Transcending Equality Theory: A Way Out of the Maternity and the Workplace Debate
![handle is hein.journals/clr86 and id is 1136 raw text is: TRANSCENDING EQUALITY THEORY: A WAY OUT OF
THE MATERNITY AND THE WORKPLACE DEBATE
Lucinda M. Finley*
There is a natural temptation to escape if we can, to close
the door behind us on this despised realm which threatens to
engulf all women, whether as mothers, or in marriage, or as
the invisible, ill-paid sustainers of the professionals and social
institutions. There is a natural fear that if we do not enter the
common world of men, as asexual beings or as exceptional
women, do not enter it on its terms and obey its rules, we will
be sucked back into the realm of servitude, whatever our tem-
porary class status or privileges. This temptation and this fear
compromise our powers, [and] divert our energies ....
[F]eminism means finally that we renounce our obedience
to the fathers and recognize that the world they have de-
scribed is not the whole world. Masculine ideologies are the
creation of masculine subjectivity; they are neither objective,
nor value-free, nor inclusively human. Feminism implies
that we recognize fully the inadequacy for us, the distortion, of
male-created ideologies, and that we proceed to think, and act,
out of that recognition.'
INTRODUCTION
There is a persistent, deeply entrenched ideology in our society,
and in the legal system reflecting that society, that men and women
perform different roles and occupy different spheres. The male role is
that of worker and breadwinner, the female role is that of childbearer
and rearer. The male sphere is the public world of work, of politics,
and of culture-the sphere to which our legal and economic systems
have been thought appropriately to be directed. The female sphere is
the private world of family, home, and nurturing support for the sepa-
rate public activities of men.2 Traditionally in our culture, legal inter-
* Associate Professor of Law, Yale Law School. J.D., 1980, Columbia Law School.
I have benefitted immensely from presenting an earlier draft of this Article at the
University of Pennsylvania Legal Studies Workshop, the Yale Law School Faculty Work-
shop, and the Femcrits Workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Numerous friends and
colleagues have provided helpful comments, but several people deserve special mention
for their contributions of attention, encouragement, or inspiration: thanks to Drew
Days, Clare Dalton, Don Elliott, Mary Joe Frug, Jack Getman, Carol Gilligan, Chris
Desan Husson, Jay Katz, Jean Love, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Gary Minda, Martha
Minow, Andy Tomback, and all the wonderful students in the Women and the Law semi-
nar I taught with Jay Katz in the fall semester of 1985.
1. A. Rich, Conditions for Work: The Common World of Women, in On Lies,
Secrets, and Silence 206-07 (1979).
2. The public-private distinction appears in many other contexts. Moreover, some
things, like the workplace, can be either public or private depending on the context. For
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Transcending Equality Theory: A Way Out of the Maternity and the Workplace Debate
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