Janet Radcliffe Richards: The Sceptical Feminist, Penguin, 1982. £2.50.
In the early years of the women's movement, socialists often attacked feminism as 'bourgeois individualism'. Feminists were said to be concerned only with the ability of individual women to compete equally with men. Few socialists now express such views; feminism has come to be acknowledged by feminists and socialists alike, as a radical and potentially revolutionary movement.
The Sceptical Feminist breaks decisively with this consensus. It is a sophisticated argument for a liberal feminism, purged of the emotional, irrational, strident, unattractive, man-hating, scruffy elements it perceives in the feminism of the women's movement. Hailed by the media and now reprinted in paperback, it can be seen as part of an intellectual backlash against both the feminist and socialist movements and, as such, needs to be taken more seriously than it has been to date.
Some of Richards' criticisms of the women's movement are apt; some feminists do use emotional manipulation in the place of consistent argument; some feminists are personally hostile to anyone who doesn't accept their views entirely; the media image of feminism does probably alienate potential support. But Richards' solution — to develop a politically acceptable, 'attractive' feminism — has little to offer most women.
Janet Radcliffe Richards calls herself a feminist because she objects strongly to discrimination on the grounds of sex. She takes to task chauvinist arguments that a woman's 'natural' place is the home and neatly demolishes the view that being a housewife has its own valued rewards. Moreover, she shows how social pressures to be 'feminine' can conflict with liberal notions of individual freedom. She makes a good case for free contraception and abortion, pointing out the inconsistencies in the positions of most anti-abortionists. All this provides valuable ammunition for abstract debates of this kind.
She even manages a justification for some positive discrimination in favour of women, though she clearly feels herself to be on weaker ground here. But, by and large, she is fighting old battles with antiquated weapons which fail utterly to match up to the task in hand.
She blames women, in effect, for their failure to win equality. In her view women have not learnt the power of rational argument. She, however, as a professional philosopher, fails to appreciate the limited power of logic in economic and political conflict. After all, men have not generally been persuaded by rational argument to act against their perceived interests, so it is difficult to see why they should start now. All Richards can suggest if we meet with irrational male resistance, is that we learn a little social psychology, the better to manipulate men. Failing this, individual sexual blackmail is suggested: 'What feminism needs is women who are very desirable to men, but will have nothing to do with any man who does not treat them properly.'
The central weakness of the book is that women's oppression is seen to stem from nothing more than a set of inconsistent beliefs; it has no material roots, or if it does, these are irrelevant to the fight for liberation. Richards does in fact at one point maintain that oppression arises from men's desire to control women's ability to procreate, but nothing follows from this observation.
It is because Janet Radcliffe Richards fails to appreciate what women are up against when fighting for liberation that her criticisms of the women's movement — that it is prone to dogmatism, philistinism and puritanism — are misplaced. She finds nothing oppressive in the dominant culture, in language, in definitions of female sexuality and attractiveness, and so reduces the problem of male domination to no more than inequalities between men and women. Hence 'direct' social pressures forcing femininity on women are attacked but 'indirect' pressures on women — eg conforming to a female stereotype in order to attract men — are defended because women have 'chosen' to want men. It is no wonder, then, that Richards so studiously avoids any discussion of 'compulsory heterosexuality' in her book.
Richards' failure to recognise male domination is reflected in her definition of feminism and her prescriptions for feminist action. For her, feminism is no more than the belief 'that women suffer systematic social injustice because of their sex'; a definition that would make a feminist of everyone but the most diehard reactionary. Such a definition of feminism implies no common view amongst 'feminists' of the importance of these injustices, nor of how they arise and, least of all, of how they should be overcome. It denudes feminism of any real content. On this basis Richards argues that feminism is neither a movement of women (for this would exclude men) nor a movement for women, because many issues which affect women — she uses the example of slavery — may have 'nothing to do with' sexual injustice.
Her insistence on this distinction arises because of her concern lest feminism should go 'too far' and instigate, in pursuit of women's interests, injustices against men. But, it is virtually impossible to maintain her chosen distinction between a movement against injustice on the grounds of sex and a movement on behalf of women, because what precisely constitutes 'injustice on the grounds of sex' is not immediately obvious. Richards herself collapses the distinction when she argues that: 'One thing all feminists must want to lessen is women's unhappiness', since if women's unhappiness is due to slavery or unemployment or anything that men share, it is not a feminist issue. The distinction is, however, politically important for Richards because she wants to abstract feminist issues from issues about equality in general.
On her definition, equality and solidarity between women are not feminist issues. She does not see, as a socialist feminist would, that inequalities and exploitation underlie sexual injustice nor that individualism and lack of solidarity among women help to perpetuate sexual inequality. Rather, she is horrified by the insistence of the women's movement that every woman's experience should be regarded as equally important and argues alongside Hayek and Keith Joseph that an unequal society may benefit the worst-off groups more than an equal one — because it is more efficient. Housework is seen as objectionable mainly because it wastes the talents of intelligent women; 'some women' she says 'are ideally suited to be housewives' and 'many are probably doing far more valuable work at home than they could do elsewhere'. She does not favour the collectivisation of housework, for it would restrict the freedom of such women to choose.
Her individualism knows few bounds; the women's movement should be about extending individual choice, not about constraining women who 'want' to be sex objects, prostitutes or slaves to the household. In true liberal style, she condemns the attempt to disrupt Miss World because many women choose to compete or watch. Despite a long discussion on conditioning, she rejects the idea that individual choices are socially structured, seeing it as totalitarian not to accept what people say for themselves. There are, of course, real problems in asserting that other people's choices result from oppression; but to accept these choices as paramount, as Richards suggests, is only to perpetuate the status quo.
This is then a profoundly conservative book, arguing for feminism on grounds of common sense without any questioning of the 'common sense' of capitalist society. Some women would no doubt benefit from the extension of bourgeois rights Janet Radcliffe Richards wants, but the choices for most women would remain as bleak as ever.
IRENE BRUEGEL is a feminist, economist and researcher.