{"title":"'It's Snowing Down South': How to Help Mothers and Avoid Recycling the Sameness/Difference Debate","authors":"Joan C. Williams","doi":"10.2307/1123761","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Professor Williams argues that by understanding their history feminists can avoid repeating it. The key disagreement in the destructive sameness/difference debate is not over whether women are the same or different from men, but over whether to empower women in their traditional caregiving role (the 'femme strategy'), or to shift them into socially valued masculine gender performances such as melding personal identity with paid work and off-loading care work (the 'tomboy strategy'). Professor Williams argues that, given the profound importance of care work to the identities of the 85% of women who become mothers, and the structural linkage of motherhood and economic inequality, we need to accept as a given that empowering women requires ending the economic marginalization of mothers. She proposes a 'listening tour,' informed by an epistemology that respects all truths as partial, flawed, and situated - all forged in an arena of constraint. The law professor's role is not to pronounce the 'One True Way' but to seek points of respectful coalition among people whose truths differ.","PeriodicalId":51408,"journal":{"name":"Columbia Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2002-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/1123761","citationCount":"10","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Columbia Law Review","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1123761","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 10
Abstract
Professor Williams argues that by understanding their history feminists can avoid repeating it. The key disagreement in the destructive sameness/difference debate is not over whether women are the same or different from men, but over whether to empower women in their traditional caregiving role (the 'femme strategy'), or to shift them into socially valued masculine gender performances such as melding personal identity with paid work and off-loading care work (the 'tomboy strategy'). Professor Williams argues that, given the profound importance of care work to the identities of the 85% of women who become mothers, and the structural linkage of motherhood and economic inequality, we need to accept as a given that empowering women requires ending the economic marginalization of mothers. She proposes a 'listening tour,' informed by an epistemology that respects all truths as partial, flawed, and situated - all forged in an arena of constraint. The law professor's role is not to pronounce the 'One True Way' but to seek points of respectful coalition among people whose truths differ.
期刊介绍:
The Columbia Law Review is one of the world"s leading publications of legal scholarship. Founded in 1901, the Review is an independent nonprofit corporation that produces a law journal edited and published entirely by students at Columbia Law School. It is one of a handful of student-edited law journals in the nation that publish eight issues a year. The Review is the third most widely distributed and cited law review in the country. It receives about 2,000 submissions per year and selects approximately 20-25 manuscripts for publication annually, in addition to student Notes. In 2008, the Review expanded its audience with the launch of Sidebar, an online supplement to the Review.