Ever since women have been formally granted equal rights in
developed countries, there has been a tendency of stereotyping and fragmenting
the term of ‘Emancipation’. The stereotypic image, for example, of a female
machinery student with a Greenpeace membership card, short hair and open sexual
relationships is often projected towards that term, lacking the depth of its
initial meaning. Emancipation originally comes from the Latin emancipare, which refers to the act of
releasing someone to an autonomous life[1].
Although emancipation is often understood as equality, its core meaning is more
compatible with the provision of equal opportunities,
which is one of the two fundamental principles of justice according to John
Rawls. He believes that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so
that they are (…) attached to positions and offices open to all”[2].
However, despite a great increase of female college graduates over the last few
years, statistically women still earn less than men.
This account lead to the proposal of the so called
affirmative action in multiple countries, making employment of a certain
percentage of females in leading positions mandatory for companies. In current German politics, the issuing of a
so - called “Frauenquote” maintains particular relevance. Given the outcome of
the last general election, the two main parties CDU (37,2%) and SPD (29,4%) are
seeing themselves forced to form a grande coalition[3]. Whereas the Christian Democratic Union
continuously tried to encourage the self- initiative of female graduates, the
Social Democrats Party has become increasingly assertive about the government’s
responsibility in setting statistical guidelines. This last week, during
increasingly serious coalition negotiations, the SPD ultimately set its foot
down and made the implementation of a mandatory Frauenquote by the end of 2013 one of its central prerequisites for
a future cooperative coalition[4].
While the intention is honorable, the establishment of a
gender based job regulation subtly implies that women wouldn’t make it into CEO
seats without assistance. To a certain degree, affirmative action even
contradicts itself; by trying to provide equal opportunities, it restricts success
to numbers rather than inherent competence.
A binding Frauenquote would
inevitably lead to men being regularly excluded from job positions merely due
to their sex, hence defeating the intention of Rawl’s second principle of
justice and ultimately emancipation itself.
Great use of Rawls on justice! However, he also stipulated that where there was unequal opportunity it should favour those who are otherwise disadvantaged, which perfectly supports affirmative action. Nonetheless, others have argued against this (e.g. Michael Kenny on identity politics) because it encourages claims for special treatment on the basis of injured identity, which can mean that those identity groups become insular, defensive and unwilling to consider the arguments and legitimate interests of others. An alternative that has been proposed is to ensure equal access to the public sphere of debate and ability to have their voice heard - a development of Habermas' original idea but one that he has embraced more recently. We'll talk about this when we get to the session on publics.
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