Ezra's Bookshelf

Justice, Gender, and the Family

by Susan Moller Okin · 252 pages · ~4.5 hrs

PhilosophyGender & FeminismPolitics & Government

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Susan Moller Okin's 'Justice, Gender, and the Family' is a foundational feminist critique of political philosophy, arguing that theories of justice that ignore family structure cannot fulfill their own principles. Okin, who taught at Stanford, examined major works of contemporary political theory, including those of Rawls, Nozick, and MacIntyre, showing how they assumed traditional gender arrangements within families while claiming to offer universal principles. She argued that the family is not a private sphere exempt from justice but the institution where children first learn about fairness, and that families organized around gender inequality inevitably reproduce that inequality in public life. The book proposes extending principles of justice into families, including equal sharing of domestic labor and economic provisions that protect women's vulnerability in marriage and divorce. While some specific proposals have been overtaken by social change, Okin's fundamental argument that justice applies within families remains influential. Readers interested in feminist theory, political philosophy, or the relationship between public and private spheres will find a work that permanently changed how philosophers think about the family.

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