Women, Marriage and Motherhood in the United States: Allocating Responsibility in a Changing World
![handle is hein.journals/sjls2011 and id is 8 raw text is: Singapore Journal of Legal Studies
[2011] 1-17
WOMEN, MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD IN THE
UNITED STATES: ALLOCATING RESPONSIBILITY
IN A CHANGING WORLD
MARTHA ALBERTSON FINEMAN*
The lesson from the United States is that egalitarian law reform alone is inadequate to achieve
gender equality, be it at home or in the workplace. Formal equality may be useful in defining
some relations between adults, but family dynamics, as well as the realisation that state and market
institutions must be responsive to human dependency and vulnerability, must also be factored into
considerations of what is needed in the way of reforms. For example, merely encouraging egalitarian
family policies has not resulted in significantly removing the obstacles to women's equal participation
in the workplace when they become mothers. The State must also respond to the situation of women
(and others) who are placed in vulnerable positions in the workplace because of the care work they
perform in the family. A responsive State would pay attention to the operation and functioning of the
institutions, entitlements and other mechanisms that provide the resources that individuals need in
order to successfully undertake responsibility for those who are dependent in society, such as infants
and children, as well as some elderly, disabled, or ill adults. It is time to expand our rhetoric of
'personal responsibility' to include a notion of 'shared responsibility', in which the state and market
institutions are charged with ensuring that there is truly equality of access and opportunity. This
would require the accommodation of our shared human vulnerability and dependency, as well as
the undoing of institutional practices and relations that unduly privilege the circumstances of some
workers while tolerating the structural disadvantages with which others grapple on a daily basis.
I. CONTEXT
This special issue of the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies commemorates the
50th anniversary of the Women's Charter.1 Intriguing from an American feminist
perspective is the fact that something deemed a women's charter is almost exclusively
concerned with family issues such as marriage, divorce and parental responsibility.
The organisation of the family was evidently viewed as the most crucial reform for
women by the mostly male politicians of the People's Action Party.2 The Women's
Charter Bill was presented to the First Session of the First Legislature in Singapore in
March of 1960.3 Statements from leaders of both parties were clear that the energy
* Robert W. Woodruff Professor, Emory University School of Law, United States of America.
1 The current version is Cap. 353, 2009 Rev. Ed. Sing., as amended by Act No. 2 of 2011.
2See announcement by PAP Chairman Toh Chin Chye at special Party Congress on 25th April 1959, The
Tasks Ahead Part]1 (Singapore: Petir, 1959) at 7-8 and 11.
3~ See Sing., Legislative Assembly Debates, vol. 12, col. 406 at 406 (2 March 1960). See also Leong Wai
Kum, Principles of Family Law in Singapore (Singapore: Butterworths Asia, 1997) at 38-44.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/sjls2011&div=5&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Women, Marriage and Motherhood in the United States: Allocating Responsibility in a Changing World
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