Okin, Susan Moller Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Susan Moller Okin (1946–2004) was a feminist and political theor ist who brought to bear the importance of the family on twentieth-century dialogues of justice. In criticizing contemporary theories of justice as overly focused on gender neutrality, she highlighted a neglected dimension of private life—namely, the domestic role of women—that must be attended to in order to establish a form of liberalism that truly included all of society’s members. From these conclusions, Okin engaged the practical dilemmas of multiculturalism, arguing for more female and minority participation in public deliberation over, for example, the right of Muslim women to wear hijabs (headscarves) in the workplace in Norway and the proper distribution of World Bank funds in India.

Okin was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on July 19, 1946, and was linked to higher education for virtually her entire life. She graduated from the University of Auckland in 1967, earned a master’s degree in philosophy from Oxford University in 1970, and received a doctorate degree in government from Harvard University in 1975. She taught at the University of Auckland, Vassar College, Brandeis College, Harvard University, and Stanford University prior to her last appointment at the prestigious Radcliffe Institute of Advance Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Okin’s writings could be polemical and provocative. Her first book, Women in Western Political Thought (1979), analyzed the work of major political philosophers, both ancient and modern, and their overall failure to include women in their political theories. Drawing on the overlooked division between political life and family life, Okin expanded on this initial evaluation in Justice, Gender, and the Family (1989), which focused on contemporary debates about the meaning of liberalism between advocates of strict neutrality and communitarianism. Okin trained her criticism primarily on leading liberal philosopher John Rawls. According to Okin, Rawls’s renowned Theory of Justice (1971), in spite of its heavy emphasis on equal rights and opportunities, largely disregarded the private division of labor that often undermined such values. In Okin’s eyes, a comprehensive expression of a just society demanded more attention toward the traditionally unequal divisions of gendered labor that invariably subordinated the social status of women. Justice, Gender, and the Family was widely acclaimed at the time of its publication, winning the American Political Science Association’s Victoria Schuck Prize for the best book on women and politics.

Okin extended her focus on female empowerment into international politics, traveling with the Global Fund for Women in 2004 and calling attention to the need for the world to redefine how monetary funds were distributed and the necessity for full female participation in politics—respect for cultural traditions and norms notwithstanding. These pleas found expression in her final book, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (1999).

Okin was also a devoted teacher, winning Stanford’s Bing Teaching Award in 1994, the Allan V. Cox Medal for faculty excellence in fostering undergraduate research in 2002, and numerous other accolades. Today, her name continues to recall one of the leading lights of feminist thought in contemporary political theory. She died March 3, 2004, in Lincoln, Massachusetts, of natural causes.

Bibliography:

Cohen, Joshua, and Matthew Howards, eds. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Okin, Susan. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books, 1989.
Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Satz, Debra, and Robert Reich. Toward a Humanist Justice: The Political Philosophy of Susan Moller Okin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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