Liberty and Feminism the Basic Intellectual Framework

What is the relationship between the status of women and the cause of liberty in modern times? The very tone of the question may suggest the anachronistic nature of this article. After all, the major battles over the status of women in the United States were fought long ago. They were, as it is sometimes difficult to remember, battles over civil capacity (for example, during the nineteenth century, the ability of married women to make contracts in their own right, to give evidence, to serve on juries) and over political capacity (for example, during the early twentieth century, the right of women to vote in political elections and to stand for office). At the time, the resistance to these simple and self-evident claims was so great that in retrospect it is hard to fathom the political turmoil generated by such modest reforms. The strife was at least as great as the present-day contention over civil rights and affirmative action. Of course, the resolution of the major questions at issue by 1920 did not put an end to debates over the role and place of women in society. In this article I hope to give some sense of how the debate has progressed, and to indicate why the very arguments that rightly led to the legal reforms affecting the status of women during the nineteenth century militate against the demands for reform from the late-twentieth-century feminist movement. In stating this position, I do not mean to position myself in the vanguard of reaction. On the contrary, I believe that the progressive ideals of the nineteenth century remain just as progressive today.