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'Freedom and Equality' explores foundational concepts for liberalism and feminism. Clare Chambers argues that the doctrines are compatible, but feminism is necessary because liberalism has been incapable of securing gender equality and women's liberation alone.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part One. Theories of Social Construction -- 1. Creativity, Cultural Practice, and the Body: Foucault and Three Problems with the Liberal Focus on Choice -- 2. Masculine Domination, Radical Feminism, and Change -- 3. Social Construction, Normativity, and Difference -- Part Two. Liberalism, Culture, and Autonomy -- 4. All Must Have Prizes: The Liberal Case for Interference in Cultural Practices -- 5. Two Orders of Autonomy and Political Liberalism: Breast Implants Versus Female Genital Mutilation -- 6. Paternalism and Autonomy -- 7. Liberal Perfectionism and the Autonomy of Restricted Lives -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index

Original and provocative view of the institution of marriage. Controversially argues that marriage violates both equality and liberty, and should not be recognized by the state. Proposes a new model for the legal regulation of personal relationships. Accessible to readers from any academic background

Clare Chambers argues that marriage violates both equality and liberty and should not be trecognized by the state. She shows how feminist and liberal principles require creation of a marriage-free state: one in which private marriages, whether religious or secular, would have no legal status

AbstractEgalitarian commitments have often been thought compatible with practices that are later identified as inegalitarian. Thus, a fundamental task of egalitarianism is to make inequality visible. Making inequality visible requires including marginalized people, questioning what equality requires, and naming inequality. At the same time, egalitarianism is a movement for change: egalitarians want to make things more equal. When egalitarians seek change at the institutional level, the two egalitarian tasks are complementary: making inequality visible is part of campaigning to make things better. However, at the level of social norms there is a dilemma because making inequality visible can make things worse. Making inequality visible can reinforce unequal norms and fail to address intersectionality. The case of gendered pronouns illustrates this dilemma.

This article introduces the concept of a Moment of Equal Opportunity (MEO): a point in an individual's life at which equal opportunity must be applied and after which it need not. The concept of equal opportunity takes many forms, and not all employ an MEO. However, the more egalitarian a theory of equal opportunity is, the more likely it is to use an MEO. The article discusses various theories of equal opportunity and argues that those that employ an MEO are problematic. Unjust inequalities, those that motivate the use of equal opportunity, occur throughout people's lives and thus go unrectified after an MEO. However, it is not possible to abandon the MEO approach and apply more egalitarian versions of equal opportunity throughout a person's life, since doing so entails problems of epistemology, efficiency, incentives, and counter-intuitive results. The article thus argues that liberal egalitarian theories of equality of opportunity are inconsistent if they support an MEO and unrealizable if they do not.

Feminists are starting to look to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, in the hope that it might provide a useful framework for conceptualizing the tension between structure and agency in questions of gender. This article argues that Bourdieu's analysis of gender can indeed be useful to feminists, but that the options Bourdieu offers for change are problematic. The article suggests that Bourdieu's analysis of gender echoes the work of earlier radical feminists, particularly Catharine MacKinnon, in important ways. Consciousness-raising, one of MacKinnon's strategies for change, sits well with Bourdieu's concept of habitus, despite Bourdieu's own scepticism. The article argues that recasting the role of consciousness-raising in Bourdieu's theory helps to undermine the deterministic elements of his work. It concludes that a feminist turn to Bourdieu as an attempt to understand gender's entrenchment-and-malleability can be fruitful, and that such a turn might find a re-engagement with the idea of consciousness-raising helpful.