Equality

Rather than a reflection of biologically given sexual difference, feminists argue, gender is socially constructed or an effect of power. Male/female is constituted so as to sustain male dominance. So are all other aspects of human existence—work, culture, family, politics, knowledge, sexuality, and subjectivity. Writers point, for example, to the structure of work in capitalist economies. Working hours and responsibilities are often inflexible and do not easily fit with caretaking or other household responsibilities. Hence, work replicates and reproduces a gendered public/private split and the sexual division of labor. The modal worker is a heterosexual, married male. His wife takes care of children and all other domestic responsibilities. Due to their reproductive capacities and existing gender expectations, women are disadvantaged within these structures. Formal equality cannot resolve or even recognize such systematic disadvantage, for it only comes into play when women are already equally situated relative to men. Equality stipulates equal pay for equal work, but it does not transform the workplace to take equally into account the multiple demands of wage labor and caretaking. Thus structural disadvantage persists.

Indeed some writers argue that it is in precisely those areas where sexual difference most disadvantages women that formal equality is most ineffective or even counterproductive. Three areas of particular concern are reproduction, the sexual division of labor, and sexual violence. Women are not similarly situated to men in any of these areas. Currently only women can be pregnant; moreover, public policies regarding matters such as abortion or forced sterilization, maternity leave, and exclusion from certain jobs on "health" grounds will necessarily impact women differently than men. Similarly, women are far more likely to suffer sexual violence and harassment than are men. The power of cultural norms and pressures of socialization and unconscious subjective desires and identity formation sustain gendered norms of caretaking so that most responsibility for domestic labor, child care, tending to the elderly, and so forth, continues to fall on women. Differential effects of public policies (or the lack of them)—concerning social welfare provision, divorce law, and health care—on women and men result from this sexual division of labor. Insistence that women are "like men" or that there is a gender-neutral norm in such areas is likely to sustain women's current disadvantages.