Feminists have long been aware of the pathology and the dangers of what are now termed “adaptive preferences.” Adaptive preferences are preferences formed in unconscious response to oppression. Thinkers from each wave of feminism continue to confront the problem of women's internalization of their own oppression, that is, the problem of women forming their preferences within the confining and deforming space that patriarchy provides. All preferences are, in fact, formed in response to a limited set of options, but not all (...) preferences are unconscious, pathological responses to oppression. Feminist theory therefore requires a method for distinguishing all preferences from adaptive or deformed preferences. Social contract theory provides such a tool. Social contract theory models autonomous preference-acquisition and retention at both the external level of causation and the internal level of justification. In doing so, social contract theory exposes preferences that do not meet those standards, acting as both a conceptual test that identifies adaptive preferences and as a practical tool for personal and social clarification. A social contract approach helps persons and societies to identify and to confront preferences rooted in unconscious response to oppression. (shrink)

Feminists have noted the injustice of the institution of marriage and the asymmetric power dynamics within gender-structured marriages. Recently, feminists have found an unexpected supporter of this struggle against marriage in some liberal political theorists. I argue that this new wave of interest in the wrongness of marriage within liberalism reveals shortcomings from a feminist perspective. While some liberals fail to realise that instead of being disestablished, the institution of marriage should be radically reformed, others do not recognise that such (...) a reform should be theorised by starting from our non-idealised conditions of gender inequality and from an analysis of how the institution of marriage intersects with other spheres of gender injustice. This article provides recommendations for the radical reform of marriage by following some methodological premises of feminist theory. To illustrate how the reform of marriage should be theorised, it focuses on the intersection between the sphere of gender injustice represented by immigration and that of marriage. (shrink)

Reshaping our methodological research tools for adequately capturing injustice and domination has been a central aspiration of feminist philosophy and social epistemology in recent years. There has been an increasingly empirical turn in recent feminist and political theorization, engaging with case studies and the challenges arising from conducting research in solidarity with unequal partners. I argue that these challenges cannot be resolved by merely adopting a norm and stance of deference to those in the struggle for justice. To conduct philosophical (...) research in an engaged and solidaristic manner, I suggest that deference be supplemented by three methodological and normative principles: 1) epistemic humility, 2) accountability, and 3) co-producing knowledge. I situate these principles within contemporary philosophical work on solidarity, and show how they might help confront power imbalances and other methodological hazards that arise when conducting research in solidarity with others. I arrive at these principles in part by critically reflecting on my own attempt to conduct research in solidarity with women’s rights activists in Senegal. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of liberal feminism as a capacious family of doctrines. The account is capacious in the sense that it sweeps in a wide variety of doctrines, including some thought to be challenges to liberal feminism, and allows us to refer to doctrines with more than one label—so we can identify, for example, care-ethical liberal feminism, socially conservative liberal feminism, and liberal socialist feminism. The capacious account also provides a conceptual framework to allow us to think with (...) greater clarity about the scope of liberal feminist claims to justice, and about how that justice is to be secured and sustained. Since there is such variety within the liberal feminist family of doctrines, it makes little sense to criticize or defend liberal feminism simpliciter. The capacious account both requires and makes it possible for us to eschew such talk and focus instead on the particular doctrines we have in mind. (shrink)

Se situant au confluent du libéralisme politique rawlsien et de l’anthropologie néoaristotélicienne, l’approche des capabilités de Martha Nussbaum offre un cadre théorique permettant de répondre aux tensions multiculturelles. Cet article constitue une analyse détaillée de la réponse de Nussbaum à ces enjeux, qui prétend unir un pluralisme axiologique à un universalisme moral fort. Nous avancerons que la démarche entreprise par la philosophe porte une tension entre le libéralisme politique rawlsien et le cadre conceptuel apporté par la liste des capabilités. Cette (...) liste pose une difficulté par le déficit démocratique de ses fondements, n’intégrant pas suffisamment des normes d’inclusion et de représentation. Dans un dernier temps, nous tenterons de pallier ces problèmes en intégrant à l’approche de Nussbaum des exigences délibératives. (shrink)