Is Gender Justice a Completed Agenda?
15 Pages Posted: 8 Feb 2013
Date Written: 1987
Abstract
The central argument of The Feminization of America is somewhat surprising and strangely compelling. Lenz and Myerhoff argue that women largely have won their struggle to enter the public sphere of American life and that, in the process, they have transformed both public and private spheres in ways that have produced more egalitarian relationships and greater human happiness. Because this transformation is nearing completion, the authors argue, we should put aside the feminist injunction to put women first; we should get, in their phrase, "beyond feminism" (p. 226). If their argument is correct, it has significant legal and political consequences. For example, if it is true that women are no longer disadvantaged, then courts might be justified in scrutinizing claims of gender discrimination less carefully and legislatures in concluding that policy choices favoring women are unnecessary and undesirable.
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