 393–407. Brake, Elizabeth. 2017. “Fair Care: Elder Care and Distributive Justice.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (2): 132–151. ———. 2012. Minimizing Marriage. New York: Oxford University Press. Chambers, Clare. 2019. Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defense of the Marriage-Free State. New York: Oxford University Press. Daniels, Norman. 1985. Just Health Care. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eichner, Maxine. 2010. The Supportive State: Families, Government, and Amer­ ica’s Political Ideals. New York: Oxford University Press. Hampton, Jean. 1993. “Feminist Contractarianism.” In A Mind of One’s Own, edited by Charlotte Witt and Louise Antony, 227–255. New York: Westview Press. ———. 1980. “Contracts and Choices: Does Rawls Have a Social Contract The­ ory?” The Journal of Philosophy 77 (6): 315–338. Hartley, Christie. 2009. “Justice for the Disabled: A Contractualist Approach.” Journal of Social Philosophy 40 (1): 17–36. James, Aaron. 2014. “Political Constructivism.” In Companion to Rawls, edited by Jon Mandle and David A. Reidy, 251–264. New York: John Wiley and Sons. ———. 2005. “Constructing Justice for Existing Practice: Rawls and the Status Quo.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 (3): 281–316. Jor, Irene. 2019. “Building Power by Building Connections: Domestic Worker Organizing for Collective Freedom.” Law and Political Economy. 2 Decem­ ber 2019. https://lpeblog.org/author/irenejorlpe/. Kelly, Erin. 2017. “The Historical Injustice Problem for Political Liberalism.” Ethics 128 (1): 75–94. Kittay, Eva Feder. 2015. “A Theory of Justice as Fair Terms of Social Life Given Our Inevitable Dependency and Our Inextricable Interdependency.” In Care

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Ethics and Political Theory, edited by Daniel Engster and Maurice Hamington, 51–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999. Love’s Labor. New York: Routledge. ———. 1995. “Taking Dependency Seriously: The Family and Medical Leave Act Considered in the Light of the Social Organization of Dependency Work and Gender Equality.” Hypatia 10 (1): 8–29. Lloyd, S.A. 1998. “Toward a Liberal Theory of Sexual Equality.” Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 9 (Spring): 203–224. ———. 1995. “Situating a Feminist Critique of John Rawls’s Political Liberal­ ism.” Loyola Law Review 28 (13): 1319–1344. ———. 1994. “Family Justice and Social Justice.” Pacific Philosophical Quar­ terly 75 (3–4): 353–371. McClain, Linda. 2006. The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality and Responsibility. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mills, Charles. 2017. Black Rights/White Wrongs. New York: Oxford University Press. Nagel, Thomas. 2003. “Rawls and Liberalism.” In Cambridge Companion to Rawls, edited by Samuel Freeman, 62–85. New York: Cambridge University Press. Okin, Susan. 1994. “Political Liberalism, Justice and Gender.” Ethics 105 (1): 23–43. ———. 1989. Justice, Gender and the Family. New York: Basic Books. Piepzna-Samariasinha, Leah Lakshmi. 2018. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Vancouver, BC: Arselan Pulp Press. Rawls, John. 2007. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Edited by Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2005. Political Liberalism. Expanded ed. New York: Columbia Univer­ sity Press. ———. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ versity Press. ———. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1997 [1999]. “The Ideal of Public Reason Revisited.” In John Rawls: Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman, 573–615. Cambridge, MA: Har­ vard University Press. ———. 1995. “Reply to Habermas.” In Political Liberalism, edited by John Rawls, 372–434. Expanded ed. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1985 [1999]. “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical.” In John Rawls: Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman, 388–414. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1980 [1999]. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” In John Rawls: Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman, 303–358. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Richardson, Henry. 2006. “Rawlsian Social-Contract Theory and the Severely Disabled.” The Journal of Ethics 10 (4): 419–462. Scheffler, Samuel. 2007. Rawls. New York: Routledge. Schouten, Gina. 2019. Liberalism, Neutrality and the Gendered Division of Labor. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Sherwin, Wilson, and Frances Fox Piven. 2019. “The Radical Feminist Legacy of the National Welfare Rights Organization.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 47 (3–4): 135–153. Stark, Cynthia. 2007. “How to Include the Severely Disabled in a Contractarian Theory of Justice.” Journal of Political Philosophy 15 (2): 127–145. Thompson, Janna. 1993. “What Do Women Want? Rewriting the Social Con­ tract.” International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 8 (3): 257–273. Watson, Lori, and Christie Hartley. 2018. Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part IV

Policy and the Design of Institutions

9

Care as Work The Exploitation of Caring

Attitudes and Emotional

Labor

Elizabeth Brake

Introduction: Care, Value, and Work Care is a great good. It is also a source of special vulnerabilities, especially as a form of labor, both paid and unpaid. How can liberalism address these complexities of caring relations, particularly when vulnerabilities of care arise from apparently free choices? Care is a special case of the problem of exploitation, of one class appropriating the products of the labor of others to the detriment of the workers. One classic Marxist criticism of liberalism is that liberalism cannot explain the injustice of exploitation. If workers choose to work, it appears that liberalism must respect the terms on which they choose to work – never mind that choice, in this context, is illusory or not mor­ ally meaningful. Catharine MacKinnon famously applied this analysis to women’s subordination (MacKinnon 1987, 60). Not only do women make choices in a context of limited options and social and economic pressures, women come to want what is not in their self-interest through gender socialization. For example, women come to eroticize the submis­ siveness associated with femininity in patriarchy. On MacKinnon’s anal­ ysis, men and women are classes parallel to the classes of capitalists and proletariats in Marxism, with men exploiting women’s sexuality. What if such an analysis also applies to care – that is, that limited options and social and economic pressures shape women’s caregiving choices and that gender socialization leads women to value care, against their own inter­ ests, facilitating their exploitation? This might seem wrong-headed. After all, as noted at the outset, car­ ing and being cared for are great goods and so appear to be in people’s interests. Indeed, caregiving is a source of self-esteem and of pleasure for many women. But like sexuality, caregiving and caring are shaped by limited options, social pressures, and gender socialization. Before proceeding, we should distinguish three types of care. “Care” can refer to material caretaking  – taking care of physical and material needs. Care can also refer to emotional caring labor or emotional sup­ port. A third kind of care is attitudinal care, or subjectively experienced

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benevolent attention and concern. Both material caretaking and emo­ tional labor can take place independently of attitudinal caring, as when performed by a stranger. Attitudinally caring relationships conceptually need not involve material caretaking or emotional labor, but usually do. My argument concerns all three distinct kinds of care, distinguishing between them as needed. For brevity, I will refer to attitudinally caring relationships as “caring relationships” in this chapter, although “caring relationships” could also refer to relationships of material or emotional caregiving lacking attitudinal care. In this chapter, I  will provide a liberal analysis of the exploitation of women’s care. Women provide more material care for children, the elderly, and for material needs in the home, and this inequitable distribu­ tion of labor has long been a cause of concern for feminists (Okin 1989; Brake 2016). But the exploitation of material caregiving labor within the household, through the gendered division of labor, is only part of this analysis. I want to extend the analysis, more controversially, to the lessrecognized division of emotional labor and to the formation of caring attitudes themselves. Women are socialized to perform emotional labor – maintaining relationships, attending to feelings – and to identify them­ selves with caregiving roles, more so than men. Women, more so than men, are socialized to care and to base their identities on caring (Bartky 1990, 99–119). This asymmetry is crucial to the exploitation of care, just as the construction of gendered desire is crucial to the exploitation of sexuality on MacKinnon’s analysis. Because care and caring relationships are goods, it may be difficult to see the harm in the gendered inculcation of caring attitudes – more dif­ ficult than in the case of gendered sexual desire. Indeed, if men’s sociali­ zation to be less caring deprives them of caring relationships, they are harmed by virtue of this socialization. But this may be true while it is also true that the disparity in caregiving – where one group is socialized to provide care, and another to receive it – has distinctive harms for the care providers. My task here is twofold: to analyze the nature of the injustice of this gendered distribution of care within liberal theory and to argue that lib­ eralism can address this exploitation by treating care as work. Breaking down legal boundaries between work and care will help protect carers’ special vulnerabilities. Conceptualizing care as work grounds my argu­ ment for economic and labor protections for unpaid caregivers. This is not to deny that care is also a great good; I am not claiming that it is merely work. This chapter should be read in the context of a series of essays I have written, which argue that a liberal state should support care, both caring relationships and material caregiving (Brake 2010, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2018). This chapter is, in particular, the companion to another paper

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that challenges the dichotomy between care and work (Brake 2018). This dichotomy obscures the special vulnerabilities that arise for paid caregiv­ ers as carers and for unpaid caregivers as workers. Thinking of care as work will increase the law’s ability to protect caregivers, paid and unpaid. In the companion paper (Brake 2018), I focused on the distinctive vul­ nerabilities of paid care workers. Care gives rise to special vulnerabilities in paid as well as unpaid care. Law professor Naomi Schoenbaum has argued that law fails to recognize that in intimate work, the “relation­ ship generates value but also vulnerability” (Schoenbaum 2015, 5). For example, the relationship itself can be terminated against both parties’ wills if the care worker is transferred or terminated. When this happens, not only may the worker lose the valuable relationship, she may also lose the value of the intimate knowledge she has gained, which allows her to do her job well. Law should recognize paid caregivers’ distinct vulner­ abilities as carers (whose valuable relationships may need protection) and as workers (whose care work relies on a special body of intimate knowl­ edge) (Brake 2018). In this chapter, I focus on the distinctive vulnerabilities of unpaid care workers. As the companion paper argues that we should recognize the overlap between paid care work and care in law, this chapter argues that we should recognize the overlap between unpaid care work and work in law. We should see unpaid material and emotional caregiving as work. Attitudinal caring is not only compatible with work but it can be manip­ ulated to exploit workers. Caregiving is (among other things) work, and work which is disproportionately extracted from women, and the state can address this by treating it like work. In what follows, I first outline the problem of the exploitation of unpaid caregiving. I then argue that liberalism has the theoretical resources to address such exploitation. Then, I present a proposal for legal measures to address it within an ideal liberal egalitarian state. Finally, I  address two theoretical objections. These arguments draw on feminist analysis of gender inequality, care ethics, and liberal egalitarianism. Together, these approaches suggest that care is valuable and that its value has been neglected. Susan Moller Okin (1989) argued that care has been ignored in political thought and relegated to the private sphere outside the scope of justice. This pre­ vented political philosophy from addressing women’s inequality. But care is a matter of justice because its distribution affects equal opportu­ nity for women and children and because care is a good that the state should support. I argue that subsuming care under norms of justice can protect the vulnerable, especially women who perform care. Protect­ ing care, and recognizing carers’ special vulnerabilities, has profound importance for migrant women, women of color, and worse-off women, who perform a disproportionate amount of paid, and arguably unpaid,

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care. Protecting care also affects people with disabilities who rely on care workers. A theory of care is integral to a full account of justice (Kittay 1999; Held 2006).

The Problem: Unpaid Caregiving, Material and Emotional It is well recognized that unpaid caregiving within the family is a source of economic vulnerability. Okin famously documented the “cycle of vul­ nerability,” which arises when women downgrade their own economic pursuits in anticipation of marriage or after marriage and in order to be primary caregivers in the family; when women are coupled with men, this typically leads to increasing economic and power inequality between the two (Okin 1989, 142–169). In different-sex marriages or partner­ ships, women’s devoting more time and energy to caregiving for children (or elderly parents or other dependents) can lead to their earning less than their male partners. This gendered division of labor is also found in women’s overseeing the fulfillment of material needs (food, clean clothes and housing, comfort) of another independent adult (such as a husband). Economic inequalities tend to diminish the decision-making power, within the marriage, of the economically dependent partner, who is typically female. The gendered division of labor also affects unmarried and unpartnered women, including single mothers or coparents, women caring for elderly parents or other dependents, and women expected to perform unpaid caring labor (not part of their job description) in profes­ sional contexts. It affects all women insofar as girls are socialized into expecting to assume gendered caregiving roles. Another aspect of the gendered division of labor is less well-recognized. The emotional labor, or support, involved in caregiving, in the case of both paid and unpaid caregivers, is also a source of vulnerability. Susan Maushart has called this emotional labor “wifework” – not simply pro­ viding housework and material care but caring for a male partner’s emo­ tional needs, listening to him, comforting him, and laughing at his jokes. She writes: “Wifework includes what Virginia Woolf called ‘reflecting a man at twice his normal size’ ” (Maushart 2001, 10–11; see discussion in Brake 2012, 116). Within different-sex relationships, attention to emo­ tions and maintaining wider social and familial relationships tend to be distributed along gender lines (Bartky 1990, 99–119). Women tend to be socialized into caring roles from an early age and to develop caring attitudes that facilitate their performance of emotional labor. Again, this affects all women, and not only married or partnered women, through gender role socialization, and also when women are expected to perform the bulk of emotional labor in professional contexts (where it is not part of their job description) or social settings.

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In an analysis of the “gendered imbalance in the provision of emotional support,” Sandra Bartky describes the nature of emotional support: “to offer him comfort, typically by the bandaging of his emotional wounds or to offer him sustenance, typically by the feeding of his self-esteem.” This is done in order “to produce or to maintain in the one supported and sustained a conviction of the value and importance of his own cho­ sen projects, hence of the value and importance of his own person.” The support is given through speech, body language, and attentive listening and interjection (Bartky 1990, 102). Bartky argues that this imbalance of emotional support and sustenance is exploitative. Drawing on Ann Ferguson, she writes, “men’s appro­ priation of women’s emotional labor is a species of exploitation akin in important respects to the exploitation of workers under capitalism” (Bartky 1990, 100, citing Ferguson 1989, chapter 4). Ferguson intends this as exploitation in the Marxist sense: “a taking advantage in which A’s profiting from his relationship to B involves substantial damage to B’s interests,” or an unequal exchange that “bring[s] about the system­ atic disempowerment of one party” (Bartky 1990, 101). The damage or disempowerment condition distinguishes it from gifts from a richer per­ son to a poorer person, or between family members, where the unequal exchange is not damaging or disempowering. One qualification is important: this account of the harms of inequita­ bly exchanged care applies to relationships between independent adults. It does not apply to child- and elder care, which involves dependents who cannot reciprocate. Care that cannot be reciprocated will not undermine self-respect in the same way that unreciprocated care between independ­ ent adults will (a point I will elaborate in the following). It is important to recognize the widespread fact of dependency care; in neglecting depend­ ency care, liberalism neglected important facts of human existence (Kit­ tay 1999; Held 2006). It also obscured the injustice of the inequitable gendered distribution of dependency care, which undermines women’s equal opportunity and distributes significant burdens of social coopera­ tion unfairly (Brake 2016; Okin 1989). However, there is a specific injustice that arises in imbalanced or ineq­ uitable caring relationships between independent adults. These are rela­ tionships in which one partner gives much more care than the other, and so receives much less care in return. While Okin focused on marriage or marriage-like relationships, such imbalanced care can also arise between adults in friendships or social and professional settings. It can also arise at the borders of dependency care, in care for older children and the elderly, if they are able to reciprocate care but do not. There is also a connection between women’s socialization as caregivers for dependents and their exploitation as carers in relationships between adults. Gender socialization encourages caring in both contexts.

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Now, this analysis of the harm of imbalanced caring relationships faces the objection that caring relationships are a good, and habits of sym­ pathetic listening and attention are valuable to their possessors. Thus, regarding caring relationships as harmful or disempowering might seem misguided, even if they are imbalanced. After all, caring relationships are a strong determinant of mental health and self-respect or self-esteem (Brake 2012, 176–178; Brake 2017, 138; Perlman 2007). Surely the opportunity to engage in them benefits women, and men are burdened by the culture of masculinity, which impedes their developing or expressing caring attitudes. However, caring (or ostensibly caring, or once-caring) relationships that are abusive, high-conflict, or incorporate other prob­ lematic aspects can be damaging (Perlman 2007, 13–14). This will apply to at least some exploitative relationships. Moreover, even if some – or many – exploitative caring relationships are valuable qua caring relationships, the fact that caring relationships are valuable does not entail that imbalanced caring relationships can­ not also be disempowering, or even damaging. Nor does it mean that work within these relationships, whether material or emotional, cannot be exploited or that caring attitudes cannot be used to extract caring behavior. As MacKinnon writes of heterosexuality: would you agree, as people say about heterosexuality, that a worker chooses to work? . . . If working conditions improve, would you call that worker not oppressed? If . . . you even like your work, or have a good day at work, does that mean, from a marxist perspective, your work is not exploited? (MacKinnon 1987, 60–61) The exploitative harm or disempowerment arising from unequal exchange can occur in contexts that also have value. In paid contexts, emotional labor is recognized as work. As Bartky discusses, Arlie Hochschild has documented how flight attendants are required to perform emotional labor and display caring behavior. Flight attendants are instructed “to smile steadily and lay down around them­ selves an atmosphere of warmth, cheerfulness, and friendly attention,” managing their own feelings as well as the passengers’ (Bartky 1990, 104, cites Hochschild 1983, see also 2013). Emotional labor is performed, as part of the job, in other professions – in the service industry and by therapists. (As I mentioned earlier, it can also be performed in any work involving human interaction, even in cases where it is not part of the job description.) Once we see that emotional labor is a type of work, we can see that this work can be exploited and that caring attitudes can be used to extract it. An objector might respond that even if imbalanced caring or emo­ tional labor would be exploitative, in fact “traditional” husbands do

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reciprocate care and emotional labor, even if not, to the same extent, in kind. Men show their attentiveness by gestures such as Valentine’s gifts or elaborate proposals (as an audience member remarked in one presen­ tation of this chapter, “men do reciprocate – they bring flowers!”). But occasional gifts are not equivalent, in emotional support, to sustained and daily attention and concern. The kernel of truth in this traditionalist response is that in many malefemale relationships, men and women may express care differently due to gender socialization. It is compatible with claiming that women system­ atically tend to provide more care than men to recognize that some men do provide care, including performing emotional labor. Men’s care can be exploited too, as can care between same-sex friends or partners. But the point that some men express their care through providing economic support or gifts does not show that women’s providing more emotional care is not exploitative. The traditionalist objection is that women’s emotional labor and care are reciprocated economically – men provide economic support in return for emotional support and caring labor. This can be seen as a specialized division of labor. This objection, however, does not take into account that the majority of married women also work outside the home for pay and that – as Bartky points out – single women in dating relationships provide emotional support without economic reciprocation (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018; Bartky 1990, 102, 110, 118). Women in social and professional settings may also be expected to perform uncompensated emotional labor. But there is a deeper problem with this objection. As Bartky argues, women’s unreciprocated (or greatly under-reciprocated) emotional labor in intimate male-female relationships disempowers women (Bar­ tky 1990, 111–113). This disempowerment differs from that of those who perform emotional labor without attitudinal care, such as flight attendants. According to Hochschild, such performance risks a sense of inauthenticity and a loss of emotional authenticity in other contexts; while we might debate the concept of “authenticity” philosophically, such felt experience can contribute to poor mental health, as Hochschild documented with flight attendants (Bartky 1990, 104; Hochschild 1983, 131). But Bartky argues that there is another risk of unreciprocated emo­ tional labor performed with attitudinal care: such labor risks a loss of self. Caring attitudes may lead the carer to take on the other’s perspective as her own. When emotional labor is imbalanced and sincerely caring, it feeds the man’s sense of self at the cost of the woman’s. Bartky argues that unreciprocated engrossment in a male partner’s concerns may cor­ rode the caregiver’s own perspective, her sense of self, and the impor­ tance of her commitments. This corrosion is why, according to Bartky, imbalanced caring meets the damage or disempowerment condition of exploitation.

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Of course, unreciprocated emotional labor can also be corrosive in same-sex relationships, friendships, and caregiving for those on the bor­ derline of dependency, such as teenagers; but gender socialization likely makes it more prevalent in male-female relationships. Moreover, malefemale relationships typically involve multiple forms of power inequality, such as differences in strength; hierarchies associated with gender roles (such as the eroticization of dominance and submission); and, in malebreadwinner families, economic dependence. These pressures intensify vulnerability and make it likely that imbalanced care is more disempow­ ering in male-female relationships. Imbalanced caregiving and the special vulnerabilities it creates are a problem of power. Just as patriarchal power is constituted and main­ tained by the exploitation of female sexuality, as MacKinnon argued, patriarchal power is also constituted and maintained by the exploitation of care (MacKinnon 1989; Ferguson 1989; discussed in Bartky 1990, 100–102). Just as, for MacKinnon, sexuality forms an intimate part of the identity of the oppressed, which is taken from them, caring forms an intimate part of many women’s identities, yet this very identification facilitates the exploitative extraction of care through the cultivation of caring attitudes. Just as sexual objectification marks women as inferi­ ors, as MacKinnon argued, when women’s attention and care is trained on men’s needs without (significant) reciprocation, it marks women as inferiors, elevating men’s values, goals, and commitments over women’s. The imbalanced inculcation of caring attitudes and identification as car­ egivers disempowers women. The gendered construction of dispositions and identities is part of what makes exploitation possible, as women are trained to put someone else’s needs first – and men are not. This gendered distribution of caring attitudes and identities leads to imbalanced care in male-female relationships. Again, this parallels MacKinnon’s account of the construction of desire and its role in maintaining patriarchal power: “how do women come to want that which is not in our interest? . . . I think that sexual desire in women, at least in this culture, is socially con­ structed as that by which we come to want our own self-annihilation” (MacKinnon 1987, 54). The inculcation of caring attitudes, likewise, may lead women to put their interests last. This analysis of patriarchal power is drawn from Marxist and radical feminism. Indeed, not only do MacKinnon, Ferguson, and Bartky explic­ itly draw on Marx, Bartky cites radical feminist Shulamith Firestone in the epigraph of her essay, suggesting that patriarchy is “parasitical, feed­ ing on the emotional strength of women without reciprocity” (Bartky 1990, 99, citing Firestone 1971, 127). Radical feminism has criticized liberal feminism as unable to address such problems of power. Imbal­ anced caring appears to be paradigmatically part of the liberal private sphere, subject to free choice among consenting adults. Unreciprocated emotional labor in adult caring relationships and the gendered imbalance

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in the inculcation of caring attitudes appear to be resistant to any form of interference by the liberal state on principle – yet they are crucial to the exploitation of care.

A Liberal Critique of Exploited Care I will argue that liberalism does have resources to address the problem of exploited care and emotional labor. In earlier work I have argued that liberalism has reason to promote caring broadly, including inculcating caring attitudes in men and women. In this section, I briefly recapitulate that argument; then I  offer further argument to show that liberalism, while promoting care, should also address the gendered asymmetry in caring attitudes. In earlier work, I argued that caring relationships and material care are goods that a politically liberal state should support. The main hurdle to justifying any support for caring relationships within political liberalism is showing that their value does not depend on appeal to a particular conception of the good. I argued that supporting caring relationships and material care is compatible with the neutrality principle (which holds that the state should remain neutral between conceptions of the good found in comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrines, excepting any conflicting with justice) (Rawls 1993, 190–195). On my view, material care and caring relationships are what Rawls would call a “primary good,” part of the “thin theory of the good” (Brake 2012, 173–181, 2017). The liberal state can, and should, support caring relationships by providing a set of marriage-like legal entitlements, which protect such relationships within certain institutional contexts.1 Because care is valuable in any kind of caring relationship, the amatonormative privileging of monogamous marriage – that is, the special treatment given to romantic, sexual couples – is unjust. As a matter of justice, support for caring relationships cannot be restricted to romantic sexual relation­ ships or even to couples. The state should distribute these legal and social bases of caring relationships equally, due to the primary good status of caring relationships. I argued that these bases of caring relationships also include educational curricula, infrastructure allowing the elderly access to social interactions, and state promotion of caring relationships. I have also argued that the state should support material caregiving, on grounds of equal opportunity (Brake 2017). Equal opportunity requires that we all receive material caregiving as children and sometimes throughout our lives; women’s equal opportunity requires that this labor be distributed fairly. My arguments for the value of caring relationships and material care entail that the state should not “level down” care in order to address the gendered asymmetry of caring attitudes and imbalanced caring relation­ ships. A  state in which men and women cared equally, but very little,

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would not be better; it would be worse-off in an important primary good. However, the fact that a liberal state has reason to support and promote caring broadly does not entail that it must address the gendered asymme­ try in caring behavior and attitudes. A state that promotes caring could still have significant inequality. Thus, further argument is needed to show why the gendered asymme­ try is unjust. My arguments that caring relationships are valuable suggest one reason: to the extent that social institutions deprive them of caring relationships, men are worse-off. This could be the case if men are less prone to develop caring relationships with friends, or even with children and extended family, due to their gender socialization. And even if men receive care from women in male-female relationships, a limited ability to care may make the relationship less valuable to them than it would oth­ erwise be. This is an injustice to men in the distribution of this primary good. However, we must be careful. My position does not entail that an economically struggling single mother is better-off than a wealthy childfree single man, simply because she has more caring relationships – with children, and with friends. Other primary goods matter too, and even when considering care, we have to see its burdens as well as its benefits. The central injustice of the exploitation of care is that one group of people is taking care from another group of people, to their detriment. What they are taking is work – unpaid work, and work not even recog­ nized as work. The solution, then, which may at first seem surprising, is to address this exploitation by recognizing and valuing care as work. One reason this may seem strange is that care is subjectively valued by many people more than work. Caregiving and caring relationships are often attributed an intrinsic value, whereas work is sometimes seen as a burden or as primarily instrumentally valuable. However, I will argue that extending worker protections (which a just liberal society should incorporate) to unpaid care workers (as well as to paid care workers) is both justified and a way to address the problem of exploitation. The challenge for liberalism, from the feminist perspective, is to show the injustice in the gendered division of caring attitudes and emotional labor. The gendered division of childcare and housework has been criti­ cized as undermining women’s equal opportunity (Okin 1989). As the family is part of what Rawls calls the “basic structure” of society, which is the subject of justice, the legal institution of the family should be designed to protect equal opportunity. But explaining the injustice of the gendered distribution of caring attitudes and emotional labor seems more challenging than explaining the injustice of the gendered division of domestic work. This is because the harms of the exploitation of emo­ tional caring labor (through the gendered distribution of caring attitudes) are more difficult to observe and quantify. Yet, if the exploitation of emo­ tional labor and caring attitudes is key to women’s oppression, an analy­ sis of the injustice is crucial.

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My analysis builds on my previous arguments for the value of caring relationships within the thin theory of the good. In brief, this value con­ sists in their close connection to mental health and to “perhaps the most important primary good” of self-respect (Rawls 1999, 386; Brake 2012, 176–178). Here I extend those arguments by considering the relation of care work, particularly emotional labor, to self-respect (while I primarily have unpaid care work in mind, the arguments also apply to cases of paid care work in which the caregiver acts with unreciprocated attitudinal care). If Bartky’s empirical hypothesis about the effects of unreciprocated, attitudinally caring emotional labor on self-respect is correct, the effects on self-respect provide reason for addressing the lack of reciprocation within Rawlsian liberalism – that is, so far as the lack of reciprocation is the product of institutions. Rawls’s argument for the importance of self-respect or self-esteem is that it underpins a sense of the importance of one’s own projects. And recognizing the importance of one’s own projects (or believing society will see them as valuable) is a condition of pursuing them at all. This is why, according to Rawls, self-respect is “perhaps the most important primary good” – because it is normally needed for pursuing one’s con­ ception of the good (Rawls 1999, 386; see also Brake 2013; Stark 2012). Bartky’s analysis of the effects of unreciprocated emotional labor resembles – in the negative – Rawls’s account of the importance of selfrespect. Bartky writes that the sincerity and quality of heartfelt concern that a woman brings to her man’s emotional needs serves to reinforce in her own mind the importance of his little dramas of daily life. But  .  .  . by failing to attend to her in the same way she attends to him, he confirms for her and, just as importantly, for himself, her inferior position in the hierarchy of gender. (Bartky 1990, 109) Inequitable emotional labor enacts a status hierarchy; when it is rooted in caring attitudes, it risks the carer internalizing this hierarchy. Bartky describes an epistemic “risk that that the woman will accept uncritically ‘the world according to him’ and that she will have corresponding difficulty in the construction of the world according to herself” (Bartky 1990, 111). She describes a corresponding ethical risk: “To affirm a man’s sense of reality is at the same time to affirm his values” (Bartky 1990, 112). This may in particular lead women to keep quiet, to keep the peace, in areas of gender conflict  – for example, in discussion of sexual harassment, #metoo, and sexual consent. In Rawlsian terms, unreciprocated care may prevent the carer from recognizing the importance of her own projects. It may have the opposite effect for the beneficiary of emotional support. Bartky’s description of

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these benefits again echoes Rawls’s account of the importance of selfrespect: the effect of receiving emotional support is “to produce or to maintain in the one supported and sustained a conviction of the value and importance of his own chosen projects, hence of the value and importance of his own person” (Bartky 1990, 102). Rawls assumes that freedom of association and relative socioeconomic equality will suffice to protect self-respect. As I have noted elsewhere, this reasoning is faulty, because people might not have access to a community of others who support their self-respect (Brake 2013). If reciprocated attitudinally caring emotional labor is a condition of self-respect, there is reason for the state to promote it, or at least its legal and social bases. This could be done by educational curricula focused on caring skills. It could also be done by public recognition of the value of emotional labor and the risk to self-respect of providing unreciprocated attitudinally car­ ing emotional labor. Before proceeding, I  should address an objection. It might be said that, in some cases of unreciprocated attitudinally caring emotional labor, such labor is the woman’s chosen project. By emotionally sup­ porting her husband and taking on his projects as her own, she pursues her conception of the good. Certainly, taking on another’s projects as one’s own – benevolence – is not intrinsically corrosive to self-respect. The response here must turn on the hypothesis that long-term subor­ dination of one’s interests and needs to those of another has epistemic and ethical risks: the loss of one’s own perspective and values (Bartky 1990; Hill 1973). The risks of imbalanced emotional labor suggest a more nuanced account of why the liberal state should address the imbalanced incul­ cation of caring attitudes and unreciprocated emotional labor. Caring relationships are primary goods insofar as they support self-respect. As primary goods, the state has reason to distribute their social and legal bases equally. But caring relationships support self-respect more or less (or not at all) based on the extent of reciprocation. If so, the asymmetry in caring attitudes and emotional labor produces an asymmetry in the primary good of self-respect-supporting caring relationships. Insofar as its distribution is affected by the basic structure, the state can modify the basic structure for a more equitable distribution. While the state can distribute material caregiving for dependents, it cannot directly distribute the attitudinally caring emotional labor consti­ tutive of caring relationships, as people cannot develop attitudinal caring on demand. At best, it can promote it through modifying the basic struc­ ture. One example of such a modification is an educational curriculum focused on teaching caring skills to all. Another is through creating posi­ tions that honor care work, such as a prestigious “Care Corps” along the lines of Teach for America (Brake 2017; Robeyns 2011; Nussbaum 2006, 213). In the following, I will propose another way of protecting against

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the inequitable distribution of emotional labor. First, one further point about the resources of liberalism to address the problem of exploitation. One aspect of the Marxist critique of exploitation is that ideology facilitates our exploitation by shaping our desires. The Marxist critique suggests that liberalism cannot address such ideological transmissions because they are protected by liberties of speech, conscience, and associa­ tion. But in fact, gendered socialization of attitudinal caring and emo­ tional labor falls within the remit of liberal justice. It does so insofar as the basic structure shapes our desires (for instance, through education replicating gender norms) and limits our options (for instance, by mak­ ing it difficult to combine work and childcare, or through tax policy).2 Insofar as the basic structure shapes our desires through education and through constraining our options, it shapes the distribution of caring, and this can be remedied. This point also distinguishes gendered imbalanced caring from imbal­ anced caring that arises unsystematically outside the basic structure. For example, people in anxious-avoidant attachment relationships (charac­ terized by one partner seeking connection, the other avoiding it) may experience imbalanced caring, but this does not fall within the remit of justice (assuming, plausibly, that attachment styles are not produced by the basic structure). The nature of the injustice is the unequal distribution of the social and legal bases of self-respect and relational goods produced by the basic structure.3 More succinctly, the distribution is unjust inso­ far as the basic structure maintains the gender system. A  similar point could be made about hierarchies of race and class, insofar as practices of deference or status corrosive to self-respect are motivated and main­ tained by the basic structure. Exploited caregiving (paid and unpaid) is linked to race and class, as well as gender, both in terms of those who perform the bulk of paid care work and in terms of racialized expecta­ tions regarding the performance of care and emotional labor. So far as these hierarchies of race, class, and gender emerge from the basic struc­ ture, they are injustices. But if imbalance arises unsystematically from outside the basic structure, due to quirks of individual psychology (as in the anxious-avoidant relationship), it is not within the remit of justice. If everyone were primed to care, and care work was not imbalanced due to institutional pressures, it would no longer be exploitative.

Proposal Earlier I suggested two ways to address the problem of imbalanced car­ ing: education and a Care Corps. Here is another proposal: regulate and recognize care – including material and emotional labor – as work from a legal point of view. Simply put, treat imbalanced care in marriage or long-term partnerships as work – and subject to worker protections such as minimum wage, overtime, sick leave, unjust termination, and health

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and safety regulations. Protections for paid care workers should extend to unpaid care workers. Such protections could involve educational and public health inter­ ventions to protect against the effects of unreciprocated caring – just as workplace signs remind workers to wear safety equipment, so the state might warn against the risks of imbalanced emotional labor. These inter­ ventions might extend to promoting reciprocal, “safer,” caring. More­ over, legally recognizing unpaid care as work might encourage unpaid caregivers to claim reciprocation as their due, or even to unionize. Seeing care as work, legally and socially, might shift both men’s and women’s perceptions of desert  – by thinking in terms of the caregiver’s right to breaks and other protections. In principle, care work could even figure into a claim for compensation on relationship dissolution. On this model, when two competent adults enter a long-term relationship of imbalanced caregiving, including friend­ ships, they would be treated as having agreed to certain legally binding terms (compare Chambers 2017, 157, 159, 189, 202). Presumably, in an ongoing relationship, parties would not appeal for enforcement of these terms, nor would it be practical to seek to enforce them on a day-to-day basis. But on dissolution, the caregiver could claim compensation for her work. A long-term contribution of caregiving could form a demonstrable basis for a claim to property and ongoing “severance” pay – and surely it is these long-term cases where the vulnerability is greatest. This differs from other proposed legal rationales for spousal support such as compensation for contributions to a spouse’s career, rehabili­ tation, income security, and equal opportunity (Jeske 2018, 180–184; Okin 1989). The rationale is not forward-looking like rehabilitation or income security; it is backward-looking, at the work the spouse has done. The compensation rationale aims to compensate the party for the contribution she has made to her partner’s career and the opportunities she has forgone, but my proposed model directly recognizes that care is work, independent of contributions made to the spouse’s career or lost opportunities. Of course, equal opportunity may be an adequate rationale for spousal support. Arguably, the effects of gender-structured marriage are so det­ rimental to women’s equal opportunity that a Rawlsian principle of fair equal opportunity requires structuring the institution of the family to protect women on divorce. Further, there are problems with treating compensation for care work as a matter of interpersonal justice. A first is evidentiary: particularly with emotional labor, proving imbalance will be difficult. A second problem is that care work is underpaid. Thus, when an unpaid caregiver divorces a highly paid husband, her claim would be less when treated as compensation for years of minimum-wage work than when treated as entitlement to a share of his earnings or continua­ tion of her standard of living. This model would benefit the worse-off at

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the expense of the better-off: wives of higher earners would have lower claims, but wives of lower earners would have equivalent claims to theirs, based on their work, despite their husband’s lower earnings. A  third problem is the “traditionalist” objection addressed earlier: a wife’s work might be considered “already paid” by earnings shared during the mar­ riage. This applies only where the husband contributes financially and the wife does not – according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2018) data, 19.5% of marriages in 2016 – but these would likely be cases of the greatest economic vulnerability. Although, if women’s work were prop­ erly valued  – as caregiver, cleaner, nutritionist, and so on  – the claim would be much higher (Waring 1999). Finally, this support model only applies to women leaving relationships that have been formalized in some way, as through minimal marriage. In the current U.S. context, spousal support provides less protection to groups with lower marriage rates such as the economically worse-off and African Americans. In addition, members of worse-off groups are less likely to be able to pay spousal support. Furthermore, the exploitation of emotional labor and caring attitudes occurs outside the context of mar­ riage and male-female relationships. Emotional labor is extracted from women in professional contexts in which they are not paid for it as well as in social settings. Hence a broader rethinking of who cares, what care entails, and what risks imbalanced caring has is best able to protect all women, and not just married or partnered women. For all these reasons, treating unpaid care as entitled to payment – a mandatory minimum wage  – has limited value in protecting women’s interests. It is infeasible, particularly outside formalized contexts (i.e., marriage). The more feasible and broadly protective aspect of the pro­ posal is the symbolic recognition of care as work, and of caregivers as deserving worker protections such as sick days. In practice, this could be accomplished by a state-funded service providing registered caregivers with respite for a certain number of sick days each year. Even more feasi­ ble (because less costly) would be through educational and public health campaigns highlighting the labor and the risks of care. Even such limited implementation could be effective. Recognizing that emotional labor is work and that it can diminish one’s self-respect might affect women’s willingness to perform it without reciprocation. Seeing care as risky work deserving protections could help to alter the way men and women think about desert. Law has an expressive function; just as “minimal marriage” (my name for marriage-like legal supports for friends and small groups) is intended, in part, to queer expectations around love and sex, recogniz­ ing the work aspect of care may begin to queer social expectations sur­ rounding care, of who gives it, who receives it, and what they deserve. One objection to treating unpaid care as work is that people can choose to donate work, foregoing compensation and workers’ protections, and presumably that is what unpaid caregivers do. But it is not true that

230 Elizabeth Brake people can donate any kind of work or that they can work under any conditions they choose. Some work is highly regulated: namely, work with high risks to self or others. Unpaid volunteers in many fields must undergo rigorous screening and adhere to strict conditions. Labor law paternalistically prohibits or regulates employment that is risky to the employee. And in contract law, unpaid work leading to an employee’s impoverishment could be construed as unjust enrichment (Fineman 2004, 134). Moreover, it is well within the liberal paradigm to prohibit or regulate work that could be harmful to nonconsenting others. When the disempowerment of an unpaid caregiver affects her children through her poverty or their internalization of harmful gender roles, it becomes legitimate for the state to regulate such work. This proposal may prompt two other practical concerns. First, on the Marxist account, workers working for wages outside the home are exploited within capitalism. Considering wives (or unpaid caregivers) as paid workers will not improve their position and in fact may make them worse-off. In U.S. law, wives have protections that paid workers do not. It is more difficult to “fire” wives; they have rights to compensation and a share of property (depending on state law) and access to the premises. But my assumption is that workers (including paid caregivers) should have fair worker protections; in an ideal liberal state these would be far greater than in current U.S. law. Second, any proposal to treat exploited unpaid carers as paid care workers risks ignoring the serious challenges faced by paid care workers and may worsen their situation. The implications for paid caregivers are complex. For one thing, many paid caregivers are also unpaid caregivers, so measures to protect unpaid caregivers will apply to them. But there are class interests at stake. Unpaid caregivers who are also employers of less privileged paid caregivers have different class interests. As wives’ unpaid labor facilitates the exploitation of husband-workers, whose labor out­ side the home depends on receiving care within it, the labor of poor or migrant women facilitates exploitation of their female employers who work outside the home.4 Paid caregivers occupy the place that wives have in Marxist feminist critique, and working wives’ labor is exploited both as workers and as wives. Seeing unpaid caregiving as work could lead to solidarity between unpaid and paid caregivers. But it might also lead the privileged to feel threatened, if the rights of the less privileged are seen as coming at their expense (through higher taxes, for example). This potential conflict points to the need for full worker protections for paid care workers. Paid caregivers have not received full legal protection as workers in U.S. law. Since the New Deal, and for reasons having to do with race and class, they have lacked the full protections against discrim­ ination and retaliation, and minimum wage and overtime protections, that other workers have (Schoenbaum 2015; Brake 2018). The many migrant care workers working unofficially have no worker protections.

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On the other hand, the dichotomy between care and work harms paid care workers because it causes their unique vulnerabilities as carers to go unrecognized. And if paid care work is less valued because it is seen as women’s work and as altruistic, then valuing unpaid care work more, and recognizing the burdens of emotional labor, stands to increase the perceived value of paid care work.

Objections: Power and Self-Interest There are objections to bringing care under the liberal paradigm of the worker, who contracts freely and self-interestedly in a capitalist labor market. These objections concern a perceived tension between care and contract, where “contract” is used to signal relationships entered as transactions between self-interested individuals, with terms defined by the parties. The first objection concerns power: when individuals with unequal power define the terms of their agreement, the more power­ ful individual will get better terms. The second objection concerns selfinterest: contracts are self-interested, whereas care is altruistic. 1. The problem of power, discussed by Carole Pateman (1988), Okin (1989), Martha Minow and Mary Lyndon Shanley (1996), and Tamara Metz (2010), is that due to power inequalities between men and women, female primary caregivers in different-sex relationships may be pressured into disadvantageous agreements, and caregiving will amplify their vulnerability over time. For example, replacing manda­ tory alimony with contractual terms could remove protections from women made vulnerable through caregiving. Apparently freely entered contracts can perpetuate power hierarchies (Pateman 1988; Minow and Shanley 1996). This is a problem for liberalism insofar as liberalism protects freedom of contract. If spouses freely choose an arrangement that makes one eco­ nomically vulnerable, why should one partner be held financially respon­ sible? Allowing spouses to contract regarding marital property might seem to protect liberal freedom  – yet also threaten women’s equality. A number of theorists have attempted to answer this either by question­ ing the freedom of such choices or by appealing to egalitarian distributive principles to justify mandatory alimony or broader redistributive institu­ tions for caregiving (Rawls 1997; Metz 2010; Alstott 2004; Okin 1989; Brake 2016). The model I have proposed suggests another option, one compatible with those just mentioned. On this proposal, care is treated as work, but not as fully contractual. In the purest form of contract, contracting par­ ties choose individualized terms. But law restricts the terms of contracts, by barring unjust enrichment, defining what we can contract, setting a

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minimum wage, and requiring worker protections. My proposed model limits agreements between spouses or partners by precluding unpaid care work without worker protections. Care work, it turns out, is in tension with the full and unrestricted application of contractual principles not because care is but because work is. Workers, even if their choices are free and the background distribution is fair, cannot contract into severely disadvantageous terms because of labor law protections. However, legally protecting caregivers can increase women’s vulner­ ability to power inequality by encouraging interdependency (Robeyns 2011). One warning comes from recent empirical research on same-sex divorce in the United Kingdom by Charlotte Bendall and Rosie Harding. Their study suggests that legal recognition of same-sex marriage may increase financial interdependence, which the previous lack of recog­ nition discouraged. Drawing on in-depth interviews with lawyers and clients in same-sex dissolution proceedings, they hypothesize that “resist­ ance to both compensation and maintenance . . . reflects pre-civil partner­ ship approaches to relationship breakdown and the previous lack of legal support on the breakdown of longstanding same sex relationships.” But they predict that [a]s those in same sex relationships find that they are no longer posi­ tioned outside of or “against” the law, approaches to money manage­ ment in legally recognised same sex relationships may shift towards greater levels of financial interdependence. Given the assumptions around financial interdependency that are inherent in the legal rec­ ognition of same sex partnerships, and the consequent reduction in welfare to support to those in same sex relationships (including those who do not choose to marry or enter into a civil partnership), it seems likely that higher levels of financial interdependence within same sex couples will result. (Bendall and Harding 2018, 151–152) This supports the objection: if legally recognizing financial interde­ pendence encourages it, can the state recognize unpaid care work with­ out incentivizing it and thereby reinforcing gender norms that facilitate power imbalances and the exploitation of care? This is a crucial practi­ cal problem, not just for my proposal but for any account of spousal support, intimate caregiving unions (Metz 2010), piecemeal directives governing relationship practices (Chambers 2017), or caregiver protec­ tions. One (practical) question is whether it is possible to support care work without reinforcing gender norms. Another (theoretical) question is whether it is required by justice: if care work were protected as work, would its exploitation – its gender-structured imbalanced performance – be objectionable on liberal egalitarian grounds?5

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It would. Even if care workers have a full – and ideal – set of worker protections, there is still reason for the liberal state to discourage imbal­ anced caring and the gendered imbalance in caring attitudes. The rea­ son is the corrosive effects of imbalanced caring on self-respect. Due to the corrosive effects on self-respect, the state has reason to be concerned about any exploitation, in which one group subordinates its interests to another group, if that subordination is maintained by the basic structure. 2. Another theoretical problem arises from a tradition concerned that altruism may be corrupted by self-interest. This is the lingering reserva­ tion that there is something fundamentally antithetical between atti­ tudinal care and paid work – that paid relationships are not authentic caring relationships, that work is less valuable than care, and that care is valuable precisely because it is not self-interested or done for reciprocation. It might be thought that what we value about caring is its authentic­ ity. Paid emotional labor – the smile of a flight attendant – is only val­ ued because it mimics what is truly valuable: authentic care. If authentic care in the home is treated as paid labor, the objection goes, this more authentic care may be “corrupted” into a performance, a simulacrum of truly valuable care. But this objection overlooks the extent to which unpaid caregivers may perform care when tired, frustrated, or otherwise preoccupied. This objection arises from the long tradition of seeing care and con­ tract, in its self-interested aspect, as oppositional – by conservatives who oppose treating marriage as a contract rather than an altruistic union and by feminists who oppose the self-interested rational contractor model (see Brake 2012, 102–107). Feminists have pointed out the ubiquity of noncontractual relationships and the unrealistic abstraction of the model of the atomistic contractor. A broader range of moral and political phi­ losophers (famously, GWF Hegel in his Philosophy of Right [1995]) have argued that contractual relationships are incompatible with the altruism of caring relationships. To respond, it is important to distinguish legal contracts, or legally binding agreements, from relationships characterized by mutual selfinterest. Caring relationships are compatible with contractually entered legal arrangements: legal contracts can protect caregivers, and treat­ ing legal marriage (or marriage-like law) as contractual in some ways both respects liberties and removes sexist assumptions from law (Brake 2012, 102–107). But this does not speak to the deeper perceived ten­ sion between caring relationships and relationships entered from a selfinterested standpoint. This alleged opposition might be marshalled to defend the conceptual dichotomy between work and care.

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From the moral point of view, encouraging unpaid caregivers to see themselves as workers who are owed compensation might seem morally detrimental. In most cases of caring, tensions will arise between prior­ itizing the cared-for, the caring relationship, or self-interest. Often, the carer’s sacrificing self-interest for the cared-for, as parents do for their children, is seen as morally praiseworthy.6 I find this tension somewhat overstated: a relationship entered into out of self-interest can also be authentically caring, and authentically car­ ing relationships can be regulated to protect the interests of each party. Law can protect against vulnerabilities arising in care relationships. Fur­ thermore, as John Tomasi (1991) has pointed out, altruism conceptually depends on the giver’s having an entitlement to what is given. Recogniz­ ing the caregiver’s separate interests, from this perspective, is a condi­ tion of altruism. While the self-interested contractor may seem morally inferior when contrasted with the altruistic self-sacrificer, the caregiver’s ability to make self-protective claims precludes the morally defective alternative of entitled, parasitic exploitation. My proposal might seem vulnerable to practical reductios. Does it imply that children owe payment to their parents for care received? No, because children are not in a position to agree to terms and because imbalanced caring for those who cannot care for themselves does not have the corrosive effects on self-respect that subordinating one’s needs to those of an equal does. (Although, of course, caring for dependents can take a heavy toll on the caregiver’s physical and mental health.) But the proposal could have other implications for family relations: for instance, perhaps adult children who provide uncompensated care for elderly par­ ents would have a larger claim against their estate than their siblings.7 Care ethicists concerned with the creeping commodification and con­ tractualization of intimate life might object that this strategy seeks to gain respect and power for caregivers by assimilating care to work. Care is valuable itself, and not merely qua work. This is true, and I have argued elsewhere that the liberal state has reason to recognize this value. My point is not that care is valuable only qua work but that caregiving can be work and deserves the protections and respect accorded to work. For those concerned with commodification, as well as socialist feminists who argue that feminism is incompatible with capitalism, my proposal might seem like a reductio of liberal feminism  – rather than attacking commodification and markets, it subordinates one of the last holdouts to market norms to those very norms. I  do not assume that the ideal feminist liberal egalitarian society would be capitalist; but in a capitalist society, the power of market forces should be recognized and regulated. For care is not, in fact, a holdout to market norms, although it is ide­ alized as such. Much caregiving is paid and subject to market norms, without the protections offered to other workers. Romanticizing care as altruistic, or free from market pressures, serves both to rationalize

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excluding paid caregivers from full legal protections as workers and to obscure the work done within the home by women. Markets pressure care in many ways. Caring for children or for elderly people or others who need care is expensive, and women who do such care have to weigh the costs of care and their earnings from paid work. Markets shape not just caregiving but the choices to have children and to marry (McClain 2013; Becker 1993). The larger problem is the extent to which instrumentalizing workers, treating them without dignity and as replaceable, and commodification – treating all goods as reducible to money – have crept into all aspects of life. Regulation to protect workers’ rights is a way to push back against the former. Policies valuing attitudinal care and caring relationships, in which others are valued for their own sakes, not instrumentally, push back against both. Even if care is recognized as work, the value of caring relationships, their unique goods, and the distinctive vulnerabilities of caregivers can simultaneously be acknowledged.8

Notes 1. These legal entitlements include hospital and prison visitation rights, special immigration eligibility, in-state residency, eligibility for spousal relocation policies, special tax status for inheritance of a shared home, and spousal relo­ cation and employment policies. I call this “minimal marriage” (Brake 2010, 2012). 2. The United States subsidizes care, in a sense, by not taxing the imputed value of unpaid care. In effect, this subsidizes gender norms. 3. Thanks to Deborah Hellman for pressing me on this. 4. A point made by Nancy Fraser in her 2018 presidential address, “Is Capital­ ism Necessarily Racist?” to the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. 5. There is a parallel concern in the feminist literature on universal basic income; see also Robeyns (2011). 6. Thanks to Virginia Held for this point. 7. Thanks to Deborah Hellman for this point. 8. Many thanks for comments and discussion to Amy Baehr, Asha Bhandary, Breanne Fahs, Tamara Metz, and audiences at the 2018 American Philosophi­ cal Association Eastern Division conference and the University of Virginia Law School.

Bibliography Alstott, Anne. 2004. No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Soci­ ety Owes Parents. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bartky, S.L. 1990. Femininity and Domination. New York: Routledge. Becker, Gary. 1993. A Treatise on the Family. Enlarged ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bendall, Charlotte, and Harding, Rosie. 2018. “Heteronormativity in Dissolu­ tion Proceedings: Exploring the Impact of Recourse to Legal Advice in Same

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Sex Relationship Breakdown.” In Philosophical Foundations of Children’s and Family Law, edited by Elizabeth Brake and Lucinda Ferguson, 134–152. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brake, Elizabeth. 2018. “Paid and Unpaid Care: Marriage, Equality, and Domes­ tic Workers.” In Philosophical Foundations of Children’s and Family Law, edited by Elizabeth Brake and Lucinda Ferguson, 75–94. Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Press. ———. 2017. “Fair Care: Eldercare and Distributive Justice.” Politics, Philoso­ phy, and Economics 16 (2): 132–151. First published online 30 August 2015. ———. 2016. “Equality and Non-Hierarchy in Marriage: What Do Feminists Really Want?” In After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships, edited by Elizabeth Brake, 100–124. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013. “Feminism, Family Law, and the Social Bases of Self-Respect.” In Re-reading the Canon Series: Feminist Interpretations of Rawls, edited by Ruth Abbey, 57–74. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. ———. 2012. Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010 “Minimal Marriage: What Political Liberalism Implies for Mar­ riage Law.” Ethics 120 (2): 302–337. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2018. “Employment Characteristics of Families  – 2017.” www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf. Chambers, Clare. 2017. Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, Ann. 1989. Blood at the Root: Motherhood, Sexuality, and Male Dominance. London: Unwin Hyman, Pandora Press. Fineman, Martha. 2004. The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency. New York: The New Press. Firestone, Shulamith. 1971. The Dialectic of Sex. New York: Bantam Books. Hegel, G.W.F. 1995. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Edited by Allen W. Wood and Translated by H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 1973. “Servility and Self-Respect.” The Monist 57 (1): 87–104. Hochschild, Arlene. 2013. The Outsourced Self: What Happens When We Pay Others to Live Our Lives for Us. New York: Picador. ———. 1983. The Managed Heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jeske, Diane. 2018. “Moral and Legal Obligations to Support ‘Family’.” In Philosophical Foundations of Children’s and Family Law, edited by Elizabeth Brake and Lucinda Ferguson, 173–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kittay, Eva. 1999. Love’s Labor. New York: Routledge. MacKinnon, Catharine. 1989. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1987. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Maushart, Susan. 2001. Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women. New York: Bloomsbury. McClain, Linda C. 2013. “The Other Marriage Equality Problem.” Boston Uni­ versity Law Review 93 (3): 921–970.

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Metz, Tamara. 2010. Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for Their Divorce. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Minow, Martha, and Mary Lyndon Shanley. 1996. “Relational Rights and Responsibilities: Revisioning the Family in Liberal Political Theory and Law.” Hypatia 11 (1): 4–29. Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Okin, Susan Moller. 1989. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books. Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. London: Polity. Perlman, Daniel. 2007. “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: The Place of Close Relationships in Psychology and Our Daily Lives.” Canadian Psychol­ ogy 48 (1): 7–18. Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ versity Press. ———. 1997. “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” The University of Chicago Law Review 64 (3): 765–807. ———. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Robeyns, Ingrid. 2011. “A Universal Duty to Care.” In Arguing About Justice: Essays for Philippe Van Parijs, edited by A  Gosseries and P. Vanderborght, 283–290. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain. Schoenbaum, Naomi. 2015. “The Law of Intimate Work.” Washington Law Review 90 (3): 1167–1244. Stark, Cynthia. 2012. “Rawlsian Self-Respect.” In Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, edited by Mark Timmons. Vol. 2, 238–261. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tomasi, John. 1991. “Individual Rights and Community Virtues.” Ethics 101: 521–536. Waring, Marilyn. 1999. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

10 The Free-Market Family Liberalism, Families, and

Government’s Responsibility

to Regulate the Market

Maxine Eichner The movement to recognize that dependency is a basic feature of the human condition has helped liberal theory make great strides in the last three decades. In that time, many writers, including myself, have called attention to the fact that the autonomous citizens depicted in liberal political theory are never, in fact, completely autonomous in the sense that all they need from others is protection from encroachment on their rights (Eichner 2010). Further, to the extent that citizens are autonomous at all, they become so only through a long developmental process that requires copious amounts of caretaking and human development. Attention to the fact of dependency, these theorists have asserted, changes the basic responsibilities of government. No longer can the state simply guarantee some combination of the freedom and equality that an autonomous adult would require, as traditional liberal theory would have it. Instead, the state must also concern itself with the project of ensuring that those within its borders get the caretaking and human development they need to become the sound adults depicted in liberal theory. Further­ more, the state must concern itself with ensuring that these sound adults stay that way, which also requires ensuring that adults get the caretaking they need. These responsibilities in turn require that the state attend to the well-being of families, the principal institution in which these tasks are accomplished in our society. Families, though, are not black boxes that will produce the same out­ comes regardless of their circumstances. Instead, the environment in which they function critically affects their well-being, as well as their ability to provide the caretaking and human development their members need. In modern, industrialized society, one of the institutions that most profoundly affects families is the market.1 Friedrich Engels long ago called attention to the market’s profound and, in that case, deeply harmful effects on working-class families in his description of life in Manchester, England, during the Industrial Revolu­ tion. In his account, the grueling demands of industrial labor decimated working-class families’ caretaking and human development functions. Market imperatives caused men, women, and children to work from

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early morning to late at night, leaving them too exhausted to nurture children. Meanwhile, infants were drugged with laudanum into quiet in their parents’ unheated flats while their families worked. The conse­ quence was that children were never properly socialized. In short, the brutal economic circumstances that prevailed suffocated feelings of love and affection, eviscerated caretaking and human development, and led to the breakdown of the family (Engels [1845] 1975, 424–425). Contemporary examples of the market’s destructive effects on families in the United States, where I write, tend to be somewhat tamer than in Engels’ time. Yet market forces are nevertheless having profoundly nega­ tive effects on U.S. families from the bottom to the top of the income lad­ der. These pressures create problems that look very different for families of different classes. Low-income families, and particularly poor families, clearly have it worst of all. Uncertain job prospects and low wages mean that many adults in this group won’t ever form the stable partnerships they badly want. Because of this, rising numbers of children are born to unmarried parents, and most children are at some point raised by sin­ gle mothers. In addition, the economic pressures on low-income families mean that they can’t give their kids the sound start they need. Yet the market’s harmful pressures extend even to families at the top of the income ladder. Families headed by professionals at the top of the income ladder generally have the money they need to support their fami­ lies (although it may not always feel that way to them). But the long hours typically demanded by their jobs, combined with the many hours they put in to make sure that their kids will be economically stable once they leave home, make life a grinding slog. Their stress and exhaustion are aggravated by technology that means these parents are never com­ pletely off-the-clock, and always checking texts and emails from work, even when they’re home. Meeting all these demands leaves them stressed and overwhelmed. Despite the harmful effects of contemporary market forces on families, government’s responsibility to regulate the market, and to ensure that the economy supports families, remains significantly undertheorized in liberal theory. This chapter begins to fill that gap.2 The first part argues that a fundamental responsibility of the liberal state must be to regu­ late societal institutions in order to support the circumstances that fami­ lies need to thrive. The second part outlines the many ways that market forces in the United States are undermining the health of families. The third part argues that, insofar as the market isn’t delivering families the circumstances they need, it is government’s role to regulate markets and to structure the economy in order to support families. The first section explains that markets are not, as is often thought today, the economy itself. Instead, they are but one part of the economic system whose job, properly conceived, is to ensure that goods and resources support the well-being of citizens. This in turn necessitates supporting the well-being

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of families. The second section then lays out the tenets that should govern economic regulation to support families. These tenets would embed both markets and families into a larger economy whose purpose is to ensure that individuals get the resources they need – through families, market, and the government – to thrive.

The Liberal State Must Support the Conditions in Which Families Thrive Until recently, liberal political theory has had little to say about the inevitability of dependency in human lives. Liberalism, particularly in its American versions, has largely conceived of citizens as able adults and has focused on them as individuals rather than as members of families. Conceptualizing citizens in this manner has served valuable functions: it has helped ground the liberal moral ideal that all citizens should be treated as free and equal. It has also justified the important notion that all citizens have an entitlement to rights that the state should safeguard. Yet while the liberal conception of humans as able adults is an impor­ tant moral ideal, it is still only a moral ideal. It is not, as it is often treated, an adequate understanding of the reality of the human condition. In truth, people spend most of their lives dependent on one another to some greater or lesser degree. They are born as helpless babies and live in near total dependence on others for much of the first decade of their lives. They spend their next decade requiring considerable assistance from oth­ ers. During these first two decades, and often longer, they will require extensive caretaking, assistance with human development, and consider­ able material resources including food, clothing, a roof over their heads, and more, to become healthy, flourishing adults and contributing mem­ bers of the polity. Some small but significant number of citizens will never achieve a sig­ nificant degree of independence from the caretaking of others because of physical or mental disabilities. Most others will enter an adulthood in which they are largely, although never completely, independent. Adults are not islands unto themselves; virtually all adults have some periods in which they require significant caretaking because of physical or mental illness, and most have intermittent periods of such dependence. And as they age and approach the end of life, most adults will become increas­ ingly dependent on others for care (Brault 2010, 4). Focusing on the dependency of the human condition makes the pic­ ture of what citizens need from their government more complex than mainstream versions of liberal theory would have it. If adults are con­ ceived as capable and autonomous, the respect for human dignity that grounds liberalism requires, above all, ensuring their freedom and equal­ ity. Mainstream theorists therefore debate how each of these two goods should be traded off against the other to best support human dignity

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(e.g., Rawls 1971). These theorists also consider how central liberal insti­ tutions should be structured to support the goods of freedom and equal­ ity, accepting the longstanding view that government should regulate to ensure sovereignty of the people, a limited state, and the security of its citizens. Once we adjust the image of citizens to account for the dependency in the human life cycle, however, respect for human dignity entails more than just protecting citizens’ individual rights: the importance of caretak­ ing and human development come to the fore as every bit as important to human dignity as safeguarding citizens’ liberty and security or ensuring a just distribution of societal goods among citizens. This transforms the lib­ eral democratic project. Respect for human dignity now demands more than the protection of individual rights and freedom. It also requires con­ sidering how we can bring into being, care for, and develop the faculties and virtues of sound citizens. The state’s responsibility to ensure a society can support caretaking and human development becomes every bit as fundamental as its responsibility to establish an adequate police force and military in order to safeguard citizens’ individual rights. The impor­ tance of caretaking and human development, in turn, calls attention to the role of the family, which, as our society is currently structured, has been the institution largely responsible for performing these functions, as well as for meeting the material needs of dependent family members. The term “family,” as used here, is defined expansively. A wide range of long-term relationships foster the well-being, caretaking, and human development that humans need to flourish. These relationships extend well beyond the heterosexual marital family together with their minor children – the grouping that many used to think of as the “natural” fam­ ily. Today’s families include, among others, single-parent families, samesex couples, with or without kids, unmarried cohabiting couples, adults with aging parents, and adult siblings. To the scant extent that mainstream liberal theory has attended to families, it has generally conceptualized them through the lens of liberal autonomy. In this reading, families, like the adults within them, are and should be autonomous. The goal of public policy, in this view, is to keep the family as free as possible from state intervention. Furthermore, as this view has it, the state should be neutral with respect to the health and well-being of families. This standard view of the state’s relationship to families, though, gets it wrong on two counts. First, it misunderstands the relationship between the state and families. In today’s complex society, the ways in which families function are always deeply and inextricably intertwined with government policy. To mention just a few examples, child-labor laws keep children financially dependent on their parents, equal employ­ ment legislation has encouraged women’s movement into the labor mar­ ket and out of the home, and Social Security survivors’ benefits influence

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some recipients not to marry. Most importantly, for the purposes of this chapter, law and public policy affect families’ ability to deal with dependency needs. The family has no “natural” baseline of function­ ing that it can be left to apart from the state and public policy, and that would be adulterated if the state were to intercede. Nor does the modern administrative state have a neutral, isolated position it can assume while leaving families autonomously to deal with their own affairs. Instead, the state is always and continually influencing how families conduct their affairs. The relevant question is not whether its actions can avoid affect­ ing families but rather whether it will consider the implications for fami­ lies when it does act. Second, the expectation that the state should be neutral with respect to families is wrong as a normative matter. The critical role that sound families play in the lives of flourishing citizens makes them central to the success of the liberal project. In carrying out this project, the state cannot equally take or leave families (at least without vastly overhauling how we deal with dependency issues in our society). As society is organ­ ized, a large proportion of the caretaking and human development that people need to flourish will come from families, if it comes at all. This means that, to succeed, the liberal enterprise requires families that have the resources and the capacity to support and nurture their members. We need a better theory of the state’s role with respect to families, one that accounts for the fact of human dependency, and the critical role that families play in resolving dependency issues. In place of positioning the liberal state as distant from and neutral to families, I propose that we treat ensuring the conditions that support sound families as a basic responsibility of government. By the term, “sound families,” I  mean the strong, stable relationships that can support the caretaking, human development, and material needs of their members. But why must the state support sound families? Can’t we expect indi­ viduals to arrange the circumstances and provide the support that fami­ lies need on their own, without state assistance? Because raising children, caring for dependents, and developing human capabilities are timeconsuming and complex tasks that generally are part of a process that takes years. During this time, families inevitably have to interact with a number of institutions that profoundly affect their health, as well as heavily influence their ability to provide the circumstances family mem­ bers’ need. Individual family members have little ability to change the rules of the game that structure these institutions. The state, though, has a unique ability to regulate societal institutions in ways that support families. This ability, coupled with the importance of sound families to the liberal project, means that the state should treat regulating to support families as a basic part of the liberal project. Doing so would recognize that the ability of families to nurture their members does not simply exist as a matter of fact or spring up as a matter of spontaneous generation.

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Instead, it is an achievement that must be accomplished jointly by both citizens and the state. We don’t have to believe that families are perfect to recognize the state’s responsibility to facilitate conditions that support them. The fact of the matter is that all families are imperfect, many reinforce some dynamics like sex inequality that are problematic, and some are downright abu­ sive. These imperfections and risks are not, however, reasons for the state to avoid support for families. That’s because we have no other credible alternative in our society for dealing with the great bulk of caretaking and human development needs. Because of this, most people will con­ tinue to get much of what they need through families, if they get them at all. This gives the state strong reason to construct supports in ways that address and cabin these flaws, for example, through measures that seek to minimize gender inequality and domestic abuse. The flaws that all families have also means that the state should build some redundancy into institutions, for example, providing human development at schools to help make up for children not getting all they need at home. In addi­ tion, the state should seek to ensure that exiting families is both safe and practicable for adults within abusive relationships and that an adequate foster-care system is in place for abused children who need to be removed from their homes. In sum, despite all the faults of actual families, we haven’t developed other institutions that come close to meeting the attachment, caretaking, and human development needs that families provide. And that makes state support for sound families critical to sound lives, as well as central to the liberal project

How Deregulated Markets Undermine Sound Families In industrial capitalist societies today, the market is one of the most important institutions – probably the most important institution in many countries – that affects families’ ability to accomplish the caretaking and human development tasks we need them to perform. Workers’ participa­ tion in the labor market affects how much and which blocks of time they have for the caretaking of family members. Families’ ability to provide income for their members depends on their ability to negotiate pay in the labor market or otherwise to make money, as well as on general mar­ ket conditions. Market forces also influence how long a parent can stay home after the birth of a child and whether and when they will return to work. The same is true for how much time off family members can take to take care of ailing family members. Finally, both parents’ income and the market price of daycare determine the quality of daycare they can afford if they do work. The same is true for the paid home health or caretaking services a family can afford for sick family members or those with disabilities. Given the extent to which the market influences how families

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function, this part makes the case that the state must regulate the market to support the conditions sound families need. The view that government should regulate the market to support fami­ lies is starkly opposed to the public policy that reigns in the United States. In the last half century, U.S. politicians and regulators have increasingly chosen to deregulate markets, on the view that a booming “free market” is all that families need to flourish. Of course, anyone who has paid any amount of attention to markets knows that they are never truly free or unregulated. A market system couldn’t exist in the absence of significant government regulation, including laws that established a stable currency, enforced property rights, backed contracts with the force of law, and so forth. What this means is that when people use the terms “free” or “deregulated” to apply to markets, they don’t really mean these markets aren’t regulated at all. Instead, they mean that these markets aren’t regu­ lated with nonmarket goals in mind, like promoting fairness, good family lives, or other social welfare goals. I’ll use these terms in the same way in this chapter. Public policy that focuses on deregulating markets, which I’ll call “free-market policy,” is supposed to give families everything they need to thrive. In fact, politicians, pundits, and many Americans believe that insulating families from market forces makes them weaker and “depend­ ent” on government. A vast array of empirical evidence from these last decades demonstrates this prevailing regulatory theory is emphatically wrong. To keep the scope of this chapter within reasonable bounds, I’ll demonstrate why this is the case specifically for families with young chil­ dren. A similar case could be made focusing on parents of older children, adults with aging parents, or the many other family relationships that are inadequately supported today. In the last five decades, the U.S. economy has tripled. Yet mushroom­ ing rates of economic inequality and insecurity have increasingly desta­ bilized poor and working-class American families. Today, opposite-sex couples without college degrees are marrying far less than they used to (Reeves, Sawhill, and Krause 2016; Wilcox and Marquardt 2010, 15). This isn’t because they don’t want to marry. In fact, the vast majority aspire to marriage and believe it is the best family arrangement for chil­ dren (McLanahan 2009, 118). Instead, they don’t because they don’t see themselves and their partners as economically stable enough (GibsonDavis, Edin, and McLanahan 2005, 1307). Their hesitation to marry particularly reflects the dimmer economic prospects for the men in these communities in recent decades. The collapse of U.S. manufacturing jobs means that more men today are competing for low-skill jobs that pay less, have fewer opportunities for advancement, and are less secure than several decades ago. The couples who would have married decades ago have cut back bearing children, but not by as much as they have decreased

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marriage. The result is that the rates of nonmarital births among poor and working-class women have shot up (Cherlin 2014, 6–7, 9–10, 126). The unmarried relationships into which these children are born are far more likely to break up than marriages. These fragile relationships create complex and unstable family patterns that result in worse outcomes for children (Cherlin 2014, 5; McLanahan 2009, 120). Yet poor and working-class families are not the only ones being hurt by market forces. Adults in families from the top to the bottom of the income ladder are being thrown into tumult by employees’ work sched­ ules. Full-time U.S. workers worked an average 47-hour workweek in 2014 (Saad 2014). This is a far longer workweek than workers put in in other wealthy democracies, all of which limit work hours to protect families (OECD 2019; Gornick and Meyers 2003, 157, 161). What is more, because more women work today than did half a century ago, most families today work almost double the paid work hours that U.S. families worked two generations ago (Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Mishel 2013). Two-earner families in the United States – six in ten of all married couples – now spend a combined average of 83 hours a week at their paid jobs (Medalia and Jacobs 2008, 149 tbl. 6.3). This leaves families far less total time away from paid work to deal with caretaking, homemaking, and the rest of their lives. Focusing only on the average family’s work schedule, though, misses a key way that market forces are undercutting American families. It turns out that far fewer workers today work schedules close to the average number of hours (Frase and Gornick 2013, 709–710). Since the 1970s, market forces have increasingly divided workers and their families into two very different groups. One group – generally those more educated, with higher incomes – is working far more hours than the already high average hours of American parents. Meanwhile, another group – generally those less educated, with lower incomes – works far fewer hours. Col­ lege graduates are far more likely to work 50 hours or more a week than workers with less education (Jacobs and Gerson 2004, 31–40, 48–55; Kuhn and Lozano 2008, 311–319). The price of good jobs that support your family today is spending a massive part of your life in paid work. The long work hours that many American workers now put in encroach heavily on family lives. Almost half of workers who work 50 or more hours a week regularly work on weekends (Jacobs and Gerson 2004, 35). Even an employee at the low end of those hours would likely need to work a full five hours over the weekend, which would still leave 45 hours to be worked during the week. This is a long schedule for par­ ents with young kids. Assuming an average commute of 25 minutes each way and a half-hour for lunch, the parent would be gone for almost ten and a half hours a day. With a 7:30 a.m. drop-off at daycare, that only puts the parent back for daycare pickup at 6:00 – not a lot of time for

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spending quality time with young children and almost none for the rest of life’s obligations and pleasures. This time crunch is exacerbated for parents of young children who also have aging parents – the so-called “sandwich generation.” One-quarter of Americans with a parent aged 65 or older report that the parent needs help with handling affairs or caring for themselves (Parker and Patten 2013, 1, 7). Most of the family members who provide care are employed (Feinberg and Choula 2012, 1). Of those who provide care, more than half say that providing this assistance is stressful (Parker et al. 2015, 41). The less-educated parents at the bottom of the economic ladder face their own, even greater, set of challenges as a result of the market. They have the opposite problem from families at the top: too few hours of paid work. Increasing numbers of them work fewer than 30  hours a week (Jacobs and Gerson 2004, 34–37; Kuhn and Lozano 2008, 318). This drop in hours, together with their decreased real wages, makes it a constant struggle to support their families. On top of that, the parents in these families are increasingly being assigned work through high-tech scheduling systems. These systems maximize employer profits by moving workers from place to place and time to time to match customer demand with little advance notice. They are then dismissed from work when customer demand is lower than expected (Kantor and Hodgson 2014). As if those aren’t enough burdens to put on the shoulders of low-wage families, workers are increasingly being asked to work nights and week­ ends. More than a quarter of U.S. workers perform some work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Almost one in every three U.S. workers works over the weekend (Hamermesh and Stancanelli 2015, 1009 tbl.1, tbl.2). Working these irregular hours can wreak havoc on family schedules (Wight, Raley, and Bianchi 2008, 266–267). If family members don’t want to work the long and irregular hours so many Americans do, why don’t they just say no? Doing so would leave those workers who want to work more or work irregular hours to negotiate for longer hours with more pay, right? This approach is how most U.S. policymakers claim markets work. The problem with this argument is that it misses the way that inequality and insecurity, both of which have mushroomed in the American economy in past decades, affect workers’ ability to bargain for what they want. It turns out that inequality, particularly at the top of the economic ladder, increases the incentives for workers to work long hours in hopes of making it up those next rungs (Bell and Freeman 2001, 200). This is particularly the case when inequality increases within a particular job category (Kuhn and Lozano 2005, 31). Increases in economic insecurity also motivate longer hours from workers. Even relatively small doubts about job security have this effect. This is true not just for low-wage workers but also for workers close to the top of the economic ladder (Boswell, Olson-Buchanan, and Harris 2014; Sverke, Hellgren, and Näswall 2002).

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All of this – the growing economic inequality, combined with increas­ ing economic insecurity  – create, in Harvard economist Richard Free­ man’s words, both a carrot and stick that push Americans to work long hours: The carrot is that Americans who work hard have a better chance of being promoted, moving up in the wide distribution of earnings, and experiencing substantial earnings increases. The stick is that Ameri­ cans who lose their jobs suffer greatly because the United States has a minimal safety net for the unemployed. (Freeman 2007, 59) One place that the pressure to work more shows up clearly is with workers’ vacation time. The United States is the only wealthy country that does not mandate that employees receive paid vacation time. Threequarters of employers still provide some paid vacation or holidays off, although for significantly fewer days than European countries require. When employees do get paid time, the average number of days is 16, including vacation days and paid holidays. This is about half the number of days employees receive in Austria, Finland, and France (Ray, Sanes, and Schmitt 2013, 2, 4 tbl. 2). Yet in 2010 almost half of American work­ ers didn’t take all of their available leave. In contrast, nine in ten French workers took all of the much longer leave available to them (Reuters/ Ipsos 2010). Why do U.S. workers leave the meager amount of paid vacation time that they do get on the table? Because of the powerful mix of economic inequality and insecurity we’ve been brewing in the United States for the past half century. Employees are significantly more likely to take less vacation time the more insecure they feel on their job (Maume 2006, 184). Something similar happens when it comes to paternity leave. Fathers report that they would like to take more leave but don’t because of fear that they will be judged as less committed to their work (Har­ rington et al. 2015, 10). Family lives suffer as a result. All this results in most U.S. working parents reporting difficulty bal­ ancing work and family, as well as high levels of stress. More than a third say they always feel rushed, even to do the things they have to do (Parker and Wang 2013, 19). This time stress is worse toward the top of the economic ladder. Seven in ten mothers with a college degree report that it is difficult for them to balance work and family life. Six in ten collegegraduate fathers report the same (Pew Research Center 2015, 5). But families at the bottom and, increasingly, the middle of the ladder have their own reasons to stress, since many of them worry about being unable to put food on the table for their kids. It’s not just poor folks who have income that falls below the poverty line for some periods these days: an astounding 94 percent of people who earn between 100 percent and

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150 percent of the poverty line fall under that line for at least one month per year. Among all Americans, over one-third  – roughly 98  million people – were officially poor for at least two months between 2009 and 2012 (Morduch and Schneider 2017, 159; U.S. Census Bureau 2016). And many who don’t fall below the poverty line are just one emergency away from that fate: in 2017, four in ten Americans reported not being able to cover an unexpected expense of $400 (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 2018, 21). While the U.S. market is tough on parents, it’s even tougher on chil­ dren. The expectation that parents will arrange for their children’s needs privately through the market is devastating for U.S. kids, violating the liberal state’s responsibility to support the caretaking and human devel­ opment of its youngest citizens. The harm done to them will most likely be permanent. Most of what experts have learned about children’s devel­ opment in the last quarter-century shows the importance of children’s first five years to their later achievement. In those first years, children establish either a fragile or a sturdy foundation for development through­ out the rest of their lives. If children don’t get what they need to flourish in those first years, this crucial window of opportunity is lost. It’s much harder and more expensive to correct problems later on, if they can be corrected at all (Harvard Center on the Developing Child 2007, 1). A sound foundation requires, among other things, that children in their first years receive excellent caretaking, as well as adequate and sta­ ble material support. The problem here is that most young parents can provide one or the other – excellent caretaking or adequate material sup­ port – but not both, given that they are relatively early in their work lives, and are therefore making less than they likely will later, and have little money saved (Fry et  al. 2011). If they stay home with their new child for the first months – the caretaking arrangement that research suggests is generally best for young kids (Waldfogel 2006, 49–57) – they can’t give their kids the stable material support they need. But if they return to work to put food on the table, most can’t afford the quality daycare their children need to develop best (Child Care Aware (CCA) of America 2016, 36–38). The difficulties for today’s new parents in the United States are exacerbated by the fact that young couples have far less wealth than they used to, in part because of the steep rise in the cost of housing in the last decades, as well as the tremendous rise in the price of college (Fry et al. 2011). Children from poor families have the toughest time in this free-market system. This is in part because parents likely can’t provide the stable, adequate material support that their kids need. Yet we know that young kids need a baseline of consistent material support to do well. One recent study of U.S. grade schoolers showed that poverty in early child­ hood actually altered the physical makeup of children’s brains. Children exposed to poverty in early childhood had less brain matter in areas that

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affect academic achievement, stress regulation, and emotion processing (Luby et al. 2013; Hair et al. 2015). This helps explain why poor kids not only miss more school and do worse in school in the short term but they also have poorer health, lower educational achievement, lower earn­ ings, and higher mortality rates over the long term (Chaudry and Wimer 2016; Ratcliffe 2015; Cohen et al. 2010. On top of that, the cost of excel­ lent daycare far exceeds what low-wage parents can pay. These children therefore largely end up in subpar daycare (Child Care Aware (CCA) of America 2016, 38–39). Finally, the strain from working the long hours they have to work to make ends meet combined with the stress of raising a family in poverty leave these parents with few emotional reserves to parent well when they do finally come home at the end of the day (Yeung, Linver, and Brooks-Gunn 2002, 1875). In short, it’s hard to think of a system less likely to deliver the circumstances children need to develop well than our current free-market system delivers to poor children.

Toward Pro-Family Regulation of the Market What’s an Economy For? If we take the state’s responsibility to support families seriously, we’d regulate markets very differently. To begin with, we would recognize that an important goal of the economy in a liberal democracy must be to get families what they need to thrive. This goal stems directly from the way that the recognition of dependency transforms the liberal project: the support for human dignity that Thomas Paine long ago recognized grounded the liberal project must be reconceptualized to include ensuring that citizens receive the caretaking and human development they need (Paine 1973). And that, barring some fundamental reorganization of society, requires ensuring that citizens have the resources they need to form sound, stable family relationships and that families have the cir­ cumstances and resources they need to support their members well. Ensuring that the economy supports families requires recognition that markets are simply one piece of the larger economy. This repre­ sents a stark departure from how most U.S. economists and policymak­ ers see markets today. They have come to believe that markets are the economy. Furthermore, they unquestioningly believe that the goal of economic policy should be to increase wealth, often thought of solely in terms of increasing the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). The economist Kate Raworth likens the way that GDP growth has taken over as the economic goal to the egg of a cuckoo bird that has been laid in the nest of another variety of bird. Just as these unsuspecting feathered foster parents nurture the young cuckoo in their nest in the belief that it is their own, Raworth argues, policymakers have mistakenly come to see increased GDP growth as the be-all, end-all of economic success

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(Raworth 2017, 27–31). Their focusing solely on growth has eclipsed everything from the economic picture except markets. In fact, seeing the economy solely in terms of markets and seeing the goal of the economy in terms of increased GDP are both relatively recent phenomena, both of which have little to recommend them. The GDP was first developed as a measure only in the 1930s – well after the rise of markets. Simon Kuznets, who fashioned the measure, himself warned that it provided a poor index of the country’s well-being, which he saw as the proper goal of an economy. “The welfare of a nation can . . . scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income,” he wrote in a 1934 report (Kuznets 1934). As most political theory students learn, the term “economy” was not fashioned as a synonym for “markets.” Instead, the term comes from the Greek word “oikos,” which the Greeks used to refer to the extended family unit that included family, servants, farmland, and all property. The term “economy,” which became associated with the system of agri­ culture and resources that supported people, was originally associated with the household because, in ancient Greece, most households received their resources through the “household economy,” rather than through the “market economy” we rely on today. Properly understood, then, the economy is the system for distributing resources to people. Markets are a central component of that system in wealthy countries today, but they shouldn’t be seen as its sum total. In fact, most U.S. families met their economic needs through the house­ hold economy until well into the nineteenth century. Before then, except in the nation’s seaboard towns, the great majority of American families lived on landlocked farmsteads. Given that our system of roads and high­ ways wasn’t built until later, these Americans had little access to trade, and little contact with the cash economy or the distribution web that we today call “the market.” Unlike present-day farms, as economic his­ torian Charles Sellers has observed, most early American farms weren’t geared to selling crops or livestock to others. Instead, they simply met the needs of those living on the farmstead. Almost all the material goods that these citizens lived on came from their farms, sometimes supplemented by goods bartered with their neighbors. The goal of producing resources in the household economy wasn’t to accumulate as much as possible, as it often is in the market economy. Any surplus couldn’t be sold easily and wouldn’t keep that long, anyway. Instead the goal was subsistence, meaning freedom from want. The goods produced on the farmstead shel­ tered, clothed, and filled the bellies of the household. After these needs were met, the purpose of work had been accomplished (at least when it came to men. For women, tasked with reproduction and domestic tasks, work was often ceaseless). Families’ long-term goals were not to amass wealth for retirement or for the next generation, as it is for many of us,

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but instead to pass land on to their children and to maintain their way of life (Sellers 1991, 4–15). At the time most Americans transitioned from the household to the market economy during the course of the nineteenth century, the notion that the goal of markets was to improve the nation’s wealth would have been foreign to them. Instead, Americans were sold the market econ­ omy on the promise that it would increase the well-being of families. For Americans to make the shift from the agrarian household economy to the urban market economy, they needed to be persuaded of the advan­ tages of the new system. The sales pitch came to be based on what the market economy would do for families. This pitch came in the form of a rising set of ideas that began to take shape in the late eighteenth century, but which only came into full flower in the nineteenth century. Histori­ ans call it the ideology of “separate spheres,” or sometimes the “cult of domesticity,” or even just “domesticity” for short. This way of seeing the world began in the Northeast but spread widely across the United States (Cott 1977, xx–xxii, 1, 33; Ryan 1981, 230–236).3 Why would Americans choose to give up their economic autonomy on the farm and submit themselves to the rising brutality of the workplace and the far longer hours required in industry? Separate spheres ideology gave a clear answer: for the well-being of their families. Men’s reward for their toil in the workplace (which separate spheres saw as uniquely the province of men) came from returning home to a warm hearth and home, a happy wife, and well-raised children (Stanley 1998, 148). One New Hampshire pastor put it this way in 1827: It is at home, where man . . . seeks a refuge from the vexations and embarrassments of business, an enchanting repose from exertion, a relaxation from care by the interchange of affection: where some of his finest sympathies, tastes, and moral and religious feelings are formed and nourished; – where is the treasury of pure disinterested love, such as is seldom found in the busy walks of a selfish and cal­ culating world. Nothing can be more desirable, than to make one’s domestic abode the highest object of his attachment and satisfaction. (Burroughs 1827, 18–19) The farmstead had been depicted unsentimentally in the era of the home economy; not so the home in the market world. Under separate spheres, the domestic realm was the place in which warmth and happiness belonged. Phrases like “home is sweet” and “there is no place like home” proliferated (Cott 1977, 85). And the price of the warmth and happiness of this realm was the wage work that men would have to endure. As Senator Henry Wilson was decades later to declare to freed black men in Charleston, South Carolina, at the end of the Civil War: “Freedom does

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not mean that you are not to work. It means that when you do work you shall have pay for it, to carry home to your wives and the children of your love” (Child 1866, 260). While part of the ideology of domesticity offered material rewards, the central lure was the thriving families it promised. The idea that family life was the reward for wage drudgery was clearly distilled in this poem published in the National Labor Tribune in 1874: Though coarse his fare, and scant his means of life, Thought of his children and loving wife Makes rich amend for all his toil and strife. As fades the last ray of setting sun, His home is reached, his daily task is done; His young ones watching at the open door He sees with joy, and hastens on the more. Within the housewife, partner of his weal, Prepares with busy hand the evening meal. . . . Arrived within, she greets him with a smile And sweet caress – the welcome home. . . . (quoted in Stanley 1998, 165) The market economy at this time wasn’t seen simply as an inevitable fea­ ture of the world, like a longstanding mountain, as it so often is today. Nor was its end simply seen as increasing the nation’s wealth, regardless of the market’s effects. Instead, it was considered valuable as a means to an important end: flourishing families. Recognizing that a central part of the liberal project requires an econ­ omy that truly supports the well-being and dignity of individuals, as well as the well-being of families, helps put markets back in their proper place. When it comes to getting people the conditions and resources they need to thrive, markets do an excellent job at a couple of very big things: they produce and distribute goods and services that can be monetized to people who desire them and who have the ability to pay. But many things that people need to thrive, like the nurturing that parents provide, aren’t distributed through markets. And the things that are distributed through markets, like high-quality daycare or home health aides to ailing seniors, aren’t affordable to many of the families whose members would benefit from them. Mainstream economic theory’s obsessive focus on markets has caused it to ignore the important work done by families. That work was tra­ ditionally performed by women, and it still is disproportionately done by them. Instead, conventional economists have tended to view families largely in terms of their consumption. But, as feminist economists have pointed out, even the shortsighted goal of healthy markets couldn’t hap­ pen without families’ unpaid caretaking and human development work

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to produce future workers (Folbre 2002). And once we move to the more farsighted issue of how to ensure the important goal of human flourish­ ing, families move to the center of the economic picture. The many tasks they accomplish – including not only the raising of children but the gro­ cery shopping, the cooking, the straightening of the house, the caring for aging parents  – help ensure that children and adults of all ages thrive. And it’s all these tasks that are getting squeezed out by the increased demands of the market. We need to structure the economy in order to ensure that families get both the circumstances and resources they need to do their job well. We also need to ensure that the important caretaking and human develop­ ment work that many women used to perform in the home is still getting done well in our era, in which far more women work in paid jobs. This brings to the fore the importance of government. Free-market advocates are openly derisive of the state’s role in the economy. Government, they claim, improperly distorts market incentives when it acts in the economic sphere. And to the extent that they concede the government has any role in regulating markets, it is only to correct for what they consider to be market failures. But once we focus on ensuring that people get what they need to thrive, which also means ensuring families get what they need to thrive, a far more active role for government emerges that goes well beyond correcting for market failures. In fact, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson point out, for most of the twentieth century, economists and policymakers generally recognized the virtues of what economic analysts call a “mixed economy.” In that arrangement, markets were seen to play the central role in producing and distributing goods. But government was also recognized to play an important role in the economy – providing collective goods like educa­ tion, courts, supporting basic scientific research that the market wouldn’t on its own, and reducing negative spillover costs like pollution, which markets don’t do well on their own. Only in the last decades, as freemarket ideology has proliferated in the United States, have the virtues of a mixed economy been forgotten (Hacker and Pierson 2016). Pro-Family Policy In all, there are five critical functions the state must play in structuring advanced market economies to support families. First, the state must part­ ner with parents when it comes to providing the caretaking and income our youngest kids need from their families. Second, when it comes to the caretaking children receive outside their homes, the state should invest in excellent daycare and early childhood education, as well as afterschool programs for older children. Third, it must regulate the economy to reduce the economic inequality and insecurity to which markets are prone. Fourth, it needs to backstop families who can’t afford important

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market goods by providing a social safety net. Fifth, and finally, the state needs to play “traffic cop,” to keep markets within their proper bounds, making sure that workers have the time they need for fulfilling family lives. Together, these five principles form the basic tenets of what I call “pro-family policy.” Each principle is discussed in turn. Partnering With Families to Provide the Circumstances Our Youngest Children Need Inside the Home Young families in systems that expect parents to support their children privately face an impossible task. A growing body of research suggests that babies do best if they are cared for by a parent or parents for at least the better part of a year.4 Most new parents are relatively young, though, and therefore at the beginning of their work life, and with little sav­ ings. Furthermore, many are in debt from college loans (at least in coun­ tries that don’t subsidize college) and buying a home – two hallmarks of responsible adulthood. Most parents in these systems simply can’t afford to pay their own way for themselves and their children, while still hav­ ing a parent take off time to stay home with their youngest. Because they can’t afford to do both, most parents wind up sacrificing the care that would be best for their kids in order to put food on the table. A system that sets up the vast majority of parents to fail at getting kids what they need abdicates the state’s responsibility to families. It is also bad policy. Good public policy can be summed up with the credo that it should “make it easy for people to do the right thing.” When it comes to families, and particularly families with young children, doing the right thing means investing significant time, attention, and nurturing, as well as providing excellent care if a parent works. Pro-family policy partners with parents to make it as easy as possible for parents to get kids what they need. To do that, pro-family policy provides for publicly paid parental leave that wholly or mostly replaces a parent’s salary in the child’s first year. Doing so means that parents are not required to choose between pro­ viding materially and providing caretaking when kids’ need for parental caretaking is high. Kids can therefore get both. After the child’s first year, when kids do well either in parental care or in excellent daycare, the state may also subsidize parents to stay home with their kids, in situations in which the family prefers parental care to day care. Pro-family policy also pays parents monthly “child benefits” to ensure that families can provide their kids the material support they need. Chil­ dren’s basic upkeep is costly. There are diapers and often bottles to be bought at first, and then clothes, shoes, and books, and all this on top of extra food, rent, and furniture. And for children to do best, this provi­ sion needs to be steady and secure. Yet children’s added costs come early

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in parents’ work lives and at a time that caretaking demands are high so parents can’t work long hours in paid work. Monthly child benefits paid to parents with young children ease these problems with timing. Later, as children’s need for caretaking drops, and their parents’ salary rises, the state will generally recoup these funds through income taxes during the remaining course of parents’ careers. These benefits also help parents ensure children steady material support they need when children need it, regardless of the vicissitudes of market forces on families. Generous Public Investment in External Care Programs for Young Children When children are ready for daycare and prekindergarten, assigning young families responsibility to purchase it through the market results in a profound underinvestment in children’s development. This is because high-quality daycare is beyond the financial reach of most young parents (Child Care Aware (CCA) of America 2016, 36–37). The state should correct this through generously subsidizing both daycare and prekinder­ garten. With such investment, the state could ensure that all children have access to high-quality programs, either completely subsidized for all parents or available for a sliding-scale fee. Public investment wouldn’t mean that the state would need to provide this daycare itself, just that it would pay for these services. Limiting Economic Inequality and Insecurity Limiting Inequality The state also has an important role to play in limiting economic ine­ quality in order to support families. It’s not just poverty that has a corro­ sive effect on families, it’s also inequality. At the bottom of the economic slope, economic inequality keeps adults from entering into stable, long­ term relationships. The stress it creates reduces the quality of parents’ caretaking for their children. All across the economic slope, it creates an overamped competition for success in the market that induces workers to work long hours and saps vital energy from other spheres of life. Gov­ ernment regulation of the market can and should reduce the steepness of this slope. In the United States today, reversing this inequality should start with raising the minimum wage significantly, as well as indexing it to infla­ tion to prevent its benefits from being eroded in future years. We also need a tax system that puts more of the burden on the wealthy. Increas­ ing marginal tax rates on the very rich not only reduces the tax burden

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on low- and middle-income workers, it helps reduce inequality, both by constraining accumulation by the wealthiest households and by reduc­ ing incentives on CEOs and hedge-fund managers to draw the highest salaries that they can. High marginal tax rates at the upper end of the income spectrum also reduce workers’ incentive to spend long hours in the workplace to compete for disproportionate rewards and therefore discourage the kind of race to the bottom we see at the high end of work hours today. Further, we need to strengthen the hand of unions to bar­ gain collectively for higher wages for workers. Many of these policies are currently used in wealthy European democ­ racies to support families and could serve as models. A number of these countries have mandatory minimum wages set at a relatively high per­ centage of the median wage of workers and far higher than current U.S. minimum wage (OCED 2018). These countries have empowered unions in ways that have lifted workers’ wages and working conditions. In coun­ tries like Sweden that have allowed unions to run unemployment insur­ ance systems, union membership has risen dramatically (Western 1997, 58). Other countries extend the collective bargaining agreements negoti­ ated between an employer and a union to the entire sector of workers, so that all workers are covered by the agreement (Eurofound 2015, 27). Limiting Insecurity To serve their function of getting goods and services into the hands of the families who want them, employers need to have sufficient flexibil­ ity to respond to market signals. That means that some jobs inevitably will be phased out as demand weakens, while others will be phased in as demand increases. Of course, the fact that a new worker somewhere will likely be hired doesn’t help a worker’s family that is suffering from a layoff. Pro-family policy allows this market restructuring, while still meeting workers’ and their families’ need for steady material provision. To serve both ends, rather than attempting to provide families’ security through workers’ attachment to individual jobs, pro-family policy seeks to build the economic stability that families need into the broader eco­ nomic system. Sweden and Denmark have both adopted programs that accomplish this, often called “flexicurity” to emphasize their combined goals of employer flexibility and worker security. These programs combine flex­ ible rules that make it easy for the employers to hire and fire work­ ers based on market demand. At the same time, employees who are laid off can get unemployment benefits for significant periods of time. Flexicurity policies also help displaced workers find new job opportu­ nities (OECD 2016, 135). To do so, significant public funds are spent on retraining programs and providing incentives to private employers

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(OECD 2017). Under pro-family policy, all market societies would adopt such measures. Building more security into the larger economic system would not only ease families’ burdens when market dislocations occur, they would make family life easier in the normal course of affairs. Reducing economic inse­ curity would lessen the incentives for anxious employees to work exces­ sively long hours in order to keep their jobs. It would therefore allow workers to get home sooner at the end of the day, as well as have more time for leisure and other pursuits. And when workers are home with their families, it would allow them to focus on their partners and chil­ dren, rather than worrying about whether they will be able to pay their bills in the upcoming months. Establishing a Strong Social Safety Net for Families Under pro-family policy far fewer families would need safety-net pro­ grams. Other pro-family policies – including the parental leave and child benefits that all families with children would receive, in combination with measures that reduce economic inequality and economic insecurity, as well as the pay parity for part-time work and childcare subsidies so that parents can more easily work for pay – will mean that fewer families can’t make ends meet. But this won’t always be the case for all fami­ lies. There will inevitably be some situations in which markets combined with universal benefits won’t be adequate. Dealing with these situations requires a strong social safety net. Pro-family policy would not allow any family with children or other dependents who need caregiving to go hungry or without a roof over their heads simply because they can’t secure sufficient income on the market. This means that government will provide basic levels of income and housing support for those who aren’t able to earn sufficient income to meet these basic demands through market work. These programs wouldn’t mean that the state couldn’t require able adults to engage in reasonable levels of productive work, at least during periods when they are able to work and don’t have significant caretaking responsibilities for family members. But it would mean that families wouldn’t be deprived of basic levels of support simply because adults couldn’t find work, or because, when they do, the market doesn’t reward them sufficiently. Playing Traffic Cop: Ensuring That Workers Can Combine Work and Family Last, but not least, work hours and schedules of citizens shouldn’t be left to the vagaries of the market. Instead, they should be set in accord­ ance with a collective commitment to allowing everyone to combine

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paid work with family lives. Six such measures together would create an economy that truly allowed people to reconcile work with family responsibilities. Limits to Work Hours The importance of sound families to the liberal project means that the state should support workers being able to return home at a reason­ able time at the end of the workday. This can be accomplished either through regulation that sets a reasonable standard workweek or through establishing a process through which working hours can be collectively bargained between workers and employers at a company or across a job sector. Both types of arrangements, or some combination of the two, are now in use in European Union member states (Eurofound 2016, 35–39). Many European countries have adopted workplace regulations that serve this function. A number of them have adopted a standard workday of eight hours, and a standard workweek of 40 hours as a baseline (Euro­ found 2016, 35 fig. 11). To accommodate intermittent periods of high demand, employers can average the maximum hours over a period of weeks, thereby allowing them to exceed the maximum weekly hours for short periods of time. Work beyond the baseline hours up to a maximum number of hours (now 48 hours a week in European Union countries) is allowed only on certain conditions, normally including that an employee agrees to the overtime work. And when employees do agree to overtime, they must receive either overtime pay or compensatory time for those extra hours. In these systems, employers may not penalize employees who refuse to agree to overtime. Paid Vacation Furthermore, the state should mandate a statutory minimum period of annual leave, paid by the employer, to ensure that workers have adequate personal and family time. The minimum of 20 paid vacation days in place in most European Union member states is a reasonable place to start (Eurofound 2016, 49). Predictable Work Hours In addition, the state should regulate to require that employers give employees reasonable advance notice of their work schedules so that they can plan their lives and their childcare and dependent care. Employers should also be required to give good-faith estimates of the number of hours that employees will likely work at the time they are hired, as well as whether employees will have to work on-call shifts. And employees

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should also be required to receive a set minimum number of hours between shifts. Part-Time Work for Parents With Young Children or Those With Elder-Care or Other Caregiving Responsibilities A pro-family economy also needs to ensure that parents and others with caretaking responsibilities can work part-time without being dispro­ portionately penalized. The United Kingdom provides a good model for such a system. Under U.K. law, employees who have worked more than one-half a year with the same employer have the right to request reduced working hours. While employers don’t have to grant the request, they can refuse it only for specified business reasons. When the United Kingdom adopted this policy for parents with a young child under six or a disabled child, it turns out that a million parents – one-quarter of the number of parents eligible – made such requests in the first year alone (Waldfogel 2006, 68). In 2013, after the law was extended to parents with children under 17, employers approved eight in ten requests for temporarily reduced work hours, while approving over 90  percent of requests for perma­ nently reduced work hours. This system worked so well that the fol­ lowing year the United Kingdom expanded it to give all employees the right to request, regardless of caregiver status (Department for Busi­ ness, Innovation, and Skills 2014, 50, appendix C table  27, 31). The Netherlands recently introduced a law that provides even stronger protections for employees. That law requires that employers show a compelling business interest in order to reject a request for part-time scheduling (Bird and Brown 2018, 74). U.K. law requires that those employees who work part-time be paid equal hourly pay compared to full-time workers, receive benefits on a pro-rata basis, and be treated no less favorably than comparable full-time workers when it comes to layoffs (GOV.UK 2018). Work-Time Flexibility Pro-family policy also supports employees being able to adjust their work schedules to accommodate family responsibilities. Where it is prac­ ticable for the employer, employees should be able to negotiate modifi­ cations to their work schedules to accommodate family responsibilities, through adjusting their daily work hours, through taking breaks in their normal working hours, or through working from home for a certain amount of time each week. Even in the United States, precedent exists for laws supporting flex­ time. Since 2014 Vermont employees have had the right to request a

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flexible work arrangement for any reason without retaliation by the employer. Furthermore, the employer must grant the request unless it is “inconsistent with business operations,” although the circumstances that fall within this category are broad (Vermont General Assembly 2014, 21.005.001 §309(f)). Paid Family Leave for Illness of Family Members Finally, workers who need time off from work to care for a family mem­ ber should be entitled to publicly paid leave. Here, too, models for such paid leave are already in place in the great majority of wealthy democra­ cies. Roughly half of these countries provide at least three months of paid leave for children’s health needs; a minority of them also provide three months paid leave for adult family members’ health needs. The majority of these countries that provide paid leave provide a wage replacement rate of at least 80 percent (Raub et al. 2018, 2–4). Every country should join them.

Conclusion Liberal theory is beginning to fill in the gap left by its previous blind spot on issues of dependency. Yet one important gap that remains is the government’s responsibility to families, the primary institution through which dependency issues are addressed in our society. Filling in this gap is particularly important when it comes to the relationship between families and the market in wealthy societies because of the complicated and contradictory relationship between families and the market. On the one hand, markets have contributed to the great rise in living standards from which many families in developed countries have benefited. Yet on the other hand, market forces, including the inequality and insecurity to which market societies are prone, also have great potential to undermine families. The transformation of the liberal project required by the recognition of dependency makes regulation of markets to support families critical. Once the fact of dependency is acknowledged, the liberal state can no longer simply safeguard some combination of the freedom and equal­ ity that autonomous adults require, as traditional liberal theory would have it. Instead, the state must also concern itself with the project of ensuring that children get the caretaking and human development they need so they can become the sound adults depicted in liberal theory and that adults receive the caretaking they need to thrive throughout their lives. That project cannot be carried out without sound families. Inso­ far as the market today is undermining the soundness of families, con­ sidering how the state should regulate markets must become a central

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subject for liberal theory. Until liberal theory fills this gap, it will not have adequately dealt with the recognition of dependency as a funda­ mental part of the human condition.

Notes 1. I use the term “market” in the same way politicians and economists use it: as a metaphor for a decentralized system of exchanges in which buyers and sellers trade goods and services. Some of the results that come out of this system of exchanges – including the wages that laborers are paid, and the prices consumers pay for goods and services – are what I call here “market forces.” 2. I discuss these issues in more detail in my book titled, The Free-Market Fam­ ily: How the Market Crushed the American Dream (and How It Can Be Restored) (Oxford University Press, 2020). 3. This is not to say, however, that the ideology of domesticity was universally or passively accepted. Both Christine Stansell and Nancy Cott describe the many ways that urban working-class women resisted its demarcation between private and public. See Stansell (1986); Cott (1977). For a discussion of the ambivalent reception of black families to the ideology, see, for example, Hor­ ton (1979); Sterling (1984); Jones (1985). 4. I summarize this research in Eichner (2020).

Bibliography Bell, Linda, and Richard Freeman. 2001. “The Incentive for Working Hard: Explaining Hours Worked Differences in the US and Germany.” Labour Eco­ nomics 8 (2): 181–202. Bird, Robert C., and Liz Brown. 2018. “The United Kingdom Right to Request as a Model for Flexible Work in the European Union.” American Business Law Journal 55 (1): 53–115. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “Report on the Economic WellBeing of U.S. Households in 2017.” Federal Reserve Board, Division of Con­ sumer and Community Affairs, 2018. www.federalreserve.gov/publications/ files/2017-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201805.pdf. Boswell, Wendy, Julie Olson-Buchanan, and Brad Harris. 2014. “I  Can­ not Afford to Have a Life: Employee Adaptation to Feelings of Job Insecurity.” Personnel Psychology 67 (4): 887–915. Brault, Matthew W. 2010. “Americans With Disabilities: 2010.” Current Popula­ tion Reports, 2010. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2012/demo/ p70-131.pdf. Burroughs, Charles. 1827. An Address on Female Education, Delivered in Ports­ mouth, New-Hampshire, October  26, 1827. Portsmouth, NH: Childs and March. Chaudry, Ajay, and Christopher Wimer. 2016. “Poverty Is Not Just an Indicator: The Relationship Between Income, Poverty, and Child Well-Being.” Academic Pediatrics 16: S23–S29. Cherlin, Andrew J. 2014. Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the WorkingClass Family in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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Child Care Aware (CCA) of America. 2016. Parents and the High Cost of Child Care. Arlington, VA: Child Care Aware of America. http://usa.childcareaware. org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CCA_High_Cost_Report_01-17-17_final.pdf. Child, Maria L. 1866. The Freedmen’s Book. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. Cohen, Sheldon, Denise Janicki-Deverts, Edith Chen, and Karen A. Matthews. 2010. “Childhood Socioeconomic Status and Adult Health.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1186: 37–55. Cott, Nancy F. 1977. The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills. 2014. The Fourth Work-Life Balance Employer Survey. London: Crown Copyright, BIS Research Paper No. 184. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/398557/bis-14-1027-fourth-work-life-balance­ employer-survey-2013.pdf. Eichner, Maxine. 2020. The Free-Market Family: How the American Market Crushed the American Dream (and How It Can Be Restored). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2010. The Supportive State: Families, Government, and America’s Politi­ cal Ideals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engels, Frederick. 1845 [1975]. “The Condition of the Working-Class in Eng­ land.” In Karl Marx & Frederick Engels: Collected Works. Vol. IV. London: International Publishers. Eurofound. 2016. Working Time Developments in the 21st Century: Work Dura­ tion and Its Regulation in the EU. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. ———. 2015. Collective Bargaining in Europe in the 21st Century. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites/ default/files/ef_publication/field_ef_document/ef1548en.pdf. Feinberg, Lynn, and Rita Choula. 2012. Understanding the Impact of Family Caregiving on Work. AARP Public Policy Institute, Fact Sheet 27. www.aarp. org/content/dam/aarp/research/public_policy_institute/ltc/2012/understand ing-impact-family-caregiving-work-AARP-ppi-ltc.pdf. Folbre, Nancy. 2002. The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. New York: The New Press. Frase, Peter, and Janet Gornick. 2013. “The Time Divide in Cross-National Per­ spective: The Work Week, Education and Institutions That Matter.” Social Forces 91 (3): 697–724. Freeman, Richard. 2007. America Works: The Exceptional U.S. Labor Market. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Fry, Richard, D’Vera Cohn, Gretchen Livingston, and Paul Taylor. 2011. “The Ris­ ing Age Gap in Economic Well-Being: The Old Prosper Relative to the Young.” Pew Research Center, Social and Demographic Trends. 7 November 2011. www. pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/. Gibson-Davis, Christina, Kathryn Edin, and Sara McLanahan. 2005. “High Hopes but Even Higher Expectations: The Retreat From Marriage Among Low-Income Couples.” Journal of Marriage and Family 67 (5): 1301–1312. Gornick, Janet C., and Marcia K. Meyers. 2003. Families That Work: Poli­ cies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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GOV.UK. 2018. Part-Time Workers’ Rights. UK Government. www.gov.uk/ part-time-worker-rights. Hacker, Jacob, and Paul Pierson. 2016. American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper. New York: Simon & Schuster. Hair, Nicole L., Jamie L. Hanson, Barbara L. Wolfe, and Seth D. Pollack. 2015. “Association of Child Poverty, Brain Development, and Academic Achieve­ ment.” JAMA Pediatrics 169 (9): 822–829. Hamermesh, Daniel, and Elena Stancanelli. 2015. “Long Workweeks and Strange Hours.” ILR Review 68 (5): 1007–1018. Harrington, Brad, Fred Van Deusen, Jennifer Fraone, and Iyar Mazar. 2015. The New Dad: A Portrait of Today’s Father. Boston College Center for Work and Family. www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/cwf/research/publications/ researchreports/The%20New%20Dad%202015%20presentation_with%20 embedded%20video.pdf. Harvard Center on the Developing Child. 2007. The Science of Early Child­ hood Development. In Brief Series, 2007. http://developingchild.harvard.edu/ resources/inbrief-science-of-ecd/. Horton, John Benjamin. 1979. Not Without Struggle: An Account of the Most Significant Political and Social-Action Changes That Have Occurred in the Lives of Black Kentuckians in the Twentieth Century. New York: Vantage Press. Jacobs, Jerry, and Kathleen Gerson. 2004. The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jones, Jacqueline. 1985. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books. Kantor, Jodi, and Sam Hodgson. 2014. “Working Anything but 9 to 5.” New York Times. 13 August  2014. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ starbucks-workers-scheduling-hours.html. Kuhn, Peter, and Fernando Lozano. 2008. “The Expanding Workweek? Under­ standing Trends in Long Work Hours Among U.S. Men, 1979–2006.” Journal of Labor Economics 26 (2): 311–343. ———. 2005. “The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours Among U.S. Men, 1979–2004.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series. Working Paper No. 11895. www.nber.org/ papers/w11895.pdf. Kuznets, Simon. 1934. “National Income, 1929–1932.” In National Income. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research (Bulletin 49). 7 June. Luby, Joan, Andy Belden, Kelly Botteron, Natasha Marrus, Michael P. Harms, Casey Babb, Tomoyuki Nishino, and Deanna Barch. 2013. “The Effects of Poverty on Childhood Brain Development: The Mediating Effect of Caregiving and Stressful Life Events.” JAMA Pediatrics 167 (12): 1135–1142. Maume, David. 2006. “Gender Differences in Taking Vacation Time.” Work and Occupations 33 (2): 161–190. McLanahan, Sara. 2009. “Fragile Families and the Reproduction of Poverty.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621 (1): 111–131. Medalia, Carla, and Jerry Jacobs. 2008. “Working Time for Married Couples in 28 Countries.” In The Long Work Hours Culture: Causes, Consequences

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and Choices, edited by Ronald Burke and Cary Cooper. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Mishel, Lawrence. 2013. “The Vast Majority of Wage Earners Are Working Harder, and for Not Much More: Trends in U.S. Work Hours and Wages Over 1979–2007.” Economic Policy Institute. 30 January 2013. www.epi.org/ publication/ib348-trends-us-work-hours-wages-1979-2007/. Morduch, Jonathan, and Rachel Schneider. 2017. The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. OECD. 2019. “Hours Worked.” https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm. ———. 2018. “Minimum Relative to Average Wages of Full-Time Workers.” OECD Stat 2018. http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=MIN2AVE. ———. 2017. “OECD Employment Outlook 2017: Statistical Annex.” OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. www.oecd.org/els/ emp/employment-outlook-statistical-annex.htm. ———. 2016. Back to Work: Denmark – Improving the Re-employment Pros­ pects of Displaced Workers. Paris: OECD Publishing. www.oecd.org/employ ment/back-to-work-denmark-9789264267503-en.htm. Paine, Thomas. 1973 [1791]. The Rights of Man. New York: Anchor Books. Parker, Kim, Juliana Horowitz, James Bell, Gretchen Livingston, Steve Schwarzer, and Eileen Patten. 2015. Family Support in Graying Societies How Ameri­ cans, Germans and Italians Are Coping With an Aging Population. Pew Research Center, Social and Demographic Trends. www.pewsocialtrends.org/ 2015/05/21/4-caring-for-aging-parents/. Parker, Kim, and Eileen Patten. 2013. The Sandwich Generation: Ris­ ing Financial Burdens for Middle-Aged Americans. Pew Research Center, Social and Demographic Trends. www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/01/30/the­ sandwich-generation/. Parker, Kim, and Wendy Wang. 2013. “Balancing Work and Family Life.” In Mod­ ern Parenthood: Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family. Pew Research Center. www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/chap ter-2-balancing-work-and-family-life/. Pew Research Center. 2015. “Raising Kids and Running a Household: How Working Parents Share the Load.” November  2015. www.pewsocialtrends. org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-running-a-household-how-working-parents­ share-the-load/. Ratcliffe, Caroline. 2015. “Child Poverty and Adult Success.” Urban Institute 2015. www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/65766/2000369-Child-Po verty-and-Adult-Success.pdf. Raub, Amy, Alison Earle, Paul Chung, Priya Batra, Adam Schickedanz, Bijetri Bose, Judy Jou, Nicolas de Guzman Chorny, Elizabeth Wong, Daniel Franken, and Jody Heymann. 2018. Paid Leave for Family Illness: A  Detailed Look at Approaches Across OECD Countries. WORLD Policy Analysis Center. www.worldpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/WORLD%20Report%20-%20 Family%20Medical%20Leave%20OECD%20Country%20Approaches_0.pdf. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Raworth, Kate. 2017. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st­ Century Economist. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.

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Ray, Rebecca, Milla Sanes, and John Schmitt. 2013. No-Vacation Nation Revis­ ited. Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://cepr.net/documents/pub lications/no-vacation-update-2013-05.pdf. Reeves, Richard V., Isabel V. Sawhill, and Eleanor Krause. 2016. “The Most Educated Women Are the Most Likely to Be Married.” Brookings. www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/08/19/the-most­ educated-women-are-the-most-likely-to-be-married/. Reuters/Ipsos. 2010. “Taking a Break: Employees in 24 Countries Tell Us If They Use Up All the Holidays Granted by Their Organization.” www.ipsos.com/ sites/default/files/news_and_polls/2010-08/4898-1.pdf. Ryan, Mary P. 1981. Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Saad, Lydia. 2014. “The ‘40-Hour’ Workweek Is Actually Longer  – by Seven Hours.” Gallup. 14 August  2014. http://news.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour­ workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx. Sellers, Charles. 1991. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press. Stanley, Amy Dru. 1998. From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stansell, Christine. 1986. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789– 1860. New York: Knopf. Sterling, Dorothy. 1984. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the 19th Century. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Sverke, Magnus, Johnny Hellgren, and Katharina Näswall. 2002. “No Security: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Job Insecurity and Its Consequences.” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 7 (3): 242–264. U.S. Census Bureau. 2016. “Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Poverty, 2009– 2012, Table 3: People in Poverty 2 or More Months by Selected Characteristics: 2009 to 2012.” www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/ poverty-dynamics-09-12.html. Vermont General Assembly. 2014. “Title 21, Chapter 005, Subchapter 001, Sec­ tion  309: Flexible Working Arrangements.” https://legislature.vermont.gov/ statutes/section/21/005/00309. Waldfogel, Jane. 2006. What Children Need. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer­ sity Press. Western, Bruce. 1997. Between Class and Market: Postwar Unionization in the Capitalist Democracies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wight, Vanessa, Sara Raley, and Susan Bianchi. 2008. “Time for Children, One’s Spouse and Oneself Among Parents Who Work Nonstandard Hours.” Social Forces 87 (1): 243–271. Wilcox, William Bradford, and Elizabeth Marquardt. 2010. When Marriage Dis­ appears: The New Middle America. The National Marriage Project and the Insti­ tute for American Values. http://stateofourunions.org/2010/SOOU2010.pdf. Yeung, W. Jean, Miriam Linver, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn. 2002. “How Money Matters for Young Children’s Development: Parental Investment and Family Processes.” Child Development 73 (6): 1861–1879.

11 Justice and Legitimacy in Caregiver Support Managing Tradeoffs Between

Gender Egalitarian and

Economic Egalitarian

Social Aims1

Gina Schouten Liberal egalitarians, feminists, and liberal egalitarian feminists should all be committed to finding political solutions to the social challenge associ­ ated with justice in caregiving: the challenge of ensuring that dependents receive the care to which they are entitled, while also ensuring that the caregivers are not unfairly burdened in virtue of performing this valuable role. This chapter is about the tradeoffs we evidently face, between dis­ tinct aims of liberal egalitarian feminist justice, when it comes to devising social policy solutions for meeting this challenge. I ask how we should weigh different normative commitments of liberal egalitarian feminism when those commitments diverge. Consider a policy that sheds light on the commitments in question and the tension that can arise between them. Unconditional basic income would materially ben­ efit disadvantaged citizens, including unpaid caregivers. But it is likely to have a side effect: As we will see, it is likely to lessen women’s labor market attachment and men’s participation in caregiving work, thereby reinforcing the gendered division of labor. Several empirical projections are packed into this putative social policy tradeoff, and the tradeoff plausibly arises only because of injustice in the social arrangement. That is, only against a backdrop of already pervasive gender norms would basic income result in patterns of choice that further exacerbate gender inequality. But suppose for now that the tradeoff is genuine and that our circumstances force us to reckon with it: Basic income would benefit unfairly disadvantaged citizens but also reinforce the gendered division of labor. What should those of us committed to gender egalitarianism and to distributive egalitarianism make of this tradeoff? We might decide which commitment to prioritize partly on strategic grounds – for example, on the basis of calculations about our prospects for making meaningful progress on this front or that. Mine is a question that abstracts away from those contingencies. I  want to ask about the moral weight of distinct policy aims in the area of caregiver support,

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which will inform but not settle the matter of what we ought to do in any particular circumstances. The tradeoff between gender egalitarianism and distributive egalitari­ anism can seem straightforward enough at the extremes. But we do not operate politically only at the extremes, and we should want values to guide us, with as much precision as they can supply, in navigating the difficult terrain in between. I want to suggest that the guidance we need is not to be found in the parts of liberal social justice theorizing where we’ve been looking for it. I use “gender egalitarianism” to refer to a social ideal whereby any differences in social roles between women and men concerning work are not determined or reinforced by social norms or social institutions that promote gendered allocations of work. I use “gendered division of labor” to refer to the norms and institutional arrangements that influ­ ence individuals’ labor allocations under the status quo. Full realiza­ tion of gender egalitarianism – full erosion of the gendered division of labor – is consistent with unequal shares of caregiving and labor market work between women and men within particular cooperative domestic arrangements or even in aggregate. What matters is that, in a fully gen­ der egalitarian society, choices about how to share work and caregiving won’t be reinforced by social norms about gender or by institutional design that makes equal sharing difficult. Defined this way, gender egali­ tarianism and, conversely, the gendered division of labor are principally about the norms and institutional arrangements that sustain prescrip­ tive gender roles, and not about inequality between women and men as measured by their shares of some distributable goods. The tradeoff I address arises between – on the one hand – the social aim of eroding the normative gendered division of labor and – on the other – the social aim of lessening unjust disadvantage in holdings of social goods, including unjust disadvantage in holdings that result from women’s disproportion­ ate share of caregiving. As we will see, liberal egalitarian feminists have particular reason as feminists to care about both social aims. Indeed, precisely for that rea­ son, some may object to my defining “gender egalitarianism” to exclude concerns about the distribution of social goods. But nothing substantive hangs on this stipulated definition. Clearly, the gendered division of labor is a cause of women’s subequal shares of social goods,2 and the stipula­ tion does not presume otherwise. It simply holds clearly open the pos­ sibility that some policy could improve the lot of disadvantaged citizens by enhancing their shares of social goods while also exacerbating the gendered division of labor. If anyone wants to insist that gender egalitari­ anism be understood to subsume the two social aims I am keeping dis­ tinct, they can simply translate this chapter into one about the tradeoffs that arise between two distinct aims of gender egalitarianism (and, too, between one of those aims and distributive egalitarianism more broadly).

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Addressing the tradeoff in question requires discussing why gender egalitarianism and distributive egalitarianism are worthy social aims, but this chapter otherwise largely takes their worth for granted. I  will also explain how the tradeoff in question arises and why forms of social support like basic income plausibly require us to address it. But skepti­ cal readers are invited to take that, too, as a stipulation and consider whether my argument might fruitfully be applied to social aims that they regard as worthy, under circumstances that they take to call for tradeoffs. Even setting aside its effects on gender egalitarianism, basic income may not be the best way to promote egalitarian distributive justice.3 This chapter does not wade into that debate. I focus on basic income because the conversation among liberal egalitarian feminists about the tradeoff I have in mind focuses on that form of social support. For my purposes, basic income serves to exemplify a range of social support policies that risk setting back progress toward gender egalitarianism because they effectively subsidize women’s withdrawal from paid labor. I’ll contrast basic income as an exemplar of such policies with “gender egalitarian” social support or social support explicitly crafted to promote the gender egalitarian social ideal  – for example, paid caregiving leaves designed to encourage leave take-up among men and continued labor market attachment among women. My interest is not in a tradeoff posed by any particular policies but rather in tradeoffs posed by types of policy that prioritize different aims of liberal egalitarian feminist justice and plausi­ bly impose costs with respect to other such aims. I begin by explaining the policy types in question and the basic case for the costs each imposes with respect to the principal aim of the other. I then consider the tradeoff in question in terms of distributive justice: Basic income can improve conditions for the very worst off in society. This is clearly an urgent demand of distributive justice. Gender egalitarian caregiver support policy that increases women’s labor market attachment and men’s performance of caregiving work will equalize opportunities between women and men by lessening the extent to which women’s career prospects are affected by caregiving responsibilities. Plausibly, this is also a gain from the perspective of distributive justice. But some have argued that that gain will primarily benefit women at the high end of the income distribution, by enabling them to compete on more equal footing for scarce positions in privileged sectors of the labor market. Equaliz­ ing opportunities between privileged women and men might matter for distributive justice, but it plausibly matters less than improving the con­ dition of the very worst-off. Thus, considerations of distributive justice evidently favor resolving the tradeoff in favor of basic income. Although there is a great deal about this diagnosis that I  endorse, I argue that its exclusive focus on distributive justice overlooks certain fundamental value commitments of liberalism. In other work, I  have argued that the gendered division of labor is best diagnosed as a problem

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of liberal legitimacy, rather than a problem of egalitarian distributive justice (Schouten 2016, 2017, 2019). If that’s right, and if considerations of liberal legitimacy constrain what we may do in pursuit of distributive justice, then our reason to prefer the gender egalitarian policy alternative is weightier than the distributive justice assessment implies. It is not only for the sake of equalizing opportunities between privileged women and men that we should want to erode the gendered division of labor; it is because our failure to do so constitutes a problem of legitimacy. Our legitimacy-based reasons to promote gender egalitarianism still give way to the moral urgency of ameliorating poverty, because pov­ erty is itself a problem of legitimacy, and a direr one than the gendered division of labor. But my argument shows that the social aim of gender egalitarianism is weightier than it would appear to be were we to restrict our focus to considerations of distributive justice alone. This argument has practical upshots concerning the relative priority of gender egali­ tarianism and distributive egalitarianism as political ends under differ­ ent circumstances; I  hope that it will also demonstrate that liberalism has underexplored resources for addressing a particular thorn in what is often thought to be its Achilles’ heel: its verdicts concerning justice’s demands on behalf of caregivers.

The Tradeoff We can situate the feminist debate over basic income within the ongoing conversation about the potentially pernicious effects of certain caregiver leave policies. Despite women’s increased labor force participation over recent decades, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal, with women in every industrialized country continuing to do the vast major­ ity of housework and childcare (Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard 2010). Among the most widely discussed interventions to promote a more equal sharing of paid and unpaid caregiving work are various forms of car­ egiver support policies, such as paid caregiving leave provisions. But recent evidence suggests that caregiver support made available to women and men on equal terms will not be effective in eroding the gendered divi­ sion of labor. Given prevailing social norms and against an institutional background of deeply structurally embedded gendered incentives, certain forms of gender-neutral caregiving support can even reinforce gender inequality.4 Consider paid caregiving leave. Even when caregiving leave is offered on equal terms to women and men, women are far likelier than men to actually take it (Kleven, Landais, and Søgaard 2018). This is true for myriad reasons: Gender role attitudes have changed greatly over recent decades, but prevailing norms continue to favor women specializing in caregiving once caregiving needs arise, even if not to the exclusion of paid work. Social surveys show that “traditional” attitudes about gender

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persist, with a robust and widespread conviction “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” (6).5 Meanwhile, gendered socialization in upbringing prepares women and men for gendered specialization, even if not for such strict specialization as it once did.6 Finally, straightfor­ ward household economic considerations make women’s leave-taking, on average, less costly than men’s. In part because women choose less well-remunerated careers that are more flexible to allow for caregiving and in part because of cumulative effects on earnings potential of prior choices to prioritize caregiving, men on average face higher opportu­ nity costs of leave-taking, both in terms of career progression and (if replacement rates fall short of full wage replacement) in terms of forgone income.7 Because women are likelier than men to use leaves or other family-friendly workplace amenities, offering those amenities on genderneutral terms won’t meaningfully erode the gendered division of labor (Kleven, Landais, and Søgaard 2018). Basic income would provide income unconditional on caregiver status, and in that sense, it is unlike the family support policies just discussed. But because basic income also does not condition the benefit on labor market participation, it effectively acts as a form of caregiver support: It increases the material standing of unpaid caregivers. Liberal egalitar­ ian feminists as feminists have some compelling reason to support basic income.8 Like caregiver support policies, basic income plausibly would disproportionally materially benefit women. In part because they do the lion’s share of caregiving, women figure disproportionally among the poor and among those unfairly badly off by the lights of egalitarian dis­ tributive justice. And basic income would provide income for caregiv­ ers, thereby elevating the status of caregiving, easing the vulnerability of caregivers and their economic reliance on breadwinner partners, and increasing caregivers’ bargaining power both within domestic relation­ ships and, where relevant, in labor markets too. But these policies benefit women by easing the vulnerabilities of car­ egiving, not by lessening women’s share of caregiving. Like the dedicated caregiver support just discussed, then, basic income will plausibly increase women’s share of caregiving work and reduce their participation in paid labor by weakening their financial incentive to stay in the workplace, or return to it, after a child is born. This presents a countervailing consid­ eration for feminists – a reason to oppose basic income. This considera­ tion does not depend on the (false, in my view) notion that caregiving work lacks value or that it is less valuable than labor market participa­ tion as a contribution to the cooperative scheme. What feminists might object to – and what I will object to later in this chapter – is the role basic income would play in reinforcing gender-norm-compliant behavior and thereby reinforcing gender norms about who should perform caregiving.

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Insofar as basic income does that, it exacerbates the gendered division of labor understood as the social norms and institutional arrangements that reinforce gendered specialization; it thereby frustrates the social aim of gender egalitarianism as I have defined it.9 To sharpen this feminist consideration against basic income, compare a caregiver support policy that explicitly aims to promote caregiving among men and labor market attachment among women: paid leaves allocated to each parent individually, on a nontransferable basis. When leaves are allocated to individuals rather than to household units, they generate an incentive effect: A father’s leave is forfeit if the father himself doesn’t take it.10 Such a policy plausibly will induce more men to take leave and, in so doing, help to erode norms against male leave-taking, promote parental intimacy and bonding among both leave-takers, increase labor market attachment among women, and promote gender egalitarian attitudes and behavior in future generations (Cunningham 2001; McGinn, Castro, and Lingo 2018; Coltrane 2009; Zippel 2009). By way of incentives for partners to use caregiver support in gender nontraditional ways, these policies can change social norms in the long run by changing individual behavior in the short run, disrupting the mechanisms that reproduce the gendered division of labor over time. Proponents of such policies have no shortage of challenges to answer. Here I want to focus on the challenge most salient to the tradeoff under consideration, between the social aims best served by gender egalitarian caregiver support, on the one hand, and those best served by uncon­ ditional (caregiver) support like basic income, on the other. By tying caregiver support to labor markets, and by structuring it to encourage caregiving take-up among men and labor market attachment among women, gender egalitarian policies apparently forfeit opportunities to meet urgent needs of the most unfairly badly off citizens, a dispropor­ tionate share of whom are women. Gender egalitarian policies subsidize leave-taking among men and labor market attachment among women, thereby benefiting most directly the women who are most advantaged within labor markets. Such policies appear to offer much less to women whose labor market participation is insecure, degrading, or badly remu­ nerated, and they apparently offer little to women outside the formal labor market. Worse still, the policies utilize resources that we might otherwise spend on unconditional support, which would clearly benefit many such women. The liabilities of the two policy types can be construed in terms of opportunity costs, as this assessment of gender egalitarian policy attests. But the liability of basic income with respect to the gender egalitarian social aim is more direct. Remember that unconditional caregiver sup­ port risks further entrenching the gendered division of labor. It enables withdrawal from paid work to perform caregiving. For reasons already set forth, policies offered to women and men on equal terms will result in

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more women opting out of paid work to perform caregiving. By enabling someone to withdraw from work to provide care, we effectively enable women to do so. Thus, the increments of support we allocate to uncon­ ditional caregiver support plausibly positively frustrate the aim of gender egalitarianism.11 To what extent should social support be unconditional so as to pri­ oritize benefiting the most unfairly badly off, and to what extent should it come with strings attached to discourage traditional gendered policy take-up and thus avoid sustaining or exacerbating the gendered division of labor? To address this question well, we need to be clearer about the moral dimensions of the costs involved.12 What is the moral importance of the progress we forfeit toward realizing the ends of basic income inso­ far as we opt for gender egalitarian caregiver support? What is the moral importance of the progress we forfeit toward realizing gender egalitari­ anism insofar as we opt for basic income? We want to use basic income to improve the lot of the least advantaged because their current lot is unjust. But we also have reasons of justice to erode the gendered division of labor. How are we to weigh these injustices so that we can decide, in a principled way, which has moral priority and to what degree?

A Distributive Justice Assessment Basic income could make things better by the lights of both feminist and distributively egalitarian social aims. It could significantly benefit the least advantaged members of society, who in gender-unequal societies are disproportionally women. The women who stand to benefit most from basic income are women with low earning capacity or low labor market attachment, including full-time housewives, many single moth­ ers, many women with disabilities, and many refugees and non-Western immigrants (Robeyns 2000, 131). While gender egalitarian incentives for continued labor market participation seem to offer little direct benefit to women in low-paid jobs or jobs otherwise not worth retaining attach­ ment to, unconditional basic income promises better financial standing and personal security for these women. This is a clear gain at the bar of egalitarian distributive justice, and this judgment is robust across differ­ ent principles of justice that call for a benefit to the worst off citizens.13 Basic income offers gains at the bar of liberal egalitarian feminist justice, then, both as liberal egalitarian justice and as feminist justice. On the other side of the ledger, basic income risks reinforcing the gen­ dered division of labor. How is this cost to be assessed at the bar of justice? Inequalities between women and men in time spent on caregiving impede further progress toward women’s material and social equality in work, politics, and social life generally. This occurs because time out

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of the workplace for caregiving affects caregivers’ earnings and career trajectories, but it occurs too because women come to be perceived as caregivers whether or not they are. Accordingly, much of the feminist criticism of basic income focuses on the risk that it will fuel statistical discrimination. Statistical discrimination occurs when employers (con­ sciously or unconsciously) use aggregate group characteristics to make inferences about the likely behavior of employees, or prospective employ­ ees, about whom they know little else (Gittell 2009; Poeschl 2008; RossSmith and Chesterman 2009). Women’s vastly larger share of caregiving is one such characteristic. Women are (known to be) likelier than men to have serious commitments to caregiving so their time available for paid employment is reduced; thus, women, and especially mothers, come to be perceived as less committed employees. Partly as a result, they are less likely to occupy the most prestigious positions and they continue to earn less than their male counterparts even if they don’t take time out for caregiving (Coltrane 2009; Zippel 2009; Correll, Benard, and Paik 2007; Glass 2004). This is unjust by the lights of a widely accepted prin­ ciple of justice: equality of opportunity. While basic income risks fueling statistical discrimination and thus diminishing equal opportunity by fur­ ther entrenching the gendered division of labor (Robeyns 2000, 2001; Gheaus 2020), gender egalitarian policies can promote equal opportunity by eroding the association of women with caregiving. Both basic income and gender egalitarian policies seem both feminist and distributively egalitarian, then, but both also have relative liabili­ ties by the lights of liberal egalitarian feminist commitments of justice. Gender egalitarian caregiver support will promote equal opportunity between women and men but appears to disproportionally benefit advan­ taged women relative to the very least advantaged. Basic income will disproportionally benefit less advantaged women but risks reinforcing the gendered division of labor and thus frustrating equal opportunity between women and men in competitions for scarce positions in labor markets and in politics. Gender egalitarian caregiver support seems sub­ optimal with respect to benefiting the unfairly badly off but preferable with respect to equal opportunity. Basic income seems suboptimal with respect to equal opportunity but preferable with respect to benefiting the unfairly badly off. How should we balance these considerations of justice? We appear to find an answer in Rawls, who gives his version of equal opportunity lexical priority with respect to the prioritarian difference principle (Rawls 1999, 52–54). But whether or not Rawls would have stood by this answer in the context of our unjust society, it is the wrong answer in that context. Even if equal opportunity has overriding moral importance in a fully just society, it is implausible to think that it auto­ matically wins the day in the actual circumstances we inhabit. In our

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circumstances, benefiting the least advantaged matters more than equal­ izing opportunity in competitions for positions at the high end of the occupational structure.14 Anca Gheaus argues for a particularly strong version of this claim (Gheaus 2020). In our unjust society, she argues, inequalities of oppor­ tunity for positions of advantage between more advantaged women and men matter very little or not at all from the perspective of justice. We therefore have little reason to care about the putative liability of basic income at the bar of equal opportunity or even to regard it as a liability at all. Gheaus advances two arguments for discounting equal opportu­ nity in this context: First, many of the positions in competition for which women are disadvantaged are positions that confer an unjustly large share of social rewards. Nobody has a right to such positions, Gheaus argues; thus, women’s rights are not violated by virtue of the fact that their competitors have more opportunities for such positions. Second, in societies wherein most people are excluded from the positions in ques­ tion, those who are competing for them generally already have had more than their fair share of opportunities; thus, they do not have a right to still more, and so no right is violated if their competitors have more opportunities than they do to attain the scarce positions in question.15 In short: the women in question do not have a right to the same opportu­ nity as their competitors for the positions in question, either because the positions confer unjust rewards or because the women able to compete for them already enjoy richer opportunities than justice allows. Thus, Gheaus argues, if the case for basic income is otherwise strong, egalitar­ ian feminists should endorse basic income even if it sets back women’s opportunities to attain positions of advantage I agree with Gheaus this far: In very distributively unequal societies, a benefit to the least advantaged has more moral value than a benefit (of equal magnitude) to the relatively more advantaged; and this is true even if the latter (and not the former) is a gain at the bar of equal opportunity. The case is stronger still when the least advantaged are not only rela­ tively worse off but very badly off by absolute standards as well. Easing the hardship of the very worst-off simply matters more than equalizing opportunity in competitions for highly rewarded social positions. I think this weighting of priorities holds even when the least advantaged are considerably better-off than they are now, but the case is clearest in our present circumstances, where improving the lot of the least advantaged means ameliorating the absolute bad of living in poverty. When we think about the tradeoff in terms of implications for distributive justice, then, gender egalitarianism seems clearly to be the less morally weighty social end, at least when the least well-off are very badly off. Assuming basic income has an edge in providing advantages for the least advantaged members of society, the weight of these considerations tilt in its favor.

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Although right as far as it goes, I  think this diagnosis of the tradeoff misses something important. It misses fundamental values of liberal­ ism that are not subsumed by principles of distributive justice but that constrain our legitimate political pursuit of those principles. Thus, while Gheaus argues that feminists as feminists and feminists as distributive egalitarians can endorse basic income despite the risk of further entrench­ ing the gendered division of labor, it is not only as feminist egalitarians that feminist liberals must assess the tradeoff in question. Concerns of equal opportunity do indeed give way to concerns of benefiting the least advantaged in our social circumstances, but infringing on equal oppor­ tunity is not all that is objectionable for liberals about the gendered divi­ sion of labor and not all that favors gender egalitarian social policy over basic income.16 By the lights of the fundamental constraining values of liberalism, I’ll argue, poverty amelioration remains the prevailingly mor­ ally important social aim. But the fundamental values in question also impugn the gendered division of labor. By surfacing these values, we can see that benefiting the least advantaged citizens is indeed urgently called for now even at a cost to gender egalitarianism, and we can make bet­ ter judgments about when the balance of considerations would begin to point in the other direction.

Other Normative Resources of Liberalism Because liberal values weightier than distributive justice are at stake when it comes to the gendered division of labor, the ranking of gains from the perspective of distributive justice doesn’t suffice to establish that basic income serves the morally weightier social end. This section defends this claim and lays foundation for a different way of looking at the tradeoff. I begin by disputing the presumption that basic income’s primary liabil­ ity is a threat to equal opportunity at the high end of the occupational structure. One way to dispute this presumption is to argue that the distributional maladies of the gendered division of labor trickle down: that the gen­ dered division of labor undermines the fairness of competitions in which the less advantaged take part and harms less advantaged citizens on abso­ lute terms as well. I think that this case can easily be made. The gendered division of labor sustains gender injustices across the population, frus­ trating equal opportunity among privileged and disadvantaged women. It sustains glass ceilings that constrain women at the top of the employ­ ment structure, and it accounts for the devaluation of caregiving and the (partially consequent) feminization of poverty. It is for this reason that many feminists regard the institution of the family and its gendered division of labor as the “linchpin” of gender injustice.17 If labor market reform can dismantle the gendered division of labor, it can benefit women

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across the income distribution and even those outside of the formal labor market altogether. But I want to focus on a different way to dispute the notion that basic income’s main liability from the perspective of liberalism is the threat it poses to equal opportunity at the high end of the occupational structure: not to deny that the problems of distributive justice befall only those at the high end of the occupational structure but to deny that basic income’s liability with respect to gender egalitarianism is reducible to a problem of distributive justice in the first place. Liberalism is not only liberal prin­ ciples of distributive justice; it includes a set of constraints that we must abide by as we enact social policies to realize those principles or, indeed, to realize any social aims at all. In the next section, I’ll argue that the gendered division of labor is problematic from the perspective of those constraining values of liberalism. Insofar as basic income risks further entrenching the gendered division of labor, then, it jeopardizes those fun­ damental values. That argument relies on some foundational theoretical commitments, which I unpack here. Ultimately, we want our theorizing to shed light on practical questions about what we should do, like: Should nonparents be taxed to help defray the costs to parents of raising children, for example, through subsidized parental leave? Or: Should parental leave be arranged to incentivize equal parenting among cooperating domestic partners? In order to settle practical political questions about what we should do, we need to consult aspirational values about what ends we should ideally seek to bring about, and we need to consult the value considerations that constrain our political pursuit of aspirational aims. Distributive justice, as I  understand it, is an aspirational social aim. Questions of distributive justice are questions about what would make society fair, setting aside such considerations as the worry that in our circumstances, we cannot achieve a fair arrangement short of political intrusions that constitute objectionable governmental overreach. Figuring out what we ought to do, all things considered, requires getting it right about the rel­ evant aspirational ideals and correctly discerning the ways in which our pursuit of those ideals is constrained by other normative considerations: most importantly for my purposes, political legitimacy. Legitimacy con­ cerns the permissibility of coercive political intervention to pursue an aspirational ideal  – like an ideal of distributive justice  – given the fact of reasonable disagreement about the ideal in question and the demo­ cratic conviction that reasonable disagreement about social ideals among diverse citizens matters politically. In addressing a question internal to liberal egalitarian feminism, this chapter takes for granted that we want 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

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their own conceptions of the good, regulated by values that they endorse. For cooperation to be possible in such a society, we must find some way of dealing with the disagreements that will inevitably arise, both about what values are worthy of allegiance for individuals and for the collec­ tive, and about how those first disagreements are fairly to be resolved. We also want to live in a society regulated by democratic values. In a democratic society, the state’s authority derives from its claim to be act­ ing 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 commitment. Questions of legitimacy depend in important ways on the concept of citizenship. In one sense, citizens are actual members of society, on whose assent legitimacy depends. This is the concept of citizenship at play when we regard a suitably constrained majoritarian process as legitimacyconferring. A second concept of citizenship generates the reasons by which actual citizens should be moved and determines the constraints within which actual citizens’ wishes carry authority. Notice, just intuitively for now, that some political interventions seem not to rely for their legitimacy on the actual consent of actual citizens. Interventions necessary to pro­ tect certain basic rights, for example, need not be approved by an actual majority in order to be legitimate. The second conception of citizenship explains why this is so. This conception is the idealized conception of political personhood that systematizes the constraints on legitimate exer­ cises of political power that a liberal democracy should impose. In Rawlsian political liberalism, idealized citizenship embodies two moral powers – the capacity for a conception of the good and the capac­ ity for a sense of justice – and a higher-order interest in the protection of those powers. This concept of citizenship gives substance to politi­ cal liberalism’s basic criterion of legitimacy, the criterion of reciprocity, which specifies 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” (Rawls 1993, xliv). In a free society, citizens will reasonably disagree about what kinds of lives are good lives and what kinds of val­ ues are worth espousing. Given this reasonable disagreement, a state that acts to promote and preserve an aspirational ideal of justice will impose burdens, and will impose burdens unequally, on citizens’ pursuit of their own values. But if in promoting that aspirational ideal it abides by the cri­ terion of reciprocity, it preserves mutual civic respect among citizens even though it imposes unequally on them. It respects all citizens as members of a justificatory community: Though we disagree about many things, we

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show mutual respect by exercising the coercive power of the state only when doing so can be justified using reasons that we can all recognize as such, because they derive from interests that we share. If deep and reasonable value pluralism is inevitable, what interests could those be? While there may be few or no interests that we all actu­ ally endorse, certain interests can be derived from the very project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a pluralistic democracy. For the purposes of theorizing liberal legitimacy, we are all taken to share the set of interests that minimally value-laden project implies. The role of idealized citizenship is to systematize these interests we share. Because we assume that the project of seeking fair terms of cooperation is not futile, we idealize citizens as capable of modulating their behavior to comply with principles of justice. Because we assume that we are seeking terms of cooperation for a diverse society, but one wherein individuals can be held accountable for the values they live by, we idealize citizens as capable of forming and rationally revising their conceptions of the good life. Because we aim to specify conditions under which a just society can stably persist over time, we attribute to them an interest in protecting these moral powers of idealized citizenship. From this characterization, we can infer still further interests of ideal­ ized citizenship. Most straightforwardly, there is a citizenship interest in protecting a prerogative for each actual citizen to pursue her conception of the good life, free from state intrusion. This interest generates a sort of presumption against coercive political intervention. But the presump­ tion is overridden when intrusion can be justified as an essential posi­ tive means of protecting other shared interests of citizenship. Intrusions justified in this way include protections for certain basic liberties that we have a shared idealized-citizenship interest in protecting. Whether or not actual citizens actually endorse the protections in question, the ide­ alization of citizenship licenses us to treat those protections as in their interest. That idealization systematizes the interests implied by a project we are all taken to endorse: finding fair terms on which to justly regulate cooperation and legitimately regulate state coercion in a society marked by profound disagreement. The criterion of reciprocity thus constrains the political strategies avail­ able to us for pursuing distributive justice or any other aspirational social end; and, underpinned by the ideal of mutual civic respect among free and equal citizens, the criterion of reciprocity also positively requires that we recognize, as reasons-giving, those fundamental interests we share in common as citizens. The citizenship capacity to form and revise a con­ ception of the good generates a strong interest in protections for the free­ dom to, for example, espouse a religion of one’s own choosing or none at all. Similarly with the other basic liberties, with the prioritization of the basic liberties, and with the provision of the material necessities for the

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effective exercise of those liberties: Because shared citizenship interests demand that these conditions be secured, any society that fails to secure them violates the criterion of reciprocity. In this way, the criterion of reciprocity takes some social arrangements off the table from the start. It is, as Rawls puts it, the “limiting feature” of a reasonable political conception of justice (1993, 450). In these positive requirements, we can find resources of liberalism, beyond the ideal of equal opportunity, for criticizing the gendered division of labor.

Basic Liberties, Citizenship, and Autonomy One such resource has already been unearthed: We can criticize the gen­ dered division of labor as a threat to fundamental values of liberalism insofar as it causes or constitutes a violation of individuals’ basic liber­ ties. Some gendered harms clearly do constitute basic liberty violations: A woman forced to perform domestic services against her will is a case in point. Perhaps women’s disproportionate share of caregiving generates an obstacle to them being taken seriously as candidates for public office. If so, then legitimacy might demand special protections for women’s political liberties. This might involve elevating the status of caregiving and educating citizens to see that traditionally feminine work and tradi­ tionally feminine skills can be sources of qualification for public service. If such a social project is essential to protecting the basic political liberties of women, then omitting to undertake it would be illegitimate.18 Simi­ larly, if protection for basic liberties required gender egalitarian political interventions, then those interventions would be a requirement of legiti­ macy and thus weigh more heavily in tradeoff cases than they would if they were needed only to promote equal opportunity among advantaged women and men. I  think we can adequately protect the basic liberties without fully eroding the gendered division of labor, however.19 If this is right, then the basic liberties case does not yet favor gender egalitar­ ian social policy independently of concerns about equal opportunity and does not yet show that the liabilities of basic income go beyond frus­ trating equal opportunity. What other resources of liberalism might we invoke? Christie Hartley and Lori Watson argue that political liberalism’s crite­ rion of reciprocity imposes substantive feminist requirements on the just liberal state: It demands political interventions to eliminate “pervasive social hierarchies that thwart the give and take of public reasons among free and equal citizens” (2010, 8), and it demands that society ensure “the social conditions necessary for recognition respect among persons viewed as free and equal citizens” (2010, 8).20 The criterion of reciprocity imposes these requirements because idealized citizens could not accept circumstances under which others fail to recognize and respect them as

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citizens, thus the criterion of reciprocity demands that society establish and preserve the positive conditions necessary for citizens to relate to one another in this capacity. Hartley and Watson argue that this has implications for the gendered division of labor. Because caregiving is necessary for sustaining society over time and because we all have an interest in receiving care as chil­ dren, caregiving work should be regarded as socially necessary work for which we share responsibility as a society, and those who do it should not be disadvantaged in their ability to participate in various other social spheres central to citizenship. Because women’s greater share of caregiv­ ing disadvantages them in labor markets, and because labor market participation is a dimension of social life central to citizenship, the cri­ terion of reciprocity licenses political interventions aimed at dismantling the hierarchical gendered division of labor (Hartley and Watson 2009, 533–535, 2010, 17; Watson and Hartley 2018). If this argument is suc­ cessful, it reveals another sense in which the gendered division of labor is unjust independent of concerns about equal opportunity: If the gendered division of labor frustrates essential interests of idealized citizenship, then political action to erode it is urgently called for on the basis of liberal­ ism’s fundamental commitment to mutual respect. Insofar as a policy like basic income is counterproductive by this metric, that constitutes a serious normative liability. In other work, I argue that Hartley and Watson’s is not a fully ade­ quate justification for gender egalitarian social policy (Schouten 2015, 2019). I argue that it places undue importance on labor market participa­ tion as a requirement for equal standing in society. Surely there is noth­ ing intrinsic to caregiving that entails that its full-time practitioners will be, or be regarded as, second-class citizens. If caregiving were appropri­ ately esteemed and respected, caregivers would not need to supplement that role with significant labor market participation in order to stand as social equals. Imagine a social arrangement in which the status of caregiving is elevated such that caregiving is remunerated and esteemed in much the same way as military service: We recognize that caregiving is inadequately rewarded in the marketplace, and so we impose mecha­ nisms to socialize its costs. We rightly appreciate the indispensable social contribution made by caregivers, and their social status and compensa­ tion are made commensurate with that contribution. Without the (surely false) premise that caregiving alone is an inherently inadequate basis for equal social standing, Hartley and Watson’s argument lacks resources to find fault with this arrangement, because no hierarchy of breadwinning over caregiving relegates caregivers to second-class citizenship. And yet, I argue, the gendered division of labor and the injustice of the gendered division of labor can survive these suppositions. If the institutionalized presumption of breadwinner/caregiver specialization remains  – if, for example, labor markets continue to presume that ideal workers have

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no caregiving responsibilities or are supported by caregiver specialist partners – and if women and men continue to be systematically socialized to specialize based on sex, then injustice persists. To put it roughly, there is injustice not only in the gendered “stacking” of traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine work but also in the gendered “steering” of individuals into roles based on sex. But Hartley and Watson’s strategy does not equip us to impugn the latter injustice, because it finds fault only with the gendered “stacking.” Hartley and Watson’s strategy may diagnose a great deal of what is wrong with the gendered division of labor, but I think we can go further. The problem with the gendered division of labor that I  worry Hartley and Watson’s strategy does not address – the problem that I am now try­ ing to illustrate only roughly and intuitively – concerns the social mecha­ nisms that sustain it. This problem survives the elimination of relational and material inequality between caregivers and other social contribu­ tors. And once we identify the problem that should make us regard even the hypothetical nonhierarchical, caregiver-esteeming but still gendered division of labor as unjust, we will see that liberalism has the tools to diagnose it as such. The problem is in the steering of women and men into certain roles on the basis of a socially embedded assumption that one’s sex rightly dictates the kind of work one does. The source of this steering  – the socially embedded assumption that sex rightly dictates work specialization – is objectionable from the perspective of liberalism’s core values systematized as fundamental interests of idealized citizenship (Schouten 2019). Let me explain. The socially embedded assumption that sex rightly dictates work spe­ cialization is objectionable from the perspective of free and equal citi­ zenship because that assumption is inimical to autonomy. A  robustly autonomous person can reflect upon, revise, and reject the social roles and affiliations that fundamentally shape her life. Her choices in domains central to her identity are not effectively determined by normalized and institutionally embedded assumptions that members of a social group to which she belongs are best suited to populating particular roles. We can be autonomous in a gendered society, because social norms do not deter­ mine our choices. And while gender norms attach social costs to some of the options we choose among, that, in itself, is no problem from the perspective of autonomy. Our options always carry contingent social and material costs. What’s objectionable is the particular configuration of social and material costs that gendered parenting norms sustain. Impor­ tantly, a social arrangement can be an affront to some value even with­ out making realization of that value impossible. This can occur precisely when the arrangement is predicated on the assumption that citizens will not realize or aspire to realize the value in question. Our social arrange­ ment is inimical to autonomy not because it makes autonomy impossible but because it presumes that citizens will behave nonautonomously: that

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they will specialize by sex into caregiving and labor market roles. Even without making gender-equal parenting impossible, and even without making autonomous choice impossible, our social arrangement is predi­ cated on the institutionalized assumption that one’s sex will dictate the work that one does. Whether or not individual decision-makers within institutions make this assumption, the institutional design takes it for granted. Labor markets are still designed for workers with “someone else at home,” a caregiving specialist partner to see to the caregiving and other domes­ tic work that need to be done so that the supposed breadwinning spe­ cialist partner can devote himself fully to wage earning.21 Employers are empowered to impose demands on workers who are incompatible with workers simultaneously having serious personal caregiving commit­ ments, and labor market success requires living up to such demands. The institutionalized assumption that sex will determine work specialization also explains the dearth of support for substitute caregiving in the United States: Because we have assumed parents – mothers – will internalize the costs of caring for children, we have neglected to develop social solu­ tions for meeting the needs of dependents or for sharing the costs. And that assumption explains increasingly labor-intensive parenting norms: Because we presume that the costs of caregiving will be internalized and borne by caregiving specialists, we increasingly expect caregivers – and caregivers expect themselves – to develop the skills and commitment that typify work specialization.22 The entrenched assumption of gender-based specialization makes it socially and materially costly to avoid gendered parenting. A  social arrangement that presumes that sex has this importance – and that in so presuming makes it costly to arrange one’s domestic life in defiance of that presumption – is an affront to autonomy. Accordingly, these insti­ tutional arrangements and social norms are objectionable on grounds of autonomy even though individuals can autonomously choose to comply with or flout those norms. The robust, comprehensive kind of autonomy that this argument invokes cannot straightforwardly justify intrusive political interventions in a society that abides by the criterion of reciprocity. The whole point, recall, is to maintain justificatory community among ideologically diverse citizens, and this includes those who eschew substantively liberal val­ ues. The value of a thin sort of autonomy – political autonomy – can be a part of our shared justificatory resources. Political autonomy, or autonomy in the sense of legal independence and political enfranchise­ ment, is valuable from the perspective of citizenship independently of any particular conception of the good. But comprehensive autonomy involves actually critically reflecting on and evaluating our ends and the values we espouse,23 and this cannot be valued intrinsically from the perspective of citizenship. Many may reject the value of this sort of critical reflection,

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and engagement in it is not implied by the citizenship interest in having the capacity for political autonomy. Thus, reciprocity dictates that no political intervention may be justified on the basis of a presumption that comprehensive autonomy is valuable in itself. But there is a reciprocity-abiding case to make based on the instru­ mental value of comprehensive autonomy. In my full defense of this argument, I  argue that tolerating an institutional arrangement that is an affront to comprehensive autonomy jeopardizes stability, the value of which can be affirmed without violating reciprocity (Schouten 2019). The point for now is just to see that we potentially have yet another lib­ eral resource, beyond equal opportunity, on the basis of which we can regard the gendered division of labor as politically objectionable. Insofar as citizenship interests favor stability, and insofar as stability is jeopard­ ized when our social arrangement is predicated on an institutionalized assumption inimical to comprehensive autonomy, we have reason to enact social policy aimed at undermining the gendered division of labor and thus reason to prefer gender egalitarian caregiver support to basic income. This reason derives from the criterion of reciprocity, which regu­ lates society’s pursuit of aspirational distributive justice. The gendered division of labor is thus a direr political problem – and the liabilities of basic income correspondingly morally weightier – than if it merely dis­ rupted equal opportunity in competitions for positions at the high end of the occupational structure.

The Tradeoff Reconsidered Because considerations of liberal legitimacy regulate what we may do in pursuit of distributive justice, if the gendered division of labor is objec­ tionable at the bar of legitimacy, then we have a weightier reason to erode the gendered division of labor than we would appear to have were we to look only at the demands of distributive justice. We might think this means that we should opt against basic income, which risks reinforcing the gendered division of labor. If the values of liberalism generate basic interests of citizenship that set the parameters for legitimate political pur­ suit of principles of distributive justice, then our reasons of legitimacy to erode the gendered division of labor appear to trump our reasons of distributive justice to benefit the least advantaged by implementing some social support intervention like basic income. I think that if the framework just set forth actually rendered this priority ranking, that verdict would be a decisive reason to reject the framework. But this preliminary assessment is too simple, because some distributive requirements are themselves entailed by the constraining val­ ues of liberalism. That is, some distributive demands of justice are issued, rather than merely countenanced, by the ideal of mutual respect and thus by our shared interests as citizens.

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Consider again the basic liberties. Because of the strong idealized citi­ zenship interest in protecting the basic liberties, political protections for those liberties are compliant with the criterion of reciprocity, and indeed a failure to enact those protections is positively proscribed by that cri­ terion. Protections for basic liberties are overridingly important relative to any social goods not mandated by the criterion of reciprocity; thus, a state that fails to protect the basic liberties of its citizens omits illegiti­ mately when it abstains from enacting those protections. Protecting the basic liberties has distributive implications because the demands of adequate protection for basic liberties are not merely formal but substantive. To adequately protect citizens’ basic liberties, the state must ensure that each citizen has enough material resources effectively to execute the powers those liberties protect. Indeed, among the most para­ digmatic of the positive requirements the criterion of reciprocity imposes are these: Society must protect certain rights, liberties, and opportunities; it must afford a special priority to these rights, liberties, and opportuni­ ties, especially with respect to claims of the general good; and it must ensure for all citizens adequate all-purpose means to make effective use of these rights, liberties, and opportunities (Rawls 1993, xlvi, 6). These conditions are demanded by the criterion of reciprocity because they are crucial to protecting a fundamental citizenship interest: the interest in exercising one’s conception of the good. That interest is jeopardized when the basic liberties are vulnerable, and it is jeopardized too when one lacks the material preconditions for exercising those liberties. Up until the point at which all citizens have enough to effectively exercise their basic liberties, then, egalitarian distributive injustice is a problem of legitimacy. Egalitarian distributive injustice also constitutes a problem of legiti­ macy whenever some citizens have so little, or so few opportunities to attain positions of value, that their status as equal citizens is undermined. At the (in my view, not very extreme) extreme, distributive inequalities or insufficiencies can undermine citizens’ capacity to stand as social equals. When this status is compromised by material inequalities or inadequa­ cies, the criterion of reciprocity demands that the situation be remedied. Up until the point at which every citizen is well-enough-off to stand as a social equal, distributive injustice is a problem of legitimacy. Where does this leave us? Under some circumstances (including ours), the gendered division of labor is a problem of liberal legitimacy. Under some circumstances (including ours), distributive inequality is too. We would ideally have some metric for weighting the moral importance of divergent citizenship interests, and thus divergent legitimacy problems. I have no such metric to offer. But it seems clear that lacking adequate material means to exercise basic liberties or to stand as a social equal is the direr problem of legitimacy. When circumstances make tradeoffs

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necessary, we have reason to prioritize social policies we judge most effective at ameliorating the most egregious problem of legitimacy: in our case, poverty. But we should not lose sight of what is at stake in this tradeoff. Insofar as the gendered division of labor also constitutes a problem of legitimacy, social policy to erode it should be weighted considerably more heavily than if it generated only a problem of unequal opportunity among the most advantaged citizens. The gendered division of labor frustrates the fundamental liberal values that regulate our use of political power in pur­ suit of distributive justice. It is a less urgent problem of legitimacy than poverty and, I  submit, a less urgent problem of legitimacy than severe inequality even when those on the losing end are considerably better-off than they are now. In a society beset by both serious inequality and an illegitimate gendered division of labor, poverty amelioration should take priority. But because the gendered division of labor is also a problem of legitimacy, gender egalitarianism comes to take priority at least as soon as distributive inequality ceases to be a problem of legitimacy and becomes (only) a failure to live up to the aspirational value of distribu­ tive justice. This occurs only after the least advantaged are materially well-enough-off to stand in relations of social equality and effectively to exercise their basic liberties. I think that this is a quite high threshold of distributive equality. Even above it, distributive inequality doesn’t cease to be unjust. But it is a failure to realize an aspirational value, not a fail­ ure to abide by the fundamental values of liberalism that constrain politi­ cal pursuit of any social aspiration. It is an injustice, but not a failure of mutual respect, and so gives way in moral weightiness to the legitimacy problem of the gendered division of labor. Just as some principles of aspirational distributive justice may be nor­ matively weightier than others, some requirements of legitimacy will be weightier than others. But as a category, requirements of legitimacy weigh more heavily than principles of aspirational justice. Their cate­ gorical weightiness comes from their being issued by the ideal of mutual civic respect among free and equal citizens. This is the same ideal that demands protections for the basic liberties as a strong priority of justice. Despite offering no metric for weighting among principles of legitimacy, this argument has important practical and theoretical upshots concerning the priority of gender egalitarian and distributive egalitarian social goals under different circumstances. First, although this debate has played out largely in terms of distribu­ tive justice, the gendered division of labor is not an injustice that we should ameliorate only for the sake of equal opportunity among relatively privileged women and men at the high end of the occupational hierarchy. This is true first because it sustains injustice that harms the least advan­ taged women as well as the most advantaged, because it sustains the very

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social attitudes that account for the devaluation of caregiving work and the feminization of poverty. But the gendered division of labor matters even apart from its frustrating equal opportunity at the high end of the social hierarchy and sustaining feminized disadvantage at the bottom: It matters because it frustrates essential interests of citizenship that liber­ als must regard as morally very important indeed. If basic income does threaten to exacerbate the frustration of those interests, we have a strong reason to prefer other mechanisms for poverty amelioration that avoid the tradeoff in question. Second, circumstances matter for the weighting of social aims. We might say in the abstract that problems of legitimacy are weightier than problems of distributive justice because the ideal of mutual respect con­ strains what aspirational values of distributive justice we may pursue. But some distributive injustices are problems of legitimacy. Which those are depends on how severe that inequality is (Does it undermine status equality among citizens?) and on how badly off those on the losing end are (Is the effective exercise of their basic liberties jeopardized?). Simi­ larly, whether the gendered division of labor is a problem of legitimacy depends on whether it maintains social hierarchies and (on my view) whether it is sustained by institutionalized social assumptions that are inimical to autonomy. Circumstances also make a difference to which tradeoffs we face in the first place. Basic income imposes setbacks with respect to gender egalitarian aims only because social norms influence the relative likelihood of women and men opting out of paid work in favor of caregiving if their financial circumstances allow it. And circumstances matter to the tradeoffs we face for a simpler reason, too: Social resources and political will are scarce, and this means we face opportunity costs. It matters that circumstances make a difference, because those circum­ stances are themselves politically malleable, and one worthy target of political energy might be to ease the tradeoffs themselves. Unconditional social supports may work to the detriment of gender egalitarianism by enabling women to withdraw from paid labor. Poverty amelioration is morally more urgent, and so we might rightly opt for basic income despite its liabilities. But they are serious liabilities, because the gendered division of labor is a problem of legitimacy. This may seem a mere quib­ ble, given that gender egalitarianism is less weighty than poverty amelio­ ration in any case. But we should want to get it right about how dire the tradeoff is, because the constraints we face and the tradeoffs they force are themselves a product of political decisions. Finally, I hope the argument demonstrates that liberalism has underex­ plored resources for rendering plausible and nuanced verdicts concerning justice’s demands on behalf of caregivers. That caregivers are vulnerable and that caregiving is gendered constitute social problems that we can recognize as such by invoking principles of distributive justice, but what is objectionable about the gendered division of labor is not exhausted by

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the consequences it has for citizens’ shares of distributable resources. The gendered division of caregiving labor is a problem from the perspective of idealized citizenship and thus can be diagnosed as a social ill by drawing on the very theoretical resources that lie at the normative core of liberal­ ism. Not only can liberalism adequately address injustices pertaining to the giving and receiving of care; at its very core, liberalism is committed to caring about caregiving.

Notes 1. I presented versions of this chapter for the University of Vermont Philoso­ phy Seminar, the Boston University Ethics Seminar, and the Fellows in Resi­ dence Seminar at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. I  am grateful to those involved for helpful comments and suggestions, and especially to Tyler Doggett, Terence Cuneo, Randall Harp, Kate Nolfi, Charles Petersen, Dan­ iel Star, and Susan Kennedy. Thanks to Anca Gheaus, Tyler Doggett, Jeff Behrends, Lucas Stanczyk, and especially to Amy Baehr and Asha Bhandary for extremely helpful written feedback on earlier drafts. 2. See Okin (1989). 3. Compared with, for example, unconditional provision of basic goods (as distinct from cash) and/or means-tested (as opposed to unconditional) provi­ sion of cash or in-kind goods. See Bergmann (2004). 4. See, for example, Bertrand (2018); Blau and Kahn (2013); Zippel (2009). 5. See also Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan (2015); Parker (2015); and Gerson (2010). 6. See England (2010). See also Okin (1989). 7. See, for example, Kleven, Landais, and Søgaard (2018); Gornick and Meyers (2003). 8. On the benefits of basic income for women, see Robeyns (2000, 2001); Elgarte (2008); Baker (2008); Pateman (2004); Zelleke (2008). 9. On the risk of basic income further entrenching gender norms, see Robeyns (2000, 2001); Bergmann (2004); Gheaus (2008). For a review of feminist arguments for and against basic income, see Robeyns (2000). 10. See Zippel (2009); Bertrand (2018). More strongly, policies may condition one parent’s access to paid leave on her co-parent taking leave too. See Berg­ mann (2009); Brighouse and Wright (2009); Coltrane (2009); Zippel (2009). 11. Says Barbara Bergmann, “the full-blown implementation of Basic Income schemes in the near future should not appeal to those for whom gender equality is an important goal” (2004, 116). 12. That’s not to say this is all we need. As already foreshadowed, the relation­ ship between the moral importance of distinct social justice aims and the further question of what we should do is complex. See, for example, Sim­ mons 2010. I assume that knowing more about the former is important but not sufficient for answering the latter. 13. If we invoke adequacy principles specifying that justice demands for each citizen a share of the social product adequate for her to achieve some level of social functioning, then on any plausible specification of the adequacy threshold, we can see that basic income offers clear gains. See Anderson (1999). If we invoke prioritarian principles affording gains to the increas­ ingly badly off increasingly greater moral priority, then on any plausible met­ ric, the citizens who stand to benefit under basic income will be owed benefit as a strong priority. See Parfit (2000). Although I will largely try to keep the

288

14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Gina Schouten in-text discussion general, I understand principles of distributive justice and the legitimacy constraints on our pursuit of them in roughly Rawlsian terms. See Rawls (1999, 1993). For evidence that Rawls would have agreed, see his discussion of the basic needs principle in Rawls (1993, 7). Gheaus allows that there is expressive disvalue when men vastly outnumber women in highly rewarded positions but argues that this disvalue can be addressed without realizing the more demanding ideal of equal opportunity in competitions for such positions. Indeed, if statistical discrimination in particular were the only political prob­ lem with the gendered division of labor, we might ultimately have little rea­ son to implement gender egalitarian policy to begin with. We might try to eradicate the discrimination without changing the statistic. I take this obser­ vation to cast doubt on the notion that statistical discrimination is the only political problem with the gendered division of labor. This is not because the statistic matters in its own right but because it reflects something that matters beyond discrimination. See Okin (1989, especially 173). See also Gheaus (2012). An illegitimate act or omission does not imply that the state itself is illegiti­ mate, or that its mandates do not generate moral duties to comply, or that a regime lacks authority to rule. These are distinct questions. See Schouten (2019), especially chapter 2. Hartley and Watson draw on the concept of recognition respect as developed in the work of Stephen Darwall. See Darwall (2009). See, for example, Williams (2000). See, for example, Gerson (2010); Ramey and Ramey (2010). See Rawls (1993, xlii–xliii) for further discussion of the difference between political and comprehensive autonomy.

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Contributors

Amy R. Baehr is Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University. Her recent work on liberalism, feminism, and dependency has appeared in Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, Ethics, and The Journal of Applied Philosophy; and in anthologies including John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions (Oxford 2020), The Original Position (Cambridge 2016), and Suffrage and Its Limits: The New York Story (SUNY 2020). She is Editor of Varieties of Feminist Liberalism (Rowman and Littlefield 2004). Asha Bhandary is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. She works in political philosophy and femi­ nist ethics. She is author of the monograph Freedom to Care: Lib­ eralism, Dependency Care, and Culture (Routledge 2020), in which she advanced the theory of liberal dependency care, a neo-Rawlsian contract theory for a just society that meets its caregiving needs. She has also published articles on liberalism, care, culture, and race in the Journal of Political Philosophy, Hypatia, Feminist Philosophy Quar­ terly, Social Theory and Practice, and The Journal of Philosophical Research. She is currently working on a monograph preliminarily titled Being at Home, which reengages the theory of liberal depend­ ency care to address the implications of racist microaggressions for liberalism’s egalitarian foundations and its commitment to autonomy. Elizabeth Brake is Professor of Philosophy at Rice University. Her research is primarily in feminist ethics and political philosophy. She is the author of Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law and editor of After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships (both with Oxford University Press). She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Philosophy. She is currently working on a project on the state’s role in disaster response. Wendy Donner is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Carleton Univer­ sity, Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of two books on John Stu­ art Mill – Mill (with Richard Fumerton, Wiley-Blackwell 2009) and

List of Contributors

293

The Liberal Self (Cornell 1991). She has also published many articles on Mill, feminist ethics, environmental ethics, and Buddhist ethics. Maxine Eichner is the Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. She writes on issues at the intersection of law and political theory, focusing particularly on family relationships, social welfare, and the market. She is the author of The Free-Market Family: How the Market Crushed the American Dream (Oxford 2020) and The Supportive State: Families, Govern­ ment, and America’s Political Ideals (Oxford 2010). Daniel Engster is Professor of Political Philosophy and Director of the Ethics Center in the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. He is the author of The Heart of Justice: Care Ethics and Political Theory (Oxford 2007) and Justice, Care, and the Welfare State (Oxford 2015), and co-editor (with T. Metz) of Justice, Politics, and the Family (Routledge 2013) and (with M. Hamington) of Care Ethics and Political Theory (Oxford 2015). Christie Hartley is Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University. She specializes in social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and ethics. Her publications include work on social contract theory and justice for persons with disability; cooperation and reciprocity; and, with Lori Watson, liberalism and equal citizenship, especially, gen­ der justice. Watson and Hartley’s book, Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism, was published in 2018 with Oxford University Press. Serene J. Khader is Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center and Jay Newman Chair in Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College. She works in feminist political philosophy with an emphasis on global issues and is the author of Adaptive Preferences and Wom­ en’s Empowerment (Oxford 2011) and Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic (Oxford 2018). Gina Schouten is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Harvard Univer­ sity. She is interested in questions of justice and legitimacy, including especially questions about whether political liberalism can constitute an adequate theory of legitimacy. Her book Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor (Oxford 2019) argues that family support policy that explicitly undertakes to erode the gendered divi­ sion of labor can be legitimate social policy. Cynthia A. Stark is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. She works in the areas of feminist, political, and moral phi­ losophy. She has written about self-respect, pornography, impartial­ ity, Rawls, social contract theory, gun rights, disability, the ethics of care, Fight Club, egalitarianism, and gaslighting. Her work appears in

294

List of Contributors

Nous, The Journal of Philosophy, Hypatia, Oxford Studies in Norma­ tive Ethics, and The Monist, among others. Helga Varden is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her main research interests are Kant’s practical philosophy, legal-political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and the philosophy of sex and love. Her main book publication is Sex, Love, and Gender: A  Kantian Theory (Oxford 2020). She has also published on a range of classical philosophical issues, including Kant’s answer to the murderer at the door, private property and poverty, political obligations, and political legitimacy, as well as on applied issues such as privacy, non-human animals, terrorism, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Lori Watson is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. She works on political philosophy, feminism, and philosophy of law. Her recent publications include Equal Citizenship and Pub­ lic Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism (coauthored with Christie Hartley, Oxford 2018); Debating Pornography (with Andrew Altman, Oxford 2018); and Debating Sex Work (with Jessica Flannigan, Oxford 2019).

Index

Abbey, Ruth 9, 11

Aboriginal Australian community organizations 134; see also culture, Aboriginal Australian; women, Aboriginal Australian abortion 63, 114

abstraction 59, 154, 233, 266

Abu-Lughod, Lila 120, 134–135 abuse 84; of caregivers 160; childhood

102–103; of children 62, 243;

domestic 243; emotional 66; drug

and substance 66, 102; effects on

children’s brain structure 102–103;

exiting 127; in families 243; neglect

of children and 102; as obstacle to

freedom 104–106; by parents 62;

physical, emotional, sexual 102;

programs protecting children from

107; psychological 42, 159; in

relationships 127, 159; survivors of

104; vulnerability to 35, 127, 134

activism 39, 205; Mill’s 80;

Nineteenth century 78

adaptive preference 133; see also false consciousness African Americans 229

agents 62–63, 99; Kantian 50–51; morally responsible 65; as second persons 108; see also autonomy amour propre 34–35, 46n19, 46n20; see also love, self Anderson, Elizabeth 128, 164n16 Anderson, Kim 149–151, 160–162; see also care, Native systems of; reciprocity, Kim Anderson’s account; women, Native Antony, Louise 175–176 attachment: avoidant, ambivalent, disorganized patterns of 110–111, 227; theory 4, 109–112

autonomy 4–5, 97–98, 107–109,

157–158, 160, 282; comprehensive

and political 282–283, 288n23;

content-neutral 108; denial

of 33; development of 98–99;

economic 251; of the family 241;

men’s 81; Mill’s view of 75–79;

procedural 108; relational 5, 98–99,

108–113; skills 6, 147, 208n37;

violation of women’s 81; weakly

substantive 113

babies 179, 240; cared for by

parent(s) 254; choice to have

114; human 54–55; newborn 53;

see also infants

Baehr, Amy 138n9, 217n11 Baron, Marcia 51

Bartky, Sandra 7, 159, 216, 218–222,

225–226; see also epistemic lean

basic needs principle 192–193 basic structure 10, 14, 67, 146–148,

169, 173, 176–181, 187–205,

224–227, 233; caregiving as part of

10, 146, 195, 198, 201, 205

belonging 87, 162

Bendall, Charlotte 232

Benson, Paul 113

Berlin, Isaiah 97–100, 107, 116n6 Bhandary, Asha 6, 13–15, 31, 91–92, 208n24, 201–202, 207n17 Brake, Elizabeth 15, 31, 157–158,

203; see also marriage, minimal

Brison, Susan 56, 64

Canadian First Nations 150

capabilities 5, 31; approach 16n6; caregiving 203; in the definition of care 98; for freedom 99–100; impaired or blighted from deficient

296

Index

care 103–104, 107, 110; natural 174; necessary for autonomy 108; Nussbaum’s central human 45n12; responsible for developing 106 capitalism 161; labor market in 231; industrial 253; Marxist critique of exploitation under 219, 230; and moral progress 125–126; relationship to ideal feminist liberal egalitarian society 234; and the welfare state 170; see also markets care 98; abusive 5; attitudinal 7, 31, 45n12, 153, 215–217, 221, 225–226, 233, 235; dependency care 1, 9, 12–14, 146–147, 151, 161, 219; ethics and ethicists 1, 98, 109, 217, 234; good 115; material 31, 216, 218, 223–224; Native systems of 149, 151, 156–157; neglectful 98, 115; personal 53, 98, 109, 282; racialized understanding of the need for 145–146; racialized understanding of the entitlement to receive 163; racialized expectations regarding the performance of 227; remedial 115; self-care 41–42, 50, 59–60, 64, 98, 114, 116n4, 162; social and emotional 29; theorists/ theory 62, 162; see also labor, care as; labor, caring; work, caregiving Care Corps 157–160, 203, 226–227 caregiver(s) 7, 54, 162; attachments to 109–111; black or brown 145; caretakers 25, 31, 39, 42–43; disadvantaged as 196, 202–204, 231; hands-on 145, 198; happiness and well-being of 80, 87–90; historical oppression of 67; invisibility of women of color 17n19, 146, 148; the least well-off 193; “nested dependencies” 100; Mill’s view 78; paid and unpaid 216–218, 228–230, 235, 266, 269; pathologies inherited from 59; primary 109, 218; and racial groups 149; subordination of 43, 160; support policy 266–268; women’s socialization as 219, 222; worker protections for 229; see also attachment; work caregiving 216–217; arrangements and institutions 10, 15, 145–146, 160, 188, 192–201, 203–205; caretaking 7, 41, 215–216,

240–260; and considered judgments 192; and the dependency critique 191; and disadvantage 203; and distributive justice 146–147; education for 202; and feminization of poverty 286; forced 194; harmful 115; imbalanced 228; intersectionality as a category of analysis 15; invisibility of 148, 207n12, 207n14; material 145, 216, 223, 226; men’s participation in 13, 266; practices 147, 148; racialized norms and patterns of 10, 145, 149, 163, 158, 227; and Rawls 193–194; remainder of 157; remedial 114; skills 202, 282; support for 259; and its value 93, 193; women’s socialization for 146, 216, 218, 269, 270–273; as work 230, 234; see also basic structure; injustice, racial; injustice, within caregiving arrangements; justice; leaves; women, of color; workers caring: for aging parents 253; attitudes 218–224; attitudinal 7, 216–217; authentic 233–234; behavior 220; for children 179, 235, 282; for dependent vulnerable people 87, 90, 129; dispositions 145; exploitative 220; for and by grandparents 153–155; liberalism(s) and liberals 2, 15, 98, 115; and Rawls 179; relations 155; relationships 31, 100, 223, 220; responsibilities 176; skills 226; social bases 223, 226; virtues 176; see also caregiving; work carers see caregiver(s) Chant, Sylvia 122, 130–131 character 76, 80, 93, 161; feminine 88; moral 34 childcare 151, 180, 224, 227, 257–258, 269; assistance 30; neoliberal cuts to 129; see also daycare children 8, 65, 76–83, 99–102, 104–109, 150, 162, 254–255; disabled 177; as future citizens 188, 192; indigenous 66; interests of 25, 280; needs of 29, 248, 258; parental rights and 66; poverty and 103, 249; reciprocity and 162, 219; special rights for 62; see also abuse; caregiver(s)

Index Chodorow, Nancy 109, 112 Christman, John 100, 107–108, 111–113 citizen(s) 43, 126, 176, 190, 248, 277; and autonomy 238; disadvantaged 267; free and equal 26–31, 189, 240, 284; Kantian public right and 62, 68 citizenship 279–283; free and equal 281; idealized 277–278, 287 civil partnerships 232 class 37–38, 132–133, 145, 170, 180, 199, 215, 227, 230; see also family, working-class coercion 61, 67, 97, 99, 105–108, 114, 175, 278 Cohen, Alix 51 common arrangement see gendered division of labor communitarianism 108, 114 comprehensive doctrine 7, 10, 123, 137, 196, 204 conception of the good 79, 169, 189–190, 223, 225–226, 277–278, 284 considered convictions 189, 192, 194, 203, 205–206 constitutional democracy 187–189, 191, 195, 197–198 constructivism 6, 12–13, 147; political 203–206 contract theory 1, 6, 12–13, 146–147, 208n37 cooperation 29, 31, 34, 44, 90, 145, 154, 156, 160–161, 168–169, 173, 189–190, 219, 277–278; see also fully cooperating assumption Crenshaw, Kimberlé 15 culture 148, 161, 177; Aboriginal Australian 134; cross-cultural understandings 148, 152; groups 134; majority Western 134; and meaning 160; and Narayan on colonial stance 137n5; narratives, norms and tropes 148; public political in Rawlsian political liberalism 187–189, 205; and representing the perspective of traditional heads of households 207; white 162; see also practices, culturally customary daycare 149, 195, 243–249; and the market 252, 255; state’s investment 253–255; see also childcare deference 14, 156, 159, 227

297

Deligiorgi, Katerina 52 democracy: values of 277; see also constitutional democracy dependency: critique 26, 28, 191, 204; fact of 1, 9, 11, 50, 219, 238, 260; forms of 27–28, 34, 37, 151; nested 100, 155 desert 14, 169, 171–181, 229 development: human 27, 37, 104, 238–243, 252–253, 259–260; narrative 122, 124–125; policy 120; programs 121 difference principle 169–174, 190–194, 206, 273 dignity 52, 56, 60, 63, 68, 240–241, 259, 262 disability 62, 76, 192; models of 39, 40, 47n28; profound cognitive 155; rights movement 203 discrimination 230; statistical 273 distributive justice see justice, distributive domination 31–32; and subordination 27–28, 33–34, 38; unjust forms of 31, 37 Donner, Wendy 79–81, 87–88, 90 double day 78–79, 81, 250; see also second shift doulia 6, 155 Driver, Julia 79, 90 education 27, 40, 75–82, 99, 104, 176, 180, 202, 227, 253; Mill’s view of 86–88, 92–93; moral 25, 29, 90; traditional 151 egalitarianism: distributive 266, 268; gender 266–269; liberal 43, 217; luck 43; relational 3, 26, 40, 43–45 Eichner, Maxine 10, 13 elderly person(s) 99, 157–158, 162, 216, 218–219, 223–225; see also old age emotions 4, 69, 87, 89, 111, 163n13, 218 employment 8, 27, 40, 42, 67, 84, 132, 179–181, 230, 242, 273, 275; see also work empowerment 121; dis- 219–221, 230; see also power Engels, Friedrich 238–239 Engster, Daniel 16n6, 109 Enlightenment 122, 137n3 entitlement 6, 153, 156, 159, 162, 228, 234, 240

298

Index

epistemic habits 120–121, 137n4 epistemic lean 7, 159; ethical risks 225–226 equality: moral 35, 37, 44; perfect 75–78; political 34; relational 43; social 28, 37, 272, 285; of standing 27, 29, 32, 44, 280; threats to 34; women’s 13, 179; see also citizenship, free and equal equality of opportunity 8, 84, 171, 180–181, 217, 223–224, 228, 273–276, 279–280, 283, 285–286; formal 171; principle of 176–177, 190, 199, 201, 206, 228; substantive 169 ethnocentrism 120 excellence 76, 79, 87–89; see also virtue exploitation 35, 39, 75, 153, 215, 219, 222, 227, 234; Marxist sense 219–220, 227 false consciousness 139n22; see also adaptive preference family 8, 77–91, 104, 145, 241–246; and the basic structure 224; and culture 121, 125; extended 149, 157, 159, 160–161; patriarchal 78–87; pro-family 249–257; samesex 241; Western nuclear 146; working-class 238–239, 244–245; see also law, family; leaves, family; pro-family policy farm, farmstead 250–251 father(s) 177, 205, 247, 271 feminism 14, 120–131, 136, 195; egalitarian 275; indigenous 6; liberal 5, 75, 81, 91, 136, 234; liberal egalitarian 266, 276, 139n25; Marxist 222, 230; radical 222; transnational 137 Ferguson, Ann 219, 222 Firestone, Shulamith 222 flexicurity 256 forced separation 66 Fraser, Nancy 126, 163n3 freedom 2–5, 33, 60–69, 97–115, 125–126, 175, 189; of association 191, 193, 226; external 50, 53, 59; internal 50, 69; of men 26; of white women 146; see also liberty Friedman, Marilyn 108, 126–127, 138n17 friendship 87, 132, 219, 222, 228; in marriage 76–78, 82, 90–91; moral 59

Frierson, Patrick 51 Frye, Marilyn 123 fully cooperating assumption 7, 31, 191–194, 207n16 gender: and the division of labor 2, 4, 6, 14, 77, 82, 84, 121, 128, 136, 160, 168–169, 174–178, 180–181, 182n11, 216, 218, 266–286; equality 82, 135, 179; essentialism 174; girls 4, 121–123, 148, 177, 180, 194, 202, 218; roles 120–121, 129, 160, 182n11, 222, 230, 267; socialization 109, 215, 219, 221–222, 224 Gheaus, Anca 273–275, 288n15 Gilligan, Carol 109, 114 girls see gender Glenn, Evelyn Nakano 129 global North 135 global South 120–126, 136–137, 137n3 good life 4, 76, 79–80, 87, 92–93, 278 goods 6, 8, 29, 31, 39, 44, 113, 121, 130, 132–133, 149, 170, 174, 215, 267; access to 40, 133; collective 253; social 2, 25–29, 169, 189–193, 197–200, 216, 223–227, 241, 250, 267–284; see also primary social goods Gordon, Linda 126 Govier, Trudy 113 grandparents 150–151, 154–155 groups 200–201, 245; gender 123, 150, 178; racial 136, 149; subordinated, oppressed or disadvantaged as a member of 36, 38, 71n22, 203; tracking care by 146; see also injustice, group-based Hacker, Jacob 253 happiness 52, 57, 69, 70n11, 79–80, 87, 89, 93, 152, 197–198, 251 Harding, Rosie 232 harm 5, 7, 8, 27, 30, 102, 105, 115, 121–123, 131, 136–137, 161, 216–220, 224, 230–231; by the market: 238–239 Hartley, Christie 12, 279–281 Hay, Carol 10–11, 60 healing 51, 64, 134 health 79, 102, 107, 151, 240; -care 29, 64, 66, 129–130, 195; of children 260; emotional 3, 51–60,

Index 67–69, 110; of families 239–242; mental 103, 107, 110, 220–221, 225, 234; public 228 Hegel, G.W.F. 233 Held, Virginia 62, 219 Herman, Barbara 51, 60 heterosexism 57, 65 heterosexuality 15, 220, 241 heterosexual relationships 15, 146; family 241; white 15, 148 hierarchy see relationships, of domination and subordination; relationships, hierarchical Hill, Thomas E. 226 Hirschman, Nancy 99, 101, 112, 114, 168 Hochschild, Arlie 146, 220–221 home 61, 65–66, 75–76, 93, 130, 168, 216, 251–252, 282; aging in 157; care in 233, 235, 248, 254–257; safety in 68; of a slaveowner 175 home health service 24, 243, 252 Hoodfar, Homa 131 hooks, bell 123, 138n8 household economy 8, 250–251 humanity 36, 83; and animality 54–57, 66 human nature 50–60, 64–79, 130, 159 hypothetical acceptability 6, 146–147, 154 ideal theory 2, 6, 9, 12–14, 137, 154, 208n28; nonideological 6, 13–14, 154; see also nonideal theory identity: ascriptive 150, 152, 281; development 109; and exploitation 222; gendered 63, 222; groupbased 123, 150; interests 134; intersectional 15; oppressed and oppressive 57–58, 63, 222; racialized 57, 63; role of caring in 216, 222; sense of 162; sexual 57–58, 63; social 38, 63 ideology 13–14, 16, 154, 177–178, 204–205, 227, 251–253, 282; liberalism as 137, 204–205 immigration 146 immigrants 66–67, 130, 148, 175, 272; see also women, immigrant; women, migrant imperialism 39, 122, 127, 129, 137 income 77, 121–122, 124–125, 127, 131, 135, 168, 178, 191, 202, 228,

299

243, 257; as a Rawlsian primary social good 31, 169, 172, 183n14, 189, 191; unconditional basic 266, 268–276, 280, 283, 286, 287n8; see also inequality, economic/ material independence 27–29, 33, 50, 57, 61, 65, 109–110, 112, 145, 199, 218–219, 240, 282; see also individualism, independence indigenous people 134, 146; see also women, indigenous indigenous practices see practices, indigenous individualism 120–124; independence 14, 120, 121, 125–137; personhood 121, 125, 127–128, 136–137 individuality 76, 79, 89, 157, 160 industrialization 124, 126; and capitalism 8, 143; and society 126, 269 industrial revolution 175, 138 inequality 155, 224; dependency relations lead to 28; economic/ material 37, 169–172, 174, 180–181, 190–191, 193, 144, 218, 239, 244–247, 253–254, 257, 281, 284–286; gender 136, 148, 179, 193, 217, 231, 243, 266–267, 269, 272; institutionalized 35; MacKinnon on 41; moral and political 36; of opportunity 274; power 222, 231–232, 281; in receipt of caregiving 10, 200–201; and relational egalitarianism 43–44; Rousseau’s critique of 28, 30, 32–33, 35–36, 41; social 145, 147; social construction of 36; status 37–38; systematic 33; tracking caregiver status 193, 200–201; understood as hierarchy 32–33, 36–41; in worthiness to receive care 193 infants 1, 30, 150–152, 191, 198, 239; see also babies inferiority 39, 43, 175, 222, 225, 234 initial choice situation 7, 187–189, 198, 205; see also original position injustice 15, 36, 41, 43, 146; actually existing 9; within caregiving arrangements 146, 201, 205–206, 216, 219; costs of transition to gender justice as 131; claims 2, 9, 11–12; dependency and care related 11–12, 28, 287; discursive

300

Index

and epistemic 177; distributive 227, 284–286; domination and subordination as 28; of the double day 78; economic 272; of exploitation 215, 224; gender 86, 227, 275; of the gendered division of labor 219, 224, 227, 266, 272, 275, 280–281, 285; group-based 123, 188, 198–200; in internal workings 10; marginalization and 40; to men 224; nonideal theory and 129; past 10, 135, 188, 194, 196, 198–201, 203–204, 206; political 192, 194; racial 15, 149, 227; systemic 50 institutions 2–3, 26, 67–69, 83–84, 224–225; caregiving 9–10, 30–32, 148–149, 160, 195–196, 201, 204–205, 238, 260; create inequalities 35–36, 38, 41; effects on caregiving 188, 223, 242–243, 231, 239; effects on thinking about appropriate roles 177; gendered division of labor and 169, 177, 282–283; in a just society 44, 176, 178, 190; public 61; recognition respect and 25–26; reform of 64; role in constructing dependencies 28, 30–32, 39–40; reinforcing gender specialization 175, 227, 267, 269, 271; social assumptions embodied in 281–283, 286; as training ground for capacities 80; see also basic structure; gendered division of labor interpersonal reciprocity see reciprocity, interpersonal intersectionality 9, 14–15, 58 James, Aaron 189 jurisdictions 160 justice 1, 15, 25–32, 37, 41, 43, 53, 60–61, 64, 76, 83, 90, 156, 199, 223, 232, 277; care and 145–146; care as a matter of 218, 223; in caregiving 66, 149, 187–188, 200, 203, 205–206; circumstances of 15, 190; costs of transition to 132; distributive 146, 168, 171, 268–270, 274–276, 278–279, 283–286; failures of 66; as fairness 147–148, 169–170, 172–174, 176, 178, 181, 204; feminist 266, 268, 270, 273; gender 5, 121, 129, 131, 188, 207n17; for indigenous

people 134; in internal workings 179; interpersonal 228; political conception of 179, 187–189, 193–196, 204–206; precepts of 172–173, 177, 181; principles of 10, 13, 171, 191–196, 270, 272–273, 278; racial 136; Rawls’ theory of 162, 168, 172–173, 187; sense of 11, 169, 190, 277; see also injustice; justice-enhancing project justice-enhancing project 129; see also nonideal theory Kabeer, Naila 125–126, 138n18 Kant, Immanuel 10–12, 50–70; on morality 52, 54, 60, 64, 69 Karim, Lamia 122 Kelly, Erin 198 Khader, Serene 9 Kittay, Eva Feder 1, 16n3, 31, 50, 60–61, 100, 130, 136, 154–155, 164n19, 191, 206n4, 207n9 Korsgaard, Christine 51 Kramer, Matthew 101–105, 107 Kuznetz, Simone 250 Kymlicka, Will 134 labor 29, 34–35, 137, 156, 161, 168, 171–174, 238, 252; care as 215–216; caring 11, 67, 91–92, 121, 136, 147–148, 177–178, 181, 218, 221; child 238; domestic 82, 128; emotional 82, 91, 218–229, 231, 233; gendered 129–131, 130–131, 145, 158; global distribution of 146; invisible 129–130, 159; making visible 147; necessary 151, 157, 193; purportedly liberatory 137; racialized division of 10, 130; see also gender, and the division of labor; markets, labor; work law 39, 85, 217, 229–234, 244, 259; child labor 241; family 61–65, 104; Kant on 54–55, 57, 61, 65–69 least advantaged 171, 190–191, 201, 272–275, 283, 285; least well-off 193, 203, 274 leaves: caregiving 268, 270–271; family 260; parenting 115 legitimacy 11, 15, 269, 276–277, 279, 283–286 LGBTQIA community 57–58, 71n22; see also heterosexism; relationships, same-sex

Index liberal dependency care, theory of 13, 146–147, 153–154, 156 liberal feminism see feminism, liberal liberalism 1–2, 9, 98, 115, 145, 216–217, 240; addressing justice of care arrangements 223–224, 169, 279, 281, 286–287; anti-oppression 9, 15; caring 12, 15, 98, 115; comprehensive 10–12; distribution of caregiving and 137; epistemic legitimacy of 15; feminism and 136; feminist 10–11, 14, 148, 275; feminist and anti-racist criticism of 8, 26, 121, 137, 219; fundamental value commitments of 168, 276, 279–281, 283, 285; ideology and 13; Marxist critique of 216, 227, 231; Mill’s 13, 75–93; neo129–130; nonideal 137; political 8–12, 43, 45n7, 177, 223, 277, 279; Rawlsian 13, 152, 162, 177, 225; transformative 9, 12; whiteness of 16 liberty(ies) 32, 75, 79, 83, 88, 93, 97, 100, 136–137, 198, 227, 233, 279, 284–286; negative 97–105, 107–108, 114–115; political 171, 180–181, 198–200, 202; positive 97, 99, 107; principle of 169, 190–191, 194, 201, 206; as Rawlsian primary social good 31, 169, 190–191; see also freedom; liberties Locke, John 32, 62, 67, 99 Louden, Robert 51 MacKinnon, Catherine 39, 41, 215–216, 220, 222 Mahmood, Saba 120, 122 marginalization 39–40, 42–43, 123, 130, 147, 207 markets 10, 170, 261n1; advocates for 244, 253; deregulated 129–130, 243–244; families and 238–241, 243–246, 248–258, 260; labor 30, 40–43, 171, 231; as part of the basic structure 169; pressures of 234–235; roles dictated by 126; system 248–249; value dictated by 131, 173; women’s attachment to 266, 268, 271–272 marriage 245; arranged 148; aspiration to 244; caregiving and 218–219, 227, 229; command and obedience model 76, 82–83, 87; as

301

contract 233; gender in 148, 228; kinship and 135; legal 15; -like relationships 219; Mill on 75–76, 78, 82–85, 90–91; minimal 157, 160, 229, 235n1; monogamous 223; same-sex 232; Western 125 Marx, Karl 204, 215, 219, 220, 222, 227, 230 Marxism 215, 227, 230; see also exploitation, Marxist sense; feminism, Marxist; Marxist critique of liberalism Marxist critique of liberalism 215, 227 Marxist feminism see feminism, Marxist Maushart, Susan 218 Metz, Tamara 231, 163n9 Meyers, Diana Tietjens 113 microcredit 14, 122, 128 Mill, John Stuart 2, 4, 10–11, 13, 76–93, 99, 175; Art of Life 92–93 Miller, Sarah Clark 60 Mills, Charles 13–14, 198–199, 208n28 minimum wage see wages Minow, Martha 231 Mohanty, Chandra 130 moral powers 31, 169, 189–190, 197, 277–278 multicultural liberal societies 136 Narayan, Uma 132–133 Native practices see practices, Native needs: basic 25–30, 35, 37, 98, 190–193, 198, 200; dependency/ caregiving 1, 9–10, 13, 25, 27, 76, 79–80, 91, 100, 136, 145–146, 148–149, 151, 157–158; 161–162, 191–198, 200–202, 205–206, 235, 242, 255; economic/material 5, 35, 42, 125, 129–130, 215–216, 218, 241, 250; emotional 218; racialized understandings of 145; for recognition respect 28, 34–37; whose matter 31, 145, 157; see also basic needs principle neoliberalism see liberalism, neo­ nested dependencies 100, 155 Neuhouser, Frederick 33–35 nonideal theory 2, 4–6, 9, 12, 14, 128, 130–131, 133, 137, 154, 159; see also justice-enhancing project nonideological ideal theory see ideal theory, nonideological

302

Index

norms 147, 151; ameliorative 145; caregiving 10, 30, 145, 147, 149, 155–156; domination and subordination and 32, 44; gender 41–42, 109, 147, 227, 232, 266–267, 269–271, 286; interpersonal reciprocity as a 153, 156, 158; of justice 173; market 134; parenting 281–282; of property-owning democracy 180; racialized 149; relationships of equality and 26, 39; Rousseau and 35–36 Nussbaum, Martha 31, 45n12, 99, 122–123, 164n22 Okin, Susan Moller 61, 85–86, 91–92, 136, 179, 217–219, 231 old age 135, 192; see also elderly person(s) omissions 105–106, 279, 183 O’Neill, Onora 51 On Liberty 75 ontological expansiveness 15 opportunity 11, 41, 79–80, 93, 104, 106, 114, 194, 220, 221, 270; as Rawlsian primary social good 31, 169, 198–200; see also equality of opportunity oppression 12–15, 60, 67, 69, 75–76, 79–80, 83, 88, 98, 121, 122–123, 126–131, 133, 136, 146, 160, 190, 224; anti- 9, 12, 147 original position 146–147, 154, 172, 189–190; see also initial choice situation other-directedness 153, 207n17 overlapping consensus 7, 11, 187, 188, 203–205 Paine, Thomas 249 parents 31, 41, 59, 62–63, 65–66, 91–92, 99, 103–106, 110–115, 151, 155, 162, 177–180, 218, 234, 239, 242–249, 252–255, 257, 259, 271, 281–282; see also grandparents parental leave see leaves Pateman, Carole 231 patriarchy 14, 88, 91, 133, 135, 160, 215 personality 52, 54–57, 110; disorders 103, 110 personhood see individualism, personhood

Pierson, Paul 253 Pirzada women see women, Pirzada political conception of justice 188–189, 193–196, 203–206, 279; freestanding 7, 187, 196, 201, 204 pornography 32 poverty 13, 67, 120, 124, 130, 171, 130, 147–149, 155, 269, 274–275, 285–286; amelioration 275, 285–286; childhood 103; see also inequality, economic/material power 26, 32–36, 38–39, 76, 82–83, 85, 123, 129, 131, 135, 150, 168–169, 180, 189, 199, 218, 222, 231–232, 234, 284; bargaining 131, 133, 270; democratic political 199, 277, 285; social 38, 135, 168; state 32, 194, 278; see also empowerment; inequality, power; moral powers practices: within basic structure 173, 176; business 30; caring 76, 92–93, 145–163; culturally customary 164n27; customary care 148–150, 155–162; of deference 227; ideological 177; indigenous 149; Native 149; new 12; related to dependency and care 28, 30; related to domination and status hierarchies 28, 32, 34, 37–39, 41, 44; relationship 232; religious 132; sexist 122–123; of silencing 15; supporting social recognition 26; through which differences are transformed into inequalities 37; that allocate goods according to effort 174 precepts of justice see justice, precepts of primary (social) goods 31, 45n12, 149, 169, 189–190, 193, 197–200, 224, 226 pro-family policy 254, 256–257, 259 property 34–35, 39, 47n21, 65, 171, 173, 228, 230–231, 244, 250 property-owning democracy (POD) 169, 179–181 public health 228–229 race 13, 15, 38, 134, 145, 147, 189, 227, 230 racialization 57–58, 125; see also labor, racialized; subordination, racial

Index racial justice see injustice, racial; justice, racial racial privilege 14, 152–153, 156, 159 racism 11, 14–15, 57, 129, 153–154, 156, 158; anti- 8, 13, 152 rape 63; marital 4, 64, 83 Rawls, John 1–2, 6–14, 31, 45n12, 46n20, 60–61, 98, 123, 146–149, 152–154, 162, 169–181, 187–206, 223–226, 228, 273, 279, 284; see also liberalism, Rawlsian Raworth, Kate 249–250 reciprocity: as an anti-sexist and antiracist virtue 13; Bartky on 222; criterion of 277–280, 282–284; gendered division of labor and 171; interpersonal 152–159, 161–163, 164n17; Kim Anderson’s account 150–152, 156–157; lacking in caregiving relationships 10; principle of 168 realistic utopia 199 relationships 51, 99, 129, 195, 218–219, 244, 249, 255, 270; abusive 159, 243; of attachment 110; caregiving 11, 15, 31, 148, 155–157, 159–160, 216–217, 219–220, 223–228, 233–235, 241–242; chosen/unchosen 125, 127; communal 121; of custom 126–128, 134; dependency 28–31, 41; of domination and subordination 27–28, 32–33, 37; of equality 26–27, 35; facilitating access to goods 121, 132–133, 136; gender differential stakes in 133; hierarchical 10, 32–34, 36–41, 178; human 97; inherited 124, 128; intergenerational 151; kinship 14, 132–135; liberal feminism on 137; loss of 132; loving 87; male-female 221–222, 224, 229, 231; Okin on 136; oppressive 134; polyamorous 65–66; reciprocity in 150, 152–153, 161; role in autonomy 100, 108–109, 111–114; same-sex 232; sexist oppression and 122; social and political 26; as sources of value 132; sustained by social goods 26; under nonideal conditions 133; unmarried 245; violence and 122, 127; white heterosexual 15; with patriarchal elements 134; see also exploitation; institutions; marriage

303

respect 3, 51, 53–54, 56, 82, 86–87, 127–128, 155, 162, 180, 190, 193, 234, 240–241, 277–278, 280, 283, 285; dis- 56, 59; recognition 26, 28–29, 32, 34–37, 40, 43–44, 279; see also self-respect right(s) 35, 51, 76, 69, 80, 86, 88, 98, 100, 107, 135, 188, 190 Kantian theory of 50–51, 53, 60–96; Kant on 60, 61–63, 65, 67–69; as Rawlsian primary social good 31, 169, 173, 189, 190, 191, 222, 228, 230, 236, 238, 240–241, 244, 259, 174, 177, 284; Rousseau, JeanJacques 2–3, 25, 28, 30, 32–39, 41, 43 Sami people 66 Schoenbaum, Naomi 217, 230 school 42, 87, 90–91, 102–103, 106, 158, 177, 179–180, 195, 202, 243, 248–249, 253 Schouten, Gina 8, 10–13 Schwartzman, Lisa 13, 123 second shift 128 self 12, 15, 108, 112–131; abnegation 92; annihilation 222; autonomous 109, 112; confidence 110–111; consciousness 56; deception 55–56, 58; determination 82; development 13, 42, 76, 79–82, 86–90; direction 108; esteem 29, 58, 102, 104, 110, 215, 219–220, 225; governance 68; Kant’s account of 12; improvement 90; interest 90, 92, 133, 154, 158, 215, 231, 233–234; loss of 7, 221; love 34, 54–55, 57; ownership 100; preservation 53, 56; rational 56; realization 107, 137; reflection 56, 108, 112; relational theory of 112; reliance 27–28; responsibility for 50; risks to 230; sacrifice 234; sense of 54, 98, 109, 111–112, 121; true 107; trust 112–113; understanding 162; value 121; worth 112–113; see also care, self-care self-respect 5, 29, 31, 113, 169, 189, 190, 192, 200, 219–220, 225–227, 229, 233, 234; social bases of 31, 169, 189, 200 self-sufficiency 9, 108, 180; economic 124–128, 130–131, 136; see also independence Sellers, Charles 250

304

Index

Sen, Amartya 99, 138n20 separate spheres 152 sexism 132, 137, 158 sexual assault 56, 64 sexual harassment 177, 225 sexuality 38, 147; women’s 215–216, 222; see also heterosexuality Shanley, Mary Lyndon 90–91, 231 Shell, Susan M. 51 slavery 114, 146, 191; marriage as 83–84, 91 socialism 170–172 socialist feminism see feminism, socialist Stark, Cynthia 10, 14 Stemplowska, Zofia 12 Subjection of Women (the) 75–76, 80, 83–84, 87–89 subordination 14, 27–28, 32–45, 58, 76, 108–109, 122–123, 128, 134, 147–148, 158–160, 215, 226, 233–234; racial 148, 158; see also domination Sullivan, Shannon 15 sympathy 4, 69, 75–76, 80, 85–91, 159 Taylor, Harriet 84 Tessman, Lisa 14, 17n24 Tomasi, John 234 transnational feminism see feminism, transnational tyranny 4, 84, 158–159; male 78, 87 unemployment benefits 256, 273 unfreedom 101–103, 106–107; see also freedom utilitarianism 4, 13–14, 75, 90, 93 vacation: paid 247, 258; school 179 Varden, Helga 10–11 violence: against children 102; of colonization 150; family 83–84; gendered 52, 122; inequality and 39; interventions 128, 134; intimate partner 122, 127; Kant on 58, 63–64; subordination and 32; against women 123; against women of color 15; see also rape virtue 4, 6, 12–13, 50, 52–53, 57–58, 60–61, 63, 69, 75–76, 78–80, 82, 85–87, 89–90, 92–93, 152–157, 159, 162–163; see also excellence

vulnerability 3, 12, 127, 130, 135, 146, 162, 217–218, 222, 228–229, 231–232, 270 wages 170–171, 174, 230, 239, 246, 256; minimum 227–230, 232, 255–256 Walker, Margaret Urban 145 Watene, Krushil 134 Watson, Lori 2–3, 9–10, 12, 279–281 wealth: and caregivers 202; and families 248, 250–252; in property-owning democracy 180; as Rawlsian primary social good 31, 169–170, 172–174, 189, 191; Rousseau on 36–37 welfare state 12, 170–171 western self-understanding 124 western self-narration 126 whiteness 8, 13, 16 white racial privilege 152 white racism 156 white supremacy 58 Woolf, Virginia 218 Wollstonecraft, Mary 99 woman 57, 77, 83, 86, 120, 125, 130, 133, 156, 178, 221, 225–226, 279; affluent 156; Bedouin 134–135; category of 15; of color 145–146; white 145, 158; see also women women 75–90, 92–93; Aboriginal Australian 128, 134; abortion and 63; affluent 15; in Anderson’s Life Stages of Native Women 150, 152; autonomy of 77, 81; as caregivers 41–42, 67, 78–80, 85, 88–90, 92, 148, 168–169, 174–177, 179–180, 193, 202, 205, 215–235, 266–273; 286; in Carol Gilligan’s research 114; category of 14–15; disadvantage to 26; as educators 78; elder 135, 160; engaged in paid work outside of the home 241, 245, 253, 266–275, 285; emancipation of 75, 77; as entrepreneurs 121; as having a distinctive nature 174–178, 182n11, 195; inferior to men 175; from the global south 120, 122, 126, 137; immigrant 175; independence of 14; individualism and self-sufficiency and 124–137; liberty of 75; marriage and 84–85; migrant 217, 230; Mill on

Index 175–193; Native 150, 160; northern 130; of color 2, 15, 129, 145–146, 148, 192, 217; opportunities of 81, 219; oppression of 83, 88; other 133; Pirzada 132; poor 120; political movements of 192, 203; privileged 269; property-owning democracy and 179–180; rights of 76, 274; Rousseau on 28, 45n9; self-development of 81; sexuality of 215; socialization of 88; subordination of 32, 41, 58, 123, 215; unfairly burdened with double-day 81–82; violence against 58, 83, 123; virtues in 85; vulnerability of 14; white 14–15, 129, 145, 158; working class 32, 261n3, 245; see also equality, women’s; markets, women’s attachment; work, women’s Women in Development (WID) paradigm 124–125 Wood, Allen 51

305

Wordsworth 80 work 128, 130, 133, 176–180, 202; caregiving 10, 26, 30, 41–43, 75–83, 85–93, 126, 129–131, 145–147, 150–151, 155, 158–159, 161–162, 168–170, 174–180, 193, 215–220, 224–225, 239, 243, 245–261, 266–272, 280–282, 286; domestic 146, 175–177, 224, 282; house 4, 81, 162, 181n2, 218, 224, 269; women’s 26, 41, 75, 78; see also exploitation; labor workers 41–42, 171, 173–174, 177, 215, 219–220, 243, 245–247, 255–261; assumed to have no caregiving responsibilities 177–178; care 217–218, 168, 224, 227–225; as carers 41–42; dependency 136, 155, 159; protections for 224, 227–230; see also exploitation Young, Iris Marion 11, 38 Zammito, John A. 51