Domestic Labor, Citizenship, and Exceptionalism: Rethinking Kant's “Woman Problem”

Abstract

There is no doubt that Immanuel Kant has a woman problem. His anthropological studies of women are full of cutting remarks, and despite a generation of feminist Kantian scholarship, it is an open question whether he meant to include women as full, equal agents in either his moral or political philosophy.Those who engage this question within Kant's political philosophy ask whether or not women can "work their way up" to full, active citizenship.1 If women can achieve equality in this way, the argument goes, then we can solve Kant's woman problem. But this approach, I argue, asks the wrong question. It focuses on the status of wives rather than on the structure of the domestic sphere as a whole, and therefore obscures the ways in which the valuation of domestic space and reproductive labor shape access to rights and equality in Kant's political philosophy. I will argue that this approach misses the deeper structural and gendered inequalities built into Kant's conception of the state. Re-examining Kant's "woman problem" points us toward a larger problem with labor and inequality in the Kantian state: Kant's map of the rightful institutional order normatively requires that someone do the dependency work that makes independence possible.In making this argument, I am responding to a recent move to reframe the Kantian state as a model of welfare state liberalism.2 Critics have examined Kant's defense of unconditional poverty relief and distributive justice and his critique of the nobility in order to offer a robust account of the obligations of the public authority in the face of socioeconomic inequality.3 Although most of these analyses have focused on inequality in the public and market spheres, a few have taken up questions about dependency within the domestic sphere. Tamar Schapiro contends that the limits on rights for those within the domestic sphere is merely a temporary and nonideal feature of Kant's account of right. Helga Varden and Ernest Weinrib argue that if this is the case, the state must foster the conditions that will allow women, domestic servants, and other dependents to "work their way up" to full, active citizenship. 4 I will show that these arguments fail to grapple with the relationship between reproductive labor and the independence of active citizens in Kant's account of the state, and therefore, that they underestimate the ways in which the domestic sphere operates as a distinct sphere of rights, labor, and relations within the Kantian state.

Asha Bhandary's Freedom to Care — A Kantian Care Engagement

“… 5 For example, I'm thinking of Hay (2013), Hay & Varden (2022), LaVaque-Manty (2006), Papadaki (2010), Pascoe (2011, 2013, 2015), Varden (2006, 2012, 2018, 2020a, 2020b), though note if we just focus on the issue of Kant and women, then the list becomes much more extensive. For an overview of much of this literature, see Varden (2020b).…”

“…For the work that may be most well known and relevant here, seeHerman (1993) and O'Neill (1996, 2000.5 For example, I'm thinking ofHay (2013),Hay & Varden (2022),LaVaque-Manty (2006), Papadaki (2010),Pascoe (2011Pascoe ( , 2013Pascoe ( , 2015,Varden (2006Varden ( , 2012Varden ( , 2018Varden ( , 2020aVarden ( , 2020b, though note if we just focus on the issue of Kant and women, then the list becomes much more extensive. For an overview of much of this literature, seeVarden (2020b).…”

Kant on Civil Society and Welfare

“…For a reading that understands the passive citizenship discussion very differently, seePascoe (2015). By contrast, Varden (2006) offers an interpretation that (like mine) posits substantial state responsibilities to "passive" citizens on a Kantian model.…”

Working Women and Monstrous Mothers: Kant, Marx, and the Valuation of Domestic Labour

“…Hay argues that this demonstrates that Kant’s political philosophy is not inconsistent with feminist aims (Hay 2013: 52) while Weinrib and Varden emphasize that a truly just state must overcome Kant’s anachronistic sexism to ensure conditions under which women could work their way to full civic equality (Weinrib 2008: 25; Varden 2015). See Pascoe (2015) for further discussion of this passage, and contemporary feminist discussion of it.…”

“… 18 For further discussion of ways to challenge the exceptionalism built into much Kantian feminism, see Pascoe (2015: 350–2). …”