Juliet Mitchell
WOMEN AND EaUALlTY
Let us put first things first. There may be some in my country
and yours who will want
to
argue that one group of people are not the
equals of another group . They will contend that differences are not
individual but general
to
a group and are a mark of inferiority or
superiority. There are certainly, I think, limitations
to
the concept of
equality. These are both problematic questions that I shall take up in
the coutse of this talk, but I want
to
start by establishing a fact:
democratic countries have as one of their highest aspirations , the
attaining of equality by their citizens, but in no democratic country in
the world do women have equal rights with men. Feminists , members
of the by now practically worldwide women's liberation movement,
face a fair amount of abuse of one sort or another , but one of the most
frequent sallies they receive is the confident assertion that they have
nothing left to fight for but the crumbs. This is not the case. No one is
arguing that there are not other deprived groups in any given society ;
but feminists are stating and demonstrating that women
as women
are
deprived and oppressed .
England has been a so-called democratic country for over three
hundred years, equality has been a guiding principle, yet this is how
the authors of a very recent survey of women's rights in Britain
introduce their researches:
At no level of society do (women) have equal rights with men . At
the beginning of the nineteenth century, women had virtually no
