Women And Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric, And Public Policy (Suny Series in Gender Theory) - Softcover

9780791465400: Women And Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric, And Public Policy (Suny Series in Gender Theory)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791465403 ISBN 13: 9780791465400

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2005

A critique of public policy rhetoric from multiple feminist perspectives.

This diverse collection explores the rhetoric of a wide range of public policies that propose “to put women and children first,” including homeland security, school violence, gun control, medical intervention of intersex infants, and policies that aim to distinguish “good” from “bad” mothers. Using various feminist philosophical analyses, the contributors uncover a logic of paternalistic treatment of women and children that purports to protect them but almost always also disempowers them and sometimes harms them. This logic is widespread in contemporary popular policy discourse and affects the way that people understand and respond to social and political issues. Contributors rethink basic philosophical assumptions concerning subjectivity, difference, and dualistic logic in order to read the rhetoric of contemporary public policy discourse and develop new ways of talking and acting in the policy domain.

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About the Author:

Sharon M. Meagher is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Scranton.

Patrice DiQuinzio is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Women’s Studies at Muhlenberg College. She is the author of The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism, and the Problem of Mothering and coeditor (with Iris Marion Young) of Feminist Ethics and Social Policy.

Review:

"This volume offers a highly interesting and provocative look at the complex, often contradictory, relationship of women and public policy. The essays, including an excellent introduction by the editors, reveal the dilemmas inherent in past feminist approaches to this topic and suggest new ways to approach it. Particularly valuable is the book's discussion of 'security' in the post-9/11 world, as an element that now enters such debates."

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