Rose Barrett

Chapter 1: 10-25

Liberal Feminism is an offshoot of liberal thought in general, which according to Jaggar, "locates our uniqueness as human persons in our capacity for rationality." (10) Liberalism sought to protect autonomy of individuals and their rights. (11) For liberal feminists, these social ideals were to create a society in which freedoms allow women to thrive as well as men. (12)

The development of reason and its ability to elevate women to a more fulfilled state of personhood was central in the ideas of the early liberal feminists Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, and John Stuart Mill. Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was geared largely towards the more affluent bourgeois woman. Working under the assumption that the stereotypically masculine traits were desirable to the exclusion of the feminine traits, she viewed a woman's status as a physical, emotional, and intellectual weakling to be the result of insufficient education such as males received, and believed that providing women with this would enable them to fulfill their utilitarian to society (13) and allow them to become self-determining persons rather than "an object he [man] nurtures merely as a means to his own delight." (15)

Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill shared Wollstonecraft's conviction in woman's rational capacities. However, unlike Wollstoncraft, they felt that political and economic equality were crucial to sexual equality. (15) Taylor's belief was that given these equal opportunities in education, politics, and economy, most women would choose to excel outside of the domestic sphere, and fulfill what was seen as the man's responsibility to "support" life in the economic sense. (16) Mill felt that most educated women in an egalitarian society would still choose to put their domestic responsibilities over an external career. (19) However, he argued that women were as capable as men, and any biological disadvantage which might prevent a woman's abilities from equaling a man's did not justify prohibitions against women attempting any activity. (18)

The U.S. women's rights movement originally emphasized reforms in marriage, divorce, child custody, and property rights, and did not unanimously endorse suffrage. (20) Although the movement was intimately linked to the abolitionist movement, the contributions of black women such as Sojourner Truth were largely overlooked at the time. (21) Gaining the vote became the symbol of women's equality until later in the 20th century when groups like NOW and WEAL challenged "sex discrimination in all spheres of life," (24) and sparked the current debate on gender equality, not only in terms of women's equal capacity in masculine roles, but also the strength of their unique feminine characteristics. (26)