Gender – Justice Everywhere

In this contribution, Katarina Pitasse Fragoso and Nathália Sanglard reflect on gender violence and public policies.

Gender violence is a form of physical, verbal, psychological or symbolic damage, caused directly or indirectly to the person due to her gender identity. It is an injustice, because, according to Elizabeth Anderson, it has been generated by arbitrary systems, such as patriarchal ones, which use gender as a justification to harm others and prevent access to resources, rights, the job market and other services. In this article, we will explore how these types of violence disproportionately affect women and feminized subjects, and we will propose some ways to enhance mainstream public policies, through a combination of actions and participatory devices.

Ending Child Marriage in the UK

By admin

On 28 June, 2021

In Children, Gender, General, Governance, International, Liberty

On 16 June 2021, Sajid Javid MP introduced a Private Members’ Bill into the UK Parliament to raise the minimum age of marriage in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to 18. This follows earlier attempts by Pauline Latham MP to criminalise child marriage. Currently, teenagers aged 16-18 may marry with their parent’s consent (in Scotland, they can already marry without parental consent). From an international law perspective, this Bill would end child marriage in the UK (which the international community has pledged to stop by 2030). Philosophically, it raises interesting questions about what decisions people should be permitted to make at 16; and the balance between maximising people’s options, and protecting a small number from significant harm.

Is the criminal law the best tool to fight discrimination and hate-based violence?

By Costanza Porro

On 17 May, 2021

In Gender, Punishment, Rights

In the past few months, a central topic of discussion in Italian public debate has been the Ddl Zan, a proposed bill to combat discrimination and violence on the grounds of sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability. The bill does not create any new crimes but extends to these categories existing criminal legislation that currently covers discrimination and violence on the grounds of racial, ethnic and religious reasons as well as incitement to commit such acts. Such acts of discrimination and violence and their incitement can either be punished with a fine or a prison sentence to up to 4 years or, in case these actions already constitute a more serious crime, the penalty can be increased to up to double. The Ddl Zan also includes measures to support victims as well as broader initiatives to fight discrimination and inequalities, including the creation of a National Day against homophobia. Unsurprisingly, the bill has been the object of a heated debate. The LGBTQ+ movement and the majority of the feminist movement as well as other progressive forces are fighting for its approval, while conservatives argue that the bill endangers freedom of speech and imposes a supposedly divisive worldview. Setting this aside, I want to address another issue in connection to this bill, namely that of whether the criminal law should be regarded as the right instrument to fight discrimination and this kind of violence.

What do co-parents owe each other?

By Journal of Applied Philosophy

On 29 April, 2021

In Children, Duties, Gender

In this post, Daniela Cutas and Sabine Hohl discuss their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on duties of co-parenting.

One of the authors of this post remembers her mother telling her, many years ago, that people spend too much time fretting about who to marry and not enough about who they want to co-parent with, since it is that relationship which lasts for life. And we could not agree with her more. (Spoiler alert: this author’s parents have since divorced. But they are still her parents.) In a new paper, we discuss co-parenting as a moral relationship in its own right, and we explore the duties that it generates between co-parents.

Introducing Political Philosophy with Public Policy

By Andrew Walton

On 15 March, 2021

In Animals, Children, Climate, Democracy, Distribution, Economics, Education, Gender, General, Liberty, Migration, Moral values, Punishment, Rights, War, Work

What is a good way to learn about political philosophy? Plausibly there is a variety of reasonable answers to this question, depending on what and why one wants to know about the subject, and it is some testament to this that there are excellent introductions that focus on the issues, concepts, and key thinkers in the field.

In our recent book – Introducing Political Philosophy: A Policy-Driven Approach – Will Abel, Elizabeth Kahn, Tom Parr, and I offer an approach that focuses on introducing the subject through the lens of public policy.

Is cancel culture good for women?

By Diana Popescu

On 8 March, 2021

In Gender, General

When it comes to strategies for pursuing ideals of justice in the real world, a practice mostly neglected by philosophers but with considerable real-life purchase is that of refusing or withdrawing a public platform or position. There are various reasons for thinking that supporting what is commonly referred to (mainly by its opponents) as “cancel culture” would further women’s interests, but I will argue that due to the background sexism in society, cancel culture is in fact bad for women.

It is not enough to listen carefully – we also have to identify who is not in the epistemic room

By Leonie Smith

On 15 February, 2021

In Academia, Duties, Gender, General, Moral values

Shawn raises his hand and asks quietly: “Mr Warner?” […] Mr Warner does not hear Shawn or notice his raised hand. Instead, Mr Warner is fielding questions from a group of middle-class students […] Shawn sighs and puts his hand down (Calarco 2018: 164).

Post by Leonie Smith and Alfred Archer

Introduction

When middle-class students are regularly heard in the classroom and working-class students, such as Shawn, are regularly not heard, and when news reporters consistently fail to seek out women experts to the same extent that they seek out men experts, something unjust is happening. In a recent paper, we argue that this something is an epistemic attention deficit.

Why There Are Some Things You Can Only Know If You’ve Been Pregnant – And Why This Matters

By Journal of Applied Philosophy

On 1 October, 2020

In Gender, Governance, Liberty, Rights

In this post, Fiona Woollard discusses their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the significance of experiencing pregnancy.

There are some experiences that make you a member of special kind of club. Some are trivial: drinking Irn Bru, Scotland’s favourite soft drink. Some are life changing: going into space, fighting in a war or having cancer. The club members (people who have had the experience) know what the experience is really like. This is very hard to explain to people outside the club. They often think they understand, but they do not really get it. It is easy to talk about the experience with other people who have had that experience. They understand what you are trying to express. They get it. L.A. Paul called experiences like this, experiences that provide knowledge that you cannot acquire without having the experience, epistemically transformative experiences.

I argue in a recent article that pregnancy is an epistemically transformative experience: being pregnant provides you with access to knowledge about what pregnancy is like that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to acquire without being pregnant. This matters because in order to think properly about the ethics of abortion we need to know what being pregnant is like.

“Level playing fields”: a misguided complaint about discrimination against well-off women

By Anca Gheaus

On 7 September, 2020

In Academia, Distribution, Economics, Gender, General, Rights

This is the third, and last, of a series of three posts about gender justice and conflicts of interest between women who belong to different classes. In the first post I argued that priority should be given to the worse off women: When a particular policy (which is otherwise justified) would benefit poor, or working class, women, there is a strong presumption in favour of that policy even if it would, at the same time, set back the interests of better off women. Many care-supporting policies are like this: The very mechanism that makes them work in favour of those women from low socio-economicbackgrounds who are saddled with care duties leads to the reinforcement of statistical discrimination and other biases against professional women.

From the Vault: Journal of Applied Philosophy

By admin

On 17 August, 2020

In Animals, Children, Climate, Democracy, Economics, Gender, International, Migration, Punishment, War

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2019-2020 season. This post focuses on the launch of our collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

In 2019-20, Justice Everywhere began a collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy. The journal is a unique forum that publishes philosophical analysis of problems of practical concern, and several of its authors post accessible summaries of their work on Justice Everywhere. These posts draw on diverse theoretical viewpoints and bring them to bear on a broad spectrum of issues, ranging from the environment and immigration to economics, parenting, and punishment.

For a full list of these posts, visit the journal’s author page. For a flavour of the range, you might read:

How environmental consultation processes can silence communities, by Dina Lupin Townsend and Leo Townsend.
A special series on causation in war, with posts from Carolina Sartorio, Helen Beebee & Alex Kaiserman, and Lars Christie.
On the role of care in punishments and prison, by Helen Brown Coverdale.
About the problem with studying non-human primates in laboratories, by Parker Crutchfield.
How values should feed into behavioural economics, by C. Tyler DesRoches.
A special series on the role of biases in oppression and injustice, with posts Lacey Davidson & Daniel Kelly and Alex Madva.
On epistemic injustices experienced by indigenous immigrant communities, by Amy Reed-Sandoval.
About what is the right number of parents for a child, by Kalle Grill.

Stay tuned for even more from this collaboration in our 2020-21 season!

***

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 7th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Justice Everywhere

a blog about philosophy in public affairs

Category: Gender (Page 1 of 4)

Combining public policies and transformative action in fighting against gender violence

Ending Child Marriage in the UK

Is the criminal law the best tool to fight discrimination and hate-based violence?

What do co-parents owe each other?

Introducing Political Philosophy with Public Policy

Is cancel culture good for women?

It is not enough to listen carefully – we also have to identify who is not in the epistemic room

Why There Are Some Things You Can Only Know If You’ve Been Pregnant – And Why This Matters

“Level playing fields”: a misguided complaint about discrimination against well-off women

From the Vault: Journal of Applied Philosophy

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