Political Liberalism: First Essay
Wylie Breckenridge
Okin suggests that the absence of discussion of justice in families and
justice and gender was a major problem in Rawls's A Theory of Justice, and
that gender continues to be so in Political Liberalism. Evaluate Okin's
argument. Do you agree or disagree? What would a liberal theory of justice
have to do in order to do justice to feminist claims about justice?
In 'Political Liberalism, Justice and Gender'1 Susan Moller Okin argues that in Political
Liberalism2 Rawls fails to adequately deal with the issues of justice in families and
justice and gender. In fact, she claims that whereas A Theory of Justice3 had great
potential to deal with them, PL is in a considerably worse position to do so. Her main
charge is that its greater toleration for a pluralism of reasonable comprehensive
doctrines is in serious conflict with the equality of women, so that Rawls is mistaken if
he thinks that PL can allow for both. Furthermore, she complains that Rawls leaves it
unclear whether or not a political conception of justice can provide for substantive
equality between the sexes, rather than merely formal equality which she believes is
inadequate when it comes to dealing with justice and gender. In this essay I will present
Okin's argument, and then offer a defence of PL against it.
Okin's Argument
In PL, Rawls's main aim is to rectify what he sees as a flaw in Theory. There he
presented the idea of a well-ordered society regulated by justice as fairness - a
comprehensive, or at least partially comprehensive, moral doctrine to be endorsed by all
citizens. He has since come to think that because of what he calls 'the fact of reasonable
pluralism' expecting every citizen in a society to endorse a single moral doctrine is
unrealistic and incompatible with achieving political stability in that society. In PL
Rawls develops instead a political conception of justice, one that can be endorsed by all
reasonable citizens as compatible with their individual comprehensive moral,
philosophical and religious doctrines, even if those doctrines are incompatible with each
other. Being more tolerant of doctrinal diversity, Rawls hopes that such a conception of
justice is both more realistic and stable - it allows reasonable citizens to agree upon a
conception of justice without compromising their own deeply-held moral, religious and
philosophical convictions.
If it is to be endorsed by people who hold a wide range of reasonable comprehensive
doctrines, a political conception of justice must be the focus of what Rawls calls 'an
overlapping consensus' of those doctrines, and its subject matter must, accordingly, be
limited. It is limited to 'the domain of the political', by which he means those political,
social, and economic institutions that form the basic structure of society, and how they
are organized into a system of social cooperation. The classification of institutions into
1
2
3
Susan Moller Okin, 'Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender', Ethics 105 (October 1994): 23 - 43,
hereafter referred to as Okin.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, hereafter referred to
as PL.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971, hereafter
referred to as Theory.
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political and nonpolitical, then, is an important aspect of PL because it is the means for
judging whether or not a given institution is to be regulated by the principles of justice.
Okin argues that PL's greater religious toleration immediately causes it an internal
problem. She points out that at least some religious doctrines include the belief that
there is a natural hierarchy between the sexes, with some being "highly patriarchal,
[and] advocate and practice the dependency and submissiveness of women" (Okin, p.
31). And she points out that Rawls seems to think that such views are to be tolerated,
citing him as saying that citizens may hold views such as that there is a fixed natural
order or a "hierarchy justified by religious or aristocratic values" (PL, p. 15). To tolerate
the moral, religious and philosophical pluralism as Rawls wants to in PL is to tolerate,
Okin argues, the belief that the sexes are not equal. But this raises a problem for a
feature of PL that Rawls calls 'congruence' - the agreement (or at least absence of
conflict) between a person's political and nonpolitical values - an important ingredient
for the achievement of stability. Okin asks how it could be possible for someone to hold
that every citizen is free and equal (a political value required by all reasonable citizens),
and also to hold that there is a natural hierarchy between the sexes (a nonpolitical value
that Rawls seems to allow). It seems that by requiring its reasonable citizens to be able
to achieve congruence, PL automatically excludes them from holding certain
comprehensive doctrines, thus compromising the toleration upon which it is based.
Okin's further charges against PL centre upon the classification of the family as a
political or nonpolitical institution. She points out that Rawls is unclear on the matter.
On the one hand he says: "the political constitution, the legally recognized forms of
property, and the organization of the economy, and the nature of the family, all belong
to the basic structure" (PL, p. 258). Furthermore, he says: "the institutions of the basic
structure have deep and long-term social effects and in fundamental ways shape
citizens' character and aims, the kinds of persons they are and aspire to be" (p. 68),
something that is certainly true, Okin suggests, of the family. If it belongs to the basic
structure, as Rawls seems to be implying here, then the family is a political institution
and thus subject to the principles of justice. In fact, Rawls also says: "the individual
members of families [need protection] from other family members (wives from their
husbands, children from their parents)" (p. 221, n. 8), and such protection can only be
provided if the family falls within the domain of the political. On the other hand,
however, he says: "The political is distinct … from the personal and the familial, which
are affectional … in ways the political is not" (p. 137), implying, in apparent
contradiction to the previous quotes, that the family is not political.
Okin suggests that what she describes as "Rawls's reluctance to apply consistently his
standards of justice to families" (Okin, p. 27) indicates that he realizes just how much of
a problem the family is for a political conception of justice. She believes that "the
family is a social institution that defies the political/nonpolitical dichotomy" (loc. cit.).
If it is classified as political, then family life is open to public scrutiny and regulation by
the principles of justice. But since family values are deeply rooted in people's
comprehensive moral, religious and philosophical doctrines, any regulation of them by
state power goes against the toleration of reasonable pluralism that is fundamental to
PL. In short, thinking of the family as a political institution seems to be incompatible
with the toleration of reasonable pluralism. If it is classified as nonpolitical, on the other
hand, then that will create another internal problem for PL. It has to do with the
development of what Rawls calls 'the political virtues' - reasonableness, a sense of
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fairness, a spirit of compromise, toleration, mutual respect, and a sense of civility.
Rawls stresses throughout PL how important it is for the stability of a well-ordered
society that its citizens develop these virtues. But Okin argues that if the family is
classified as nonpolitical, along with the various religious and associational institutions,
then it cannot be guaranteed that citizens will develop these virtues. If Rawls allows that
nonpolitical institutions can advocate the view that the sexes are not equal, then, Okin
believes, it cannot be guaranteed that in such institutions the political virtues can be
learned. If the family is one such institution, and if, as Okin claims, the family is where
children spend the greatest part of their most morally-formative years, then it cannot be
guaranteed that children will grow up to learn the political virtues at all. In short, it
seems that Rawls cannot allow for the toleration of reasonable pluralism in a wellordered society and also expect that its citizens develop the political virtues, as they
must if stability is to be achieved.
Okin goes on to argue that if PL does not require the principles of justice to apply to the
family, then it does not provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of gender
inequality. She says: "No matter how formally equal women are, so long as the social
structures that depend upon a gendered division of labor are still in place … women will
remain systematically disadvantaged" (Okin, p. 42). As evidence for the claim that
merely formal equality is insufficient she cites an analogous case: "[formal legal
equality] has proved vastly insufficient for the achievement of anything like 'fair
equality of opportunity' for black Americans" (p. 39). The gendered social structure that
she particularly has in mind is the family. She says: "women continue to bear
disproportionate responsibility for domestic work, raising children, and caring for the
sick and elderly", with this work being "undervalued, and unpaid or underpaid" (p. 42),
supporting her case with statistical data. She argues that if gender inequality can only be
truly abolished once the social structures that maintain it are broken down, and if unjust
family life is one such social structure, then true gender equality can only be achieved
by the political system advocated in PL if it allows that families be subject to the
principles of justice - that is, if it takes the family to be political. So Rawls's failure to
clearly deal with the issue of justice in families amounts to a failure to deal with the
issue of justice and gender. In fact, Okin suggests that Rawls leaves it unclear whether
or not he believes that more than formal equality can be provided by PL. His most
explicit treatment is a single statement in the introduction: "The same equality of the
Declaration of Independence which Lincoln invoked to condemn slavery can be
invoked to condemn the inequality and oppression of women" (PL, xxxi). Okin claims
that this is ambiguous - that it could be taken as saying: "that all that women need in
order to be treated justly is equal basic rights with men and the formal freedom to
choose a traditionally female or a less nongendered life" (Okin, p. 43); or as advocating:
"an anticaste solution for women to undo the long centuries of injustice" (loc. cit.). Okin
argues that only if PL can provide for substantive equality, as advocated by the second
interpretation, can it be thought to adequately treat the issue of gender equality.
A Defence
Now I want to offer a defence of PL against these charges of Okin. I do not want to
argue that Rawls makes his position on justice and the family clear in PL, because he
does indeed seem, as Okin has pointed out, to make contradictory statements. Nor do I
want to argue that he can count the family as political without compromising the greater
toleration fundamental to PL. That may be the case, but it is not my concern here. What
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I want to argue is that PL can regard the family as nonpolitical and tolerate a pluralism
of comprehensive doctrines, including ones that hold hierarchical views, without facing
the two apparent internal problems that Okin suggests it would, and without closing off
the possibility of achieving substantive equality between the sexes.
First, the problem of congruence. The question Okin raises is this: how could it be
possible for someone to hold that every citizen is free and equal and also to hold that
there is a natural hierarchy among them - to hold, for example, that men have a natural
right to power over women? I think it's important here to consider closely what Rawls
means by 'free and equal'. He says: "The basic idea is that in virtue of their two moral
powers (a capacity for a sense of justice and for a conception of the good) and the
powers of reason … persons are free. Their having these powers to the requisite
minimum degree to be fully cooperating members of society makes persons equal" (PL,
p. 19). I understand Rawls to be saying, here, that people are to be thought of as equal in
the sense that each has the intellectual capacity to be a fully cooperating member of
society. It requires any reasonable man to think of every woman as equally capable as
he is of being a fully cooperating citizen. It does not require him to think of them as
equal in any wider sense. In particular, it does not require him to think of them as
having completely equal intellectual capacities, or physical capacities, or the equal
ability to hold positions of responsibility. It just requires that he regards them as equally
capable of participating in systems of cooperation - to be able to put forward reasonable
points of view and to expect them to be reasonably considered. It seems plausible to me
that a man might be prepared to fully cooperate with men and women alike, and yet
believe that women should perform certain tasks rather than men, because, for instance,
of their different physical capacities. In one sense he would not be regarding women as
his equals. But in Rawls's sense, and that is the one at issue here, he would. Of course, if
he refused to debate the matter with women or even forced them to perform those tasks,
then he would no longer be regarding them as fully cooperating members of society,
and so would no longer be regarding them as equal in Rawls's sense either. But Okin's
charge is that by holding the view that men and women are unequal in a broader sense
he must also hold the view that they are unequal in the narrower Rawlsian sense, and
that doesn't seem to me to be right.
Second, the problem of the development of the political virtues. Okin's concern is that
the family is not a reliable school of justice. In fact, she is concerned that many
contemporary families are poor schools of justice. She draws upon two pieces of recent
research. The first suggests that unequal divisions of work between mothers and fathers
are reflected - even magnified - in unequal divisions of work assumed by the children.
She asks: "Is such a family environment a good place to learn to be just and to treat each
other as equals, to acquire … the political virtues … ? Or is it a place where people
absorb the message that they have different entitlements and responsibilities, based on a
morally irrelevant contingency - their sex?" (Okin p. 36). Clearly she thinks the latter.
But I think it would be a mistake to draw any such conclusion, because of what Okin
herself points out: "Unfortunately, those doing the study did not interview the
adolescents (or their parents) about their perceptions of the fairness or unfairness of the
situation" (p. 36). It seems possible to me that a family with an unequal division of
labour between the males and females, even if that division is substantial, could still be
an environment in which its members are learning the principles of justice. Just because
a family situation is what we, looking from outside, might think of as unjust, it does not
follow that the members of that family regard it as so, nor, in particular, that it was
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arrived at by an unjust procedure. It may well be the case that the family sat down and
entered into a fully rational and reasonable discussion of how the labour was to be
divided, with the parents demonstrating to their children how to exercise a sense of
fairness and compromise, toleration, mutual respect, and civility - all of the political
virtues. It is equally possible that a family whose division of labour would be regarded
by we external observers as just is actually a poor environment for learning these
virtues. The parents may, for example, have simply imposed an equal distribution of
labour on their children, without discussing why, nor considering whether or not one
child may actually want to do more work than the others. Political virtue, as I
understand it, is the ability to enter into a form of social cooperation, and not the
holding of certain beliefs about how society should be. To decide whether or not a given
family is an environment in which children can learn political virtue, then, we must look
to whether or not it fosters this ability to cooperate, and not to whether or not it
promotes certain beliefs about the structure of society.
The second piece of research that Okin cites finds that the wives and daughters in Druze
Arab families accept as inevitable the power of the male family head over many of their
activities and decisions, and, moreover, regard it as unjust. She describes this as "the
learned acceptance of injustice, enforced by male power", and urges: "Surely such
hierarchical early learning environments are not suitable training grounds for just
citizens of either sex" (Okin, p. 37). If the research is right, then it is difficult not to
agree with Okin - such family situations cannot be trusted to encourage the development
of political virtue, and so they threaten to undermine the stability of Rawls's wellordered society. Okin argues that if the family is placed outside the political arena, as it
must be if PL is to be as tolerant as Rawls wants, then the state cannot intervene to
ensure that the children in these families grow up in an environment in which they can
develop the political virtues. Rawls would say, and I think that Okin would agree, that
the men in these families are, by his definition, unreasonable. This is significant,
because early in PL he says: "Of course, a society may also contain unreasonable and
irrational, and even mad, comprehensive doctrines. In their case the problem is to
contain them so that they do not undermine the unity and justice of society" (PL, xviii xix). I think it would be agreed that the practices of these unreasonable men do threaten
to undermine the justice of society, by upsetting the requirement, for example, that all
citizens be able to develop the political virtues, and thus upsetting the ability of society
to obtain stability. So it seems to me that in the case of families like those of the Druze
Arabs, the state is indeed licensed to intervene in the family situation, even though the
family institution in general is nonpolitical and, therefore, off limits.
I think Okin agrees with this, but her concern is that if the practices of these families are
judged as unreasonable then so too must the practices of the many religions that preach
sex discrimination, and therefore that if the former are not to be tolerated then neither
are the latter, which calls in question the ability of a political conception of justice to be
as tolerant as Rawls believes. I think that she misses two important points here. Firstly,
to be reasonable, if I understand the term correctly, is to be prepared to engage in a fair
system of cooperation with others regarded as free and equal. But 'equal', here, means
equal in Rawls's sense, a sense that I argued above should not be taken too broadly. It
seems to me that a religion can regard men and women as unequal in one sense - for
example, by stipulating that only men can hold certain offices - and yet regard them as
equal in Rawls's sense - by being prepared to debate with women the reasons for this
stipulation, treating them as equally able as men to present reasonable points of view,
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and reasonably considering those points of view. If I am right in this, then it does not
follow that any religion that preaches sex discrimination must be unreasonable, but can
only be judged so by duly considering its wider operations. Secondly, even if a religion
was found to be unreasonable it may not threaten to undermine the unity and justice of
society, which is Rawls's main concern, and so it may not need to be deemed
intolerable. If a particular unreasonable religion (i) had compulsory membership, and
(ii) was the main (if not only) source of political education of its members, then it
would, like the Druze Arab families, have to be regarded as a threat to the unity and
justice of society, and therefore it would have to be regarded as intolerable. But without
such conditions then I can see no reason why it should not be accommodated by a
reasonable pluralistic society.
Finally, the matter of formal versus substantive gender equality. I do not want to
disagree with Okin that Rawls is unclear about whether PL can promote the latter - he
certainly seems to be. But I do want to disagree with her suggestion that the greater
toleration of PL takes away its ability to ensure substantive equality between the sexes.
By substantive equality she means the breaking down of the social structures that hinder
formal equality from becoming real equality. In particular, she means the breaking
down of gender inequality in families - such as the distribution of work, power and
opportunity. Okin is concerned that if the family is placed outside the political arena, as
it must be if PL is to be as tolerant as Rawls wants, then the state cannot intervene into
family life to ensure that gender inequality is stopped. My defence of PL here takes a
similar line to the one above. PL licenses the state to intervene into families in which
the exercise of unreasonable comprehensive doctrines threatens to undermine the unity
and justice of society, and that, as I have argued, is the case in families whose female
members believe that they are unjustly expected to do an unfair share of work, or are
unjustly restricted in the responsibilities that they can bear. In those cases, the state can
step in to ensure that such structures are broken down, without compromising its
toleration of reasonable pluralism. I do not believe, however, that it is automatically so
licensed in every case of a family whose workloads are unequally shared, because it is
possible that such families are regulated by reasonable comprehensive doctrines and
that they are actually good schools of political virtue. In those cases I agree with Okin.
But I do not think they pose any barrier to substantive equality between the sexes.
Although the members of these families accept a structure that we from outside might
regard as unjust, it is because they themselves do not regard them as so, and not because
they have learned to accept injustice. If, and when, they come to think that their family
situation is unjust, then they will, as rational and reasonable citizens who have
developed a sufficient sense of justice within their family, be able to adjust accordingly.
If they cannot, then there must be some unreasonable force within the family, and
because of the danger this poses to the unity and justice of society, the state can
intervene.
Conclusion
Okin's charge against PL is that if Rawls expects a political conception of justice to
allow a pluralism of comprehensive moral, religious and philosophical doctrines to
coexist in a well-ordered society, then (i) he cannot expect all of its citizens to achieve
congruence between their political and nonpolitical values, and so he cannot expect that
society to achieve stability in the way that he describes, (ii) he cannot expect all of its
citizens to fully acquire political virtue, and so, again, he cannot expect stability to be
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achieved, and (iii) he cannot expect that substantive gender equality can be achieved in
that society, and so he cannot expect a political conception of justice to be capable of
adequately dealing with the pressing contemporary issue of justice and gender. I have
argued that (i) if we distinguish the meaning of 'equal' as we tend to use it when
discussing gender equality from the narrower meaning I think that Rawls intends in PL,
(ii) if we understand being reasonable and being politically virtuous as the ability to act
in a certain way rather than as the possession of a particular set of beliefs about how
society should be structured (i.e. a particular conception of the good), and (iii) if we take
Rawls seriously in his claim that any unreasonable comprehensive doctrine that
threatens to undermine the unity and justice of society ought to be contained, then, on
all three counts, he can.
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