Feminist philosopher Susan Moller Okin died last week, although the news has only been publicly released today. Her second book, Justice, Gender and the Family, hit me like a onrushing train the first time I read it, and still influences my thought today.
She was a courageous voice, both in person and in her work. She spoke out against injustices wherever she saw them, often saying publicly what other people were only thinking privately. Her scholarship reflected her sense that political theory must reach out to public concerns, both in the United States and abroad. She was a feminist, with concerns about women at the heart of her work. In Justice, Gender, and the Family, Okin wrote, “My proposals, centered on the family but also on the workplace and other social institutions that currently reinforce the gender structure, will suggest some ways in which we might make our way toward a society much less structured by gender, and in which any remaining, freely chosen division of labor by sex would not result in injustice. In such a society, in all the spheres of our lives, from the most public to the most personal, we would strive to live in accordance with truly humanist principles of justice.”
I don’t really have much to say, except that if you haven’t read Justice, Gender and the Family you should. Okin does a remarkable job of discussing complex issues in reasonable depth using entertaining, jargon-free prose; I’m sure most “Alas” readers would enjoy it immensely. Amazon has used copies starting at two bucks..
I’d also recommend Is Multiculturalism Bad For Women? I don’t, personally, agree with everything she writes in that book, but since it includes essays responding to her original essay, the book definitely gives all sides of complicated issue.
I’m so sorry to hear that such an amazing woman has passed away.