Abstract

Contributing to the debate on the compatibility of feminism and liberalism, I argue that much feminist rejection of liberalism rests on associating the latter with a number of unattractive theses that are not necessary to liberal theory. I develop a feminist liberalism and make the case that Habermas', rather than Rawls', recent work in political theory provides a theoretical basis for such a liberalism. This liberalism is sensitive in the right way to the moral-political relevance of gender difference, especially in the way it places relationships of human dependency characteristic of women's lives in the center of a conception of justice