gender justice essay

What is Gender Justice?

Our feminism is rooted in intersectionality. We recognize that women are not a monolith and experience multiple, overlapping sources of oppression. The struggle for women’s rights is deeply impacted by and connected to the struggles for racial justice, queer justice, immigration justice, climate justice, and so many more.

WHAT DOES GENDER JUSTICE MEAN?

For us, the term “gender justice” best signifies our intersectional approach that centers the diverse needs, experiences, and leadership of people most impacted by discrimination and oppression. This approach helps achieve both equity (equal distribution of resources, access, and opportunities) and equality (equal outcomes for all).

THE IMPORTANCE OF GENDER JUSTICE

Utilizing a gender justice framework also means allowing for movements to define their own priorities and indicators of success. By embracing grassroots movement leadership and participatory grantmaking, we aim to mitigate the harm of discriminatory, racist, and toxic practices by traditional Global North philanthropists, institutions, and structures.

MOVEMENTS MOVE MOUNTAINS

We envision a world where gender justice movements have transformed power and privilege for a few into equity and equality for all. Our movement-led approach embodies a new kind of philanthropy that shifts power into the hands of those working at the frontlines of gender justice.

Ending Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Perú

Moving in Feminism with Adolescent Leaders in Action

Make an impact.

The future is equal

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Every day, in every country in the world, women are confronted by discrimination and inequality. They face violence, abuse and unequal treatment at home, at work and in their wider communities – and are denied opportunities to learn, to earn and to lead.

Women form the majority of those living in poverty.  They have fewer resources, less power and less influence compared to men, and can experience further inequality because of their class, ethnicity and age, as well as religious and other fundamentalism.

Gender inequality is a key driver of poverty. And a fundamental denial of women's rights.

Gender inequality in numbers

Achieving gender justice to tackle poverty.

Oxfam understands  gender justice as the full equality and equity between women, men, LGBTQIA+, and non-binary people  in all spheres of life, resulting in women jointly, and on an equal basis with men, defining and shaping the policies, structures and decisions that affect their lives and society as a whole.

Further improvements in legislation and policy are necessary but not sufficient. We believe that  transforming gender and power relations , and the structures, norms and values that underpin them, is critical to ending poverty and challenging inequality.

We believe that  women taking control and taking collective action  are the most important drivers of sustained improvements in women's rights, and are a powerful force to end poverty not only for women and girls, but for others too.

Join the fight for gender justice

Gender inequality is when a person is discriminated against because of their sex or gender. Women, non-binary and trans people are confronted by discrimination and inequality. They face violence, abuse and unequal treatment at home, at work,in their wider communities –and are denied opportunities to learn, to earn and to lead.

Women form the majority of those living in poverty. Governments and social institutions increasingly treat women and LGBTQIA+ people unfairly and in a biased way. They have fewer resources, less power and less influence compared to men, and can experience further inequality because of their class, ethnicity and age, as well as religious and other fundamentalism.

Being treated equally and enjoying the same rights no matter your sex or gender is a fundamental human right.

Gender inequality is one of the oldest and most pervasive forms of inequality. For centuries it has caused discrimination and exclusion of women, non-binary and trans people from social, political,and economic life. It has also blocked women from leadership roles and has led to increasing gender-based violence.The Covid-19 pandemic has made this situation worse. Structural inequality has increased as well. Specifically, governments and social institutions increasingly treat women and LGBTQIA+ people unfairly and in a biased way. Intersecting inequality has worsened too. This means, on top of being mistreated because of your gender, you are also discriminated against because of your ethnicity, sexual orientation, race, disability, income, and occupation, etc. As a result, we now have even wider gender and racial gaps.

This is unacceptable and is putting a lot of people at serious risk every day.

Fighting for a feminist and gender-just world.

Oxfam recognizes that there is no economic, social, and environmental justice without gender justice. We work to make sure that women and girls, LGBTQIA+ and non-binary people live free from gender-based discrimination and violence. We campaign against deep rooted male privilege and dominance that prevent women from realizing their rights and work with communities to challenge harmful norms and beliefs that drive abuse and keep women poor.

1. Women, girls, and LGBTQIA+ people can realize their full rights, including rights that impact their sexual and reproductive health.

2. Violence against women, girls, and non-binary people is eliminated and protection offered during and after shocks and crises when the risk of discrimination, exploitation and abuse is heightened.

3. Policies and practices protect the equal rights of women, girls, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community and all those who suffer discrimination based on gender or sex.

4. Women and members of the queer community are in leadership positions across different sectors with equal recognition to men and in equal numbers. They are shaping public policy, including decision making on peace and security.

5. Feminist activists, organizations, and movements grow in strength. They lead equally, safely and freely in both online and offline spaces, exposing how patriarchal practices interact with other forms of inequality, and protected from violent anti-rights backlash.

Together we can change this and achieve gender justice!

If we stand together, wecan demand that women, non-binary, LGBTQIA+ people enjoy their full rights and live a life with dignity, free from discrimination, violence and oppression.

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Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender

Feminism is said to be the movement to end women’s oppression (hooks 2000, 26). One possible way to understand ‘woman’ in this claim is to take it as a sex term: ‘woman’ picks out human females and being a human female depends on various biological and anatomical features (like genitalia). Historically many feminists have understood ‘woman’ differently: not as a sex term, but as a gender term that depends on social and cultural factors (like social position). In so doing, they distinguished sex (being female or male) from gender (being a woman or a man), although most ordinary language users appear to treat the two interchangeably. In feminist philosophy, this distinction has generated a lively debate. Central questions include: What does it mean for gender to be distinct from sex, if anything at all? How should we understand the claim that gender depends on social and/or cultural factors? What does it mean to be gendered woman, man, or genderqueer? This entry outlines and discusses distinctly feminist debates on sex and gender considering both historical and more contemporary positions.

1.1 Biological determinism

1.2 gender terminology, 2.1 gender socialisation, 2.2 gender as feminine and masculine personality, 2.3 gender as feminine and masculine sexuality, 3.1.1 particularity argument, 3.1.2 normativity argument, 3.2 is sex classification solely a matter of biology, 3.3 are sex and gender distinct, 3.4 is the sex/gender distinction useful, 4.1.1 gendered social series, 4.1.2 resemblance nominalism, 4.2.1 social subordination and gender, 4.2.2 gender uniessentialism, 4.2.3 gender as positionality, 5. beyond the binary, 6. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the sex/gender distinction..

The terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ mean different things to different feminist theorists and neither are easy or straightforward to characterise. Sketching out some feminist history of the terms provides a helpful starting point.

Most people ordinarily seem to think that sex and gender are coextensive: women are human females, men are human males. Many feminists have historically disagreed and have endorsed the sex/ gender distinction. Provisionally: ‘sex’ denotes human females and males depending on biological features (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features); ‘gender’ denotes women and men depending on social factors (social role, position, behaviour or identity). The main feminist motivation for making this distinction was to counter biological determinism or the view that biology is destiny.

A typical example of a biological determinist view is that of Geddes and Thompson who, in 1889, argued that social, psychological and behavioural traits were caused by metabolic state. Women supposedly conserve energy (being ‘anabolic’) and this makes them passive, conservative, sluggish, stable and uninterested in politics. Men expend their surplus energy (being ‘katabolic’) and this makes them eager, energetic, passionate, variable and, thereby, interested in political and social matters. These biological ‘facts’ about metabolic states were used not only to explain behavioural differences between women and men but also to justify what our social and political arrangements ought to be. More specifically, they were used to argue for withholding from women political rights accorded to men because (according to Geddes and Thompson) “what was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by Act of Parliament” (quoted from Moi 1999, 18). It would be inappropriate to grant women political rights, as they are simply not suited to have those rights; it would also be futile since women (due to their biology) would simply not be interested in exercising their political rights. To counter this kind of biological determinism, feminists have argued that behavioural and psychological differences have social, rather than biological, causes. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir famously claimed that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, and that “social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature” (Beauvoir 1972 [original 1949], 18; for more, see the entry on Simone de Beauvoir ). Commonly observed behavioural traits associated with women and men, then, are not caused by anatomy or chromosomes. Rather, they are culturally learned or acquired.

Although biological determinism of the kind endorsed by Geddes and Thompson is nowadays uncommon, the idea that behavioural and psychological differences between women and men have biological causes has not disappeared. In the 1970s, sex differences were used to argue that women should not become airline pilots since they will be hormonally unstable once a month and, therefore, unable to perform their duties as well as men (Rogers 1999, 11). More recently, differences in male and female brains have been said to explain behavioural differences; in particular, the anatomy of corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres, is thought to be responsible for various psychological and behavioural differences. For instance, in 1992, a Time magazine article surveyed then prominent biological explanations of differences between women and men claiming that women’s thicker corpus callosums could explain what ‘women’s intuition’ is based on and impair women’s ability to perform some specialised visual-spatial skills, like reading maps (Gorman 1992). Anne Fausto-Sterling has questioned the idea that differences in corpus callosums cause behavioural and psychological differences. First, the corpus callosum is a highly variable piece of anatomy; as a result, generalisations about its size, shape and thickness that hold for women and men in general should be viewed with caution. Second, differences in adult human corpus callosums are not found in infants; this may suggest that physical brain differences actually develop as responses to differential treatment. Third, given that visual-spatial skills (like map reading) can be improved by practice, even if women and men’s corpus callosums differ, this does not make the resulting behavioural differences immutable. (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, chapter 5).

In order to distinguish biological differences from social/psychological ones and to talk about the latter, feminists appropriated the term ‘gender’. Psychologists writing on transsexuality were the first to employ gender terminology in this sense. Until the 1960s, ‘gender’ was often used to refer to masculine and feminine words, like le and la in French. However, in order to explain why some people felt that they were ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’, the psychologist Robert Stoller (1968) began using the terms ‘sex’ to pick out biological traits and ‘gender’ to pick out the amount of femininity and masculinity a person exhibited. Although (by and large) a person’s sex and gender complemented each other, separating out these terms seemed to make theoretical sense allowing Stoller to explain the phenomenon of transsexuality: transsexuals’ sex and gender simply don’t match.

Along with psychologists like Stoller, feminists found it useful to distinguish sex and gender. This enabled them to argue that many differences between women and men were socially produced and, therefore, changeable. Gayle Rubin (for instance) uses the phrase ‘sex/gender system’ in order to describe “a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention” (1975, 165). Rubin employed this system to articulate that “part of social life which is the locus of the oppression of women” (1975, 159) describing gender as the “socially imposed division of the sexes” (1975, 179). Rubin’s thought was that although biological differences are fixed, gender differences are the oppressive results of social interventions that dictate how women and men should behave. Women are oppressed as women and “by having to be women” (Rubin 1975, 204). However, since gender is social, it is thought to be mutable and alterable by political and social reform that would ultimately bring an end to women’s subordination. Feminism should aim to create a “genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love” (Rubin 1975, 204).

In some earlier interpretations, like Rubin’s, sex and gender were thought to complement one another. The slogan ‘Gender is the social interpretation of sex’ captures this view. Nicholson calls this ‘the coat-rack view’ of gender: our sexed bodies are like coat racks and “provide the site upon which gender [is] constructed” (1994, 81). Gender conceived of as masculinity and femininity is superimposed upon the ‘coat-rack’ of sex as each society imposes on sexed bodies their cultural conceptions of how males and females should behave. This socially constructs gender differences – or the amount of femininity/masculinity of a person – upon our sexed bodies. That is, according to this interpretation, all humans are either male or female; their sex is fixed. But cultures interpret sexed bodies differently and project different norms on those bodies thereby creating feminine and masculine persons. Distinguishing sex and gender, however, also enables the two to come apart: they are separable in that one can be sexed male and yet be gendered a woman, or vice versa (Haslanger 2000b; Stoljar 1995).

So, this group of feminist arguments against biological determinism suggested that gender differences result from cultural practices and social expectations. Nowadays it is more common to denote this by saying that gender is socially constructed. This means that genders (women and men) and gendered traits (like being nurturing or ambitious) are the “intended or unintended product[s] of a social practice” (Haslanger 1995, 97). But which social practices construct gender, what social construction is and what being of a certain gender amounts to are major feminist controversies. There is no consensus on these issues. (See the entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism for more on different ways to understand gender.)

2. Gender as socially constructed

One way to interpret Beauvoir’s claim that one is not born but rather becomes a woman is to take it as a claim about gender socialisation: females become women through a process whereby they acquire feminine traits and learn feminine behaviour. Masculinity and femininity are thought to be products of nurture or how individuals are brought up. They are causally constructed (Haslanger 1995, 98): social forces either have a causal role in bringing gendered individuals into existence or (to some substantial sense) shape the way we are qua women and men. And the mechanism of construction is social learning. For instance, Kate Millett takes gender differences to have “essentially cultural, rather than biological bases” that result from differential treatment (1971, 28–9). For her, gender is “the sum total of the parents’, the peers’, and the culture’s notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture, and expression” (Millett 1971, 31). Feminine and masculine gender-norms, however, are problematic in that gendered behaviour conveniently fits with and reinforces women’s subordination so that women are socialised into subordinate social roles: they learn to be passive, ignorant, docile, emotional helpmeets for men (Millett 1971, 26). However, since these roles are simply learned, we can create more equal societies by ‘unlearning’ social roles. That is, feminists should aim to diminish the influence of socialisation.

Social learning theorists hold that a huge array of different influences socialise us as women and men. This being the case, it is extremely difficult to counter gender socialisation. For instance, parents often unconsciously treat their female and male children differently. When parents have been asked to describe their 24- hour old infants, they have done so using gender-stereotypic language: boys are describes as strong, alert and coordinated and girls as tiny, soft and delicate. Parents’ treatment of their infants further reflects these descriptions whether they are aware of this or not (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 32). Some socialisation is more overt: children are often dressed in gender stereotypical clothes and colours (boys are dressed in blue, girls in pink) and parents tend to buy their children gender stereotypical toys. They also (intentionally or not) tend to reinforce certain ‘appropriate’ behaviours. While the precise form of gender socialization has changed since the onset of second-wave feminism, even today girls are discouraged from playing sports like football or from playing ‘rough and tumble’ games and are more likely than boys to be given dolls or cooking toys to play with; boys are told not to ‘cry like a baby’ and are more likely to be given masculine toys like trucks and guns (for more, see Kimmel 2000, 122–126). [ 1 ]

According to social learning theorists, children are also influenced by what they observe in the world around them. This, again, makes countering gender socialisation difficult. For one, children’s books have portrayed males and females in blatantly stereotypical ways: for instance, males as adventurers and leaders, and females as helpers and followers. One way to address gender stereotyping in children’s books has been to portray females in independent roles and males as non-aggressive and nurturing (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 35). Some publishers have attempted an alternative approach by making their characters, for instance, gender-neutral animals or genderless imaginary creatures (like TV’s Teletubbies). However, parents reading books with gender-neutral or genderless characters often undermine the publishers’ efforts by reading them to their children in ways that depict the characters as either feminine or masculine. According to Renzetti and Curran, parents labelled the overwhelming majority of gender-neutral characters masculine whereas those characters that fit feminine gender stereotypes (for instance, by being helpful and caring) were labelled feminine (1992, 35). Socialising influences like these are still thought to send implicit messages regarding how females and males should act and are expected to act shaping us into feminine and masculine persons.

Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices. In particular, gendered personalities develop because women tend to be the primary caretakers of small children. Chodorow holds that because mothers (or other prominent females) tend to care for infants, infant male and female psychic development differs. Crudely put: the mother-daughter relationship differs from the mother-son relationship because mothers are more likely to identify with their daughters than their sons. This unconsciously prompts the mother to encourage her son to psychologically individuate himself from her thereby prompting him to develop well defined and rigid ego boundaries. However, the mother unconsciously discourages the daughter from individuating herself thereby prompting the daughter to develop flexible and blurry ego boundaries. Childhood gender socialisation further builds on and reinforces these unconsciously developed ego boundaries finally producing feminine and masculine persons (1995, 202–206). This perspective has its roots in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, although Chodorow’s approach differs in many ways from Freud’s.

Gendered personalities are supposedly manifested in common gender stereotypical behaviour. Take emotional dependency. Women are stereotypically more emotional and emotionally dependent upon others around them, supposedly finding it difficult to distinguish their own interests and wellbeing from the interests and wellbeing of their children and partners. This is said to be because of their blurry and (somewhat) confused ego boundaries: women find it hard to distinguish their own needs from the needs of those around them because they cannot sufficiently individuate themselves from those close to them. By contrast, men are stereotypically emotionally detached, preferring a career where dispassionate and distanced thinking are virtues. These traits are said to result from men’s well-defined ego boundaries that enable them to prioritise their own needs and interests sometimes at the expense of others’ needs and interests.

Chodorow thinks that these gender differences should and can be changed. Feminine and masculine personalities play a crucial role in women’s oppression since they make females overly attentive to the needs of others and males emotionally deficient. In order to correct the situation, both male and female parents should be equally involved in parenting (Chodorow 1995, 214). This would help in ensuring that children develop sufficiently individuated senses of selves without becoming overly detached, which in turn helps to eradicate common gender stereotypical behaviours.

Catharine MacKinnon develops her theory of gender as a theory of sexuality. Very roughly: the social meaning of sex (gender) is created by sexual objectification of women whereby women are viewed and treated as objects for satisfying men’s desires (MacKinnon 1989). Masculinity is defined as sexual dominance, femininity as sexual submissiveness: genders are “created through the eroticization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex” (MacKinnon 1989, 113). For MacKinnon, gender is constitutively constructed : in defining genders (or masculinity and femininity) we must make reference to social factors (see Haslanger 1995, 98). In particular, we must make reference to the position one occupies in the sexualised dominance/submission dynamic: men occupy the sexually dominant position, women the sexually submissive one. As a result, genders are by definition hierarchical and this hierarchy is fundamentally tied to sexualised power relations. The notion of ‘gender equality’, then, does not make sense to MacKinnon. If sexuality ceased to be a manifestation of dominance, hierarchical genders (that are defined in terms of sexuality) would cease to exist.

So, gender difference for MacKinnon is not a matter of having a particular psychological orientation or behavioural pattern; rather, it is a function of sexuality that is hierarchal in patriarchal societies. This is not to say that men are naturally disposed to sexually objectify women or that women are naturally submissive. Instead, male and female sexualities are socially conditioned: men have been conditioned to find women’s subordination sexy and women have been conditioned to find a particular male version of female sexuality as erotic – one in which it is erotic to be sexually submissive. For MacKinnon, both female and male sexual desires are defined from a male point of view that is conditioned by pornography (MacKinnon 1989, chapter 7). Bluntly put: pornography portrays a false picture of ‘what women want’ suggesting that women in actual fact are and want to be submissive. This conditions men’s sexuality so that they view women’s submission as sexy. And male dominance enforces this male version of sexuality onto women, sometimes by force. MacKinnon’s thought is not that male dominance is a result of social learning (see 2.1.); rather, socialization is an expression of power. That is, socialized differences in masculine and feminine traits, behaviour, and roles are not responsible for power inequalities. Females and males (roughly put) are socialised differently because there are underlying power inequalities. As MacKinnon puts it, ‘dominance’ (power relations) is prior to ‘difference’ (traits, behaviour and roles) (see, MacKinnon 1989, chapter 12). MacKinnon, then, sees legal restrictions on pornography as paramount to ending women’s subordinate status that stems from their gender.

3. Problems with the sex/gender distinction

3.1 is gender uniform.

The positions outlined above share an underlying metaphysical perspective on gender: gender realism . [ 2 ] That is, women as a group are assumed to share some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines their gender and the possession of which makes some individuals women (as opposed to, say, men). All women are thought to differ from all men in this respect (or respects). For example, MacKinnon thought that being treated in sexually objectifying ways is the common condition that defines women’s gender and what women as women share. All women differ from all men in this respect. Further, pointing out females who are not sexually objectified does not provide a counterexample to MacKinnon’s view. Being sexually objectified is constitutive of being a woman; a female who escapes sexual objectification, then, would not count as a woman.

One may want to critique the three accounts outlined by rejecting the particular details of each account. (For instance, see Spelman [1988, chapter 4] for a critique of the details of Chodorow’s view.) A more thoroughgoing critique has been levelled at the general metaphysical perspective of gender realism that underlies these positions. It has come under sustained attack on two grounds: first, that it fails to take into account racial, cultural and class differences between women (particularity argument); second, that it posits a normative ideal of womanhood (normativity argument).

Elizabeth Spelman (1988) has influentially argued against gender realism with her particularity argument. Roughly: gender realists mistakenly assume that gender is constructed independently of race, class, ethnicity and nationality. If gender were separable from, for example, race and class in this manner, all women would experience womanhood in the same way. And this is clearly false. For instance, Harris (1993) and Stone (2007) criticise MacKinnon’s view, that sexual objectification is the common condition that defines women’s gender, for failing to take into account differences in women’s backgrounds that shape their sexuality. The history of racist oppression illustrates that during slavery black women were ‘hypersexualised’ and thought to be always sexually available whereas white women were thought to be pure and sexually virtuous. In fact, the rape of a black woman was thought to be impossible (Harris 1993). So, (the argument goes) sexual objectification cannot serve as the common condition for womanhood since it varies considerably depending on one’s race and class. [ 3 ]

For Spelman, the perspective of ‘white solipsism’ underlies gender realists’ mistake. They assumed that all women share some “golden nugget of womanness” (Spelman 1988, 159) and that the features constitutive of such a nugget are the same for all women regardless of their particular cultural backgrounds. Next, white Western middle-class feminists accounted for the shared features simply by reflecting on the cultural features that condition their gender as women thus supposing that “the womanness underneath the Black woman’s skin is a white woman’s, and deep down inside the Latina woman is an Anglo woman waiting to burst through an obscuring cultural shroud” (Spelman 1988, 13). In so doing, Spelman claims, white middle-class Western feminists passed off their particular view of gender as “a metaphysical truth” (1988, 180) thereby privileging some women while marginalising others. In failing to see the importance of race and class in gender construction, white middle-class Western feminists conflated “the condition of one group of women with the condition of all” (Spelman 1988, 3).

Betty Friedan’s (1963) well-known work is a case in point of white solipsism. [ 4 ] Friedan saw domesticity as the main vehicle of gender oppression and called upon women in general to find jobs outside the home. But she failed to realize that women from less privileged backgrounds, often poor and non-white, already worked outside the home to support their families. Friedan’s suggestion, then, was applicable only to a particular sub-group of women (white middle-class Western housewives). But it was mistakenly taken to apply to all women’s lives — a mistake that was generated by Friedan’s failure to take women’s racial and class differences into account (hooks 2000, 1–3).

Spelman further holds that since social conditioning creates femininity and societies (and sub-groups) that condition it differ from one another, femininity must be differently conditioned in different societies. For her, “females become not simply women but particular kinds of women” (Spelman 1988, 113): white working-class women, black middle-class women, poor Jewish women, wealthy aristocratic European women, and so on.

This line of thought has been extremely influential in feminist philosophy. For instance, Young holds that Spelman has definitively shown that gender realism is untenable (1997, 13). Mikkola (2006) argues that this isn’t so. The arguments Spelman makes do not undermine the idea that there is some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines women’s gender; they simply point out that some particular ways of cashing out what defines womanhood are misguided. So, although Spelman is right to reject those accounts that falsely take the feature that conditions white middle-class Western feminists’ gender to condition women’s gender in general, this leaves open the possibility that women qua women do share something that defines their gender. (See also Haslanger [2000a] for a discussion of why gender realism is not necessarily untenable, and Stoljar [2011] for a discussion of Mikkola’s critique of Spelman.)

Judith Butler critiques the sex/gender distinction on two grounds. They critique gender realism with their normativity argument (1999 [original 1990], chapter 1); they also hold that the sex/gender distinction is unintelligible (this will be discussed in section 3.3.). Butler’s normativity argument is not straightforwardly directed at the metaphysical perspective of gender realism, but rather at its political counterpart: identity politics. This is a form of political mobilization based on membership in some group (e.g. racial, ethnic, cultural, gender) and group membership is thought to be delimited by some common experiences, conditions or features that define the group (Heyes 2000, 58; see also the entry on Identity Politics ). Feminist identity politics, then, presupposes gender realism in that feminist politics is said to be mobilized around women as a group (or category) where membership in this group is fixed by some condition, experience or feature that women supposedly share and that defines their gender.

Butler’s normativity argument makes two claims. The first is akin to Spelman’s particularity argument: unitary gender notions fail to take differences amongst women into account thus failing to recognise “the multiplicity of cultural, social, and political intersections in which the concrete array of ‘women’ are constructed” (Butler 1999, 19–20). In their attempt to undercut biologically deterministic ways of defining what it means to be a woman, feminists inadvertently created new socially constructed accounts of supposedly shared femininity. Butler’s second claim is that such false gender realist accounts are normative. That is, in their attempt to fix feminism’s subject matter, feminists unwittingly defined the term ‘woman’ in a way that implies there is some correct way to be gendered a woman (Butler 1999, 5). That the definition of the term ‘woman’ is fixed supposedly “operates as a policing force which generates and legitimizes certain practices, experiences, etc., and curtails and delegitimizes others” (Nicholson 1998, 293). Following this line of thought, one could say that, for instance, Chodorow’s view of gender suggests that ‘real’ women have feminine personalities and that these are the women feminism should be concerned about. If one does not exhibit a distinctly feminine personality, the implication is that one is not ‘really’ a member of women’s category nor does one properly qualify for feminist political representation.

Butler’s second claim is based on their view that“[i]dentity categories [like that of women] are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary” (Butler 1991, 160). That is, the mistake of those feminists Butler critiques was not that they provided the incorrect definition of ‘woman’. Rather, (the argument goes) their mistake was to attempt to define the term ‘woman’ at all. Butler’s view is that ‘woman’ can never be defined in a way that does not prescribe some “unspoken normative requirements” (like having a feminine personality) that women should conform to (Butler 1999, 9). Butler takes this to be a feature of terms like ‘woman’ that purport to pick out (what they call) ‘identity categories’. They seem to assume that ‘woman’ can never be used in a non-ideological way (Moi 1999, 43) and that it will always encode conditions that are not satisfied by everyone we think of as women. Some explanation for this comes from Butler’s view that all processes of drawing categorical distinctions involve evaluative and normative commitments; these in turn involve the exercise of power and reflect the conditions of those who are socially powerful (Witt 1995).

In order to better understand Butler’s critique, consider their account of gender performativity. For them, standard feminist accounts take gendered individuals to have some essential properties qua gendered individuals or a gender core by virtue of which one is either a man or a woman. This view assumes that women and men, qua women and men, are bearers of various essential and accidental attributes where the former secure gendered persons’ persistence through time as so gendered. But according to Butler this view is false: (i) there are no such essential properties, and (ii) gender is an illusion maintained by prevalent power structures. First, feminists are said to think that genders are socially constructed in that they have the following essential attributes (Butler 1999, 24): women are females with feminine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at men; men are males with masculine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at women. These are the attributes necessary for gendered individuals and those that enable women and men to persist through time as women and men. Individuals have “intelligible genders” (Butler 1999, 23) if they exhibit this sequence of traits in a coherent manner (where sexual desire follows from sexual orientation that in turn follows from feminine/ masculine behaviours thought to follow from biological sex). Social forces in general deem individuals who exhibit in coherent gender sequences (like lesbians) to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ and they actively discourage such sequencing of traits, for instance, via name-calling and overt homophobic discrimination. Think back to what was said above: having a certain conception of what women are like that mirrors the conditions of socially powerful (white, middle-class, heterosexual, Western) women functions to marginalize and police those who do not fit this conception.

These gender cores, supposedly encoding the above traits, however, are nothing more than illusions created by ideals and practices that seek to render gender uniform through heterosexism, the view that heterosexuality is natural and homosexuality is deviant (Butler 1999, 42). Gender cores are constructed as if they somehow naturally belong to women and men thereby creating gender dimorphism or the belief that one must be either a masculine male or a feminine female. But gender dimorphism only serves a heterosexist social order by implying that since women and men are sharply opposed, it is natural to sexually desire the opposite sex or gender.

Further, being feminine and desiring men (for instance) are standardly assumed to be expressions of one’s gender as a woman. Butler denies this and holds that gender is really performative. It is not “a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is … instituted … through a stylized repetition of [habitual] acts ” (Butler 1999, 179): through wearing certain gender-coded clothing, walking and sitting in certain gender-coded ways, styling one’s hair in gender-coded manner and so on. Gender is not something one is, it is something one does; it is a sequence of acts, a doing rather than a being. And repeatedly engaging in ‘feminising’ and ‘masculinising’ acts congeals gender thereby making people falsely think of gender as something they naturally are . Gender only comes into being through these gendering acts: a female who has sex with men does not express her gender as a woman. This activity (amongst others) makes her gendered a woman.

The constitutive acts that gender individuals create genders as “compelling illusion[s]” (Butler 1990, 271). Our gendered classification scheme is a strong pragmatic construction : social factors wholly determine our use of the scheme and the scheme fails to represent accurately any ‘facts of the matter’ (Haslanger 1995, 100). People think that there are true and real genders, and those deemed to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ are not socially sanctioned. But, genders are true and real only to the extent that they are performed (Butler 1990, 278–9). It does not make sense, then, to say of a male-to-female trans person that s/he is really a man who only appears to be a woman. Instead, males dressing up and acting in ways that are associated with femininity “show that [as Butler suggests] ‘being’ feminine is just a matter of doing certain activities” (Stone 2007, 64). As a result, the trans person’s gender is just as real or true as anyone else’s who is a ‘traditionally’ feminine female or masculine male (Butler 1990, 278). [ 5 ] Without heterosexism that compels people to engage in certain gendering acts, there would not be any genders at all. And ultimately the aim should be to abolish norms that compel people to act in these gendering ways.

For Butler, given that gender is performative, the appropriate response to feminist identity politics involves two things. First, feminists should understand ‘woman’ as open-ended and “a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or end … it is open to intervention and resignification” (Butler 1999, 43). That is, feminists should not try to define ‘woman’ at all. Second, the category of women “ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics” (Butler 1999, 9). Rather, feminists should focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement.

Many people, including many feminists, have ordinarily taken sex ascriptions to be solely a matter of biology with no social or cultural dimension. It is commonplace to think that there are only two sexes and that biological sex classifications are utterly unproblematic. By contrast, some feminists have argued that sex classifications are not unproblematic and that they are not solely a matter of biology. In order to make sense of this, it is helpful to distinguish object- and idea-construction (see Haslanger 2003b for more): social forces can be said to construct certain kinds of objects (e.g. sexed bodies or gendered individuals) and certain kinds of ideas (e.g. sex or gender concepts). First, take the object-construction of sexed bodies. Secondary sex characteristics, or the physiological and biological features commonly associated with males and females, are affected by social practices. In some societies, females’ lower social status has meant that they have been fed less and so, the lack of nutrition has had the effect of making them smaller in size (Jaggar 1983, 37). Uniformity in muscular shape, size and strength within sex categories is not caused entirely by biological factors, but depends heavily on exercise opportunities: if males and females were allowed the same exercise opportunities and equal encouragement to exercise, it is thought that bodily dimorphism would diminish (Fausto-Sterling 1993a, 218). A number of medical phenomena involving bones (like osteoporosis) have social causes directly related to expectations about gender, women’s diet and their exercise opportunities (Fausto-Sterling 2005). These examples suggest that physiological features thought to be sex-specific traits not affected by social and cultural factors are, after all, to some extent products of social conditioning. Social conditioning, then, shapes our biology.

Second, take the idea-construction of sex concepts. Our concept of sex is said to be a product of social forces in the sense that what counts as sex is shaped by social meanings. Standardly, those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries that produce large egg cells, female genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘female’ hormones, and other secondary sex characteristics (relatively small body size, less body hair) count as biologically female. Those with XY-chromosomes, testes that produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘male’ hormones and other secondary sex traits (relatively large body size, significant amounts of body hair) count as male. This understanding is fairly recent. The prevalent scientific view from Ancient Greeks until the late 18 th century, did not consider female and male sexes to be distinct categories with specific traits; instead, a ‘one-sex model’ held that males and females were members of the same sex category. Females’ genitals were thought to be the same as males’ but simply directed inside the body; ovaries and testes (for instance) were referred to by the same term and whether the term referred to the former or the latter was made clear by the context (Laqueur 1990, 4). It was not until the late 1700s that scientists began to think of female and male anatomies as radically different moving away from the ‘one-sex model’ of a single sex spectrum to the (nowadays prevalent) ‘two-sex model’ of sexual dimorphism. (For an alternative view, see King 2013.)

Fausto-Sterling has argued that this ‘two-sex model’ isn’t straightforward either (1993b; 2000a; 2000b). Based on a meta-study of empirical medical research, she estimates that 1.7% of population fail to neatly fall within the usual sex classifications possessing various combinations of different sex characteristics (Fausto-Sterling 2000a, 20). In her earlier work, she claimed that intersex individuals make up (at least) three further sex classes: ‘herms’ who possess one testis and one ovary; ‘merms’ who possess testes, some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries; and ‘ferms’ who have ovaries, some aspects of male genitalia but no testes (Fausto-Sterling 1993b, 21). (In her [2000a], Fausto-Sterling notes that these labels were put forward tongue–in–cheek.) Recognition of intersex people suggests that feminists (and society at large) are wrong to think that humans are either female or male.

To illustrate further the idea-construction of sex, consider the case of the athlete Maria Patiño. Patiño has female genitalia, has always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others. However, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from competing in women’s sports (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, 1–3). Patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex. Patiño successfully fought to be recognised as a female athlete arguing that her chromosomes alone were not sufficient to not make her female. Intersex people, like Patiño, illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically or scientifically. Deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are influenced by social factors.

Insofar as our cultural conceptions affect our understandings of sex, feminists must be much more careful about sex classifications and rethink what sex amounts to (Stone 2007, chapter 1). More specifically, intersex people illustrate that sex traits associated with females and males need not always go together and that individuals can have some mixture of these traits. This suggests to Stone that sex is a cluster concept: it is sufficient to satisfy enough of the sex features that tend to cluster together in order to count as being of a particular sex. But, one need not satisfy all of those features or some arbitrarily chosen supposedly necessary sex feature, like chromosomes (Stone 2007, 44). This makes sex a matter of degree and sex classifications should take place on a spectrum: one can be more or less female/male but there is no sharp distinction between the two. Further, intersex people (along with trans people) are located at the centre of the sex spectrum and in many cases their sex will be indeterminate (Stone 2007).

More recently, Ayala and Vasilyeva (2015) have argued for an inclusive and extended conception of sex: just as certain tools can be seen to extend our minds beyond the limits of our brains (e.g. white canes), other tools (like dildos) can extend our sex beyond our bodily boundaries. This view aims to motivate the idea that what counts as sex should not be determined by looking inwards at genitalia or other anatomical features. In a different vein, Ásta (2018) argues that sex is a conferred social property. This follows her more general conferralist framework to analyse all social properties: properties that are conferred by others thereby generating a social status that consists in contextually specific constraints and enablements on individual behaviour. The general schema for conferred properties is as follows (Ásta 2018, 8):

Conferred property: what property is conferred. Who: who the subjects are. What: what attitude, state, or action of the subjects matter. When: under what conditions the conferral takes place. Base property: what the subjects are attempting to track (consciously or not), if anything.

With being of a certain sex (e.g. male, female) in mind, Ásta holds that it is a conferred property that merely aims to track physical features. Hence sex is a social – or in fact, an institutional – property rather than a natural one. The schema for sex goes as follows (72):

Conferred property: being female, male. Who: legal authorities, drawing on the expert opinion of doctors, other medical personnel. What: “the recording of a sex in official documents ... The judgment of the doctors (and others) as to what sex role might be the most fitting, given the biological characteristics present.” When: at birth or after surgery/ hormonal treatment. Base property: “the aim is to track as many sex-stereotypical characteristics as possible, and doctors perform surgery in cases where that might help bring the physical characteristics more in line with the stereotype of male and female.”

This (among other things) offers a debunking analysis of sex: it may appear to be a natural property, but on the conferralist analysis is better understood as a conferred legal status. Ásta holds that gender too is a conferred property, but contra the discussion in the following section, she does not think that this collapses the distinction between sex and gender: sex and gender are differently conferred albeit both satisfying the general schema noted above. Nonetheless, on the conferralist framework what underlies both sex and gender is the idea of social construction as social significance: sex-stereotypical characteristics are taken to be socially significant context specifically, whereby they become the basis for conferring sex onto individuals and this brings with it various constraints and enablements on individuals and their behaviour. This fits object- and idea-constructions introduced above, although offers a different general framework to analyse the matter at hand.

In addition to arguing against identity politics and for gender performativity, Butler holds that distinguishing biological sex from social gender is unintelligible. For them, both are socially constructed:

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. (Butler 1999, 10–11)

(Butler is not alone in claiming that there are no tenable distinctions between nature/culture, biology/construction and sex/gender. See also: Antony 1998; Gatens 1996; Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999.) Butler makes two different claims in the passage cited: that sex is a social construction, and that sex is gender. To unpack their view, consider the two claims in turn. First, the idea that sex is a social construct, for Butler, boils down to the view that our sexed bodies are also performative and, so, they have “no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute [their] reality” (1999, 173). Prima facie , this implausibly implies that female and male bodies do not have independent existence and that if gendering activities ceased, so would physical bodies. This is not Butler’s claim; rather, their position is that bodies viewed as the material foundations on which gender is constructed, are themselves constructed as if they provide such material foundations (Butler 1993). Cultural conceptions about gender figure in “the very apparatus of production whereby sexes themselves are established” (Butler 1999, 11).

For Butler, sexed bodies never exist outside social meanings and how we understand gender shapes how we understand sex (1999, 139). Sexed bodies are not empty matter on which gender is constructed and sex categories are not picked out on the basis of objective features of the world. Instead, our sexed bodies are themselves discursively constructed : they are the way they are, at least to a substantial extent, because of what is attributed to sexed bodies and how they are classified (for discursive construction, see Haslanger 1995, 99). Sex assignment (calling someone female or male) is normative (Butler 1993, 1). [ 6 ] When the doctor calls a newly born infant a girl or a boy, s/he is not making a descriptive claim, but a normative one. In fact, the doctor is performing an illocutionary speech act (see the entry on Speech Acts ). In effect, the doctor’s utterance makes infants into girls or boys. We, then, engage in activities that make it seem as if sexes naturally come in two and that being female or male is an objective feature of the world, rather than being a consequence of certain constitutive acts (that is, rather than being performative). And this is what Butler means in saying that physical bodies never exist outside cultural and social meanings, and that sex is as socially constructed as gender. They do not deny that physical bodies exist. But, they take our understanding of this existence to be a product of social conditioning: social conditioning makes the existence of physical bodies intelligible to us by discursively constructing sexed bodies through certain constitutive acts. (For a helpful introduction to Butler’s views, see Salih 2002.)

For Butler, sex assignment is always in some sense oppressive. Again, this appears to be because of Butler’s general suspicion of classification: sex classification can never be merely descriptive but always has a normative element reflecting evaluative claims of those who are powerful. Conducting a feminist genealogy of the body (or examining why sexed bodies are thought to come naturally as female and male), then, should ground feminist practice (Butler 1993, 28–9). Feminists should examine and uncover ways in which social construction and certain acts that constitute sex shape our understandings of sexed bodies, what kinds of meanings bodies acquire and which practices and illocutionary speech acts ‘make’ our bodies into sexes. Doing so enables feminists to identity how sexed bodies are socially constructed in order to resist such construction.

However, given what was said above, it is far from obvious what we should make of Butler’s claim that sex “was always already gender” (1999, 11). Stone (2007) takes this to mean that sex is gender but goes on to question it arguing that the social construction of both sex and gender does not make sex identical to gender. According to Stone, it would be more accurate for Butler to say that claims about sex imply gender norms. That is, many claims about sex traits (like ‘females are physically weaker than males’) actually carry implications about how women and men are expected to behave. To some extent the claim describes certain facts. But, it also implies that females are not expected to do much heavy lifting and that they would probably not be good at it. So, claims about sex are not identical to claims about gender; rather, they imply claims about gender norms (Stone 2007, 70).

Some feminists hold that the sex/gender distinction is not useful. For a start, it is thought to reflect politically problematic dualistic thinking that undercuts feminist aims: the distinction is taken to reflect and replicate androcentric oppositions between (for instance) mind/body, culture/nature and reason/emotion that have been used to justify women’s oppression (e.g. Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The thought is that in oppositions like these, one term is always superior to the other and that the devalued term is usually associated with women (Lloyd 1993). For instance, human subjectivity and agency are identified with the mind but since women are usually identified with their bodies, they are devalued as human subjects and agents. The opposition between mind and body is said to further map on to other distinctions, like reason/emotion, culture/nature, rational/irrational, where one side of each distinction is devalued (one’s bodily features are usually valued less that one’s mind, rationality is usually valued more than irrationality) and women are associated with the devalued terms: they are thought to be closer to bodily features and nature than men, to be irrational, emotional and so on. This is said to be evident (for instance) in job interviews. Men are treated as gender-neutral persons and not asked whether they are planning to take time off to have a family. By contrast, that women face such queries illustrates that they are associated more closely than men with bodily features to do with procreation (Prokhovnik 1999, 126). The opposition between mind and body, then, is thought to map onto the opposition between men and women.

Now, the mind/body dualism is also said to map onto the sex/gender distinction (Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The idea is that gender maps onto mind, sex onto body. Although not used by those endorsing this view, the basic idea can be summed by the slogan ‘Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs’: the implication is that, while sex is immutable, gender is something individuals have control over – it is something we can alter and change through individual choices. However, since women are said to be more closely associated with biological features (and so, to map onto the body side of the mind/body distinction) and men are treated as gender-neutral persons (mapping onto the mind side), the implication is that “man equals gender, which is associated with mind and choice, freedom from body, autonomy, and with the public real; while woman equals sex, associated with the body, reproduction, ‘natural’ rhythms and the private realm” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). This is said to render the sex/gender distinction inherently repressive and to drain it of any potential for emancipation: rather than facilitating gender role choice for women, it “actually functions to reinforce their association with body, sex, and involuntary ‘natural’ rhythms” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). Contrary to what feminists like Rubin argued, the sex/gender distinction cannot be used as a theoretical tool that dissociates conceptions of womanhood from biological and reproductive features.

Moi has further argued that the sex/gender distinction is useless given certain theoretical goals (1999, chapter 1). This is not to say that it is utterly worthless; according to Moi, the sex/gender distinction worked well to show that the historically prevalent biological determinism was false. However, for her, the distinction does no useful work “when it comes to producing a good theory of subjectivity” (1999, 6) and “a concrete, historical understanding of what it means to be a woman (or a man) in a given society” (1999, 4–5). That is, the 1960s distinction understood sex as fixed by biology without any cultural or historical dimensions. This understanding, however, ignores lived experiences and embodiment as aspects of womanhood (and manhood) by separating sex from gender and insisting that womanhood is to do with the latter. Rather, embodiment must be included in one’s theory that tries to figure out what it is to be a woman (or a man).

Mikkola (2011) argues that the sex/gender distinction, which underlies views like Rubin’s and MacKinnon’s, has certain unintuitive and undesirable ontological commitments that render the distinction politically unhelpful. First, claiming that gender is socially constructed implies that the existence of women and men is a mind-dependent matter. This suggests that we can do away with women and men simply by altering some social practices, conventions or conditions on which gender depends (whatever those are). However, ordinary social agents find this unintuitive given that (ordinarily) sex and gender are not distinguished. Second, claiming that gender is a product of oppressive social forces suggests that doing away with women and men should be feminism’s political goal. But this harbours ontologically undesirable commitments since many ordinary social agents view their gender to be a source of positive value. So, feminism seems to want to do away with something that should not be done away with, which is unlikely to motivate social agents to act in ways that aim at gender justice. Given these problems, Mikkola argues that feminists should give up the distinction on practical political grounds.

Tomas Bogardus (2020) has argued in an even more radical sense against the sex/gender distinction: as things stand, he holds, feminist philosophers have merely assumed and asserted that the distinction exists, instead of having offered good arguments for the distinction. In other words, feminist philosophers allegedly have yet to offer good reasons to think that ‘woman’ does not simply pick out adult human females. Alex Byrne (2020) argues in a similar vein: the term ‘woman’ does not pick out a social kind as feminist philosophers have “assumed”. Instead, “women are adult human females–nothing more, and nothing less” (2020, 3801). Byrne offers six considerations to ground this AHF (adult, human, female) conception.

• It reproduces the dictionary definition of ‘woman’.
• One would expect English to have a word that picks out the category adult human female, and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.
• AHF explains how we sometimes know that an individual is a woman, despite knowing nothing else relevant about her other than the fact that she is an adult human female.
• AHF stands or falls with the analogous thesis for girls, which can be supported independently.
• AHF predicts the correct verdict in cases of gender role reversal.
• AHF is supported by the fact that ‘woman’ and ‘female’ are often appropriately used as stylistic variants of each other, even in hyperintensional contexts.

Robin Dembroff (2021) responds to Byrne and highlights various problems with Byrne’s argument. First, framing: Byrne assumes from the start that gender terms like ‘woman’ have a single invariant meaning thereby failing to discuss the possibility of terms like ‘woman’ having multiple meanings – something that is a familiar claim made by feminist theorists from various disciplines. Moreover, Byrne (according to Dembroff) assumes without argument that there is a single, universal category of woman – again, something that has been extensively discussed and critiqued by feminist philosophers and theorists. Second, Byrne’s conception of the ‘dominant’ meaning of woman is said to be cherry-picked and it ignores a wealth of contexts outside of philosophy (like the media and the law) where ‘woman’ has a meaning other than AHF . Third, Byrne’s own distinction between biological and social categories fails to establish what he intended to establish: namely, that ‘woman’ picks out a biological rather than a social kind. Hence, Dembroff holds, Byrne’s case fails by its own lights. Byrne (2021) responds to Dembroff’s critique.

Others such as ‘gender critical feminists’ also hold views about the sex/gender distinction in a spirit similar to Bogardus and Byrne. For example, Holly Lawford-Smith (2021) takes the prevalent sex/gender distinction, where ‘female’/‘male’ are used as sex terms and ‘woman’/’man’ as gender terms, not to be helpful. Instead, she takes all of these to be sex terms and holds that (the norms of) femininity/masculinity refer to gender normativity. Because much of the gender critical feminists’ discussion that philosophers have engaged in has taken place in social media, public fora, and other sources outside academic philosophy, this entry will not focus on these discussions.

4. Women as a group

The various critiques of the sex/gender distinction have called into question the viability of the category women . Feminism is the movement to end the oppression women as a group face. But, how should the category of women be understood if feminists accept the above arguments that gender construction is not uniform, that a sharp distinction between biological sex and social gender is false or (at least) not useful, and that various features associated with women play a role in what it is to be a woman, none of which are individually necessary and jointly sufficient (like a variety of social roles, positions, behaviours, traits, bodily features and experiences)? Feminists must be able to address cultural and social differences in gender construction if feminism is to be a genuinely inclusive movement and be careful not to posit commonalities that mask important ways in which women qua women differ. These concerns (among others) have generated a situation where (as Linda Alcoff puts it) feminists aim to speak and make political demands in the name of women, at the same time rejecting the idea that there is a unified category of women (2006, 152). If feminist critiques of the category women are successful, then what (if anything) binds women together, what is it to be a woman, and what kinds of demands can feminists make on behalf of women?

Many have found the fragmentation of the category of women problematic for political reasons (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Bach 2012; Benhabib 1992; Frye 1996; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Martin 1994; Mikkola 2007; Stoljar 1995; Stone 2004; Tanesini 1996; Young 1997; Zack 2005). For instance, Young holds that accounts like Spelman’s reduce the category of women to a gerrymandered collection of individuals with nothing to bind them together (1997, 20). Black women differ from white women but members of both groups also differ from one another with respect to nationality, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and economic position; that is, wealthy white women differ from working-class white women due to their economic and class positions. These sub-groups are themselves diverse: for instance, some working-class white women in Northern Ireland are starkly divided along religious lines. So if we accept Spelman’s position, we risk ending up with individual women and nothing to bind them together. And this is problematic: in order to respond to oppression of women in general, feminists must understand them as a category in some sense. Young writes that without doing so “it is not possible to conceptualize oppression as a systematic, structured, institutional process” (1997, 17). Some, then, take the articulation of an inclusive category of women to be the prerequisite for effective feminist politics and a rich literature has emerged that aims to conceptualise women as a group or a collective (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Ásta 2011; Frye 1996; 2011; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Stoljar 1995, 2011; Young 1997; Zack 2005). Articulations of this category can be divided into those that are: (a) gender nominalist — positions that deny there is something women qua women share and that seek to unify women’s social kind by appealing to something external to women; and (b) gender realist — positions that take there to be something women qua women share (although these realist positions differ significantly from those outlined in Section 2). Below we will review some influential gender nominalist and gender realist positions. Before doing so, it is worth noting that not everyone is convinced that attempts to articulate an inclusive category of women can succeed or that worries about what it is to be a woman are in need of being resolved. Mikkola (2016) argues that feminist politics need not rely on overcoming (what she calls) the ‘gender controversy’: that feminists must settle the meaning of gender concepts and articulate a way to ground women’s social kind membership. As she sees it, disputes about ‘what it is to be a woman’ have become theoretically bankrupt and intractable, which has generated an analytical impasse that looks unsurpassable. Instead, Mikkola argues for giving up the quest, which in any case in her view poses no serious political obstacles.

Elizabeth Barnes (2020) responds to the need to offer an inclusive conception of gender somewhat differently, although she endorses the need for feminism to be inclusive particularly of trans people. Barnes holds that typically philosophical theories of gender aim to offer an account of what it is to be a woman (or man, genderqueer, etc.), where such an account is presumed to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for being a woman or an account of our gender terms’ extensions. But, she holds, it is a mistake to expect our theories of gender to do so. For Barnes, a project that offers a metaphysics of gender “should be understood as the project of theorizing what it is —if anything— about the social world that ultimately explains gender” (2020, 706). This project is not equivalent to one that aims to define gender terms or elucidate the application conditions for natural language gender terms though.

4.1 Gender nominalism

Iris Young argues that unless there is “some sense in which ‘woman’ is the name of a social collective [that feminism represents], there is nothing specific to feminist politics” (1997, 13). In order to make the category women intelligible, she argues that women make up a series: a particular kind of social collective “whose members are unified passively by the objects their actions are oriented around and/or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the other” (Young 1997, 23). A series is distinct from a group in that, whereas members of groups are thought to self-consciously share certain goals, projects, traits and/ or self-conceptions, members of series pursue their own individual ends without necessarily having anything at all in common. Young holds that women are not bound together by a shared feature or experience (or set of features and experiences) since she takes Spelman’s particularity argument to have established definitely that no such feature exists (1997, 13; see also: Frye 1996; Heyes 2000). Instead, women’s category is unified by certain practico-inert realities or the ways in which women’s lives and their actions are oriented around certain objects and everyday realities (Young 1997, 23–4). For example, bus commuters make up a series unified through their individual actions being organised around the same practico-inert objects of the bus and the practice of public transport. Women make up a series unified through women’s lives and actions being organised around certain practico-inert objects and realities that position them as women .

Young identifies two broad groups of such practico-inert objects and realities. First, phenomena associated with female bodies (physical facts), biological processes that take place in female bodies (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) and social rules associated with these biological processes (social rules of menstruation, for instance). Second, gender-coded objects and practices: pronouns, verbal and visual representations of gender, gender-coded artefacts and social spaces, clothes, cosmetics, tools and furniture. So, women make up a series since their lives and actions are organised around female bodies and certain gender-coded objects. Their series is bound together passively and the unity is “not one that arises from the individuals called women” (Young 1997, 32).

Although Young’s proposal purports to be a response to Spelman’s worries, Stone has questioned whether it is, after all, susceptible to the particularity argument: ultimately, on Young’s view, something women as women share (their practico-inert realities) binds them together (Stone 2004).

Natalie Stoljar holds that unless the category of women is unified, feminist action on behalf of women cannot be justified (1995, 282). Stoljar too is persuaded by the thought that women qua women do not share anything unitary. This prompts her to argue for resemblance nominalism. This is the view that a certain kind of resemblance relation holds between entities of a particular type (for more on resemblance nominalism, see Armstrong 1989, 39–58). Stoljar is not alone in arguing for resemblance relations to make sense of women as a category; others have also done so, usually appealing to Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ relations (Alcoff 1988; Green & Radford Curry 1991; Heyes 2000; Munro 2006). Stoljar relies more on Price’s resemblance nominalism whereby x is a member of some type F only if x resembles some paradigm or exemplar of F sufficiently closely (Price 1953, 20). For instance, the type of red entities is unified by some chosen red paradigms so that only those entities that sufficiently resemble the paradigms count as red. The type (or category) of women, then, is unified by some chosen woman paradigms so that those who sufficiently resemble the woman paradigms count as women (Stoljar 1995, 284).

Semantic considerations about the concept woman suggest to Stoljar that resemblance nominalism should be endorsed (Stoljar 2000, 28). It seems unlikely that the concept is applied on the basis of some single social feature all and only women possess. By contrast, woman is a cluster concept and our attributions of womanhood pick out “different arrangements of features in different individuals” (Stoljar 2000, 27). More specifically, they pick out the following clusters of features: (a) Female sex; (b) Phenomenological features: menstruation, female sexual experience, child-birth, breast-feeding, fear of walking on the streets at night or fear of rape; (c) Certain roles: wearing typically female clothing, being oppressed on the basis of one’s sex or undertaking care-work; (d) Gender attribution: “calling oneself a woman, being called a woman” (Stoljar 1995, 283–4). For Stoljar, attributions of womanhood are to do with a variety of traits and experiences: those that feminists have historically termed ‘gender traits’ (like social, behavioural, psychological traits) and those termed ‘sex traits’. Nonetheless, she holds that since the concept woman applies to (at least some) trans persons, one can be a woman without being female (Stoljar 1995, 282).

The cluster concept woman does not, however, straightforwardly provide the criterion for picking out the category of women. Rather, the four clusters of features that the concept picks out help single out woman paradigms that in turn help single out the category of women. First, any individual who possesses a feature from at least three of the four clusters mentioned will count as an exemplar of the category. For instance, an African-American with primary and secondary female sex characteristics, who describes herself as a woman and is oppressed on the basis of her sex, along with a white European hermaphrodite brought up ‘as a girl’, who engages in female roles and has female phenomenological features despite lacking female sex characteristics, will count as woman paradigms (Stoljar 1995, 284). [ 7 ] Second, any individual who resembles “any of the paradigms sufficiently closely (on Price’s account, as closely as [the paradigms] resemble each other) will be a member of the resemblance class ‘woman’” (Stoljar 1995, 284). That is, what delimits membership in the category of women is that one resembles sufficiently a woman paradigm.

4.2 Neo-gender realism

In a series of articles collected in her 2012 book, Sally Haslanger argues for a way to define the concept woman that is politically useful, serving as a tool in feminist fights against sexism, and that shows woman to be a social (not a biological) notion. More specifically, Haslanger argues that gender is a matter of occupying either a subordinate or a privileged social position. In some articles, Haslanger is arguing for a revisionary analysis of the concept woman (2000b; 2003a; 2003b). Elsewhere she suggests that her analysis may not be that revisionary after all (2005; 2006). Consider the former argument first. Haslanger’s analysis is, in her terms, ameliorative: it aims to elucidate which gender concepts best help feminists achieve their legitimate purposes thereby elucidating those concepts feminists should be using (Haslanger 2000b, 33). [ 8 ] Now, feminists need gender terminology in order to fight sexist injustices (Haslanger 2000b, 36). In particular, they need gender terms to identify, explain and talk about persistent social inequalities between males and females. Haslanger’s analysis of gender begins with the recognition that females and males differ in two respects: physically and in their social positions. Societies in general tend to “privilege individuals with male bodies” (Haslanger 2000b, 38) so that the social positions they subsequently occupy are better than the social positions of those with female bodies. And this generates persistent sexist injustices. With this in mind, Haslanger specifies how she understands genders:

S is a woman iff [by definition] S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction.

S is a man iff [by definition] S is systematically privileged along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a male’s biological role in reproduction. (2003a, 6–7)

These are constitutive of being a woman and a man: what makes calling S a woman apt, is that S is oppressed on sex-marked grounds; what makes calling S a man apt, is that S is privileged on sex-marked grounds.

Haslanger’s ameliorative analysis is counterintuitive in that females who are not sex-marked for oppression, do not count as women. At least arguably, the Queen of England is not oppressed on sex-marked grounds and so, would not count as a woman on Haslanger’s definition. And, similarly, all males who are not privileged would not count as men. This might suggest that Haslanger’s analysis should be rejected in that it does not capture what language users have in mind when applying gender terms. However, Haslanger argues that this is not a reason to reject the definitions, which she takes to be revisionary: they are not meant to capture our intuitive gender terms. In response, Mikkola (2009) has argued that revisionary analyses of gender concepts, like Haslanger’s, are both politically unhelpful and philosophically unnecessary.

Note also that Haslanger’s proposal is eliminativist: gender justice would eradicate gender, since it would abolish those sexist social structures responsible for sex-marked oppression and privilege. If sexist oppression were to cease, women and men would no longer exist (although there would still be males and females). Not all feminists endorse such an eliminativist view though. Stone holds that Haslanger does not leave any room for positively revaluing what it is to be a woman: since Haslanger defines woman in terms of subordination,

any woman who challenges her subordinate status must by definition be challenging her status as a woman, even if she does not intend to … positive change to our gender norms would involve getting rid of the (necessarily subordinate) feminine gender. (Stone 2007, 160)

But according to Stone this is not only undesirable – one should be able to challenge subordination without having to challenge one’s status as a woman. It is also false: “because norms of femininity can be and constantly are being revised, women can be women without thereby being subordinate” (Stone 2007, 162; Mikkola [2016] too argues that Haslanger’s eliminativism is troublesome).

Theodore Bach holds that Haslanger’s eliminativism is undesirable on other grounds, and that Haslanger’s position faces another more serious problem. Feminism faces the following worries (among others):

Representation problem : “if there is no real group of ‘women’, then it is incoherent to make moral claims and advance political policies on behalf of women” (Bach 2012, 234). Commonality problems : (1) There is no feature that all women cross-culturally and transhistorically share. (2) Delimiting women’s social kind with the help of some essential property privileges those who possess it, and marginalizes those who do not (Bach 2012, 235).

According to Bach, Haslanger’s strategy to resolve these problems appeals to ‘social objectivism’. First, we define women “according to a suitably abstract relational property” (Bach 2012, 236), which avoids the commonality problems. Second, Haslanger employs “an ontologically thin notion of ‘objectivity’” (Bach 2012, 236) that answers the representation problem. Haslanger’s solution (Bach holds) is specifically to argue that women make up an objective type because women are objectively similar to one another, and not simply classified together given our background conceptual schemes. Bach claims though that Haslanger’s account is not objective enough, and we should on political grounds “provide a stronger ontological characterization of the genders men and women according to which they are natural kinds with explanatory essences” (Bach 2012, 238). He thus proposes that women make up a natural kind with a historical essence:

The essential property of women, in virtue of which an individual is a member of the kind ‘women,’ is participation in a lineage of women. In order to exemplify this relational property, an individual must be a reproduction of ancestral women, in which case she must have undergone the ontogenetic processes through which a historical gender system replicates women. (Bach 2012, 271)

In short, one is not a woman due to shared surface properties with other women (like occupying a subordinate social position). Rather, one is a woman because one has the right history: one has undergone the ubiquitous ontogenetic process of gender socialization. Thinking about gender in this way supposedly provides a stronger kind unity than Haslanger’s that simply appeals to shared surface properties.

Not everyone agrees; Mikkola (2020) argues that Bach’s metaphysical picture has internal tensions that render it puzzling and that Bach’s metaphysics does not provide good responses to the commonality and presentation problems. The historically essentialist view also has anti-trans implications. After all, trans women who have not undergone female gender socialization won’t count as women on his view (Mikkola [2016, 2020] develops this line of critique in more detail). More worryingly, trans women will count as men contrary to their self-identification. Both Bettcher (2013) and Jenkins (2016) consider the importance of gender self-identification. Bettcher argues that there is more than one ‘correct’ way to understand womanhood: at the very least, the dominant (mainstream), and the resistant (trans) conceptions. Dominant views like that of Bach’s tend to erase trans people’s experiences and to marginalize trans women within feminist movements. Rather than trans women having to defend their self-identifying claims, these claims should be taken at face value right from the start. And so, Bettcher holds, “in analyzing the meaning of terms such as ‘woman,’ it is inappropriate to dismiss alternative ways in which those terms are actually used in trans subcultures; such usage needs to be taken into consideration as part of the analysis” (2013, 235).

Specifically with Haslanger in mind and in a similar vein, Jenkins (2016) discusses how Haslanger’s revisionary approach unduly excludes some trans women from women’s social kind. On Jenkins’s view, Haslanger’s ameliorative methodology in fact yields more than one satisfying target concept: one that “corresponds to Haslanger’s proposed concept and captures the sense of gender as an imposed social class”; another that “captures the sense of gender as a lived identity” (Jenkins 2016, 397). The latter of these allows us to include trans women into women’s social kind, who on Haslanger’s social class approach to gender would inappropriately have been excluded. (See Andler 2017 for the view that Jenkins’s purportedly inclusive conception of gender is still not fully inclusive. Jenkins 2018 responds to this charge and develops the notion of gender identity still further.)

In addition to her revisionary argument, Haslanger has suggested that her ameliorative analysis of woman may not be as revisionary as it first seems (2005, 2006). Although successful in their reference fixing, ordinary language users do not always know precisely what they are talking about. Our language use may be skewed by oppressive ideologies that can “mislead us about the content of our own thoughts” (Haslanger 2005, 12). Although her gender terminology is not intuitive, this could simply be because oppressive ideologies mislead us about the meanings of our gender terms. Our everyday gender terminology might mean something utterly different from what we think it means; and we could be entirely ignorant of this. Perhaps Haslanger’s analysis, then, has captured our everyday gender vocabulary revealing to us the terms that we actually employ: we may be applying ‘woman’ in our everyday language on the basis of sex-marked subordination whether we take ourselves to be doing so or not. If this is so, Haslanger’s gender terminology is not radically revisionist.

Saul (2006) argues that, despite it being possible that we unknowingly apply ‘woman’ on the basis of social subordination, it is extremely difficult to show that this is the case. This would require showing that the gender terminology we in fact employ is Haslanger’s proposed gender terminology. But discovering the grounds on which we apply everyday gender terms is extremely difficult precisely because they are applied in various and idiosyncratic ways (Saul 2006, 129). Haslanger, then, needs to do more in order to show that her analysis is non-revisionary.

Charlotte Witt (2011a; 2011b) argues for a particular sort of gender essentialism, which Witt terms ‘uniessentialism’. Her motivation and starting point is the following: many ordinary social agents report gender being essential to them and claim that they would be a different person were they of a different sex/gender. Uniessentialism attempts to understand and articulate this. However, Witt’s work departs in important respects from the earlier (so-called) essentialist or gender realist positions discussed in Section 2: Witt does not posit some essential property of womanhood of the kind discussed above, which failed to take women’s differences into account. Further, uniessentialism differs significantly from those position developed in response to the problem of how we should conceive of women’s social kind. It is not about solving the standard dispute between gender nominalists and gender realists, or about articulating some supposedly shared property that binds women together and provides a theoretical ground for feminist political solidarity. Rather, uniessentialism aims to make good the widely held belief that gender is constitutive of who we are. [ 9 ]

Uniessentialism is a sort of individual essentialism. Traditionally philosophers distinguish between kind and individual essentialisms: the former examines what binds members of a kind together and what do all members of some kind have in common qua members of that kind. The latter asks: what makes an individual the individual it is. We can further distinguish two sorts of individual essentialisms: Kripkean identity essentialism and Aristotelian uniessentialism. The former asks: what makes an individual that individual? The latter, however, asks a slightly different question: what explains the unity of individuals? What explains that an individual entity exists over and above the sum total of its constituent parts? (The standard feminist debate over gender nominalism and gender realism has largely been about kind essentialism. Being about individual essentialism, Witt’s uniessentialism departs in an important way from the standard debate.) From the two individual essentialisms, Witt endorses the Aristotelian one. On this view, certain functional essences have a unifying role: these essences are responsible for the fact that material parts constitute a new individual, rather than just a lump of stuff or a collection of particles. Witt’s example is of a house: the essential house-functional property (what the entity is for, what its purpose is) unifies the different material parts of a house so that there is a house, and not just a collection of house-constituting particles (2011a, 6). Gender (being a woman/a man) functions in a similar fashion and provides “the principle of normative unity” that organizes, unifies and determines the roles of social individuals (Witt 2011a, 73). Due to this, gender is a uniessential property of social individuals.

It is important to clarify the notions of gender and social individuality that Witt employs. First, gender is a social position that “cluster[s] around the engendering function … women conceive and bear … men beget” (Witt 2011a, 40). These are women and men’s socially mediated reproductive functions (Witt 2011a, 29) and they differ from the biological function of reproduction, which roughly corresponds to sex on the standard sex/gender distinction. Witt writes: “to be a woman is to be recognized to have a particular function in engendering, to be a man is to be recognized to have a different function in engendering” (2011a, 39). Second, Witt distinguishes persons (those who possess self-consciousness), human beings (those who are biologically human) and social individuals (those who occupy social positions synchronically and diachronically). These ontological categories are not equivalent in that they possess different persistence and identity conditions. Social individuals are bound by social normativity, human beings by biological normativity. These normativities differ in two respects: first, social norms differ from one culture to the next whereas biological norms do not; second, unlike biological normativity, social normativity requires “the recognition by others that an agent is both responsive to and evaluable under a social norm” (Witt 2011a, 19). Thus, being a social individual is not equivalent to being a human being. Further, Witt takes personhood to be defined in terms of intrinsic psychological states of self-awareness and self-consciousness. However, social individuality is defined in terms of the extrinsic feature of occupying a social position, which depends for its existence on a social world. So, the two are not equivalent: personhood is essentially about intrinsic features and could exist without a social world, whereas social individuality is essentially about extrinsic features that could not exist without a social world.

Witt’s gender essentialist argument crucially pertains to social individuals , not to persons or human beings: saying that persons or human beings are gendered would be a category mistake. But why is gender essential to social individuals? For Witt, social individuals are those who occupy positions in social reality. Further, “social positions have norms or social roles associated with them; a social role is what an individual who occupies a given social position is responsive to and evaluable under” (Witt 2011a, 59). However, qua social individuals, we occupy multiple social positions at once and over time: we can be women, mothers, immigrants, sisters, academics, wives, community organisers and team-sport coaches synchronically and diachronically. Now, the issue for Witt is what unifies these positions so that a social individual is constituted. After all, a bundle of social position occupancies does not make for an individual (just as a bundle of properties like being white , cube-shaped and sweet do not make for a sugar cube). For Witt, this unifying role is undertaken by gender (being a woman or a man): it is

a pervasive and fundamental social position that unifies and determines all other social positions both synchronically and diachronically. It unifies them not physically, but by providing a principle of normative unity. (2011a, 19–20)

By ‘normative unity’, Witt means the following: given our social roles and social position occupancies, we are responsive to various sets of social norms. These norms are “complex patterns of behaviour and practices that constitute what one ought to do in a situation given one’s social position(s) and one’s social context” (Witt 2011a, 82). The sets of norms can conflict: the norms of motherhood can (and do) conflict with the norms of being an academic philosopher. However, in order for this conflict to exist, the norms must be binding on a single social individual. Witt, then, asks: what explains the existence and unity of the social individual who is subject to conflicting social norms? The answer is gender.

Gender is not just a social role that unifies social individuals. Witt takes it to be the social role — as she puts it, it is the mega social role that unifies social agents. First, gender is a mega social role if it satisfies two conditions (and Witt claims that it does): (1) if it provides the principle of synchronic and diachronic unity of social individuals, and (2) if it inflects and defines a broad range of other social roles. Gender satisfies the first in usually being a life-long social position: a social individual persists just as long as their gendered social position persists. Further, Witt maintains, trans people are not counterexamples to this claim: transitioning entails that the old social individual has ceased to exist and a new one has come into being. And this is consistent with the same person persisting and undergoing social individual change via transitioning. Gender satisfies the second condition too. It inflects other social roles, like being a parent or a professional. The expectations attached to these social roles differ depending on the agent’s gender, since gender imposes different social norms to govern the execution of the further social roles. Now, gender — as opposed to some other social category, like race — is not just a mega social role; it is the unifying mega social role. Cross-cultural and trans-historical considerations support this view. Witt claims that patriarchy is a social universal (2011a, 98). By contrast, racial categorisation varies historically and cross-culturally, and racial oppression is not a universal feature of human cultures. Thus, gender has a better claim to being the social role that is uniessential to social individuals. This account of gender essentialism not only explains social agents’ connectedness to their gender, but it also provides a helpful way to conceive of women’s agency — something that is central to feminist politics.

Linda Alcoff holds that feminism faces an identity crisis: the category of women is feminism’s starting point, but various critiques about gender have fragmented the category and it is not clear how feminists should understand what it is to be a woman (2006, chapter 5). In response, Alcoff develops an account of gender as positionality whereby “gender is, among other things, a position one occupies and from which one can act politically” (2006, 148). In particular, she takes one’s social position to foster the development of specifically gendered identities (or self-conceptions): “The very subjectivity (or subjective experience of being a woman) and the very identity of women are constituted by women’s position” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff holds that there is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals on the grounds of (actual or expected) reproductive roles:

Women and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship of possibility to biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-feeding, involving one’s body . (Alcoff 2006, 172, italics in original)

The thought is that those standardly classified as biologically female, although they may not actually be able to reproduce, will encounter “a different set of practices, expectations, and feelings in regard to reproduction” than those standardly classified as male (Alcoff 2006, 172). Further, this differential relation to the possibility of reproduction is used as the basis for many cultural and social phenomena that position women and men: it can be

the basis of a variety of social segregations, it can engender the development of differential forms of embodiment experienced throughout life, and it can generate a wide variety of affective responses, from pride, delight, shame, guilt, regret, or great relief from having successfully avoided reproduction. (Alcoff 2006, 172)

Reproduction, then, is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals that takes on a cultural dimension in that it positions women and men differently: depending on the kind of body one has, one’s lived experience will differ. And this fosters the construction of gendered social identities: one’s role in reproduction helps configure how one is socially positioned and this conditions the development of specifically gendered social identities.

Since women are socially positioned in various different contexts, “there is no gender essence all women share” (Alcoff 2006, 147–8). Nonetheless, Alcoff acknowledges that her account is akin to the original 1960s sex/gender distinction insofar as sex difference (understood in terms of the objective division of reproductive labour) provides the foundation for certain cultural arrangements (the development of a gendered social identity). But, with the benefit of hindsight

we can see that maintaining a distinction between the objective category of sexed identity and the varied and culturally contingent practices of gender does not presume an absolute distinction of the old-fashioned sort between culture and a reified nature. (Alcoff 2006, 175)

That is, her view avoids the implausible claim that sex is exclusively to do with nature and gender with culture. Rather, the distinction on the basis of reproductive possibilities shapes and is shaped by the sorts of cultural and social phenomena (like varieties of social segregation) these possibilities gives rise to. For instance, technological interventions can alter sex differences illustrating that this is the case (Alcoff 2006, 175). Women’s specifically gendered social identities that are constituted by their context dependent positions, then, provide the starting point for feminist politics.

Recently Robin Dembroff (2020) has argued that existing metaphysical accounts of gender fail to address non-binary gender identities. This generates two concerns. First, metaphysical accounts of gender (like the ones outlined in previous sections) are insufficient for capturing those who reject binary gender categorisation where people are either men or women. In so doing, these accounts are not satisfying as explanations of gender understood in a more expansive sense that goes beyond the binary. Second, the failure to understand non-binary gender identities contributes to a form of epistemic injustice called ‘hermeneutical injustice’: it feeds into a collective failure to comprehend and analyse concepts and practices that undergird non-binary classification schemes, thereby impeding on one’s ability to fully understand themselves. To overcome these problems, Dembroff suggests an account of genderqueer that they call ‘critical gender kind’:

a kind whose members collectively destabilize one or more elements of dominant gender ideology. Genderqueer, on my proposed model, is a category whose members collectively destabilize the binary axis, or the idea that the only possible genders are the exclusive and exhaustive kinds men and women. (2020, 2)

Note that Dembroff’s position is not to be confused with ‘gender critical feminist’ positions like those noted above, which are critical of the prevalent feminist focus on gender, as opposed to sex, kinds. Dembroff understands genderqueer as a gender kind, but one that is critical of dominant binary understandings of gender.

Dembroff identifies two modes of destabilising the gender binary: principled and existential. Principled destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ social or political commitments regarding gender norms, practices, and structures”, while existential destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ felt or desired gender roles, embodiment, and/or categorization” (2020, 13). These modes are not mutually exclusive, and they can help us understand the difference between allies and members of genderqueer kinds: “While both resist dominant gender ideology, members of [genderqueer] kinds resist (at least in part) due to felt or desired gender categorization that deviates from dominant expectations, norms, and assumptions” (2020, 14). These modes of destabilisation also enable us to formulate an understanding of non-critical gender kinds that binary understandings of women and men’s kinds exemplify. Dembroff defines these kinds as follows:

For a given kind X , X is a non-critical gender kind relative to a given society iff X ’s members collectively restabilize one or more elements of the dominant gender ideology in that society. (2020, 14)

Dembroff’s understanding of critical and non-critical gender kinds importantly makes gender kind membership something more and other than a mere psychological phenomenon. To engage in collectively destabilising or restabilising dominant gender normativity and ideology, we need more than mere attitudes or mental states – resisting or maintaining such normativity requires action as well. In so doing, Dembroff puts their position forward as an alternative to two existing internalist positions about gender. First, to Jennifer McKitrick’s (2015) view whereby gender is dispositional: in a context where someone is disposed to behave in ways that would be taken by others to be indicative of (e.g.) womanhood, the person has a woman’s gender identity. Second, to Jenkin’s (2016, 2018) position that takes an individual’s gender identity to be dependent on which gender-specific norms the person experiences as being relevant to them. On this view, someone is a woman if the person experiences norms associated with women to be relevant to the person in the particular social context that they are in. Neither of these positions well-captures non-binary identities, Dembroff argues, which motivates the account of genderqueer identities as critical gender kinds.

As Dembroff acknowledges, substantive philosophical work on non-binary gender identities is still developing. However, it is important to note that analytic philosophers are beginning to engage in gender metaphysics that goes beyond the binary.

This entry first looked at feminist objections to biological determinism and the claim that gender is socially constructed. Next, it examined feminist critiques of prevalent understandings of gender and sex, and the distinction itself. In response to these concerns, the entry looked at how a unified women’s category could be articulated for feminist political purposes. This illustrated that gender metaphysics — or what it is to be a woman or a man or a genderqueer person — is still very much a live issue. And although contemporary feminist philosophical debates have questioned some of the tenets and details of the original 1960s sex/gender distinction, most still hold onto the view that gender is about social factors and that it is (in some sense) distinct from biological sex. The jury is still out on what the best, the most useful, or (even) the correct definition of gender is.

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Gender Justice: Key to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

Publication year: 2010.

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The Millennium Declaration and the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) collectively herald a vision for a more just and equal world. Social, political and economic equality for women is integral to the achievement of all Millennium Development Goals. Hence, gender justice entails ending the inequalities between women and men that are produced and reproduced in the family, the community, the market and the state. It also requires that mainstream institutions - from justice to economic policymaking - are accountable for tackling the injustice and discrimination that keep too many women poor and excluded. Gender Justice shows how addressing inequalities, including gender inequality, will be essential to achieving the MDGs.

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

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CEDAW ; Civil and political rights ; Cultural violence ; DEDAW ; Equality ; Female genital mutilation ; Freedom of choice ; Gender discrimination ; Gender justice ; Rape ; Religious violence ; Rights of women ; Sexual violence ; Violence against women

Gender justice is the concept that equates to the comprehensive objective and plan of shielding the subordinated sex from abuse caused by the dominant sex. It especially implies that women must exercise investment in basic leadership in varying backgrounds, and should completely take an interest together with men in finding impartial and down-to-earth answers for issues in the family and society (Mishra 2003 ). It deviates off from stereotyping of women’s conventional role controlled and created by men. Gender Justice upholds a theory that sees all individuals as fundamental operators toward the progress of enlarging the choices by both genders. It trusts that women are rights-bearing, self-sufficient, or autonomous individuals...

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Rai, M., Paul, S. (2021). Exploring Gender Justice for Attaining Equality. In: Leal Filho, W., Marisa Azul, A., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (eds) Gender Equality. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95687-9_70

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Article contents

Gender and transitional justice.

• Maria Martin de Almagro Maria Martin de Almagro University of Ghent
•  and  Philipp Schulz Philipp Schulz Institute for Intercultural and International Studies, University of Bremen
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.669
• Published online: 19 October 2022

Transitional justice (TJ) refers to a set of measures and processes that deal with the legacies of human rights abuses and violent pasts, and that seek to aid societies transitioning from violence and conflict toward a more just and peaceful future. Much like the study of armed conflict and peacebuilding more broadly, the study and practice of transitional justice was traditionally silent on gender. Historically, gendered conflict-related experiences and harms have not been adequately addressed by most transitional justice mechanisms, and women in particular have been excluded from the design, conceptualization, and implementation of many TJ processes globally. While political violence perpetrated against men remained at the center of TJ concerns, a whole catalogue of gendered human rights abuses perpetrated primarily against women has largely remained at the peripheries of dominant TJ debates and interventions.

Catalyzed by political developments at the United Nations within the realm of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda and by increasing attention to crimes of sexual violence by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), however, the focus in the 2000s has been radically altered to include the treatment of gender in transitional contexts. As such, considerations around gender and sex have increasingly gained traction in TJ scholarship and praxis, to the extent that different justice instruments now seek to engage with gendered harms in diverse ways. Against this background, to the authors review this growing engagement with gender and transitional justice, offering a broad and holistic overview of legal and political developments, emerging trends, and persistent gaps in incorporating gender into the study and practice of TJ. The authors show how gender has been operationalized in relation to different TJ instruments, but the authors also unearth resounding feminist critiques about the ways in which justice is approached, as well as how gender is often conceptualized in limited and exclusionary terms. To this end, the authors emphasize the need for a more sustained and inclusive engagement with gender in TJ settings, drawing on intersectional, queer, and decolonial perspectives to ultimately address the variety of gendered conflict-related experiences in (post)conflict and transitional settings.

• transitional justice
• truth and reconciliation commissions
• queer perspectives
• structural violence
• criminal courts
• reparations
• gender justice
• masculinities
• sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV)

Gender and Transitional Justice: An Overview

In July 2020 , the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of nonrecurrence issued a report on gender perspectives in transitional justice (TJ), which “considers multiple aspects of adopting a gender perspective in transitional justice processes” ( United Nation’s Special Rapporteur, 2020 , p. 4). This report came at a time when there had been much progress in gendering peacebuilding and transitional justice work ( Weber, 2021 ), but also when gender sensitivity in transitional justice work still remained elusive ( Ní Aoláin, 2019 ) and numerous gendered blind spots persisted in delivering justice for various gendered conflict-related harms and experiences.

Much like the study of armed conflict more broadly ( Sjoberg, 2016 ), the field of transitional justice was traditionally silent on gender ( Buckley-Zistel & Stanley, 2012 ; O’Rourke, 2013 ), leading feminist scholars to pose the question of “where are women, where is gender and where is feminism in transitional justice?” ( Bell & O’Rourke, 2007 , p. 23).

Partly in response to these questions, there has been a radical shift in viewing the role of gender in transitional justice, which has witnessed an increasing feminist curiosity ( Enloe, 2004 ) about gender justice in postconflict transitions ( Buckley-Zistel & Stanley, 2012 ). As such, considerations around gender and sex have increasingly gained traction in the growing TJ literature, to the extent that as of the early 21st century , gender constitutes “a burgeoning focus of investigation within TJ scholarship and practice globally” ( O’Rourke, 2017 , p. 117). For one, considering gender is important for participation and representation ( O’Rourke, 2013 ) in terms of ensuring equal participation and involvement of men, women, and persons with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) in the design and implementation of these processes—for instance, as active protagonists and beneficiaries but also as witnesses. At the same time, incorporating gender lenses and perspectives is crucial for broadening conceptions of gender, peace, and security ( Rees & Chinkin, 2015 ) and the types of violence addressed by different TJ processes—including, for instance, gendered socioeconomic harms ( Lai, 2020 ) or gender-based violence ( Aroussi, 2011 ). In particular, women’s movements around the world have led important efforts to ensure that gender justice is put at the center of political, legal, and humanitarian agendas of transitional justice ( Bell & O’Rourke, 2007 , p. 24); that sexual violence is considered a war crime ( Aroussi, 2011 ); and that transitional justice also addresses social, economic, and cultural rights, as well as collective rights to socioeconomic development ( Roht-Arriaza & Mariezcurrena, 2006 ). Collective reparations are based on a redistribution of resources and wealth to the most marginalized, and the concept extends the definition of “victims” not only to include those physically affected but to compensate for the social effects of war, such as hunger, disease, or forced displacement to which women are particularly vulnerable. In policy terms, much of this engagement with gender and transitional justice unfolds within the realm of the U.N. Women, Peace, and Security Agenda (WPS), spearheaded by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 , which, inter alia, focuses on access to justice, the rule of law, and the investigation and prosecution of wartime sexual violence ( Martin de Almagro, 2017 ).

Yet, despite this increasing engagement with gender, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin has reminded us that gender lenses and a “feminist presence in transitional justice is complex, multilayered and still in the process of engagement”( Ní Aoláin, 2012 , p. 205). As such, 15 years after Bell and O’Rourke’s call for feminist theorizing in TJ, “gender parity remains elusive in transitional justice implementation” ( Ní Aoláin, 2019 , p. 1), and numerous gendered blind spots persist. As such, various gendered experiences remain largely unaccounted for in the implementation and practice of dealing with the past, and existing TJ processes across the globe have largely fallen short in advancing actual transformations for women. In particular, structural forms of gender-based violence and discrimination, rooted in patriarchal value systems, need to be engaged with more comprehensively by TJ processes to continue to address violence across time and space, spanning from conflict to peace and beyond ( Cockburn, 2008 ). At the same time, an engagement with gender in transitional justice must be broader and more inclusive, moving beyond a singular focus on women (and on sexual violence against women, in particular) to also include masculinities and queer perspectives.

The objective of this article is to offer a concise yet comprehensive overview of developments and debates in scholarship and policymaking concerning gender and transitional justice. As such, the article aims to provide a state-of-the-field assessment of how an incorporation of gender into transitional justice processes and debates has unfolded since 2000 , and what gendered blind spots, gaps, and avenues for further engagement nevertheless persist. To this end, the section titled “ Historical, Political, and Legal Advances in Transitional Gender Justice ” will discuss the key historical and legal advances in transitional gender justice in a post-Cold War context. The section titled “ Gendering Transitional Justice Instruments ” then outlines how different transitional justice mechanisms have tried to deal with gender specific harms and women’s experiences from war, in retributive justice, truth seeking, and reparation processes. Based on this overview, the section titled “ Reparations ” offers dominant feminist critiques of these advances to transform women’s lives before moving on to an assessment of persisting gendered blind spots with regard to masculinities and queer perspectives in TJ. The article concludes by proposing some new avenues and strategies for transformative transitional gender justice.

Historical, Political, and Legal Advances in Transitional Gender Justice

Broadly referring “to the set of measures implemented [. . .] to deal with the legacies of massive human rights abuses” ( de Greiff, 2012 , p. 34) in the aftermath of armed conflicts or authoritarian regimes, the study and implementation of transitional justice (TJ) has significantly expanded and globalized since the beginning of the 21st century ( Teitel, 2015 ). Transitional justice mechanisms and institutions thereby seek to redress past wrongs, institutionalize the rule of law, and construct new legal and normative frameworks in postconflict contexts or in societies that have dealt with occupation or authoritarian regimes so as to prevent violent conflict from reemerging. Traditionally, transitional justice measures are a set of judicial and nonjudicial instruments and mechanisms, such as trials, truth commissions, lustration, or memorials. The aims of TJ are thereby often linked to the normative objectives of democratization, nation-building, and the primacy of the rule of law but also fostering a free market economy ( Rees & Chinkin, 2015 , p. 1012). This approach is embedded within a liberal peacebuilding model ( Sriram, 2014 ), which often unfolds through a primary focus on civil and political rights placed over an engagement with socioeconomic and cultural rights ( Hamber, 2016 ).

While there is not a predetermined set of standards on how and where transitional justice should be applied, the practice of TJ has frequently been critiqued for following a standardized toolkit or “one-size-fit-all” approach ( Sharp, 2013 ). At the same time, various scholars have emphasized that TJ mechanisms and their implementation must vary depending on geographical contexts ( Teitel, 2003 , p. 76), hence requiring a localization and contextualization of TJ processes ( Shaw & Waldorf, 2010 ). These dynamics in many ways also apply to the ways in which gender perspectives in TJ are conceptualized and understood, which often follow a standardized procedure but neglect the locally-contingent meanings of “justice” and “gender” in different geopolitical regions ( Schulz, 2019 ).

While many of the foundations of TJ date back to the post-World War II Tokyo and the Nuremberg criminal tribunals, the first time the actual concept of TJ was used was in the context of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and the reordering of geopolitical dynamics in Africa, South and Central America, and Eastern Europe ( Bell, 2009 , p. 7). Whereas certain countries descended to civil wars, particularly on the African continent, others started transitioning from authoritarian to democratic rule. This is important because since then, there has been a normative assumption that transitional justice needs to ensure the basis of a peaceful transition toward Western-like democracies based on liberal individualism ( Arthur, 2009 ; Rees & Chinkin, 2015 , p. 1212; Teitel, 2003 , p. 75). This historical origin has conditioned the horizon of possibilities of what justice means and which kind of measures are necessary to ensure it. While prosecutions, truth-telling commissions, reparations, and institutional reform of authoritarian and centralized states were deemed necessary, distributive socioeconomic justice was not ( Arthur, 2009 , p. 326). This liberal notion of justice has gendered and gendering consequences, as the discussion to unfold throughout this article demonstrates.

Over the decades, then, the study, praxis, and implementation of transitional justice in many ways experienced its own transition ( McEvoy, 2007 ), emerging from its initially exceptionalism origins toward becoming a standardized, institutionalized, and globalized practice ( Teitel, 2015 ). As such, transitional justice expanded to include a whole variety of processes, measures, and instruments, and to be applied to a wide range of violence-affected situations. Not only the points of departure, however, but also the end-goals of transitional justice processes are increasingly recognized as being more diverse than initially assumed, and transitional justice has been increasingly emancipated from the bonds of the assumingly linear transition from war to peace ( Sharp, 2013 ), which cannot live up to the complexities and nonlinearity of lived realities in times of violence, conflict, and peace ( Hamber, 2008 ). As part of this expansion process, transitional justice has over the years also been increasingly localized ( Shaw & Waldorf, 2010 ), turned its attention to (post)colonial dynamics ( Bueno-Hansen, 2015 ) or to socioeconomic aspects ( Lai, 2020 ), and has also become more attentive to the gender dynamics of political transitions ( O’Rourke, 2013 ).

Historically, however, the experiences of women have not been adequately addressed by transitional justice mechanisms and processes. Women experience direct violence, such as sexual violence, domestic and sexual slavery, forced displacement, and forced marriage. They also have more difficulties rebuilding their lives after war because gender norms and traditional women’s societal roles make it difficult for women to access property, land, and jobs, as well as health and education services. Nevertheless, the gendered nature of direct and structural violence as well as different gendered experiences that men, women, and people with diverse gender identities faced during war have rarely been a concern of transitional justice projects ( Fobear, 2014 ; Franke, 2006 ).

In terms of design and procedure, the first decades of transitional justice processes did not provide sufficient participation and representation of women and minorities ( O’Rourke, 2017 ). This led to the reproduction of patriarchal logics and discourses about what transitional justice is for, and what human rights violations and crimes should be addressed and how ( Ní Aoláin, 2012 ). While political violence most suffered by men has been at the center of transitional justice, the systemic violence most commonly experienced by women—such as poverty, internal displacement, lack of access to public infrastructure, and unequal access to land, employment, or education ( Martin de Almagro & Ryan, 2019 )—was not recognized or redressed ( Ní Aoláin, 2009 ; Weber, 2021 ).

While much of an engagement with gender in transitional justice has taken place in scholarship evidenced through a growing body of literature (see Fobear, 2014 ; Franke, 2006 ; Ní Aoláin, 2012 ; O’Rourke, 2013 ), there are also legal, normative, and political developments that have addressed gender and transitional justice. Much of this policy engagement is unfolding within the realms of the United Nations Security Council and its mandate to maintain international peace and security, and specifically under the umbrella of the U.N. Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) framework ( Martin de Almagro, 2017 ). As a result of intensive efforts by a transnational coalition of women’s movements and feminist organizations, the agenda specifically calls for increased representation of women in decision making at all levels in the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict; the protection of women’s rights in conflict; the prevention of violence against women in conflict; and the importance of gender-sensitive humanitarian assistance, relief, and recovery ( Aroussi, 2011 ). Under this mandate, the WPS agenda also specifically engages with gender and transitional justice, which comprises a vast set of tools to fight against gender injustices ( Martin de Almagro, 2017 ). For instance, United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1888 focused on access to justice; the rule of law, legal; and judicial reforms; investigations; and prosecutions specifically for victims of wartime sexual violence. UNSCR 2106 specifically asked to punish sexual violence in conflict, and UNSCR 2242 recommended “reparation for victims as appropriate” ( United Nations Security Council, 2015 , p. 7), while reminding that the Security Council can enact sanctions against those who commit conflict-related sexual violence. The Global Study on the Implementation of UNSCR 1325 also called on the United Nations and its member states to “prioritize the design and implementation of gender sensitive reparations programs with transformative impact” ( UN Women, 2015 , p. 124).

Similarly, the resolution of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council that in 2011 established the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence—through which much of the U.N.’s engagement with transitional justice unfolds—specifically referred to gender, emphasizing that the Special Rapporteur must integrate gender lenses throughout its work (see O’Rourke, 2017 ). Outside the realm of the United Nations, the monitoring Committee of the Convention and Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW) similarly developed normative guidance in gender and transitional justice. As Catherine O’Rourke observed, “the Committee’s General Recommendation Number 30 on the rights of women in conflict prevention, conflict and post-conflict situations calls on state parties to address transitional justice mechanisms as part of broader activities to ensure women’s access to justice” ( O’Rourke, 2017 , p. 125). However, the U.N. Special Rapporteur was only established in 2011 , and the CEDAW general recommendation 30 was adopted in 2013 , signaling how TJ as a matter of international peace and security in general, as well as attention to gender and TJ specifically, has become increasingly mainstreamed since the early 2010s.

Gendering Transitional Justice Instruments

As a result of these cumulative efforts, then, gender lenses have been increasingly incorporated into and applied to the different aspects, mechanisms, and instruments of transitional justice, as reviewed throughout this section, structured along retributive and criminal justice, truth-seeking efforts, reparations, and bottom-up TJ mechanisms.

Retributive Justice and Criminal Courts

Much of the engagement with gender in transitional justice unfolds within the context of criminal courts and tribunals, with an emphasis on responding to wartime sexual violence through criminal accountability and retributive justice ( Aroussi, 2011 ; Campbell, 2004 ; Schulz & Kreft, 2022 ). This emphasis on criminal justice thereby mirrors larger trends in TJ, whereby criminal retribution and legal punishment still often are seen as ultimate responses to crimes ( Fletcher & Weinstein, 2002 ).

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, notable progress has been made toward an engagement with gender in international criminal law ( Chappell, 2011 ). Progressive developments by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR) in the 1990s contributed toward the recognition of crimes of rape and sexual violence as constitutive of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide ( Mibenge, 2013 ). Throughout the literature, these two ad hoc tribunals are generally credited with the responsibility for the contemporary evolution of jurisprudence on conflict-related sexual violence ( Haffajee, 2006 ), and are seen as having established landmark and precedence cases concerning sexual violence.

These developments also set the precedent for other hybrid tribunals—such as the Special Courts for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)—as well as the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), which has heard several cases that include charges of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV; Chappell, 2014 ). Since 2014 , prosecuting gender-based violence (GBV) has been among the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor’s (OTP) key strategic goals, reflected in the “Policy Paper on Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes.” Since then, as of 2018 , 16 out of 23 cases pending at the International Criminal Court have included charges of SGBV. This process of ensuring accountability for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is important, and has “contributed toward documenting the patterns and dynamics of sexual violence” ( Schulz & Kreft, 2022 , p. 7) across contexts, in addition to contributing to the development of international jurisprudence on sexual violence. At the same time, testifying in a court of law about their experiences of sexual abuse may for some survivors be healing, empowering, and a “cathartic process that equips them with a sense of agency and enables them to articulate their voices” ( Schulz & Kreft, 2022 , p. 13; see also Mertus, 2004 ).

Yet, despite growing attention, the track record of actually delivering justice for sexual violence survivors remains limited. And while the ICC’s conception of SGBV has broadened over the years to also include crimes of forced marriage and pregnancy alongside sexual torture or crimes of rape, the emphasis remains on sexual violence over other forms of gendered violence and discrimination. What is more, despite only a handful of exceptions, most proceedings involving sexual violence at international courts have focused on women survivors, but have tended to sideline sexual violence against men or against persons with diverse SOGIESC ( Schulz, 2020 ). Influenced by and in tandem with these developments in the international criminal justice arena, and in the interest of complementarity, there also is a growing collection of cases concerning CRSV at national and domestic courts—including for instance the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber, or courts in Guatemala, El Salvador, or the Democratic Republic of Congo ( Seelinger, 2020 ).

Despite much of this progress of investigating and prosecuting crimes of sexual violence, however, the existing caseload of successful convictions remains limited at best. This in many ways mirrors the “justice gap” for SGBV that persists not only in (post)conflict settings but more widely across time and space ( McGlynn & Westmarland, 2019 ). In addition, feminist scholars in particular have identified various legal, political, technical, and gendered shortcomings of criminal proceedings. As such, Houge and Lohne (2017) have cautioned that treating CRSV simply as “a problem of law” overlooks more structurally-engrained forms of violence and discrimination, as well as potential alternative justice conceptions and mechanisms. A growing body of scholarship has also identified more practical limitations, evidencing victims’ and survivors’ dissatisfaction with criminal justice processes ( Henry, 2009 ). This body of work takes note of the fact that many survivors feel “footnoted” in the proceedings, silenced, deprived of any agency ( Mertus, 2004 ), or revictimized ( Franke, 2006 ; see Schulz & Kreft, 2022 ). Focused on the ICTY, Mertus showed that women’s agency during criminal proceedings was severely stunted, and that survivors of wartime rape who participated in criminal trials often felt “like [they were] shouting from the bottom of a well” ( Mertus, 2004 , p. 113). Drawing on an analysis of the SCSL, Kelsall and Stepakoff (2007) similarly showed how women who participated in the trials “were prohibited from speaking about the principal manner in which they were victimized [sexually] during the conflict” (p. 365), and how as a result, women’s experiences were removed from the Court’s records (see Mibenge, 2013 ). As such, “experience[s] of giving testimony [are] likely to be mixed” ( Henry, 2009 , p. 114), leading feminist scholars to question whether criminal proceedings constitute adequate means to deliver accountability for GBV ( Henry, 2009 ; Mertus, 2004 ; Otto, 2009 ).

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

As an alternative to some of these structural limitations with regards to criminal justice, an emphasis on restorative justice, often in the form of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), has gained growing popularity over the decades—perhaps most notably in South Africa as well as across Latin America. In their broadest terms, truth (and reconciliation) commissions are entities that seek to establish facts, causes, and impacts of past human rights violations with a focus on victims’ and survivors’ testimonies, thereby seeking to provide recognition of harm and suffering.

The first Truth Commissions in Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, and South Africa did not include gendered harms in their terms of reference; but were instead focused on political crimes to the exclusion of ordinary and structural violence. In these proceedings, women’s testimonies were primarily limited as witnesses of harms committed between men. This had consequences not only for the lack of recognition of violence against women, but also for the ensuing policy recommendations and reparations identified as necessary in the TRC reports. As Sanne Weber (2021) noted, “Truth Commissions have historically tended to leave out women’s particular conflict experiences” (p. 214).

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission ( 1996–2003 ), established to deal with human rights violations of the apartheid system, was the first to adopt ad hoc gender-sensitive strategies such as holding special women’s hearings, creating gender-sensitive statement-taking protocols, and adding a chapter on women in the final report ( Fiske, 2019 ). After sustained advocacy from key women activists and even though it had not been part of the original plan, the Peru Truth and Reconciliation Commission ( 2001–2003 ) established a specific Gender Unit in charge of examining gendered and sexual patterns of violence, training staff on gender-sensitive approaches to truth and reconciliation, and leading a public hearing on women’s human rights. The Commission’s final report devoted two individual chapters to a gendered analysis of the conflict and the use of sexual violence against women. Nevertheless, the lack of an appropriate budget to support the activities of the Gender Unit prevented it from achieving much and many Peruvian activists saw it as a lost chance for a more systematic and transformative approach for enhancing women’s access to justice ( Nesiah et al., 2006 ).

Later TRCs included a focus on gender in their mandates and tried to actively understand how violence and oppression are gendered ( Bell & O’Rourke, 2007 , p. 28). In particular, the Truth Commissions of Sierra Leone ( 2002–2004 ) and East Timor ( 2002–2005 ) are regarded as best practices. Their reports in 2004 and 2005 included a stand-alone chapter on gender and sexual violence, as well as recommendations for reparations ( Nesiah et al., 2006 ). Furthermore, the Sierra Leone TRC’s procedures for engagement with women were also gender-sensitive. First, it proactively looked for women testimonies, offering material support and counseling for those willing to testify. Second, women could choose whether to provide written or oral testimony and whether to testify at an open or closed hearing. Third, the Commission trained specialized women statement takers to work with sexual violence victims. In general terms, Truth Commissions have been criticized for overtly focusing on sexual violence, and for not taking into consideration how women often face the socioeconomic consequences of conflicts. In the context of the Sierra Leone TRC (SLTRC), however, sexual violence and abuse were the terms of reference under which women could testify as victims, and even though the SLTRC was determined “to capture the experiences of both women and girls in respect of sexual violence, as well as their complete gendered experiences at a political, legal, health and social welfare level” ( Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2004 , p. 87), the commission’s final report focused mainly on rape and other sexual violence crimes committed against women during the conflict. As such, both truth commissions and courts have been criticized for their singled-issue focus on sexual violence at the expense of the complex nature of gender violence in conflict-affected settings.

In addition to these formalized and institutionalized truth commissions, more informal and/or grassroots-level, truth-seeking, and historical memory processes have evolved across a number of conflicts, including most prominently the Gacaca courts in Rwanda ( Bronéus, 2008 ), but also Colombia’s National Centre for Historical Memory , and the National Memory and Peace Documentation Centre (NMPDC) in Uganda. These and similar efforts across contexts document and preserve conflict-related experiences and enable survivors to share their experiences in often more informal processes, thereby at times offering more space for diverse stories. At the same time, these informal efforts are also often structured around heteronormative conceptions of gender, thereby restricting the space of what experiences can be openly talked about, and have also been experienced as retraumatizing and threatening by women giving testimony ( Bronéus, 2008 ). This mirrors shortcomings of criminal tribunals as discussed in the subsection “ Retributive Justice and Criminal Courts ,” and of bottom-up transitional justice mechanisms as discussed in the section “ Reparations .”

Reparations

Reparations are typically portrayed to be among the most victim-centric elements of transitional justice ( Hamber, 2008 ). As emphasized by de Greif, reparations provide financial or other material compensations, such as property restitution as a form of corrective justice, obliging the wrongdoer to provide goods to the victim so that the latter find themselves in the original position before the harm ( de Greiff, 2008 , p. 435). In practice and implementation, the U.N. Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation ( 2005 ) lists five components of reparations: (a) restitution, (b) compensation, (c) rehabilitation (including access to medical and psychological care), (d) satisfaction and, (e) guarantees of nonrepetition. Importantly, reparations not only imply material gains for survivors, but crucially “can be profoundly meaningful to victims or survivors at a psychological level” ( Hamber, 2008 , p. 8). In this reading, reparations can be individual and/or collective, and material and/or symbolic ( Hamber & Palmary, 2009 ) as well as prospective and retrospective.

For the most part, however, reparations programs are not “designed with an explicit gender dimension in mind” ( Rubio-Marín et al., 2006 , p. 23), nor have they “focused on the forms of victimization that women are more commonly subject to,” including forms of CRSV. As Ní Aoláin et al. (2015) observed, global discussions aimed at ensuring accountability and ending impunity for CRSV have largely neglected and marginalized reparations.

However, reparations have been increasingly linked to sexual and gender-based violence. In March 2007 , international legal and gender experts and women survivors of sexual violence met in Nairobi (Kenya) to draft the Nairobi Declaration on the Right of Women and Girls to a Remedy and Reparation. The declaration is key because it sought to redefine reparations from a gendered perspective that makes visible the linkages between direct and structural violence. The declaration had two core principles: First, reparations should be transformative, go to the root causes of gender violence, and “must go above and beyond the immediate reasons and consequences of the crimes and violations; they must address structural inequalities that negatively shape women’s and girls’ lives” (Nairobi Declaration, supra n 3, Principle 3[h]). The second core principle is the participation and involvement of women at all stages of the planning, design, and implementation of reparations programs because the involvement of women in the reform of social structures will also lead to recognition and to political empowerment.

This emphasis on structural discrimination and transformation thereby speaks to some conceptual shortcomings of reparations, as well as a recent emphasis on transformational reparations within a broader shift from transitional to transformative justice ( Gready & Robins, 2019 ). As suggested by the Nairobi Declaration, a gender perspective indeed reveals that if reparative justice and reparations aim to quite literally repair conflict-related harms ( Hamber, 2008 ), this can potentially translate into a reconstitution of an unequal preconflict status quo (see Ní Aoláin et al., 2015 ; Rubio-Marín & de Greiff, 2007 ). In transitional and (post)conflict settings, this frequently implies a reparation of and return to hetero-patriarchal societal structures, characterized by vast gendered inequalities and the systematic discrimination of women ( Goldblatt & Meintjes, 2011 ). Rather than transforming unequal gendered and intersectional structures—which may have given rise to conflict and violence in the first place—reparations thus risk reinstating that status quo, thus reinstating patriarchy.

Since then, there has been growing attention within scholarship and policymaking ( Duggan et al., 2008 ; Ní Aoláin et al., 2015 ; Walker, 2016 )—evidenced for instance through the Global Survivors Fund, founded by the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nadia Murad and Dr. Denis Mukwege, which seeks to enhance access to reparations for survivors of CRSV. In particular, the United Nations Secretary-General’s adoption of a Guidance Note on Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence ( 2014 ) marked an important turning point in the area of reparations for SGBV ( Ní Aoláin et al., 2015 ). At the same time, several of the U.N. Security Council resolutions that make up the WPS agenda, such as Resolution 2122 , repeatedly refer to reparations in response to gender-based violence.

This process of repairing preconflict structures specifically for women can often imply a return to an unequal gendered status quo ante and to inferior female subject positioning ( Buckley-Zistel, 2013 ). Rubio-Marín and de Greiff (2007) therefore urged that reparations programs need to ensure that they do “not conform to or contribute to the entrenchment of pre-existing patterns of female land tenure, education or employment” (p. 325). Further, most reparations programs primarily concentrate on civil and political rights, at the expense of other violations, including socioeconomic rights, many of which are often heavily gendered ( Rubio-Marín, 2009 ), thereby mirroring gendered trends and shortcomings in transitional justice more broadly ( Boesten & Wilding, 2015 ; O’Rourke, 2013 ).

As such, there are, as of 2022 , a handful of cases of reparations for gender-based crimes, for instance in the War Crimes Chambers in Bosnia ( Björkdahl & Selimovic, 2015 ), and by national courts in Sierra Leone and Guatemala, where “an urgent reparation scheme awarded one-off payments for survivors of sexual violence, together with medical treatment” ( Weber, 2021 , p. 221). In Guatemala, apart from the individual compensation to victims of rape in the case of Sepur Zarco, the judges ordered the construction of a health clinic in the village and the creation of an education scholarship fund for women and girls. In Mexico, the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) and Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) and its “Cotton Field” judgement on femicide cases have contributed precedent-setting cases for the award of reparations in response to gender violence and harms ( Rubio-Marín & Sandoval, 2011 ) and, more precisely, for the development of gender-just transformation processes ( Ketelaars, 2018 ). As explained by Sane Weber (2021) , the Cotton Field judgement “stated that when violations were committed in a context of structural discrimination, reparations should aim to transform this pre-existing situation” (p. 222).

Colombia adopted a transformative approach to reparations and land restitution in its 2011 Victims’ Law. Since land titles are in their majority in men’s names, the Law provides for the allocation of joint land titles to men and women as a way to ensure a better social and economic security in case of divorce or of the husband’s death and in this way transforms gender inequality. In practice, however, transforming attitudes toward women and agricultural work are difficult to achieve and the agricultural projects that have accompanied land restitution in Colombia have focused on men’s agricultural work and have devalued women’s work as just family work to “help make ends meet” ( Weber, 2021 ), reinforcing rather than ending gender inequalities. What is more, most reparations programs globally focus on female victims at the neglect of male survivors and persons with diverse SOGIESC ( Schulz, 2020 ). As noted by Ní Aoláin et al. (2015) , “a limited understanding of who can be a victim of sexual harms means that violence against men is often unseen and unaccounted for when states and other international actors conceive and implement reparations” (p. 97). Challenges therefore remain to ensure that reparations can address the gendered manifestations of violence in their holistic occurrence, and that reparations can cement real gendered progress, in particular for conflict-affected women ( Rubio-Marín & de Greiff, 2007 ) as well as for sexual violence survivors of all genders ( Duggan et al., 2008 ; Ní Aoláin et al., 2015 ; Schulz, 2020 ).

In light of these conceptual and practical gaps of implementing reparations in response to gendered harms and violence, several scholars have emphasized that “a commitment to transformative reparations is critical to gender-sensitive reparations” ( Ní Aoláin et al., 2015 , p. 98; see also Kettelaars, 2018 ; Walker, 2016 ).Transformative reparations, especially in the context of redressing gendered violence, require “go[ing] beyond the immediacy of sexual violence, [and] encompassing the equality, justice and longitudinal needs of those who have experienced sexual harms” ( Ní Aoláin et al., 2015 , pp. 98–99).

Bottom-Up Transitional Justice Mechanisms

In the absence of concrete, tangible results for specific crimes committed against women, an array of civil society-led and locally-embedded mechanisms have seen the day. Much of this growing attention to processes at the grassroots and micro level is embedded within the so-called “local turn” in transitional justice ( Shaw & Waldorf, 2010 ), which has also increasingly engaged with gender ( Baines, 2010 ; Kent, 2014 ). As an illustrative example of such bottom-up initiatives, women’s tribunals have constituted a collective effort at putting women’s experiences of war and violence at the center of truth, justice, and reparation processes necessary to rebuild more gender just societies. In Kosovo, Albano–Kosovar women created an initiative of legal support for victims of sexual violence through the Kosovo Women’s Network, and joined forces with the Serb Women in Black Network Serbia to create the Women Peace Coalition on May 7, 2006 ( Kosovo Women’s Network, 2013 ). Together, they participated in the Women’s Tribunal, a regional initiative of restorative justice led by women survivors of conflict in Yugoslavia ( Mujika Chao, 2017 ).

In Northern Uganda, too—the context in which one of the authors primarily works—a variety of civil society-supported and locally-driven processes exist to deal with past human rights abuses ( Baines, 2007 ). While such processes catalyze a sense of justice on the micro level, in the absence of sufficient processes at the state or international level, however, such processes nevertheless also contain gendered challenges. In many conflict-affected societies—frequently characterized by masculine, patriarchal, and heteronormative constructions of gender—a turn to the local simultaneously often implies a geographical move toward, and a reinforcement of, largely masculinized, homophobic, and sexually conservative societal contexts, which raises challenges for the participation of and roles played by women and youths. For instance, Boege (2006) described how women and girls are often excluded from the administration of these measures and only “become the subjects of these decisions” (p. 16). In Northern Uganda, “the most visible proponents of traditional justice and the most visible participants in the ceremonies are male elders” ( Lonergan, 2012 , p. 1)—excluding women (and youth) from active roles and instead only passively subjecting them to these processes. With regard to the application of justice, Baines (2007) consequentially argued that “it is unlikely that mato oput [one of the most common traditional justice rituals] will be able to reflect [women’s] interests without significant modification” (p. 107).

In addition to gendered participation and involvement, a localization of justice likewise carries implications for the treatment of gendered conflict-related experiences, including women’s structural inequalities and crimes of sexual violence against women and men. In many conflict-affected societies, a localization of transitional justice measures likely implies that taboo and culturally stigmatized crimes of sexual violence against men fall outside the realm and framework of local means of delivering justice ( Schulz, 2020 ).

Feminist Critiques of Transitional Gender Justice

In light of this overview, and against the background of many of these shortcomings and gaps of extant approaches to gender and transitional justice as discussed in the section on “ Gendering Transitional Justice Instruments ,” feminist scholars, activists, and practitioners in particular have articulated profound and resounding critiques of transitional gender justice—which constitute the focus of discussion in this section. In particular, feminist perspectives on justice have argued that violence cannot be understood as separate, single acts, but rather as a continuum—as a manifestation of structural inequality and gendered power relations ( Braithwaite & D’Costa, 2018 ). Therefore, these perspectives have criticized transitional justice mechanisms’ focus on “extraordinary” violence during a specific historical moment—from the war declaration to the signature of a peace accord. They have argued that this focus renders invisible the complexities of individual and collective war experiences ( Bunch, 1990 ; Rao, 2001 ). This, in turn, impairs women’s access to justice ( Fiske, 2019 ). At the same time, a persistent focus of most TJ processes on women as passive, vulnerable victims overlooks and downplays the active roles and agency exercised by women in (post)conflict and transitional settings ( Björkdahl & Selimovic, 2015 ), thereby reinforcing essentialist gender stereotypes of female victimhood ( Enloe, 2000 ).

The Experiences of Violence

The differentiation between extraordinary and ordinary violence does not reflect women’s lived experiences during war and in postwar justice efforts and socioeconomic restructuring processes. First, this distinction has resulted in the reinforcement of harmful tropes about sexual violence committed in “ordinary” circumstances in conflict and postconflict settings ( Grewal, 2015 ) and has not addressed rapes and sexual violence committed by peacekeepers, (civilian) men from the same ethnic group, or from the victims’ own families and communities, or any other circumstances than those considered as rape as a strategic weapon of war perpetrated by enemy armed soldiers ( Fiske & Shackel, 2014 ).

Second, this false and binary differentiation between ordinary and extraordinary also ignores the fact that wartime violence is not only physical and direct, but rather is inherently relational and takes many forms, and that these cannot be separated in lived experiences ( Hozić & True, 2017 ). This is due to the fact that acts of violence are “dynamically connected through social, political and economic factors in the surrounding context” ( Krause, 2015 , p. 16). For example, many women become widowed during war and as a result are dispossessed of land and other resources in patrilinear societies ( Shackel & Fiske, 2016 ), are excluded from social life ( Yadav, 2016 ), and are vulnerable to further violence due to their precarious economic situation ( True, 2012 ). In addition, war also blurs the boundaries between production and social reproduction because violent conflict pushes both productive and reproductive activities into private spaces. For example, families need to go into subsistence production to access food and other basic goods; there is an absence of social or public spaces for childcare, healthcare, and the elderly; and the gendered, classed, and racial patterns of everyday violence get exacerbated by militarization and economic collapse ( Elias & Rai, 2019 ; Rai et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, this socioeconomic violence tends to be reproduced in postwar economic and political reforms by the national and the international community.

The Continuum of Violence

Feminist activists and scholars have pointed out that while sexual violence and rape during war have been recognized as crimes against humanity and war crimes, the persistence of physical, sexual, and gender-based violence in the aftermath of conflict is barely given any attention. Nevertheless, the consequences of war, such as a militarized society, impoverishment, unemployment, and posttraumatic stress disorder, as well as men’s feelings of inability to fulfill their perceived gender roles as providers and protectors of their families often lead to domestic and sexual violence ( El Bushra, 2003 ; Ní Aoláin et al., 2011 ; Rubio-Marín, 2009 ).

Furthermore, the focus on sexual violence has ignored that gendered violence takes many forms. For example, the lack of access to social services and infrastructure results in women taking the burden of reproductive work, while often being the only bread winners in separated or destroyed families. Ultimately, feminist have argued for a long time that in contexts of war and peace, transitional justice is “brought” to war-torn countries by the international community ( Nagy, 2014 , p. 217). However, looking at injustices and conflict-related violence also entails accounting for the role that international financial institutions and their postwar reconstruction projects play in reproducing wartime gender-based violence and preexisting economic inequalities through their politics of privatization, liberalization, and austerity ( Lai, 2020 ). The lack of a serious engagement with the socioeconomic legacies of the war and the justice claims deriving from it provokes the sidelining of access to health services, education, and job market policies to the benefit of macrostructural reforms and reconstruction projects of roads, airports, and other transport infrastructure ( Manjoo & McRaith, 2011 ; Martin de Almagro & Ryan, 2019 ; Ní Aoláin et al., 2011 ; Rubio-Marín, 2009 ).

Crucially, the justice model envisioned in liberal peacebuilding reforms often excludes redistributive demands as security and justice are defined in a state-centric manner ( Ní Aoláin, 2009 ), where the reintegration of the state in global markets provide further economic exploitation and exclusion of women through the reestablishment of traditional gender roles and feminized low-paying jobs ( Sassen, 2000 ). These concerns have evolved toward larger debates on redistributive policies and the role of states and markets in postconflict economies. Lai (2020) explained how postwar countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina with a socialist past had social services available to support social reproduction while women were at work. These services disappeared once International Financial Institutions (IFIs) reconstructed the country according to liberal standards, entrenching gendered inequalities and injustices that the war brought with it. While women lost their jobs in the factories, had difficult access to food and water during wartime, and were responsible for the survival of the household, the IFIs reconstruction project did not redress but rather reproduced wartime socioeconomic violence. The transition post-Apartheid period in South Africa also marked a case in point: the South African government started implementing neoliberal policies that negatively affected black people in general, and women’s economic and social conditions in particular ( Hunter, 2007 ).

Feminist Solutions to Achieve Transformative Justice

In light of these dynamics, feminist analytical lenses underscore the continuities between (gendered) public and private violence; distinctions between prewar, war, and postwar violence; and physical to structural violence and inequalities ( Boulding, 1984 ; Enloe, 2000 ; Tickner, 1992 ; True, 2012 ). Such feminist takes contend that gender justice can only happen through the direct and substantive participation by ordinary people, and in particular conflict-affected women and girls ( Rees & Chinkin, 2015 ). Taking their participation seriously, these scholars have argued, will result in a broadening of transitional justice’s scope to include economic, social, and cultural rights ( Nagy, 2014 ; Rees & Chinkin, 2015 ). Feminist scholars thus have claimed that TJ measures should reflect transformative understandings of justice directed at ensuring that gender-based violence will not happen again and at tackling the inequalities, marginalizations, and exclusions that underlie and fuel wars ( Cohn & Duncanson, 2020 ; True & Hozić, 2020 ).

Therefore, for justice to be transformative, transitional justice mechanisms must also operate hand in hand with postwar reforms ( Lai, 2020 ; Martin de Almagro & Ryan, 2019 , 2020 ). As argued, many of the underpinning components of transformative justice, such as a commitment to challenge unequal status quos and structural (often gendered) inequalities as well as a prioritization of socioeconomic rights (see Sharp, 2013 ), have long been advocated for by feminist scholars (see Cockburn, 2008 ). In particular, “for women, periods of societal transition have to aim for the transformation of the underlying inequalities that provided the conditions in which [their] specifically gendered harms were possible” ( Boesten & Wilding, 2015 , p. 1); see also ( Davies & True, 2017 ). As outlined by Ní Aoláin (2019) , transformation and transformative (gender) justice “depend on the redistribution of formal and informal power” and a feminist “commitment to profoundly recalibrate power relationships” ( Ní Aoláin, 2019 , p. 150; also see Enloe, 2000 ). In this capacity, transformative reparations and remedies to conflict-related violations of socioeconomic or “subsistence” rights ( Arbour, 2007 ; Sankey, 2014 ) carry important implications for feminist projects of gender justice and women’s equality in transitional justice in particular ( Boesten & Wilding, 2015 ).

Inclusive Gender: Integrating Masculinities and Queer Perspectives on Transitional Justice

Despite this vastly growing and diversifying engagement with gender in the study of transitional justice, the dominant conceptualization of “gender” in transitional contexts effectively remains an incomplete and exclusive one. Indeed, discussions about gender and TJ often circle around how transitional processes can advance “gender justice” for female victims of violence ( Boesten & Wilding, 2015 ) and for women survivors of wartime sexual violence in particular ( Aroussi, 2011 ). According to these prevailing understandings, “gender” is often synonymous with “women,” and conflict-related experiences are only considered “gendered” when they represent and reinforce “the unequal position of women in society” ( Pillay, 2007 , p. 317). As argued by feminist anthropologist Kimberly Theidon (2007) , in transitional justice, “from gender hearings to gender units and gender-sensitive truth commissions, ‘adding gender’ is policy-speak for ‘adding women’” (p. 353). To illustrate, the implementation of transitional justice measures put forward in several resolutions of the WPS agenda also primarily understand “gender” as “women.” For example, the 2010 U.N. Secretary-General report on the implementation of UNSCR 1325 included both the “number and percentage of transitional justice mechanisms called for by peace processes that include provisions to address the rights and participation of women and girls in their mandates” and the “number and percentage of women and girls receiving benefits through reparation programs, and types of benefits received” ( United Nations Secretary General, 2010 , p. 48).

Without a doubt, owing to the pervasive and structural discrimination of women in conflict-affected and transitional settings globally and the marginalization of women’s perspectives and experiences throughout TJ scholarship and praxis, such a focus remains urgently needed ( O’Rourke, 2017 ). Yet, despite this importance, such a focus also reinforces the on-going exclusion of masculinities and queer perspectives throughout international relations (IR) and conflict research at large, and within the fields of peacebuilding and transitional justice in particular ( Bueno-Hansen, 2018 ; Duriesmith, 2016 ; Fobear, 2014 ; Hagen, 2016 ; Schulz et al., 2023 ). In fact, specific masculinities perspectives and careful consideration for men’s and boys’ experiences as gendered—as well as for the lived realities of persons with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC; Daigle & Myrttinen, 2018 )—remain omitted from most gendered TJ analyses. This has slowly begun to change, and emerging critical research has increasingly called for attention to masculinities and SOGIESC questions in transitional justice scholarship ( Bueno-Hansen, 2018 ; Fobear, 2014 ; Hamber, 2016 ; Theidon, 2009 ). Yet, as one of the authors cautioned previously, “these few studies thus far exist primarily in silos, and are often characterized by an often unitary focus on either masculinities or sexual and gender minorities” ( Schulz, 2019 , p. 692).

Masculinities Perspectives

In their broadest sense, masculinities are socially constructed gender norms, specifically referring to the multiple ways of “doing male” within and across societies. The foundational work by R. W. Connell (1995) in particular teaches us about the multiplicities and variations of masculinities (in plural) as well as about the inherent power relations within and between masculinities and gender hierarchies more widely. Since the early 2000s, a growing body of literature has begun to pay critical attention to masculinities and their relations to and positioning in the global gender order ( Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005 ), and specifically in relation to armed conflicts ( Duriesmith, 2016 ). However, while a “fairly substantial amount of literature has been generated over the years regarding the forms of masculinity that emerge in times of armed conflict and war” ( Ní Aoláin et al., 2011 , p. 231), this has not yet sufficiently travelled toward postconflict and transitional contexts, with only few exceptions ( Hamber, 2016 ; Theidon, 2009 ). Tracing the marginalization of these intersections over a decade, Hamber (2007 , 2016 ) attested that masculinities perspectives in TJ scholarship presently find themselves in an embryonic state and are only gradually emerging. This is not to suggest, however, that TJ scholarship does not incorporate the voices and views of men. On the contrary, and as convincingly argued by feminist scholars, TJ can largely be seen as inherently dominated by masculine values and actors ( O’Rourke, 2017 ). What remains underdeveloped, however, is careful consideration for men’s experiences as gendered .

If and when there is engagement with masculinities in TJ contexts, this often unfolds against the backdrop of a violation-centric lens. That is, emerging research on masculinities and TJ focuses either on violent and militarized masculinities, so the violations they perpetrate; or on masculine vulnerabilities, and specifically on sexual violence against men, so the (sexual) violations perpetrated against men. A primary concern of this existing literature has centered around questions of how to disarm and transform violent masculinities in postconflict and transitional periods ( Cahn & Ní Aoláin, 2010 ), for instance through disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programming ( Theidon, 2009 ). This focus is underpinned by the argument that facilitating transitions from conflict to peace requires that militarized masculinities—embodied by (former) combatants—are successfully transformed. As Cahn and Ní Aoláin (2010) argued, one of the central quandaries for TJ and DDR processes “is how to undo the [violent] masculinities learned during wartime” and its wake (p. 118). Research by Theidon (2009) similarly centralized the importance of sustainably mobilizing former combatants to respond to the security challenges posed by them, as well as to the perceived loss of masculine privilege that often attends such processes. Theidon (2009) argued that “transforming the hegemonic, militarized masculinities that characterize former combatants can help further the goals of both DDR and transitional justice processes [. . .] to contribute to building peace on both the battlefield and the home front” (p. 34).

At the same time, however, previous research has also acknowledged the complexities and difficulties of these transformation processes due to the ways in which these masculinities constructions are socially embedded within patriarchal and nationalistic societal structures. In many ways, this focus on militarized masculinities is reflective of dominant research on men and masculinities within the context of war and insecurities more broadly, which has mostly examined the “violences of men” ( Hearn, 1998 ) and the linkages between certain forms of masculinities and the various forms of violence associated with them ( Myrttinen et al., 2017 ).

Another angle through which an engagement with masculinities has unfolded is based on attention to men’s vulnerabilities, and in particular to sexual violence against men and boys (SVAMB). For a long time, men’s experiences of sexual violence were often overlooked and “tailored intervention to address male-centred sexual harms remains exclusive and marginalized” ( Ní Aoláin et al., 2015 , p. 109). In practical terms, despite a handful of cases involving sexual violence against men in the international criminal justice arena, and in the context of some truth and reconciliation commissions (TRC) in Latin America, TJ instruments have thus far almost entirely turned a blind eye to the experiences of sexually violated men ( Schulz, 2020 ).

Despite this prevailing marginalization of sexual violence against men, emerging scholarship has begun to explore how socially constructed masculinities render men vulnerable to gender-based violence in the first place and how sexual violence impacts male survivors’ gendered identities as men in myriad ways ( Myrttinen et al., 2017 ; Schulz, 2020 ). Accordingly, there has also been some attention to the intersections between SVAMB and TJ in the form of growing engagement with the ways in which male survivors conceptualize justice in postconflict settings ( Schulz, 2020 ). Focused specifically on Northern Uganda, previous research by one of the authors has begun to highlight male survivors’ gender-specific justice needs and conceptions ( Schulz, 2019 , 2020 ), as well as how numerous gendered, cultural, and sociopolitical barriers often uphold a vacuum of justice and persisting impunity for those crimes committed against most male survivors of sexual violence globally. Paying attention to male survivors’ lived realities and their justice-related concerns, needs, and priorities is important to address some of the persisting gendered gaps and blind spots.

However, what arguably still requires further examination are the experiences of noncombatant and nonmilitarized civilian men, who arguably constitute the majority of men during most armed conflicts globally, as well as nonheterosexual masculinities, which are still largely rendered invisible by heteronormative frames of conflict and TJ ( Schulz et al., 2023 ). As such, a much needed avenue for further engagement is to consider “how hidden masculine cultures operate within a variety of hierarchies and social spaces ( Hamber, 2016 , p. 30).

Queer Perspectives

Paying sustained attention to masculinities, however, also bears the risk of reinforcing binary constructions of gender, which have been remarkably consistent throughout the study of armed conflict ( Sjoberg, 2016 ). To avoid this, careful consideration for gender and sexualities as fluid spectrums, for the elasticity of gender, as well as the inclusive recognition of people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) is important to fully comprehend gendered understandings of conflicts and political transitions. These nonbinary experiences and perspectives, however, are only seldom taken into account in the context of conflict studies and peacebuilding in general ( Hagen, 2016 ) and in relation to transitional justice processes specifically ( Bueno-Hansen, 2018 ; Fobear, 2014 ). As summarized by McQuaid (2017) , “on the subject of the particular justice needs and harms experienced by sexual minorities, much current transitional justice scholarship remains silent” (p. 1). Katherine Fobear (2023) similarly attested that even though the field of transitional justice has grown substantially, including with regard to incorporating gender, the question of “what it would mean to better incorporate and engage with queer bodies and theory in transitional justice is still very relevant today” (p. 2; also see Fobear, 2014 ). Queer and queering in the context of this discussion serves as an umbrella term to recognize a variety of expressions, identities, and actions that disrupt cis-heteronormative frames based on strict and binary conceptions of gender and sexualities.

It would, however, be misleading to claim that there has been no movement within the field of TJ to queer it, thanks to critical interventions from scholars and activists alike ( Fobear, 2023 ). Many of these developments can be observed in relation to truth commissions ( Bueno-Hansen, 2023 ; Fobear, 2014 ) as well as processes of dealing with the past in Latin American contexts, “some of which have expanded their purview to include human rights investigations of violence against sexual and gender minorities” ( Schulz, 2019 , p. 701; see also Bueno-Hansen, 2018 ). Colombia in particular serves as a contemporary example of the precedent-setting work for the inclusion of persons with diverse SOGIESC and their experiences into TJ processes ( Oettler, 2019 ), for instance with the 2011 Victim’s and Land Restitution Law and its Victim’s Unit, which include “a differential approach that recognizes sexual orientation and gender identity” ( Bueno-Hansen, 2018 , p. 5). In Ecuador, too, a feminist-informed and gender inclusive approach contributed toward “a holistic understanding of sexual and gender-based violence,” including attention to violence against persons with diverse SOGIESC in the Truth Commission’s final report ( Bueno-Hansen, 2023 , p. 2).

However, to queer transitional justice processes, it is not enough to only address antiqueer violence directed against LGBTQI communities and people with diverse SOGIESC, but also to address and critically interrogate larger systems of homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy, and heteronormativity ( Bueno-Hansen, 2018 ; Fobear, 2023 ). To this end, critical scholars have argued for the need of queer, intersectional, and decolonial approaches ( Bueno-Hansen, 2018 ; Ní Aoláin & Rooney, 2007 ) that expose “how institutionalized categories and identities are used to regulate and socialize” ( Fobear, 2023 , p. 6), and that would contribute toward circumventing the neoliberal and heteronormative foundations of TJ. In combination, this triangulation of queer, intersectional, and decolonial analytical lenses to examine queer lived realities can challenge the hetero- and cis-normativity of the field ( Bueno-Hansen, 2018 ; Hagen, 2016 ), and can thus contribute toward a more inclusive understanding of gender in the context of TJ. Nevertheless, across time and space, states’ accountability to address systematic forms of violence against persons with SOGIESC and to push for greater inclusion remains severely limited—consequentially requiring further engagement and advocacy to push the conversation forward by focusing on greater engagement across different spheres and for a variety of populations in transitional settings ( Fobear, 2023 ).

Ways Forward: Toward More Comprehensive and Inclusive Conceptions of “Gender” and “Justice”

This article has offered an overview of transitional (gender) justice mechanisms and their limitations and has put forward questions as to whether transitional justice and its “formulaic approach” ( Rees & Chinkin, 2015 , p. 1211) can ever succeed in changing women’s and other marginalized population’s lives. Without a doubt, much progress has been made in gendering transitional justice processes, and gendered harms have received increasing attention in the international policy arena. However, several shortcomings persist in effectively addressing gendered conflict-related experiences and in advancing transformations for women. When it comes to the implementation of transitional justice, all too often gender remains an afterthought, and is often implemented through a typical “add women and stir” approach—which in turn falls short in fully understanding the ways in which gender permeates all aspects of social and political life, including of armed conflicts and political transitions.

In light of these limitations and shortcomings, then, more needs to be done to address gender in postconflict and transitional spaces. This includes a move beyond transitional justice toward transformative justice, for instance in the form of transformative reparations to ultimately address gendered and patriarchal structures and root causes of violence and conflict and contribute toward more gender-just societal structures. Gendering transitional justice also requires going beyond a conflation of “gender” with “women,” to instead fully consider the full spectrum and elasticity of gender in the form of paying more sustained attention to masculinities and queer experiences and perspectives. To gain a more complete picture of gender in transitional justice and to ultimately advance this progress in practical turn, relational, intersectional, de-colonial and queer approaches are required that take into account the ways in which gender intersects with other identities and forms or exclusions and discrimination. Such approaches, then, also hold the potential to move beyond neoliberalized notions of justice (and gender) that dominate the study and practice of transitional justice, and to instead think of justice in more relational and creative terms.

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5 Powerful Essays Advocating for Gender Equality

Gender equality – which becomes reality when all genders are treated fairly and allowed equal opportunities –  is a complicated human rights issue for every country in the world. Recent statistics are sobering. According to the World Economic Forum, it will take 108 years to achieve gender parity . The biggest gaps are found in political empowerment and economics. Also, there are currently just six countries that give women and men equal legal work rights. Generally, women are only given ¾ of the rights given to men. To learn more about how gender equality is measured, how it affects both women and men, and what can be done, here are five essays making a fair point.

Take a free course on Gender Equality offered by top universities!

“Countries With Less Gender Equity Have More Women In STEM — Huh?” – Adam Mastroianni and Dakota McCoy

This essay from two Harvard PhD candidates (Mastroianni in psychology and McCoy in biology) takes a closer look at a recent study that showed that in countries with lower gender equity, more women are in STEM. The study’s researchers suggested that this is because women are actually especially interested in STEM fields, and because they are given more choice in Western countries, they go with different careers. Mastroianni and McCoy disagree.

They argue the research actually shows that cultural attitudes and discrimination are impacting women’s interests, and that bias and discrimination is present even in countries with better gender equality. The problem may lie in the Gender Gap Index (GGI), which tracks factors like wage disparity and government representation. To learn why there’s more women in STEM from countries with less gender equality, a more nuanced and complex approach is needed.

“Men’s health is better, too, in countries with more gender equality” – Liz Plank

When it comes to discussions about gender equality, it isn’t uncommon for someone in the room to say, “What about the men?” Achieving gender equality has been difficult because of the underlying belief that giving women more rights and freedom somehow takes rights away from men. The reality, however, is that gender equality is good for everyone. In Liz Plank’s essay, which is an adaption from her book For the Love of Men: A Vision for Mindful Masculinity, she explores how in Iceland, the #1 ranked country for gender equality, men live longer. Plank lays out the research for why this is, revealing that men who hold “traditional” ideas about masculinity are more likely to die by suicide and suffer worse health. Anxiety about being the only financial provider plays a big role in this, so in countries where women are allowed education and equal earning power, men don’t shoulder the burden alone.

Liz Plank is an author and award-winning journalist with Vox, where she works as a senior producer and political correspondent. In 2015, Forbes named her one of their “30 Under 30” in the Media category. She’s focused on feminist issues throughout her career.

“China’s #MeToo Moment” –  Jiayang Fan

Some of the most visible examples of gender inequality and discrimination comes from “Me Too” stories. Women are coming forward in huge numbers relating how they’ve been harassed and abused by men who have power over them. Most of the time, established systems protect these men from accountability. In this article from Jiayang Fan, a New Yorker staff writer, we get a look at what’s happening in China.

The essay opens with a story from a PhD student inspired by the United States’ Me Too movement to open up about her experience with an academic adviser. Her story led to more accusations against the adviser, and he was eventually dismissed. This is a rare victory, because as Fan says, China employs a more rigid system of patriarchy and hierarchy. There aren’t clear definitions or laws surrounding sexual harassment. Activists are charting unfamiliar territory, which this essay explores.

“Men built this system. No wonder gender equality remains as far off as ever.” – Ellie Mae O’Hagan

Freelance journalist Ellie Mae O’Hagan (whose book The New Normal is scheduled for a May 2020 release) is discouraged that gender equality is so many years away. She argues that it’s because the global system of power at its core is broken.  Even when women are in power, which is proportionally rare on a global scale, they deal with a system built by the patriarchy. O’Hagan’s essay lays out ideas for how to fix what’s fundamentally flawed, so gender equality can become a reality.

Ideas include investing in welfare; reducing gender-based violence (which is mostly men committing violence against women); and strengthening trade unions and improving work conditions. With a system that’s not designed to put women down, the world can finally achieve gender equality.

“Invisibility of Race in Gender Pay Gap Discussions” – Bonnie Chu

The gender pay gap has been a pressing issue for many years in the United States, but most discussions miss the factor of race. In this concise essay, Senior Contributor Bonnie Chu examines the reality, writing that within the gender pay gap, there’s other gaps when it comes to black, Native American, and Latina women. Asian-American women, on the other hand, are paid 85 cents for every dollar. This data is extremely important and should be present in discussions about the gender pay gap. It reminds us that when it comes to gender equality, there’s other factors at play, like racism.

Bonnie Chu is a gender equality advocate and a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur. She’s the founder and CEO of Lensational, which empowers women through photography, and the Managing Director of The Social Investment Consultancy.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Gender Justice

Human rights violations can have unique consequences for women and others targeted because of their gender or sexual identity. ICTJ helps victims to fulfill their rights to justice, truth, and reparation and affirm their dignity by providing accompaniment, support, and tailored responses. We stand with victims in seeking acknowledgment and accountability for sexual and gender-based violations committed in situations of systemic abuse.

      “Why should a fight be played out on my body?”

      — Jacqueline Mutere, Founder of Grace Agenda, Kenya

In periods of conflict or authoritarianism, women often become targets of human rights violations because of their gender and the marginalization they suffer in many societies. They may be subjected to physical and sexual violence, as well as other violations that affect them in unique ways, such as enforced disappearance of their loved ones, displacement, and socioeconomic discrimination.

For example, women whose husbands are forcibly disappeared in conflict can suffer prolonged psychological trauma, unjust legal barriers, and other forms of discrimination because of their ambiguous status as neither married nor officially widowed. They endure a higher risk of exploitation due to poverty worsened by the loss of a primary breadwinner and ostracization by their families and other close social networks.

Compounding these harms, women’s ability to seek recourse is often severely limited, due to structural inequalities. Even transitional justice mechanisms themselves can be blind to the particular needs of women if badly designed, and responses can mirror the gendered power imbalances in society at large.

While women are often among the most marginalized in society, requiring specific attention and targeted transitional justice responses, gender justice is not only concerned with women. All victims’ experiences need to be assessed for gendered implications. A gender-sensitive approach to transitional justice examines and address the full range of experiences, including of male victims in special contexts as well as LGBTQI victims.

Can Transitional Justice Help Promote Justice for Victims of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence?

Transitional justice responses to gender-based violations during conflict and authoritarian rule are essential for ensuring justice for victims, combating women’s marginalization, and preventing future violations against women and other groups targeted for their gender. Of equal importance is ensuring that transitional justice measures meaningfully address the causes and consequences of all abuses against women—even those that are not inherently gender based.

The past few decades have seen considerable progress in terms of public acknowledgment of gender inequality, gender discrimination, and gender-based human rights violations. Too often, however, these acknowledgments do not translate into effective implementation. Much of this failure comes from a lack of technical knowledge on how to implement measures in ways that encourages women’s participation and adequately addresses the gendered nature of human rights violations.

This shortcoming is compounded when women are also excluded from the decision-making process. Women must play a central role in the design and implementation of transitional justice measures if policy is to adequately respond to their needs. This is especially true when attempting to implement policy amid ongoing sexual and gender-based violence, where the will and capacity of authorities to investigate falls short.

ICTJ’s Approach

ICTJ’s goal is to ensure that victims of gender-based violations meaningfully engage in transitional justice measures and that these measures effectively address the causes and consequences of gendered experiences of human rights violations. 

ICTJ’s main approach is to provide technical assistance in particular contexts, including by partnering with victims’ groups, activists, and officials to develop gender-sensitive and gender-responsive policies and processes that are informed by the priorities of all victims. ICTJ works to ensure that these efforts  promote meaningful justice for sexual and gender-based violations, address the gendered implications of human rights violations more broadly, and proactively create safe and accessible spaces for the most vulnerable and marginalized victims. 

ICTJ’s Gender and Transitional Justice curriculum , which draws on ICTJ’s decades of work, is intended to help civil society actors and practitioners incorporate this foundational and technical knowledge into their work and trainings. 

In addition to context-specific assistance, ICTJ also provides new insights into how transitional justice can address the gender dynamics of violence, and contributes to global policy debates on the issue. Through groundbreaking research on topics that have often received scant prior attention, such as the impact of enforced disappearance on women or sexual violence against men and boys, ICTJ seeks to push boundaries and ensure that existing norms and best practices appropriately match the day-to-day realities of victims. ICTJ also works closely with victims and civil society groups to this end. For example, ICTJ assisted Colombia Diversa with its project to explore systematic crimes committed against LGBT people during the country’s armed conflict, which resulted in submissions to the Truth Commission and Special Jurisdiction for Peace. 

We work side by side with victims to obtain acknowledgment and redress for massive human rights violations, hold those responsible to account, reform and build democratic institutions, and prevent the recurrence of violence or repression.

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Gender, justice and empowerment: creating the world we want to see

Rebecca fielding-miller.

a Center on Gender Equity and Health, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA;

Abigail M. Hatcher

b Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA;

c School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa;

Jennifer Wagman

d Department of Community Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA;

e Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment Center of Expertise, University of California Global Health Institute, San Francisco, CA, USA;

Dallas Swendeman

f Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA;

Ushma D. Upadhyay

g Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

Gender is one of the most important social determinants of health. Considerable research has shown that power imbalances due to gender and sexual orientation lead to numerous negative health outcomes and risk exposures for people across the gender spectrum. These include exposure to violence, the inability to negotiate safer sex, diminished ability to choose whether and when to have a child, and decreased access to economic, political, and social capital. Over the past 25 years, women’s empowerment has gained traction as a way to address these negative outcomes in the fields of public health, development, economics, political science, education, sociology and beyond.

Rarely has the question of inequality related to gender been more pressing than in the current global context. The COVID-19 pandemic is devastating for a myriad of populations with regards to morbidity and mortality, economic growth, and emotional wellbeing. Yet, COVID-19 is likely to have a disproportionately greater impact on women, as female-dominated service industries are harder-hit by the accompanying recession and as childcare demands increase ( Alon et al. 2020 ). Intimate partner violence (IPV) is also likely to spike as quarantines lead to social isolation for survivors and fewer accessible services ( van Gelder et al. 2020 ). We know that any recession worsens IPV perpetration ( Schneider, Harknett, and McLanahan 2016 ), but COVID-19 may be even more risky for survivors since the very public health strategies used for decreased viral transmission – social distancing – can reduce access to justice and care. Beyond women, Logie and Turan reminds us that quarantine and movement restriction will “disproportionately affect already stigmatised persons, including homeless persons, persons who are incarcerated, migrants and refugees, undocumented immigrants, and racial minorities,” (2020: epub ahead of print p. 2). Increased attention to justice and empowerment for women and marginalised groups therefore makes a timely and essential contribution to the field of public health.

Over the past two decades, public health researchers and activists have begun to turn their attention from ‘women’s empowerment’ to ‘gender transformation’ for both men and women. This change is associated with two large shifts in the field. The first of these is the acknowledgment that men and boys must be involved as allies in the work to create a more gender equitable world ( Jewkes, Flood, and Lang 2015 ; Dunkle and Jewkes 2006 ; Barker et al. 2010 ), and that some masculine norms (i.e. “toxic masculinities”) harm men and boys as well women, girls, and gender-nonconforming people ( Miedema et al. 2017 ; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005 ). The second is an increasing acceptance that individual-level programmes cannot fully address the problems associated with gender inequality, since those with less power must continually navigate a broader social ecology ( Kerrigan et al. 2015 ). An exponential growth in scholarly publications which cite ‘women’s empowerment’ or ‘gender transformation’ has accompanied these new priorities. Over the last fifteen years an upward trend in interest has occurred for both topics ( Figure 1 ).

Number of Web of Science citations for ‘women’s Empowerment’ and ‘gender Transformation’ annually.

This growing emphasis on gender’s role as a health determinant for all members of our society is unquestionably important. Yet the terminology is still hotly debated. When we refer to the work of empowering women, or transforming gender, do we mean changing the social norms that prescribe (cis-gendered, heterosexual) men’s and women’s roles in society? Or are we discussing something broader, namely the systems of privilege and oppression that not only organise access to power by gender, but also by sexual orientation, race, class, colonial history, physical and mental ability, and beyond?

We believe that clarity around gender, justice and empowerment has implications for the ways in which we structure our research, design our interventions and advocate for specific policies. One goal in creating this Special Issue of Culture, Health & Sexuality was to stimulate and showcase a conversation about what, exactly, we mean when we say ‘women’s empowerment’ or ‘gender transformation’. Notwithstanding the importance of naming the constructs, our unanswered questions extend further than mere semantics. Ultimately, a better understanding of these ideas may lead to better health and quality of life around the world.

In our call for papers, the California Global Health Institute Center of Expertise on Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment, WHGE and the COE asked researchers and theorists to submit papers exploring this question from a range of angles, all centred on the notion of transformative gender justice in sexual and reproductive health. Reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of the question and of the work of the COE, we sought papers exploring behavioural and sociological theories, lessons from programming, and research methods that could deepen our understanding of the process of gender transformative interventions. We hope this collection of papers contributes to the ongoing dialogue on the role of gender in health through practical application of the concepts of women’s empowerment and gender transformation to sexual and reproductive health interventions.

In this Special Issue, we sought to create a space for rigorous reflection on these, and other, gaps in gender justice and empowerment literature. After receiving 31 sub-missions, we sent 18 manuscripts out for full peer review. A challenging selection phase led to the final group of 9 manuscripts in this Special Issue. Together, we feel these articles make important strides in deepening and clarifying our understanding of key aspects of gender and health.

Approach and key constructs

The California Global Health Institute Center of Expertise on Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment, WHGE and the COE is comprised of faculty, staff and students from across the campuses of the University of California, along with an expert advisory board, practitioners and international partners. The COE promotes research, education and community engagement at the intersection of health and empowerment in the USA and globally. The COE has placed gender equity at the forefront of its mission and has previously sponsored a special journal issue focusing on women’s empowerment around the time of pregnancy ( Prata, Tavrow, and Upadhyay 2017 ) and an edited book of model programmes across health domains with supplementary multimedia materials ( Dworkin, Gandhi, and Passano 2017 ).

The COE chose the language of gender justice to allow room for broad narratives. The shift from women’s empowerment to gender transformation is a clear nod to the importance of involving women, men and non-binary persons concurrently in programming. The articles in this Special Issue highlight that women’s empowerment is not simply about individual-level consciousness raising, community norm shifting, or couples interventions. Women, men and people across the gender spectrum exist in a world in which gender, class, race and national identities all intersect with one another. There is an important social and structural facet to transforming the constraints of gender – and we felt that the term ‘justice’ captures this somewhat more clearly than ‘empowerment’. This is partly because a focus on justice moves the field towards structural solution-building rather than individual aptitudes or competencies.

Several theories underpin the work featured in this Special Issue. Multiple papers draw upon Connell’s gender theory as a guiding framework ( Chantelois-Kashal, Apenem Dagadu, and Gardsbane 2019 ; Conroy, Ruark, and Tan 2020 ; Fehrenbacher and Patel 2019 ). Familiar to many readers of Culture, Health & Sexuality , Connell’s application of the notion of hegemonic masculinity has been a pivotal means for explaining how gender norms are created and reproduced ( Connell 1985 , Connell 2014 ; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005 ). Chantelois-Kashal and colleagues extend this theoretical work around gender and masculinity by applying Schippers’ concept of alternative femininities, or the ways that women take up positions that push the boundaries of the traditional gender dichotomy of ‘dominant masculinity’ and ‘subordinate femininity’ ( Schippers 2007 ). In Malawi, Conroy and colleagues emphasise the importance of acknowledging and using an emic lens to understand how men and women conceptualise notions of gender and power, and extend DiClemente and Wingood’s theories to consider the ways in which these ideas are constantly being reconstructed and contested. Hereth et al. call upon Bourdieu’s theories around systems of domination, and remind us that identity development is an important angle when considering how young people, in particular, learn and try out gender in their own lives.

Several authors draw upon an intersectionality framework to articulate the ways in which gender affects sexual and reproductive health differently based on individual’s other social identities. Intersectional theory, as articulated by Kimberle Crenshaw ( Crenshaw 1991 ), a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, lays out the ways in which socially marginalised people face multiple levels of constraints due to gender, sexuality, race and class status.

Gender, justice, and their application

We begin the special issue with a paper that highlights many of they key themes which reoccur throughout the Special Issue. First, McLean and colleagues draw upon a gender transformative, theory-based intervention in Rwanda to explore how couples might examine and challenge their norms and assumptions around gender ( McLean, Heise, and Stern 2020 ). This paper showcases some of the ways in which deeply entrenched beliefs about gender roles and men’s authority over resources make it challenging to transform norms at a community level. In this paper, McLean and colleagues define gender transformation as an overall movement in the grand majority of norms in a community - rather than the piecemeal adjustments of a select few individuals ( McLean, Heise, and Stern 2020 ). This pushes the gender transformation field towards a social and structural conceptualisation of gender change. Yet, in practice, the authors identify a more realistic shift in norms that occurs through finite changes in individual beliefs. McLean and colleagues talk about ‘bending’ old beliefs into something new, and posit that perhaps this is a necessary first step along the road to true transformation ( McLean, Heise, and Stern 2020 ).

Similar to McLean et al., Hereth and colleagues describe a ‘renegotiating’ of gender positions ( Hereth, Pardee, and Reisner 2020 ). The authors explore the ways in which young transgender men and non-binary men in the USA navigate the complexities of gender and sexuality, creating and ‘doing’ new forms of both as they go ( Hereth, Pardee, and Reisner 2020 ). The participants in their qualitative study vary greatly in their gender expression and sexual preferences. Yet, despite differences in individual lives, common themes emerge. The authors highlight how these young people use narrative as an act of creative resistance against heteronormative narratives, and the strategies they use to safely navigate their relationships and communities.

In the following manuscripts, Conroy et al and Ninsiima et al explore the ways in which gender and sexual identity manifest in the lives of young people. As in Hereth and Patel’s paper, these authors explore how young people – transgender and non-binary men who have sex with men in the USA and young, heterosexual men and women in rural Malawi and Uganda - navigate the meaning of gender in their daily lives and social relationships. Young participants actively create, recreate and resist different narratives about gender and sexuality. Their narratives are influenced by a variety of sources, including peer norms, global human rights discourses, and histories of queer resistance. Each of these authors posit that gender transformation is an ongoing project for all men and women, not simply something that begins with the introduction of a new public health or development programme.

In Malawi, Conroy and colleagues conducted qualitative research with young men and women between the ages of 19 and 24 years. The authors use a lens that counters a traditional, hegemonic view of gender that is predicated on male dominance and female vulnerability. Instead, they highlight voices of participants that offer new ideals for the division of labour and power. They note that despite patriarchal norms in the Malawian setting, young people also hold to a ‘unity narrative’ characterised by love, respect, helping one another, and having open communication.

Ninsiima et al. led a large number of qualitative interviews and focus groups with young adolescent women and their parents and teachers in western Uganda ( Ninsiima et al. 2019 ). The authors focus on structural factors of poverty, high rates of intimate partner violence, and a lack of services as the backdrop to the construction of gender norms in this setting. Structural constraints frame how young women are able to exercise their reproductive rights, since young women who lack ability to move freely or choose their own romantic partners will necessarily find it challenging to secure sexual autonomy.

Also from Uganda, Chantelois-Kashal and colleagues use longitudinal qualitative interviews grounded in Bourdieu’s notions of how power reproduces itself across generations and Schipper’s framing of the ways in which emphasised feminities compliment and reinforce hegemonic masculinity ( Schippers 2007 , Bourdieu 1994 ). The authors explore how youth ‘learn gender’ amidst a structural backdrop of poverty and inadequate access to services ( Chantelois-Kashal, Apenem Dagadu, and Gardsbane 2019 ). Of particular interest, theoretically, is the way young women were found to carefully navigate subordinated femininities as they move through adolescence. Young girls narrated use of strategies such as seeking out small (what the authors call “regulated”) liberties amidst severe constraints to women’s freedom by, for example, securing a source of income. By drawing on the insider perspective of the community, rather than relying simply on standard outsider framings of gender (which may lack nuance or fail to acknowledge the dynamic), the authors consider how young women engage with, recreate and resist different models of femininity.

The next set of articles in this special issue speak to how practitioners might apply gender in programming. Much of the research highlights the need to consider gender programming from an intersectional lens, and in true partnership with the community.

Mdege critiques the practical application of gender norms in the 2004 South African film Yesterday. The author questions whether the portrayal of one particular woman in the film is a helpful way of understanding South African gender norms, particularly in the context of HIV and AIDS ( Mdege 2019 ). Mdege notes that while the film unpacks the structural constraints of living in rural South Africa – poverty, lack of services, violence – it also tends to portray the main character as a helpless woman, devoid of choice. This representation, Mdege posits, leads not to gender transformation but towards a limited construction of agency. Ultimately, films can be a tool for shifting societal norms around gender, but Yesterday stopped short in enabling South African viewers to imagine possibilities for women and true gender transformation.

Several papers in the Special Issue detail what are – at least on the surface - success stories: participants adopt new, presumably more beneficial, gender-related behaviours after an intervention. However on further examination, true transformation can prove elusive, in part because there are so many ways to operationalize what transformation might mean to a community.

Leddy and colleagues explore how a cross cultural team in Tanzania implemented the community-based Shikamana intervention ( Leddy et al. 2019 ). The Shikamana intervention was grounded in Freire’s notions of education as a tool for empowerment ( Friere 1993 ), and developed with female sex workers in a low-resource setting. Public health researchers frequently acknowledge the importance of partnering with and centering community, and Leddy’s piece lays out strategies for doing this in the context of HIV prevention. However, the authors rightly point out two constraints of gender transformation in a setting where sex work is illegal and where resources are scarce. In the first, the solidarity between peer navigators and community advisory members was strained when issues around unequal compensation arose. Secondly, the project would have benefitted from greater sensitisation of local police, who historically used methods like bribery or sexual extortion in response to reports of violence by sex workers.

In Rwanda, McLean and colleagues describe men in a couples’ intervention shifting their behaviours due to several processes: feeling consulted by their female partners, feeling listened to (during the course of the group work), and a focus on the benefits and positive feelings associated with new behaviors ( McLean, Heise, and Stern 2020 ). For example, participants reported enhanced household income once both members of a couple worked together. They also spoke about new sexual satisfaction and relationship closeness. McLean and colleagues thoughtfully engage with the critical absences within this narrative of closer, happier couples. While some men did take on new roles caring for children and contributing to household chores, most men and women still viewed these tasks as primarily the responsibility of women. It was as though men could voluntarily “dip in” to the chores when they felt inclined to, but were never really taking on new roles as homemakers or parents. So while distinct behaviours shifted over time, the attitudes and entrenched beliefs surrounding identities were perhaps slower to evolve.

Treves-Kagan et al. examine the mechanisms for behaviour change among young South African men taking part in a community mobilisation intervention called One Man Can that was embedded within broader HIV prevention programming ( Treves-Kagan et al. 2019 ). The authors note that as young men became more visible in their own communities through association with the programme, they were held accountable to the types of gender equitable actions the programme encouraged . However, in keeping with other mixed findings from this type of programming ( Chantelois-Kashal, Apenem Dagadu, and Gardsbane 2019 ), there were limits to the ability of One Man Can to deeply transform men’s beliefs and behaviours. Treves-Kagan and colleagues present a considered critique of workshops and community activities, noting ways that these may have been insufficient to stimulate true changes in entrenched violent and patriarchal norms at the community level.

Treves-Kagan’s paper highlights a regression or backlash after a set of gender norms was shifted. The authors note the tendency of participants to emphasise the role of the church and home as centring on “respect” for male authority ( Treves-Kagan et al. 2019 ). The subtle re-purposing of language that emerges from human rights ultimately served to entrench patriarchal views of men’s and women’s roles in the community. Several participants wonder whether new ideas brought in through the programme were a sign that people were “bewitched” or whether “white, western” ideals were now being imported into rural South Africa. These are powerful and, often, unassailable methods of undercutting transformation around gender in a way that allows little opportunity for change.

Moving methodology forward

In the final paper, Fehrenbacher and Patel note an important gap in the application of quantitative research approaches to explaining gender transformation ( Fehrenbacher and Patel 2019 ). Indeed, nearly every paper in this Special Issue use traditional qualitative methodologies.

A couple of important qualitative innovations deserve highlighting. McLean et al. use a novel method of speaking with both members of a couple at three timepoints, a longitudinal approach that allows the team insights into gender transformation over time and deepens the traditional individual lens of qualitative research with dyadic data collection. The paper led by Treves-Kagan similarly collected longitudinal qualitative data, allowing the authors to think more deeply about change and transformation. Hereth and colleagues employ life histories as a mode of allowing participants themselves to define topics of interest and lead the narrative of their gender experience.

However, while these qualitative approaches are important for something as complex as gender, the field requires quantitative evidence for impact and evaluation if we are to create solutions and move forward. Fehrenbacher and Patel use the lens of intersectionality to highlight strides in theoretical work and qualitative empirical evidence along-side a dearth of studies that frame gender and intersectionality quantitatively. Fehrenbacher and Patel identify several analytical techniques that may be well-suited to questions of gender justice and intersectionality: hierarchical linear modeling, propensity score matching, heterogeneous treatment effects, and geospatial analyses, among others. The authors note that mixed methods approaches such as nested qualitative studies, cultural consensus methods, and the ‘ethnographic sandwich’ of starting and ending a project with ethnography can be effective means of deepening our analytical tools for gender transformation. Their call for the field to pursue novel ways of answering these questions is timely – given the dearth of papers that we ourselves received for this issue using quantitative or mixed methods approaches.

Limitations

While the editorial team tried to be deliberate in our outreach, peer review and curation of final manuscripts, we acknowledge that voices are missing from the discussions presented in the following pages. The majority of authors are women from the global north, and the majority of papers represent work conducted in sub-Saharan Africa. This may be for a number of reasons. While the importance of gendered power imbalances affects people all over the world, the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has focused attention and international funding dollars on the role of gender norms as a structural drivers of HIV risk. Additionally, the editors of this Special Issue, RFM and AMH, are also cis-gendered, white, female researchers who trained in the global North and conduct research in the African region. Although the call for papers had a global reach, it is reasonable to assume that our professional networks shaped the submissions received.

That both of these factors – donor priorities and access to the social and professional networks of researchers with the power to decide whose voices are heard – originate in the global North and are dominated by white researchers should not be considered a coincidence. Nor should it be considered unique to this Special Issue. As these articles highlight, efforts to move towards a more just and healthy world must consider not only the role of gender as a power structure, but also the ways in which gender intersects with other salient power structures, including nationality, race and social class. As several of the programmatic papers in this collection highlight, true change must come at the community level, and in participation with communities. We venture to extend this notion by suggesting the way we conduct our work as professional researchers and public health professionals must be done in a way that deliberately dismantles, rather than reinforces, the power hierarchies that cause harm.

Funding opportunities that prioritise researchers of color from institutions in the global South are an important part of this process. The COE is proud to have a track record of doing just this: last year funding four projects led by local teams in South Africa, Kenya, and Zambia to study sexual violence as part of our international pilot grant programmes. Other funders, such as the UK Medical Research Council and the Sexual Violence Research Initiative have been similarly deliberate, and we encourage others to follow their lead.

Where do we go from here?

There are important tensions and contradictions highlighted by the collection of papers in this Special Issue. Multiple papers in this collection signal the gap between theory and practice, particularly in terms of the required scope of gender transformative work. McLean et al. consider whether a ‘shift’ in gender normative behaviour should be considered a success even if the gendered power structures remain intact ( McLean, Heise, and Stern 2020 ). Ninsiima and colleagues highlight that individual rights-based narratives can sometimes mask higher level social injustices ( Ninsiima et al. 2019 ). As others have argued, the original meaning of empowerment – or, collectively breaking down oppressive patriarchal structures – has been depoliticised over time ( Cronin-Furman, Gowrinathan, and Zakaria 2017 ). There is a need to critically examine how the idea of empowerment or gender transformation, when used apolitically, may actually reinforce the power held by a few.

Indeed, if the goal is systemic-level gender transformation or the restructuring of societal power structures that result in adverse health outcomes, do we perhaps need to be operating at a societal level? Here, one thinks of new laws and policies, structural shifts like mass poverty alleviation, or collective action nationally or even globally, such as the #MeToo movement. The papers in this collection highlight a need for such broad scale systematic change. No submission operated uniquely at the policy level, and even those that engaged structural-level thinking tended to analyse individual-level data and think through stories of individual change.

It is still difficult to determine whether a programme or policy actually leads to more gender justice or transformation. While we received many excellent qualitative and theoretical submissions to this special issue, none utilized methods that support robust causal inferences that generalizable to communities. This makes sense for phenomena as nuanced and complicated as gender, empowerment, and transformation. Certainly in the gender field more broadly, there are important examples of experimental trials and impact evaluations that assess causality robustly and point to promising evidence for how to transform gender over time ( Pronyk et al. 2006 , Gibbs et al. 2020 , Abramsky et al. 2014 , Jewkes et al. 2008 ). However, effort is needed to better operationalise and measure the constructs of empowerment or transformation using quantitative or mixed methods approaches. One small step towards this measure web-based, searchable database of quantitative measures of empowerment to enhance access and utilisation by researchers, practitioners and communities globally ( University of California Global Health Institute 2020 ).

Clearly, there is considerable work to be done if the broader sexual and reproductive health field is to develop and test effective approaches to transform gender and achieve justice. In a recent systematic review of 61 evaluations, only ten (16%) successfully changed social norms at the broader community level ( Levy et al. 2020 ). In the current moment, resources will likely be diverted away from essential sexual and reproductive health as COVID-19 is prioritized by policy makers ( Hall et al. 2020 ). As Hall and colleagues write in The Lancet, “Only when public health responses to COVID-19 leverage intersectional, human rights centred frameworks, transdisciplinary science-driven theories and methods, and community-driven approaches, will they sufficiently prevent complex health and social adversities for women, girls, and vulnerable populations,” (2020: 1176) ( Hall et al. 2020 ). Clearly, continuing to conceptualise translate constructs of empowerment and gender transformation to real-world, finding ways to target them through programmes and policy, and applying new methods towards understanding intervention effects are pressing next steps is a pressing, potentially life-saving, goal for the field.

Much has already been done to better understand how gender works and what transformation may mean. And as the thinking around theoretical and practical implications of this work continues to evolve, the contributions of scholars, community-level champions, and participants themselves will be crucial to sustain. We hope this Special Issue deepens our collective efforts towards reaching the goal of gender transformation and better health across the globe.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the California Global Health Institute Center of Expertise on Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment, for its strong support for the conceptual, logistic, and financial elements of this issue. In particular, we wish to thank Stephanie Sumstine, Chiao-Wen Lan, Ndola Prata, and Melissa Smith for their assistance and guidance throughout the process. At Culture, Health & Sexuality , the consistent efforts of the journal’s editor-in-chief, Peter Aggleton, and its administrator, Ilaria Longo, have been central to the success of this work. Drs Fielding-Miller and Hatcher are supported by National Institute of Mental Health training grants (K01 MH112436 and K01 MH121185). We are indebted to the many peer reviewers who generously gave of their time to offer constructive criticism to the authors, and to the authors themselves for taking onboard reviewer critique.

This article is part of a special issue on Transformative Approaches to Gender Justice in Sexual and Reproductive Health, led and sponsored by the University of California Global Health Institute, Center of Expertise on Women’s Health, Gender, and Empowerment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Gender Justice

Last updated on October 18, 2023 by ClearIAS Team

Gender justice refers to the fair and equitable treatment of individuals of all genders in social, economic, political, and legal contexts. Still, women continue to be under-represented in decision-making roles that directly impact their lives, safety, and well-being. Read here to understand gender justice better.

Progress towards equal power and equal rights for women remains elusive around the world.

Globally, discriminatory laws, policies, and attitudes remain common and ingrained. In crisis settings, women often bear the brunt of violence, marginalization, and economic exclusion.

Gender justice seeks to address historical and ongoing disparities and discrimination based on gender, striving for a more just and equal society where all individuals have equal rights, opportunities, and access to resources, regardless of their gender identity or expression.

Table of Contents

Gender justice

Gender justice emphasizes gender equality, which means that individuals of all genders should have equal rights and opportunities. This includes equal access to education, employment, healthcare, and participation in decision-making processes.

• It opposes discrimination based on gender, including discrimination against women, men, transgender individuals, and gender non-conforming people. Discrimination can take various forms, including unequal pay, gender-based violence, and exclusion from certain roles or positions.
• Gender justice promotes the empowerment of individuals, especially women and marginalized genders, by giving them the tools, resources, and support needed to make informed choices, participate in society, and achieve their full potential.

Access to Justice:

Ensuring that individuals have access to legal remedies and protection against gender-based discrimination and violence is a fundamental aspect of gender justice. This includes efforts to strengthen the legal framework, provide support services, and raise awareness about legal rights.

• Gender justice seeks to prevent and address gender-based violence, which disproportionately affects women and marginalized genders. It advocates for the enforcement of laws against violence, support for survivors, and efforts to change social norms that perpetuate violence.

Empowerment and Rights:

Promoting gender equality and challenging harmful stereotypes and biases are essential components of gender justice. Education and awareness campaigns help change societal attitudes and behaviors.

• Gender justice includes economic empowerment initiatives to reduce gender disparities in income, access to resources, and economic opportunities. This often involves measures to promote women’s participation in the workforce and entrepreneurship.
• Ensuring access to healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health services, is a critical aspect of gender justice. It encompasses issues like family planning, maternal health, and access to contraceptives.
• Gender justice advocates for equal participation of individuals of all genders in political and decision-making processes. This includes efforts to increase the representation of women and marginalized genders in elected offices and leadership positions.

Gender justice recognizes that individuals experience multiple forms of discrimination and disadvantage based on factors such as race, class, disability, and sexual orientation. It aims to address these intersecting forms of discrimination.

Read:  Women’s Reservation Bill

Constitutional provisions of Gender justice

India has a long history of being one of the most unequal and insensitive to gender issues nations in the world.

This is especially true for women, who suffer from a range of social issues like infanticide, foeticide, child marriage, and gender biases regarding the ownership of coparcenary property, among others.

Even in the 21st century, when the entire world has become aware of the attraction of feminism, India has been unable to break free from the constraints of antiquated social practices and customs in various regions.

India continues to be the most significant country in the patriarchal belt of the world, where women are still viewed as less important than males, in a kin-ordered social structure.

Indian women should be treated equally, and the state should protect them, according to the constitution’s creators.

• Right to Equality (Article 14): Article 14 of the Indian Constitution guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the law to all citizens, regardless of their gender. It prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex.
• Prohibition of Discrimination (Article 15): Article 15 prohibits discrimination based on sex, among other grounds. It empowers the state to make special provisions for women and children.
• Equality of Opportunity (Article 16): Article 16 ensures equality of opportunity in matters of public employment. It prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex, and the state is authorized to make reservations for women in government jobs.
• Protection of Minorities (Article 29): Article 29 protects the educational and cultural rights of minorities, which includes women belonging to minority communities.
• Abolition of Untouchability (Article 17): Article 17 abolishes “untouchability” in any form and prohibits its practice. While this provision doesn’t explicitly mention gender, it has a significant impact on the lives of women from marginalized communities.
• Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) (Article 39): The DPSP includes principles that guide the state in matters of policy. Article 39(a) emphasizes equal pay for equal work for both men and women.
• Rights of Women (Article 42): Article 42 directs the state to make provisions for securing just and humane conditions of work and maternity relief for women.
• Reservation of Seats in Panchayats (Article 243D): This article provides for the reservation of seats for women in Panchayats (local self-government institutions) to ensure their participation in grassroots-level governance.
• Reservation of Seats in Municipalities (Article 243T): Similar to Article 243D, Article 243T mandates the reservation of seats for women in municipal bodies.
• Protection Against Violence (Article 15(3), Article 46, Article 51A(e)): While these articles do not explicitly mention violence against women, they emphasize the need for the state to protect the rights and dignity of women and to promote a culture that respects the dignity of women.
• Right to Privacy (Article 21): The right to privacy, as established by the Supreme Court of India, includes the right to bodily autonomy. This has important implications for issues such as reproductive rights and the prevention of gender-based violence.

Landmark Judgments

Over the years, the Indian judiciary has delivered numerous landmark judgments that have advanced gender justice, including judgments related to gender-based violence, workplace harassment, and property rights for women.

• Vishakha v. State of Rajasthan (1997): This landmark judgment by the Supreme Court of India laid down guidelines to prevent sexual harassment of women in the workplace. These guidelines, known as the Vishakha Guidelines , were an important step toward addressing workplace harassment and creating a safer environment for women employees.
• Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017): This case challenged the practice of triple talaq (instant divorce) in Islamic personal law, which disproportionately affected Muslim women. The Supreme Court declared the practice of triple talaq unconstitutional, recognizing the importance of gender justice in matters of personal laws.
• Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018): This historic judgment decriminalized homosexuality in India by striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalized consensual same-sex relations. The judgment was a significant step toward recognizing the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ individuals , including women.
• Sarla Mudgal v. Union of India (1995): In this case, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of bigamy and the practice of Hindu men converting to Islam to marry again without divorcing their Hindu wives. The judgment highlighted the need for legal reforms to protect the rights of women in such cases.
• Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020): This judgment clarified the legal rights of Hindu daughters in matters of ancestral property. It affirmed that daughters have equal rights as sons in ancestral property, irrespective of whether the father was alive or not at the time of the amendment to the Hindu Succession Act.
• Independent Thought v. Union of India (2017): This case resulted in the Supreme Court raising the legal age of consent for sexual intercourse from 15 to 18 years, recognizing the need to protect the rights and well-being of girls and prevent child marriages.
• Joseph Shine vs Union of India (2018): This landmark judgment challenged the constitutional validity of Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), an archaic law that criminalized adultery, defining it as a crime committed solely by a man having sexual intercourse with a married woman without her husband’s consent.

Way forward

Gender justice is a multifaceted and ongoing effort to create a more equitable and inclusive society.

Achieving gender justice requires the collaboration of governments, civil society organizations, businesses, and individuals to challenge gender-based discrimination and work toward a world where all individuals can live free from gender-related inequalities and injustices.

Social, political, and economic equality for women is integral to the achievement of all Millennium Development Goals . Hence, gender justice entails ending the inequalities between women and men that are produced and reproduced in the family, the community, the market, and the state.

Since 2020, UNDP and UN Women have worked together to empower women, support their leadership, and fulfill the promise of justice and human rights for all. In 2022, this partnership evolved into the Gender Justice Platform , a framework for strategic cooperation and upscaled joint initiatives.

Previous year question

Q. Explain the constitutional perspectives of Gender Justice with the help of relevant Constitutional Provisions and case laws. ( GS Paper 2 2023 )

Related article: Same-Sex Marriage

-Article by Swathi Satish

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Gender Inequality and Theories of Justice

• Published: November 1995
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Turning to concrete questions of justice for women, Sen introduces the issue of ‘co‐operative conflicts’ and argues that these conflicts are often rooted in traditional conceptions of women's role, which are internalized as ‘natural’ by the women themselves. Sen's contention is that the capabilities approach can handle these conflicts better than Rawlsian liberalism and economic utilitarianism. To Sen, the central problem is to confront the underlying prejudice directly and to outline the need for and scope of reducing inequalities in capabilities without accepting that this project necessarily causes great inefficiency.

1 Practice and Theory

Empirical research in recent years has brought out clearly the extent to which women occupy disadvantaged positions in traditional economic and social arrangements. While gender inequalities can be observed in Europe and North America (and in Japan), nevertheless in some fields women's relative deprivation is much more acute in many parts of the ‘Third World’.

Indeed, there are extensive inequalities even in morbidity and mortality in substantial parts of Asia and North Africa. Despite the biological advantages that women have in survival compared with men (the ratio of women to men averages around 1.05 or so in Europe and North America, partly due to biological differences in mortality rates), the number of women falls far short of men in Asia and North Africa, though not in sub‐Saharan Africa. If we took the European and North American ratios as the standard, the total number of ‘missing women’ in Asia and North Africa would be astonishingly large (more than 50 million in China alone). Even if the sub‐Saharan African ratio of females to males is taken as the standard, the number of ‘missing women’ would be more than 44 million in China, 37 million in India, and a total exceeding 100 million world‐wide. 2 While looking at female: male ratios in the population is only one way of examining the relative position of women, this approach does give some insight into the acuteness of the problem of gender inequality in matters of life and death. It also throws some indirect light on the history of inequalities in morbidity and of unequal medical care. Direct observation of these other data confirm the intensity of gender inequality in vitally important fields. 3

I have begun with a rather stark account of some features of gender inequality. What bearing does a theory of justice have on our understanding and analysis of these dreadfully practical matters? One bearing is obvious enough. In describing some arrangements as ‘unjust’ we invoke—explicitly or by implication—some conception of justice, and it is necessary at some stage to come to grips with the appropriateness of the respective theories of justice to pronounce judgement on these matters. An observation of inequality can yield a diagnosis of injustice only through some theory (or theories) of justice.

A second context is a bit more complex but no less important. The tolerance of gender inequality is closely related to notions of legitimacy and correctness. In family behaviour, inequalities between women and men (and between girls and boys), are often accepted as ‘natural’ or ‘appropriate’ (even though they are typically not explicitly discussed). Sometimes the operational decisions relating to these inequalities (e.g. providing more health care or nutritional attention to boys vis‐à‐vis girls) are undertaken and executed through the agency of women themselves. The perceived justness of such inequalities and the absence of any contrary sense of deep injustice play a major part in the operation and survival of these arrangements. 4 This is not the only field in which the survival of extraordinary inequality is based on making ‘allies’ out of those who have most to lose from such arrangements. It is, therefore, important to scrutinize the underlying concepts of justice and injustice, and to seek a confrontation between theory and practice.

2 Co‐operative Conflicts

There are many areas of social organization in which all the parties have something to gain from having a workable arrangement, but the gains that are made respectively by different parties differ greatly from one working arrangement to another. There are co‐operative elements in these arrangements, but also elements of conflict in the choice of one arrangement rather than another.

This class of problem can be called ‘co‐operative conflicts’. 5 Such problems have been investigated in the literature of economics and game theory in different ways. For example, what J. F. Nash ( 1950 ) calls ‘the bargaining problem’ is a case of co‐operative conflict in which each party has well‐defined and well‐understood interests which coincide with their objectives.

Sometimes, simplifying assumptions are made that eliminate crucial aspects of co‐operative conflicts. One example is the assumption (used powerfully by Gary Becker, 1981 ) that the ‘altruistic’ head of the family acts in the joint interest of all, and everybody else in the family has exactly the same rational perception of the family's joint interest, which they all want to maximize in a rational and systematic way. This avoids the problem of   conflict in co‐operative conflicts by making everyone pursue the same objectives, as a result of which they have no disharmony of interests, or of objectives. If women (or girls) die in much larger numbers than men (or boys), because of differential medical attention and health care, then this model requires that such differentials are what every member of the family (including the relatively more‐stricken women) rationally promote and their consequences are what they jointly seek.

The existence of conflicts is, however, fully acknowledged in game‐theoretic discussions of ‘the bargaining problem’ inside the family (see, for example, Manser and Brown ( 1980 ); Lundberg and Pollak ( 1994 )). Different family members are seen to have partly divergent interests. It is taken for granted that every member of the family acts on the basis of promoting his or her rationally perceived individual interests, and there is no ambiguity about this. This has the effect of abstracting from the role of implicit theories of justice and of appropriateness, and instead of Beckerian ‘collectivism’, we have here thoroughly individualistic perception of interests and choices based on them.

There is an interesting contrast here that is worth a comment. The situation of real conflict between different members of the family is well caught by the game‐theoretic perspective in a way that the Beckerian formulation does not. On the other hand, the socially influenced perception of the absence of conflict between family members may well be closer to Becker's formulation than to the standard game‐theoretic one. What is needed is a combination, which acknowledges the possibility of real conflicts of interests (unlike in Becker's framework) coexisting with a socially conditioned perception of harmony (unlike in the standard game‐theoretic model). Implicit theories of justice and traditional understandings of what is ‘natural’ and ‘proper’ can play a major part in making people with divergent interests feel united around shared perceptions of common objectives. Thus, despite the illumination about conflicts provided by game‐theoretic models, they do tend to ignore some of the more important causal influences—related to perceptions of legitimacy—that give stability to extreme inequalities in traditional societies. 6

Theories of justice are important in bringing out the tension between perceptions of justice and what may be required by the demands of fairness or less partial rational assessment. Practical uses of theories of justice can be particularly important in the long run, since social change is facilitated by a clearer understanding of tensions between what happens and what is acceptable. While such an impact may be indirect, and while the connections between ethical analysis (on the one hand) and social perceptions and practical politics (on the other) may not be instantaneous, it would be a mistake to ignore the long‐run practical importance of a clearer understanding of issues of justice and injustice.

3 The Claims of Utilitarian Justice

No ethical theory has had as much influence in the modern world as utilitarianism. It has been the dominant mode of moral reasoning over the last two centuries. We can do worse than begin with the question: Why not go for the utilitarian theory of justice as the basis of analysis of gender inequality? The fact that utilitarianism had a radical role in providing effective critiques of many traditional inequities (Bentham's own 1789 practical concerns were much inspired by his outrage at what he saw around him) makes it particularly appropriate to look for a positive lead from that quarter.

Unfortunately, utilitarianism provides a rather limited theory of justice for several distinct reasons. First, utilitarianism is ultimately an efficiency‐oriented approach, concentrating on promoting the maximum sum total of utilities, no matter how unequally that sum total may be distributed. If equity is central to justice, utilitarianism starts off somewhere at the periphery of it.

It is, of course, possible to use utilitarianism to reject many inequalities, since inequalities are often also thoroughly inefficient. But given the lack of a basic concern with equality in the distribution of advantages, the utilitarian concentration on the promotion of utilities is not particularly oriented towards justice.

Secondly, the efficiency that utilitarianism promotes is, of course, specifically concerned only with the generation of utilities . Under different interpretations of utilities variously championed by different utilitarian authors, this amounts to promoting either maximal pleasures, or maximal fulfilment of felt desires, or maximal satisfaction of perceived preferences, or some other achievement in a corresponding mental metric. 7 As was discussed in the last section, one of the features of traditional inequalities is the adaptation of desires and preferences to existing inequalities viewed in terms of perceived legitimacy. This plays havoc with the informational basis of utilitarian reasoning since inequalities in achievements and freedoms (e.g., in morbidities, mortalities, extents of undernourishment, freedom to pursue well‐being) get concealed and muffled in the space of conditioned perceptions.

There is, in fact, some empirical evidence that the deprived groups such as oppressed women in deeply unequal societies even fail to acknowledge the facts of higher morbidity or mortality (even though these phenomena have an objective standing that goes beyond the psychological perception of these matters). 8 Basing the assessment of justice on a measuring rod that bends and twists and adapts as much as utilities do, can be formidably problematic. The difficulties are certainly big enough to discourage us from looking for a utilitarian theory of justice as an ethical arbitrator or as a conceptual frame of reference for analysing the problem of gender inequalities.

4 The Rawlsian Theory of Justice

Compared to the utilitarian approach the Rawlsian theory of ‘justice as fairness’ has many decisive advantages. The Rawlsian theory also has merits in terms of scope and reach over more relativist and less universalist approaches that have sometimes been proposed. 9

The Rawlsian approach avoids the peculiar reliance on selected mental characteristics that utilitarianism recommends. It also provides a foundation based on the idea of fairness that links the demands of justice to a more general mode of reasoning. 10 The use of ideas of fairness, rationality, reasonableness, objectivity, and reflective equilibrium provides Rawls's theory of justice with a depth of political argumentation that is remarkably effective. More substantively, the concern with equity in addition to efficiency as reflected in Rawls's principles of justice puts equity at the centre of disputes about justice in a way that utilitarianism (peripherally concerned, as it is, with equity) fails to do. 11

The Difference Principle of Rawls focuses on primary goods as the basis of assessing individual advantages. Primary goods are things that every rational person is presumed to want, such as income and wealth, basic liberties, freedom of movement and choice of occupation, powers and prerogatives of office and positions of responsibility, and the social bases of self‐respect. In this list there is a clear recognition of the importance of a variety of concerns that affect individual well‐being and freedom and which are sometimes neglected in narrower analyses (e.g., in the concentration only on incomes in many welfare‐economic analyses of inequality).

Despite these advantages there are some real problems in using the Rawlsian theory of justice as fairness for the purpose of analysing gender inequality. In fact, these problems are quite serious in many other contexts as well, and constitute, in my judgement, a general deficiency of the perspective of the Rawlsian theory of justice. Perhaps the most immediate problem relates to Rawls's use of the respective holdings of primary goods as the basis of judging individual advantage. The difficulty arises from the fact that primary goods are the means to the freedom to achieve, and cannot be taken as indicators of freedoms themselves.

The gap between freedoms and means to freedoms would not have been of great practical significance if the transformation possibilities of means into actual freedoms were identical for all human beings. Since these transformation possibilities vary greatly from person to person, the judgements of advantage in the space of means to freedom turn out to be quite different from assessments of the extents of freedoms themselves. The source of the problem is the pervasive diversity of human beings which make equality in one space conflict with equality in other spaces. 12 The particular issue of inter‐individual variations in converting primary goods into freedoms to achieve fits into a more general problem of divergence between different spaces in which the demands of equity, efficiency, and other principles may be assessed.

One of the features of gender inequality is its association with a biological difference which has to be taken into account in understanding the demands of equity between women and men. To assume that difference away would immediately induce some systematic errors in understanding the correspondence between the space of primary goods and that of freedoms to achieve. For example, with the same income and means to buy food and medicine, a pregnant woman may be at a disadvantage vis‐à‐vis a man of the same age in having the freedom to achieve adequate nutritional well‐being. The differential demands imposed by neo‐natal care of children also have considerable bearing on what a woman at a particular stage of life can or cannot achieve with the same command over primary goods as a man might have at the corresponding stage in his life. These and other differences, in which biological factors are important (though not exclusively so), make the programme of judging equity and justice in the space of primary goods deeply defective, since equal holdings of primary goods can go with very unequal substantive freedoms.

In addition to these differences which relate specifically to biological factors, there are other systematic variations in the freedoms that women can enjoy vis‐à‐vis men with the same supply of primary goods. Social conventions and implicit acceptance of ‘natural’ roles have a major influence on what people can or cannot do with their lives. Since the sources of these differences may appear to be ‘external’ to the human beings, it is possible to expect that they can be somehow accounted in when constructing a suitable basket (and index) of primary goods. If this could be adequately done, problems arising from these ‘external sources’ would be accountable within Rawlsian calculus.

However, in many circumstances this may not prove to be possible. Some of the social influences appear in most complex forms and may be hard to formalize into some component of primary goods. The sources of pervasive social discouragement are often hard to trace and harder to separate out.

Perhaps more importantly, as was discussed earlier, some of the constraints that are imposed on what women are free or not free to do may closely relate to women's own perceptions of legitimacy and appropriateness. The presence of this influence plays havoc, as was discussed earlier, with the utility‐based evaluation of justice. That problem has some bearing on the Rawlsian perspective as well. The behavioural constraints related to perceptions of legitimacy and correctness can strongly affect the relationship between primary goods and the freedoms that can be generated with their use. If women are restrained from using the primary goods within their command for generating appropriate capabilities, this disadvantage would not be observed in the space of primary goods. It is not clear how these constraints, many of which are implicit and socially attitudinal, can be incorporated within the framework of the ‘external’ category of primary goods.

I would, therefore, argue that despite major advantages in adopting the Rawlsian theory of justice in analysing gender inequality, there are also serious problems, arising particularly from variations in the correspondence between primary goods and freedoms to achieve. These problems are not specific to gender justice, but they apply with particular force in this case.

There is another problem that may be briefly mentioned here. This relates to the domain of applicability of the Rawlsian theory of justice. In the original presentation (Rawls, 1958 ; 1971 ), ‘justice as fairness’ did appear to be a theory with a very wide domain, applicable in many diverse social circumstances, with a universalist outlook. Without formally contradicting anything presented in that earlier version, Rawls's more recent presentations (Rawls, 1985 ; 1987 ; 1988 a ; 1988 b ; 1993 ) have increasingly stressed some special features of Western liberal democracies as preconditions for applying the principles of justice.

Rawls has emphasized that his ‘political conception’ of justice requires tolerance and acceptance of pluralism. These are certainly attractive features of social organization. If these were parts of the requirement imposed by Rawls's theory, without making it illegitimate to apply other parts of his principles of justice even when these conditions were not entirely met, the domain of his theory would not have been substantially reduced, even though its demands would have been significantly expanded. However, Rawls has sometimes asserted precisely that conditionality—making the requirements take a fairly ‘all or nothing’ form. This has the immediate effect of making it an illegitimate use of his theory to apply his principles of justice in circumstances where the conditions of tolerance are not met.

In the context of many ‘Third World’ countries in which the problems of gender inequality are particularly acute, Rawls's requirements of toleration are not at all well met. If, as a result, it becomes right to conclude (as seems to be suggested by Rawls) that his theory cannot be applied in such societies, then there is not a great deal to be said about gender inequality in those circumstances with the aid of ‘justice as fairness’.

I personally would argue that Rawls over‐restricts the domain of his theory, since it has usefulness beyond these limits. 13 The theory comes into its own in the fuller context of toleration that make Rawls's ‘political conception’ more extensively realizable, but the important questions of liberty, equity, and efficiency outlined by Rawls have substantial bearings even in those circumstances in which the demands of toleration are not universally accepted.

5 Freedoms, Capabilities, and Justice

I have argued elsewhere in favour of judging individual advantage directly in terms of the freedom to achieve, rather than in terms of primary goods (as in Rawls, 1971 ), incomes (as in standard welfare‐economic discussions), resources (as in Dworkin, 1981 ), and other proposed spaces. The ‘capability perspective’ involves concentration on freedoms to achieve in general and the capabilities to function in particular (especially when assessing freedoms to pursue well‐being). 14 Individual achievements in living could be seen in terms of human functionings, consisting of various beings and doings, varying from such elementary matters as being adequately nourished, avoiding escapable morbidity, etc., to such complex functionings as taking part in the life of the community, achieving self‐respect, and so on.

An important part of our freedom to achieve consists of our capability to function. In the functioning space an achievement is an n ‐tuple of functionings that are realized, whereas a capability set is a collection of such n ‐tuples of functioning combinations. The capability set of a person represents the alternative combinations of functioning achievements from which the person can choose one combination. It is, thus, a representation of the freedom that a person enjoys in choosing one mode of living or another. 15

When we want to examine a person's freedom to achieve in a more general context (including the achievement of social objectives), we shall have to go beyond the functioning space into the corresponding representations of broader achievements, e.g., promoting her social objectives such as reforming some feature or another of the society in which she lives. By pointing our attention towards freedoms in general, the capability approach is meant to accept the relevance of freedom over this broader space, even though the formal definition of capabilities may not take us beyond human functionings as such. 16

A number of questions have been raised about the cogency, scope, and applicability of the capability approach to justice. I have dealt with some of the issues elsewhere (Sen, 1992 a ; 1992) and will not go into them here. 17 There are also interesting issues in the relationship between this approach and the perspective emerging from Aristotelian analysis of capability, virtues, and justice, and these have been illuminatingly discussed by Martha Nussbaum ( 1988 a ; 1988 b ). These issues too I shall not pursue here. Instead I shall try to comment on some particular features of this approach that may be particularly relevant in developing a capability‐based theory of justice in general, and can be usefully applied specifically to analyse gender inequality.

I would argue that any theory of justice (1) identifies a space in which inter‐personal comparisons are made for judging individual advantages, and (2) specifies a ‘combining’ procedure that translates the demands of justice to operations on the chosen space. For example, the utilitarian approach identifies the relevant space as that of individual utilities (defined as pleasures, fulfilment of desires, or some other interpretation), and picks the combining formula of simply adding up the individual utilities to arrive at a sum total that is to be maximised. To take another example, Nozick's ( 1974 ) ‘entitlement theory’ specifies the space as a set of libertarian rights that individuals can have, and uses as a combining formula an equal holding of these rights. Similarly, the Rawlsian approach demands maximal equal liberty for all in the space of some specified liberties (through the ‘First Principle’) and supplements it by demanding a lexicographic maximin rule in the space of holdings of primary goods (included in the ‘Second Principle’ in the form of the ‘Difference Principle’).

It should be obvious that the specification of the space of functionings and capabilities in particular, and of achievements and freedoms in general, does not amount to a theory of justice. It merely identifies the field in which the ‘combining’ operations have to be defined. The assertiveness of the claim rests on the acceptance of the peculiar relevance of this space in judging individual advantage in formulating a theory of justice.

I have argued elsewhere that a theory of justice must include aggregative considerations as well as distributive ones. 18 It will be a mistake to see the space of functionings and capabilities as being exclusively related to specifications of the demands of equality. In assessing the justice of different distributions of individual capabilities and freedoms, it would be appropriate to be concerned both about aggregative considerations and about the extent of inequality in the distribution pattern.

It is not my purpose here to argue for a particular formula for combining the diverse considerations of equality and efficiency, and I am not about to propose a rival specification to the lexicographic maximin rule used by Rawls, or to the simple summation rule used by the utilitarians. There are good grounds for attaching importance both to overall generation of capabilities (this includes aggregative considerations in general and efficiency considerations in particular) as well as to reducing inequalities in the distribution of capabilities. Within that general agreement various formulae can be found that do not coincide with each other but which can be—and have been—defended in a reasonable way in many presentations. I have not gone beyond outlining a space and some general features of a combining formula, and this obviously falls far short of being a complete theory of justice. Such a complete theory is not what I am seeking, and more importantly for the present purpose, it is not especially needed to analyse gender inequality. The class of theories of justice that are consistent with these requirements is adequate for the present purpose.

6 Gender and Justice

Earlier in this paper I have tried to outline the connection between common perceptions of legitimacy and appropriateness (shared even by women themselves) in traditional societies and the gender inequalities that are generally accepted in those societies (even by the women themselves). In that context I illustrated the inequalities with some standard indicators of minimal success in living, such as survival rates. This was just one illustration of the kind of variable in terms of which inequalities can be assessed. Being able to survive without premature mortality is, of course, a very basic capability. When a fuller accounting is done, many other capabilities would have obvious relevance, varying from the ability to avoid preventable morbidity, to be well‐nourished, to be comfortable and happy, etc., on the one hand, as well as more complex freedoms to achieve, including social goals and objectives, on the other.

This way of judging individual advantage provides an immediate connection between (1) the basis of the class of theories of justice outlined in the previous section, and (2) the empirical realities in terms of which gender inequality can be effectively discussed. The main advantage in being concerned with this space rather than the space of resources, primary goods, incomes, etc., is that the perspective of freedom to achieve tells us a great deal more about the advantages that the persons actually enjoy to pursue their objectives (as opposed to the means they possess that may differentially privilege different people to promote their aims).

It has been suggested by Rawls ( 1988 b ), in a critique of my line of reasoning, that comparing people's capabilities would require the use of one universal set of ‘comprehensive’ objectives shared by all, and that demanding such uniformity would be a mistake. I agree that it would be a mistake to demand such uniformity, but is it really needed?

People do, of course, have different particular aims. Whether at a deep and sophisticated level a shared set of general objectives can be fruitfully assumed is an important question that has been addressed in the Aristotelian perspective by Martha Nussbaum ( 1988 b ). 19 But no matter what position we take on that particular question, it is important to recognize that inter‐personal comparison of capabilities are not rendered impossible by the absence of an agreed ‘comprehensive doctrine’. By looking at ‘intersections’ between different individual orderings, agreed judgements on capabilities can be made without invoking a single ‘comprehensive’ doctrine shared by all. 20 There can be incompletenesses in such orderings but that is a problem that applies to the indexing of primary goods as well. 21 The really serious cases of inequities that tend to move us towards agitating for social change would typically be captured by a variety of orderings, even when they would disagree with each other in many subtler issues.

The specification of the relevant space opens the way not only for the assessment of inequalities in those terms but also for understanding the demands of efficiency in that context. This is particularly important in understanding gender inequality for two distinct reasons.

First, as was argued earlier, gender relations do involve ‘co‐operative conflicts’. There are benefits for all through co‐operation, but the availability of many different arrangements (yielding different levels of inequality in the generated capabilities) superimpose conflicts on a general background of co‐operative gains. To deny the existence of the efficiency problem would be a great mistake, and cannot serve the cause of gender equality in a practical world. Efficiency issues have to be tackled along with problems of inequality and injustice.

Secondly, gender inequality is made acceptable to women themselves (along with the more powerful male members of the society at large) by playing up the demands of efficiency in particular social arrangements. The relatively inferior role of women and the shockingly neglected treatment of young girls are implicitly ‘justified’ by alleged efficiency considerations. The alternative of chaos and gross inefficiency is frequently presented, explicitly or by implication, in discussions on this subject. That line of argument has to be critically scrutinized and challenged.

To meet that general presumption and prejudice, what is needed is a serious analysis of the feasibility of alternative arrangements that can be less iniquitous but no less efficient. To some extent such an analysis can draw on what has already been achieved in other countries. In the light of specific circumstances, more particular analysis of feasibilities may also be needed. 22 The identification of deprivation has to be linked directly to the demands of fair division.

The central issue is to confront the underlying prejudice directly and to outline the need for and scope of reducing inequalities in capabilities without accepting that this must cause great inefficiency. The implicit prejudices call for explicit scrutiny. We have to be clear on the nature of the ‘theory’ underlying the practice of extreme inequality, and be prepared to outline what justice may minimally demand. The advantage of a theory of justice defined in terms of the capability space is to place the debate where it securely belongs.

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A revised version of a paper presented at the WIDER conference on Human Capabilities: Women, Men and Equality, in Helsinki, August 1991. In revising the paper. I have benefited from the comments of David Crocker, Jonathan Glover, Martha Nussbaum, and Ruth‐Anna Putnam.

See Sen ( 1989 ; 1992 b ). See also Coale ( 1991 ); Klasen ( 1994 ) for other bases of estimates, and Harriss and Watson ( 1987 ) for a general discussion of the underlying issues.

I have tried to discuss the available evidence in Sen ( 1990 c ); and also in my joint work with Jean Drèze; Drèze and Sen ( 1989 ), ch. 4. See also Boserup ( 1970 ); Lincoln Chen et al. ( 1981 ); Kynch and Sen ( 1983 ); Sen ( 1985 b ).

Indeed, sometimes even social analysts tend to treat the absence of any perceived sense of unjust inequality as ‘proof’ that any suggestion of real conflict is mistaken—‘an import of foreign ideas into the harmony of traditional rural living’. For a critique of this tradition of interpretation, see Kynch and Sen ( 1983 ) and Sen ( 1990 c ).

For a characterization and analysis of ‘co‐operative conflicts’, see Sen ( 1990 c ). This is an extension of what Nash ( 1950 ) called ‘the bargaining problem’.

In this paper I am concerned specifically with the situation in the ‘Third World’, but I believe that the problem of gender inequality even in the economically advanced countries of Europe and North America can be better understood by bringing in conceptions of justice and legitimacy as determinants of individual behaviour.

It is sometimes thought that the ‘desire‐fulfilment’ theory of utility is radically different from a ‘mental metric’ approach, since it examines the extent of fulfilment of what is desired, and the objects of desire are not themselves mental magnitudes: for this and related arguments see Griffin ( 1982 ; 1986 ). But the utilitarian formula requires interpersonally comparable cardinal utilities, and this demands comparisons of intensities of desires for different objects, by different people. Thus, in effect, the dependence on mental metrics is extensive also in the desire‐fulfilment formulation of utilitarian calculus.

On this see Kynch and Sen ( 1983 ). It is, of course, a different issue as to how these ‘objective’ matters relate to human perceptions generally (including those of professional doctors), and I am not addressing here the foundational question of objective–subjective divisions. On that issue, see Hilary Putnam ( 1987 ; 1991 ).

Relativism raises many different types of issues. There are questions of cultural relativism, which are sometimes invoked to dispute criticisms of traditional societies. There is also the question of a separate ‘feminist’ approach to justice. These is, in that context, the methodological problem as to whether the advantages of men and women in a theory of justice can be judged in the ‘same’ standards. On these matters and also on their bearing on theories of justice, see Okin ( 1987 ; 1989 ), Nussbaum ( 1988 a ; 1988 b ) and Ruth Anna Putnam ( 1992 ).

I am referring particularly to the use of ‘the original position’ in Rawls ( 1958 ; 1971 ). See also Rawls ( 1985 ; 1993 ). In his later presentations Rawls has integrated the reasoning based on ‘the original position’ with a constructivist programme inspired by Kant ( 1785 ).

Equality is valued in Rawls's first principle (demanding ‘equal liberty’) as well as the second (of which the Difference Principle particularly brings out the concern with the worse off members of the society). The special concern with liberty, which is a part of the first principle, is also an attractive feature of justice, even though the lexicographic priority that liberty gets over other human concerns can be disputed. On this see Hart ( 1973 ).

I have discussed this issue in Sen ( 1980 ; 1990 b ; 1992 a ).

On related matters see Putnam ( 1992 ).

On this see Sen ( 1980 ; 1985 a ; 1985 b ; 1993 ). For an excellent review of discussions relating to this perspective, see Crocker ( 1991 b ). See also Griffin and Knight ( 1989 ), Crocker ( 1991 a ), and Anand and Ravallion ( 1993 ).

On some technical issues in evaluating freedom, see Sen ( 1990 a ; 1991 a ; 1992 a ). It is important to emphasize that the freedom to choose from alternative actions has to be seen not just in terms of permissible possibilities, but with adequate note of the psychological constraints that may make a person (e.g., a housewife in a traditional family) desist from taking steps that she could, in principle, freely take. On this and related issues, see Laden ( 1991 ).

A distinction made between ‘agency objectives’ in general and ‘well‐being objectives’ in particular is relevant here. The capability to function is closely related to well‐being objectives but the approach (of which this outlook is a part) encourages us to look beyond this space when we are concerned with a person's ‘agency freedoms’ (see Sen, 1985 a ).

See also Crocker ( 1991 b ).

This is discussed particularly in Sen ( 1992 a ).

On this see Sen ( 1970 ; 1990 b ; 1992 a ).

On that problem see Plott ( 1978 ); Gibbard ( 1979 ); Blair ( 1988 ) and Sen ( 1991 b ).

One of the most important fields of investigation in this context is the role of the freedom to accept remunerative employment on the part of women. On this see Sen ( 1990 c ) and Martha Chen ( 1992 ).

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World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024

Global economic growth is projected to slow from an estimated 2.7 per cent in 2023 to 2.4 per cent in 2024, trending below the pre-pandemic growth rate of 3.0 per cent, according to the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2024. This latest forecast comes on the heels of global economic performance exceeding expectations in 2023. However, last year’s stronger-than-expected GDP growth masked short-term risks and structural vulnerabilities. 

The UN’s flagship economic report presents a sombre economic outlook for the near term. Persistently high interest rates, further escalation of conflicts, sluggish international trade, and increasing climate disasters, pose significant challenges to global growth.

The prospects of a prolonged period of tighter credit conditions and higher borrowing costs present strong headwinds for a world economy saddled with debt, while in need of more investments to resuscitate growth, fight climate change and accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“2024 must be the year when we break out of this quagmire. By unlocking big, bold investments we can drive sustainable development and climate action, and put the global economy on a stronger growth path for all,” said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General. “We must build on the progress made in the past year towards an SDG Stimulus of at least $500 billion per year in affordable long-term financing for investments in sustainable development and climate action.”

Subdued growth in developed and developing economies Growth in several large, developed economies, especially the United States, is projected to decelerate in 2024 given high interest rates, slowing consumer spending and weaker labour markets. The short-term growth prospects for many developing countries – particularly in East Asia, Western Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean – are also deteriorating because of tighter financial conditions, shrinking fiscal space and sluggish external demand. Low-income and vulnerable economies are facing increasing balance-of-payments pressures and debt sustainability risks. Economic prospects for small island developing States, in particular, will be constrained by heavy debt burdens, high interest rates and increasing climate-related vulnerabilities, which threaten to undermine, and in some cases, even reverse gains made on the SDGs.

Inflation trending down but recovery in labour markets still uneven Global inflation is projected to decline further, from an estimated 5.7 per cent in 2023 to 3.9 per cent in 2024. Price pressures are, however, still elevated in many countries and any further escalation of geopolitical conflicts risks renewed increases in inflation. 

In about a quarter of all developing countries, annual inflation is projected to exceed 10 per cent in 2024, the report highlights. Since January 2021, consumer prices in developing economies have increased by a cumulative 21.1 per cent, significantly eroding the economic gains made following the COVID-19 recovery. Amid supply-side disruptions, conflicts and extreme weather events, local food price inflation remained high in many developing economies, disproportionately affecting the poorest households. 

“Persistently high inflation has further set back progress in poverty eradication, with especially severe impacts in the least developed countries,” said Li Junhua, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “It is absolutely imperative that we strengthen global cooperation and the multilateral trading system, reform development finance, address debt challenges and scale up climate financing to help vulnerable countries accelerate towards a path of sustainable and inclusive growth.”

According to the report, the global labour markets have seen an uneven recovery from the pandemic crisis. In developed economies, labour markets have remained resilient despite a slowdown in growth. However, in many developing countries, particularly in Western Asia and Africa, key employment indicators, including unemployment rates, are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. The global gender employment gap remains high, and gender pay gaps not only persist but have even widened in some occupations.   

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Yale awards nine honorary degrees.

Front row, from left, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, Judith Rodin, Peter Salovey, Mahzarin Banaji, and Hortense Spillers.  Second row, from left, László Lovász,  Kehinde Wiley,  Mario Capecchi, and Stephen Breyer. (Photo by Michael Marsland)

During its 323rd graduation ceremony on Monday, Yale conferred honorary degrees on nine individuals who have achieved distinction in their fields.

This year’s honorary degree recipients included the eminent social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji; retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer; Nobel Prize-winning molecular geneticist Mario Capecchi; health policy leader Risa Lavizzo-Mourey; mathematician and computer scientist László Lovász; research psychologist and global thought leader Judith Rodin; literary critic Hortense Spillers; and visual artist Kehinde Wiley ’01 M.F.A.

And also receiving an honorary degree was Yale President Peter Salovey, who presided over his final Commencement as Yale’s leader before his planned return to the faculty this summer.

The awarding of honorary degrees, which has been a Yale tradition since 1702, recognizes pioneering achievement or exemplary contribution to the common good.

The honorary degree recipients and their citations follow:

Mahzarin Banaji Social psychologist Doctor of Social Science

“ Groundbreaking scholar whose pioneering work has helped establish the role that unconscious processes play in governing human social action, you have educated us to appreciate how our judgment of others may spring, not from conscious dislike or animosity, but from implicit biases we do not recognize or understand. These ‘mind bugs’ occur outside of our awareness or control and give rise to prejudices based on race, gender, age, and other characteristics. Intrepid investigator whose work has opened minds and hearts by illuminating what leads us to categorize others, we are pleased to admit explicit bias in your favor as we honor a beloved former Yale faculty member with the degree of Doctor of Social Science. ”

Stephen Breyer Jurist, retired associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Doctor of Laws

“ Supreme court justice for over a quarter century, you are known for your pragmatic philosophy, a belief that the judiciary must adapt to changing society and consider real-world consequences for human beings when deciding cases. Your fact and data-driven decisions in matters involving school integration, the rights of criminal suspects, a woman’s prerogative to control her own body, and many more, mark you as someone who shares Justice Holmes’ belief that the important thing is ‘not where we stand, but in what direction we are moving.’ Quintessential enlightenment man, Yale celebrates a justice who reminds us that judges must hew to principle, not politics, as we honor you with the degree of Doctor of Laws. ”

Mario Capecchi Molecular geneticist Doctor of Science

“ Born in Verona to a mother who was taken to Dachau, you lived alone on the streets during the Holocaust from age four, scrounging for food, until, through a set of miraculous circumstances, you were brought to the United States. Without any formal schooling until you were nine, you rose to share the Nobel Prize in medicine for the development of gene targeting in mouse embryo stem cells, a discovery that has led to major advancements in human disease, drug development, and more. Inspiring scientist, whose life lessons teach us all and whose story exemplifies the triumph of the human spirit, we award you the degree of Doctor of Science. ”

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey Health policy leader Doctor of Medical Sciences

“ Trailblazing physician, geriatrician, and first woman and first African American to be president and chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, you have devoted your career to empowering communities and corporations to making equitable health care a shared value. Your persuasiveness has prevailed on big corporations to heed your cry of ‘Less sugar! Less sugar!’ and to help create a healthier America. Yale salutes a visionary who is insistent that all Americans — from every zip code in our nation — can live longer, healthier, better lives, as, with a big glass of delicious water, we toast and award you the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences. ”

László Lovász Mathematician and computer scientist Doctor of Engineering and Technology

“ Brilliant mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, your pathbreaking contributions in combinatorics, a branch of pure mathematics, have led to real-life applications in computer science, engineering and technology, statistics, and science that serve and advance humankind.  Over time you have received nearly every award a mathematician can earn, including the Abel Prize, the highest award in mathematics. We are honored that you have agreed to receive one more, from the university where you taught and conducted research for over a half decade, and which itself is honored to present you with the degree of Doctor of Engineering and Technology. ”

Judith Rodin Global thought leader Doctor of Humane Letters

“ Pioneering leader who served as the first woman president of both the University of Pennsylvania and the Rockefeller Foundation, you have helped reshape two great institutions to face the needs of modern times. In both, your creative and forward-looking ideas — from health psychology to resilient cities — galvanized initiatives that emphasized change amidst challenge. Yale celebrates as well your twenty-two years in New Haven as a Yale faculty member, educator, dean of the graduate school, and university provost. A resilient and transformational leader wherever you go, Yale salutes an innovator we still think of as ‘one of our own,’ as we proudly confer on you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. ”

Peter Salovey P resident of Yale University Doctor of Humane Letters

“ When you step down in June as Yale’s 23rd president, you will enter history as the Yale professor who has held more senior leadership positions at the university than anyone in its 322-year history. Beginning with your presidency of the  Graduate and Professional Student Senate  when you were a Ph.D. student, you have been, serially, chair of the Psychology Department, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, dean of Yale College, provost, and president — a cornucopia of senior positions held by no other Yale historical personage, ever.

“ When you were appointed, you said you hoped to help a great university create a more accessible, a more innovative, and a more excellent Yale. You have done all three. Yale now has a dramatically wider array of socioeconomic and geographic diversity across its student body, departments, and schools. New buildings have brought together scattered faculty who now work with and learn from each other. New Haven’s economy is strengthened because of your partnership with its mayor. And the new faculty and academic collaborations in schools and programs that you have prioritized have made Yale more innovative and forward looking in developing ways to address society’s greatest challenges.

“ From the start of your presidency your stated aim has been inspiring Yale as a community where students, staff, and faculty collaborate with one another to make a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. As you return now to the faculty after a suitable rest, no doubt to galvanize students as the excellent teacher you always have been, Yale offers its thanks, as we gratefully confer on you your fourth Yale degree, doctor of Humane Letters. ”

Hortense Spillers Literary critic Doctor of Humanities

“ Inspiring Black feminist theorist and critic, your foundational work, embedded in your deep historical and literary knowledge, challenges received thought and provides us a profound understanding of how race and gender shape the modern world. In three books and dozens of essays, you rewrite the American grammar book, claiming the insurgent ground as you revolutionize how we consider and write about our nation’s history and culture. Pioneering thinker, we celebrate the marvels of your inventiveness, and your enduring contributions to letters, as we proudly confer on you the degree of Doctor of Humanities. ”

Kehinde Wiley ’01 M.F.A. Visual artist Doctor of Fine Arts

“ Internationally renowned painter and sculptor, whose portrait of President Obama hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, your arresting portraits, like all pioneering art, break the category, depicting ‘common’ people in traditional styles that raise questions about privilege, power, authority, and representation. Artist recognized around the world for your vibrant and imaginative work, and an awardee of the W.E.B. Du Bois medal for ‘contributions to African and African American culture, and advocacy for intercultural understanding and human rights,’ Yale honors you with a second Yale degree, Doctor of Fine Arts. ”

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