Women and Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric and Public Policy (review)

This diverse collection of essays sets out to provide an analysis of “the rhetoric of a wide range of American and Canadian public policies that propose to put women and children first” (p. 1). As the editors, Sharon M. Meagher and Patrice di Quinzio, note however, the analysis reveals pervasive paternalistic treatment of women and children under the guise of putting them first in ways that “almost always disempower them and sometimes harm them” (p. 1). Meagher and di Quinzio explain that policies protecting women and children from themselves undermine women’s subjectivity and agency and are based on a model of male dominance. Theorist Sarah Lucia Hoagland has identified such an approach as relying upon a predator/protector logic. This logic coincides with two key elements of western philosophy; first, the abstract individualist theory of subjectivity, and second, dualistic thinking which privileges essence over difference, and dichotomizes human existence into public and private realms. Kelly Oliver, one of the authors included in this collection, applied a different label in her earlier work: she speaks of the “virile subjectivity” that is the foundation of western understandings of personhood and autonomy. Virile subjectivity situates men squarely in the public sphere, while essential motherhood confirms women’s place in private sphere.

An analysis of modern western rhetoric also demonstrates this problem of essential motherhood, which defines femininity with an emphasis on emotionality, concern and care for others, and self-definition in the context of social relations. Of course, such a definition is at odds with the notion of rational agency contained by abstract individualism. This leaves us to confront what feminists have called the dilemma of difference, that in the individualistic ideological context of modern western political culture, feminism must argue for women’s equality, including women’s equal citizenship, by asserting women’s abstract individualist subjectivity and by denying the particularity and significance of gender and sexual difference. Thus to the extent that women claim equal citizenship in abstract individualist terms (i.e. virile subjectivity), they risk misrepresenting women’s experiences and situation and they may be criticized for their failure to conform to dominant conceptions of proper femininity or essential motherhood. On the other hand, if women rely on alternate conceptions of interconnected subjectivity to represent their experiences, then it could be suggested that they are not really autonomous individual agents, are not capable of equal citizenship and are in need of protection. As the editors so insightfully demonstrate, the “interplay of abstract individualism and essential motherhood…ensures that the representation of women and women’s interests is always contested” (p. 5).

These theoretical problems that are outlined by the editors in the introductory chapter are the ones that underpin all the analyses in the book and serve to tie them together into a unified collection. As philosophers, the editors suggest the discipline of philosophy leads to discourse analysis, and discourse analysis is critical to policy formulation because policy should be shaped not just “by what we do, but also by what we say and how we say it” (p. 5). Thus all the essays in the collection attempt to apply these theoretical critiques to seemingly benign protective policies aimed at putting women and children first. The policies examined include those addressing gun control, intersexed infants, school violence, domestic violence, women’s depression and substance abuse, welfare, reproductive technologies, criminal law and family law. Beyond the critiques contained in the essays, the authors of many of the chapters also attempt to suggest strategies to counter the individualist/essential mother rhetoric by insisting on the inclusion of intersubjectivity, difference, equality, civic participation and complexity as integral to proper analysis. They stress the need for ongoing revisions and reconsiderations as part of policy development aimed at including all the complexity that such issues encompass.

The essays are organized into five parts dealing with topics ranging from issues that might intuitively seem to be within the realm of “putting women and children first”, such...