Appraising the Impact of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State: Consciousness-Raising, Hierarchy Theory, and Substantive Equality Laws
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: As Ian Shapiro describes, a problem-driven political science "start [s] with a problem in the world," as opposed to analyzing a problem "in ways that are . . .mere artifacts of the theories and methods that are deployed to study it."Ian Shapiro, Problems, Methods, and Theories in the Study of Politics, or What's Wrong with Political Science and What to Do About It, 30 POL.THEORY 596, 598 (2002). Law & Inequality[Vol.35: 353 in the world, specifically using legal challenges to pornography and prostitution as examples.Parts I and II will demonstrate how Toward a Feminist Theory of the State departed from conventional epistemologies, in part explaining its revolutionary appeal to students, practitioners, and scholars.Part III continues the analysis by using real world applications of its approach to pornography and prostitution, beginning with the anti-pornography civil rights ordinances drafted by Catharine A. MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin in 1983, six years before the publication of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State.Part III illustrates how the ordinances mobilized MacKinnon's same cutting-edge approach to advancing women's legal substantive equality about which she later theorized.A similar approach was instrumental in grounding a substantive equality prostitution law, proposed by MacKinnon in a public speech in Stockholm, Sweden, November 2, 1990, situating that law within her broader approach to equality.3 The Swedish national umbrella organization for women's shelters, ROKS, lobbied for the law and rallied other actors to support it, 4 precipitating its passing in Parliament in 1998, with the law taking effect in 1999.5 Similar laws have now been adopted by many more countries, attesting to MacKinnon's extraordinary influence as a legal and social theorist, 6 but not until ten years or 3. MacKinnon's speech was translated into Swedish.See Catharine A. MacKinnon, Pornografi och jämställdhet [Pornography and Gender Equality], in PORNOGRAFI: VERKLIGHET ELLER FANTASI? [PORNOGRAPHY: REALITY OR FANTASY?] 58 (Amanda Golert &
Author: Max Waltman
Institution: Harvard University
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2659852371