Review Essay: The Power of Women
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Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. By Catharine A. MacKinnon. *
Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 1989. Pp. xvii, 330.
Stephanie M. Wildmant
In Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Catharine MacKinnon
presents a compelling description of the gendered nature of our social
reality. She describes her work as seeking to understand gender as a form
of power and power in its gendered forms.' At the same time she
cautions that to look for the place of gender in everything is not to reduce
everything to gender.2
The first third of the book examines marxism, a theory about class
exploitation,3 from a feminist perspective, feminism, a theory about sex
exploitation,4 from a marxist perspective, and considers efforts to integrate
the two, particularly in the wages for housework movement.' The middle
section of the book, entitled Method, discusses consciousness raising,
politics, and sexuality.6 This section is the heart of MacKinnon's femi-
* Visiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law
School.
t Professor of Law, University of San Francisco School of Law. Visiting Professor, 1989-90,
University of California, Hastings College of the Law. A.B., Stanford, 1970; J.D., Stanford, 1973.
The author thanks Diane Bessette, Hastings College of the Law Class of 1990, for tireless
research assistance and continued enthusiasm, Fran Olsen, Chris Littleton, Martha Mahoney, Catharine
Wells Hantzis, Juliana Alvarez, Michael Tobriner, and especially Trina Grillo.
1. C. MACKINNON, TOWARD A FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE xi (1989) [hereinafter TOWARD].
2. Id.
3. Marxist theory argues that society is fundamentally constructed of the relations people form
as they do and make things needed to survive humanly .... Class is its structure, production its conse-
quence, capital a congealed form, and control its issue. Id. at 3.
4. As the organized expropriation of the work of some for the benefit of others defines a class,
workers, the organized expropriation of the sexuality of some for the use of others defines the sex,
woman. Heterosexuality is its social structure, desire its internal dynamic, gender and family its
congealed forms, sex roles its qualities generalized to social persona, reproduction a consequence, and
control its issue. Id. at 3-4. Comparing the role of sexuality and work in each theory, MacKinnon
observes: Sexuality is to feminism what work is to marxism: that which is most one's own, yet most
taken away. Id. at 3.
5. See id. at 63-80.
6. See id. at 81-154.
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Review Essay: The Power of Women
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