Hypatia, Inc.

The Politics of Self-Respect: A Feminist Perspective

Author(s): Diana T. Meyers
Source: Hypatia, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 83-100
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3810064
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 diana t meyers

The Politics of Self-Respect:

A Feminist Perspective

Recent liberal moral and political philosophy has placed great em-
phasis on the good of self-respect. But it is not always evident what is
involved in self-respect, nor is it evident how societies can promote it.
Assuming that self-respect is highly desirable, I begin by considering
how people can live in a self-respecting fashion, and I argue that
autonomous envisaging and fulfillment of one's own life plans is
necessary for self-respect. I next turn to the question of how societal
implementation of rights may affect self-respect, and I urge that
discretionary rights, which allow people to decline the benefits they
confer, support self-respect more effectively than mandatory rights,
which forbid people to refuse the benefits they confer. I conclude by
examining the import of these contentions for feminist theory. I
believe that my arguments are of particular concern to women because
women have traditionally been victimized by a mandatory right to
play a distinctively "feminine" role which has undermined their self-
respect.

In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls gives the classical

liberal theme of individual dignity a new twist. Although his emphasis
on reciprocal respect among the members of society draws on this
tradition in a familiar way, his granting paramount importance to
self-respect in his inventory of primary social goods is an important
departure (Rawls 1971, 62). For the purposes of this paper, I shall
assume that self-respect is highly desirable and explore some devices
through which societies promote or inhibit it.
As a basis for dealing with this broader social and political issue, it
is necessary to clarify what is involved in being a self-respecting per-
son. After arguing that autonomous envisaging and fulfillment of life
plans is a necessary condition for self-respect, I contrast the impact of
mandatory rights and discretionary rights on individual life plans.
Though discretionary rights are subject to some forms of criticism in
this regard, mandatory rights are particularly inimical to self respect.

I am indebted to Mary Katzenstein, John Bennett, and Judith Lichtenberg for

their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I have also benefited from the suggest-
ions of Hypatia's referees.

-Hypatia vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1986). c by Hypatia, Inc.

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 hypatia

It is important for feminists to appreciate this antagonism because

women have customarily been assigned a mandatory right to play a
distinctly "feminine" role. Apart from the liabilities of the inferior
status and power characteristic of this role, the mandatory right I
describe below preempts women's conceiving and pursuing their own
life plans and thereby victimizes them by undermining their self-
respect.

1. The Problem of Self-Respect and Rights

A self-respecting person has due regard for her dignity. According
to John Rawls's widely discussed view, the self-respecting person's
state of mind couples the conviction that her plan of life is worthwhile
with confidence in her ability to execute this plan (Rawls 1971, 440).
By contrast, a notable critic of Rawls's position, David Sachs, focuses
on a set of characterological responses instead of a self-referential
belief to account for self-respect. On Sachs's view, the self-respecting
person feels resentment when others gratuitously ignore her wishes
and feels shame when she submits to degrading treatment (Sachs
1981, 352-353). Nevertheless, it is evident that self-respecting people
not only have the relevant beliefs and responses, but also they
generally act on them. They pursue their life plans, and they resist at-
tempts to humiliate them. Thus, self-respect issues in characteristic
types of behavior both in hospitable and in adverse circumstances.
It seems clear that there are some constants in self-respecting con-
duct. People who sheepishly acquiesce in violations of their rights
lack self-respect (Sachs 1981, 352), as do needlessly secretive or
dissimulating individuals (Boxhill 1976, 69). Still, once these broad
parameters have been marked out, it remains necessary to ask what a
self-respecting person is like in everyday life. Supposing that a person
is not compulsively evasive and that this person's rights are not in
jeopardy, is there any positive way in which self-respect enters into
her conduct of her life?
Despite their differences, Rawls and Sachs concur in thinking that
self-respecting people must have life plans-collocations of more or
less articulated interests, needs, values, wishes, and so forth-that
they intend to satisfy.' Rawls regards a person's life plan as the

1. B.C. Postow gives a modified formulation of Rawls's account of self-respect:

". . the person's conviction that the long-range satisfaction of her or his own needs
and desires is valuable and worth achieving" (Postow 1978-79, 182) I agree with
Postow's concern that the expression 'life plan' connotes an excessively self-conscious
and deliberate approach to life; however, I shall use Rawls's familiar terminology with
the understanding that this connotation is not intended.

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 diana t meyers

foundation of her self-respect, and Sachs could not explain why peo-
ple should resent others' dismissiveness without appealing to the life
plans such treatment obstructs. For the purposes of this essay, I shall
set aside the discrepancies between these two accounts of self-respect
and examine the import of this common feature. Specifically, I shall
urge, a person could have a worthwhile life plan, pursue it assiduous-
ly, and yet fail to exhibit self-respect. In other words, if a person's life
plan cannot be described as her own life plan, her fulfilling it does not
evidence respect for her self.
Suppose that a parent discerns exceptional intellectual gifts in her
very young child, relentlessly cultivates this potential, and firmly
guides the child into a suitable occupation. Suppose further that the
child eventually makes a brilliant career. Still, as an adult, she faces a
troubling situation, for she is carrying out an imposed plan of life.
However valuable she may believe her contribution to be and however
greatly others may admire it, she still may suffer from self-contempt.
If she regards her life plan as an alien, albeit illustrious, exercise-if
she does not see in it an expression of her deepest convictions, affec-
tions, and the like-she may despise herself for hewing to this course.
Indeed, it is altogether possible that she persists in this direction
precisely because she does not respect herself enough to believe that
she should control her own life.
Self-respect requires self-knowledge and self-direction.2 It presup-
poses that the individual has chosen a life plan which is congruent with
her self. There are two spheres in which this congruency may hold or
fail to hold: the moral and the personal.
Following Kant, Rawls identifies moral autonomy with the idea of
free and equal rational beings adopting principles for themselves
(Rawls 1971, 252-255). Thus, the principles selected in Rawls's
original position are expressions of the freedom, equality, and ra-
tionality that all selves share. For Kant, any other rules or objectives a
person might choose are heteronomous. Rawls is sufficiently influenc-
ed by Kant's captivation with pure reason to reserve the term

2. It may be objected that self-knowledge and self-direction are illusory

phenomena, residual forms of the discredited belief in free will. Introspection merely
reveals a socialized self, and voluntary action is largely a product of social forces.
Though I cannot adequately address this contention here, I would urge that socializa-
tion is not as pervasive as this objection supposes; in some respects-language acquisi-
tion is a case in point-socialization is open-ended. Moreover, children can be taught to
attend to such self-referential responses as shame, frustration, pride, and gratification,
and they can be helped to guide their lives in accordance with the insight they gain in this
way. There is a voluminous literature on this subject. I have particularly
benefited from Feinberg 1980; Frankfurt 1976; Dworkin 1976; and Benn 1975-76.

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 hypatia

'autonomy' for principled adherence to ethical and political

standards.
Nevertheless, Rawls wisely extends his understanding of self-respect
beyond these realms. Self-respect depends on life plans, and life plans
include the individual's personal aims as well as morality and justice.
Once individuals have chosen principles from the standpoint of the
original position, they must go on to plan the course their own lives
will take. To explain this further choice situation, Rawls offers a
theory of deliberative rationality (Rawls 1971, 407-424). This theory
articulates the idea of the congruence between a person's distinctive
self and her life plan by setting out ground rules for the process of per-
sonal planning. Though I would not endorse Rawls's theory of
deliberative rationality in its entirety-among other things, it does not
deal adequately with the role of nonrational factors in personal
choice-I would nonetheless emphasize that it establishes the
rudiments of an account of what I propose to call personal autonomy.
Deliberative rationality does not entail that every person's life plan
will be astonishingly unconventional, but it does entail that no self-
respecting person can follow convention simply because doing so is
socially expected. To have due regard for one's dignity in everyday cir-
cumstances, then, is to conduct one's life in a morally and personally
autonomous fashion.
As a result of this link to autonomy, self-respect is naturally
associated with rights, which classical liberal thought advanced as
political guarantors of autonomy. The connection between self
respect and rights is often said to be a consequence of the fact tha
having a particular right entitles a person to press certain claims and to
protest refusals to respect these claims (Held, 1973; Feinberg, 1970
Since a person who has a right has equal standing in any decision pr
cess that may affect respect for her right, she cannot legitimately be
obliged to adopt a posture of servile petitioning for favors or merc
On the contrary, her right justifies her in demanding that it be
respected or that restitution be made for violations. The idea is that
person who is asserting rights against those who would deny them is in
a better position to respect herself than a person who must rely on ap-
peals to the benevolence or forgiveness of her pretended superiors.
This explanation of how rights shore up self-respect, while not to be
dismissed, is limited. It considers only one kind of right, and, as w
shall see below, not all rights are aptly labeled guarantors of
autonomy. In addition, this account is overly preoccupied with vic-
tims. Either an individual's rights are denied and she is seeking
recognition for them, or her recognized rights have been abridged and
she is seeking compensation for her loss. In both cases, her rights-

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 diana t. meyers

based claims are her weapons against injustice and may be viewed as
affirmations of her own worth.
Still, some writers (Rawls among them, 1971, 544) have contended
that possession of recognized rights that are not in any way threatened
promotes self-respect. Yet, the mere fact that others respect a person's
basic rights and in so doing acknowledge her humanity cannot provide
her with a reason to respect herself. Strangers who know almost
nothing about us can only be expected to respect our humanity, but
self-respect involves more intimate scrutiny and appraisal of our
distinctive attributes. We do not respect ourselves for being persons
but rather for our selves.3 The problem of how rights can enhance self-
respect, then, is the problem of how a political instrument granted to
classes of individuals without regard for their idiosyncracies can pro-
mote the incomparably personal good of self-respect.

2. Prerogatives
Though it is plausible to think that recognized and respected rights
promote self-respect, it is not obvious how they do this. The preceding
discussion of self-respect suggests an explanation of this relation:
rights promote self-respect by creating a social environment conducive
to the autonomous creation and pursuit of life plans. Assuming that
this is a major contribution established rights make to self-respect, I
now want to argue that some rights, the discretionary ones, are better
suited to sustain self-respect than others which are mandatory.4
A mandatory right is a right which confers its object on the right-
holder willy-nilly. It consists of a duty on the part of the right-holder
to do x or to have y correlated with a duty other individuals or the
state have to allow the right-holder and, if necessary, to compel her to

3. It is worth noting, however, that David Sachs's treatment of this issue seems to
leave no room for a personal account of self-respect. He reduces self-respect to an
elemental respect for the fact of selfhood (Sachs 1981, 350). I believe he is able to main-
tain such a limited view of the matter because he focuses exclusively on how a self-
respecting person behaves when challenged and ignores the question of how a self-
respecting person conducts her life the rest of the time. It is only when this latter ques-
tion is posed that the importance of distinctively personal life plans comes to the fore.
In addition, it should be mentioned that Thomas E. Hill, Jr. bases his account of the
relation between self-respect and rights on the idea that each of us has rights befitting
our personhood and that in respecting our own rights we respect ourselves (Hill 1979,
142). Still, Hill's argument does not entail that respecting one's own rights is sufficient
for self-respect. Consequently, his position is not in conflict with mine.
4. The distinction between discretionary rights and mandatory rights is drawn by
Joel Feinberg (Feinberg 1978, 104). In an earlier article, Martin Golding draws
a similar distinction using different terminology (Golding 1968, 546).

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 hypatia

exercise the right and, in addition, to provide anything she may need
to exercise the right. In the United States persons between the ages of
five and sixteen have a mandatory right to education. Similarly, the
People's Republic of China has in the past granted a mandatory right
to work on rural communes to university students. Since a mandatory
right imposes a presumptive benefit on the right-holder which this in-
dividual is not entitled to decline, mandatory rights and their objects
are both inalienable.
The fact that mandatory rights confer only one option might be ad-
duced to argue against classifying them as rights; however, two
features of mandatory rights suggest that this restriction on usage
would be artificially narrow. First, the mandatory right-holder is th
prime beneficiary of her own duty; duties thought to be purely
altruistic do not generate mandatory rights. Thus, a mandatory right-
holder may have occasion to assert her right, for she may encounter
opposition in exercising it. Second, mandatory rights can be con-
structed so as to allow considerable latitude in their exercise-for ex-
ample, in the United States the right to education can be exercised at a
public or a private institution-in which case they do not completely
determine what a person must do. The only option a mandatory righ
cannot compass is that of refusing to do the action it specifies or have
the benefit it secures. Though mandatory rights are not paradigmati
rights, they have enough in common with model rights to warrant the
appellation.
A discretionary right provides the right-holder with options with
respect to the object of the right: she may choose to do x or to have y
or not, and others are obligated to honor her decision. In other words,
a discretionary right secures a measure of freedom for the right-
holder. Whether she presses claims predicated on the right or doe
nothing, she is acting within the bounds of the freedom allotted by the
right. Examples of discretionary rights include the right to vote in the
United States, the right to medical care in England, and the right to a
religiously sanctified marriage in Israel. Like mandatory rights
discretionary rights confer an inescapable benefit, but it takes th
form of freedom with respect to the object of the right. This is to say
that the object of a discretionary right is alienable though the righ
itself may not be. The areas of freedom delineated by discretionary
rights preempt complaints against the state alleging that citizens ar
unjustly deprived of the object of the right, but these rights do no
force any right-holder to accept the benefit made available by th
right.5 Though a discretionary right-holder may have a duty with

5. It should be noted that some rights do not fall neatly into the discretionary or

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respect to the object of her right, this duty must arise independently of
the right. For discretionary rights confer only prerogatives.
It is because they do not secure equally extensive prerogatives that
mandatory rights can be inimical to self-respect. A hypothetical socie-
ty, dividing its members into a hereditary slave class and a hereditary
master class, might grant to each member of the master class a man-
datory right to own at least one slave. In this society, there might be
masters whose qualms about slavery are compromised by the slaves
they are obliged to own. Though they could contrive to treat their
slaves as much like compeers as possible, the mere possession of the
right to a slave would remain morally repugnant to them and force
them to participate in a social system they shun. Since this mandatory
right would conflict with their moral convictions and could not finally
be eluded, it would subvert their life plans and along with them their
self-respect.
At best, a mandatory right will prove neutral in regard to self-
respect. Concurrence with the dictates of a mandatory right allows the
right-holder to comply in good conscience, but her conduct does not
enhance her self-respect. Though such conduct may be unobjec-
tionable, no one may pride herself on obeying the law or following
strict convention since she cannot convincingly claim (except when a
law or a social norm is known to be unenforceable or unenforced) that
her obedience is not prompted by fear of punishment or habitual
social conformity. Where there is no apparent tension between a per-
son's life plan and her exercise of a mandatory right, the coercive
character of the right circumvents personal initiative and thus drives a
wedge between the person's conduct and her self.6 Such rights under-
cut the requirement that conduct be part of the agent's own life plan if
it is to evidence self-respect.

the mandatory category. For example, the right to a fair trial is mandatory inasmuch
as the law requires that trials be conducted in accordance with procedures designed to
ensure fairness but is discretionary to the extent that actual trials may be mishandled
and appeals are not compulsory. Rights of this sort span the two categories because
they are complex and their constituent elements require different classifications.
6. At this point, it is necessary to note that social and legal strictures do not have
the same effects on everyone. A requirement addressed to all of the members of a
specified class but which few of these individuals felt compelled to fulfill would not
count as coercive. But a requirement can be coercive although some members of the
target class feel free to defy it. Individuals who are endowed with exceptional voli-
tional fortitude may be able to transcend the pressures exerted upon them and thus to
live autonomously. However, since such people are by definition atypical, their ex-
perience could only be used to develop an elitist account of autonomy, rights, and self-
respect.

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 hypatia

Of course, some mandatory rights do not completely obviate

autonomy. A twelve-year-old American whose parents insist that she
attend school and whose peers are not truants cannot respect herself
for going but can respect herself for excelling academically. Because
mandatory rights often require conduct that may be carried off
passably or superlatively, and because skillfulness of a relevant sort
may be among a person's autonomously determined aspirations, man-
datory rights might be thought to promote self-respect by securing op-
portunities to shine. Yet, many possible mandatory rights-among
them a mandatory right to vote in single-party elections and a man-
datory right to an annual chest X-ray-could occasion neither
especially commendable nor especially execrable performances. Fur-
thermore, mandatory rights which do allow right-holders to exhibit
their strengths are no improvement on similar discretionary rights.
Whether mandatory or discretionary, a right to vote in contested elec-
tions affords the same opportunities to investigate the issues and ap-
praise the platforms of the rival candidates, in short, to be a good
citizen. Thus, as stimuli to virtue, mandatory rights cannot be credited
with any distinctive contribution to self-respect.
Still, it might be urged that mandatory rights minister to another
dimension of self-respect, namely, self-confidence. Without self-
confidence, a person will have little reason to take her own ideas and
inclinations seriously and will lack the audacity to express herself
through her life plan. Since individuals lacking confidence typically
seek to mold themselves to fit the image of an exemplary figure or to
fit into a social milieu, they skirt the issue of autonomy. Whereas
frustrated dedication to a cause is rare, the objection continues, in-
security is sadly common and deserves relief. Thus, a firm infra-
structure of mandatory rights may be put forward as a promising an-
tidote for anxious imitation. By putting a social stamp of approval on
selected life orientations and assigning one to each individual, these
rights assure compliant right-holders that they are launched on accep-
table courses. Once endowed with this cushioning base of security,
persons will presumably have sufficient confidence in themselves to
act on their own beliefs and desires.
The assignment of social and economic positions through legal or
customary mandatory rights is mildly attractive because this arrange-
ment gives every individual a place where she belongs. For those who
mesh well with the operative system, crises of identity never erupt, and
crises of confidence cannot penetrate to the individual's basic plan of
life. No doubt, it is a blessing to be spared these alarms. However, for
those whose temperaments and abilities lead them to scorn their
designated roles and to yearn for other opportunities, social ascription

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 diana t meyers

is a form of oppression that poisons the individual's entire life. Ac-

cordingly, to advocate mandatory rights on the grounds that they in-
still self-confidence and thereby promote self-respect is to disregard
the potential victims of social calcification whose development would
be stunted and whose self-respect would be suppressed.
Fortunately, there are means other than mandatory rights through
which self-assurance can be cultivated. Child-rearing methods em-
phazing tolerance and delight in diversity, familiarity with a common
heritage, and emotional openness in a supportive atmosphere foster
self-confidence. Moreover, associations of adults whose talents and
interests overlap help to sustain this sense of personal competence.7
Whereas mandatory rights nurture the self-confidence of some at the
expense of the autonomy of others, educational and associational sup-
ports for self-confidence do not have damaging secondary effects on
autonomy.
Mandatory rights are not necesary to impart self-confidence to nor-
mal adults, and they may place obstacles in the way of autonomous
life plans. Scruples about the moral presuppositions or the practical
consequences of a mandatory right leave a person with a choice bet-
ween complying in bad faith or courting sanctions by refusing to com-
ply. The possibility of working for change through the exercise of
other rights is irrelevant here both because denial of basic political
rights or personal liberties can deprive persons of this tactic and also
because the presence of extraneous rights that soften a mandatory
right's offense to autonomy cannot transform the mandatory right in-
to a promoter of self-respect. Since a person's acting in a manner that
contradicts her own plan of life will inevitably damage self-respect, it
appears that mandatory rights only increase self-respect when persons
flout convention to resist them. We cannot, however, sustain a case in
support of mandatory rights by adverting to the fact that they might
conceivably occasion greater self-respect for conscientious dissenters.
This would be like advocating war and famine because they bring out
the courage and generosity in people.
Discretionary rights, unlike mandatory rights, generate no occa-
sions for risky conscientious refusual since one of the options they
guarantee is that of declining to do x or have y. Yet, discretionary
rights are not beyond protest. They can be condemned for being too
restrictive or too broad, that is, for providing too few or too many op-
tions. The complaint that a discretionary right is too permissive need
not detain us since anyone who objects to the breadth of a right can

7. John Rawls stresses the need for this type of support for self-respect in a liberal
society (Rawls 1971, 440-442).

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 hypatia

avoid harm to her own self-respect by confining her conduct to the set
of options she condones. However, the position of persons who con-
sider a discretionary right too narrow is worrisome; for they may be
obliged to reluctantly comply with or secretly defy the strictures im-
posed by the right. Neither of these alternatives is satisfactory from
the standpoint of self-respect.
There is no a priori way to absolve all discretionary rights of
charges that they restrict freedom in a manner incompatible with the
self-respect of some persons.8 A discretionary right can be formulated
so restrictively that it is equivalent to a single-option mandatory right
with an abstinence clause attached. Victorian England taught Oscar
Wilde that sexual preference was a discretionary right of this stultify-
ing sort. But it can be said in defense of discretionary rights that the
options they comprise tend to expand rather than contract. Because
people find it less disturbing to agree that more options should be
countenanced than that a duty should be demoted to the status of an
option, it is easier to argue successfully that a discretionary right
should be amended to permit additional options than it is to argue
that a mandatory right should be converted into a discretionary one.
That discretionary rights may fail to sustain the self-respect of some
individuals must be conceded. Nevertheless, that they are superior to
mandatory rights in their actual and potential support for self-respect
is indisputable.
In principle, discretionary rights represent an indefinitely large and
varied set of opportunities for people to determine their own courses
of action and to judge the adequacy of these plans as projections of
their abilities and aspirations. It must be remembered, however, that
these rights represent a correlative set of opportunities to belie
autonomous commitments and to dismiss this self-betrayal as trivial.
Discretionary rights do not discriminate between genuine and
fraudulent self-representations. Moreover, they do not exact ad-
mirable conduct, and they do not inhibit ignoble conduct. These
choices are all left to the right-holder who is permitted but not com-
pelled to avow herself. Thus, the role of discretionary rights vis-a-vis
self-respect is essentially a negative one, namely, that of circumscrib-
ing domains throughout which autonomy will not be thwarted.
Self-respect is not a good that societies can simply bestow upon

8. Indeed, it may not be possible for a society to tolerate the self-respect of all its
members. If evil people must commit atrocities to respect themselves, societies will be
obliged to repress the very conduct that would secure these individuals' self-respect.
The practical aspect of this problem is, of course, distinguishing between gratuitous
suppression of unconventionality and necessary suppression of harmful perversity.

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 diana t. meyers

their members. For people can neither be forced to freely devise their
own life plans nor to adopt sensible expectations about their success in
fulfilling these plans. Societies can protect autonomy, but they cannot
ensure that anyone will use it well. What a society can do is to establish
a context in which individuals are granted as many opportunities as
possible for expressing themselves without fear of incurring penalties.
The prerogatives secured by discretionary rights are uniquely suited to
reduce needless self-censorship and thereby to promote self-respect.

3. Political Implications
Once it has been conceded that the good of self-respect stands at a
remove from political measures, the appropriateness of counting self-
respect as a political issue can be called into question. Discretionary
rights foster self-respect but only by not quashing autonomy. Further-
more, discretionary rights differ in their support for self-respect in
practice, and some mandatory rights would rarely, if ever, undermine
anyone's self-respect. Some rights entitle persons to goods that hardly
anyone needs to disown as a matter of conscience or settled propensity.
If these rights are mandatory, few persons will suffer from their
overzealous beneficence, and many persons may be restrained from
rashly foregoing goods which they would eventually regret losing.
Moreover, some discretionary rights, like the right to vote and the
right to speak without censorship, explicitly entitle persons to express a
wide range of their intellectual and affective commitments, whereas
others, like the right to a minimally adequate income and the right to
medical care, implicitly entitle persons to express themselves regarding
only a narrow matter, namely, how extensive their entitlement ought
to be and whether they will avail themselves of it. Since the impact of
diverse rights on self-respect varies so much, it might be asked why we
should attend to the general relation I have delineated.
One thrust of my argument is cautionary. It establishes a presump-
tion in favor of discretionary rights and thus specifies one sort of ob-
jection that must be overcome before implementation of a mandatory
right can be justified. Since discretionary rights promote self-respect,
advocates of mandatory rights must show that their proposed rights
advance some good superior to self-respect or that they will only
obstruct inadmissible self-representations. The onus of justification,
then, lies with the paternalistically inclined.
More importantly, my analysis enables us to understand how people
can be victims of mandatory rights: when individuals are legally or
customarily saddled with goods that their convictions or feelings
abhor, they are condemned to a life of social ostracism or to one of

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 hypatia

self-contempt, and, when these impressed goods interlock with the

right-holder's life plan, these individuals gain no self-respect from ac-
cepting them. Social injustice is most glaring when it involves ar-
bitrarily withholding from the members of one social group discre-
tionary rights which are granted to others-slavery together with its
progeny, segregation, is a notorious example of this type of injustice.
However, social groups can be victimized by mandatory rights-ex-
amples range from a right compelling the children of atheists to pray
at school to a right compelling adult citizens to vote in one-party elec-
tions. Both of these forms of injustice are condemnable for wrongful-
ly depriving individuals of sources of self-respect. However, a society
that uses mandatory rights to disguise an illicitly repressive social
order is particularly insidious because mandatory rights purport to
confer benefits on right-holders. In concert with this ostensible
beneficence, apparently innocent legal sanctions and customary pat-
terns are especially resistant to criticism and reform.
The history of the social and economic position of women in the
United States and similar countries provides an instructive case of
customary mandatory rights victimization. Though it is well-known
that women have been legally denied sundry discretionary rights, in-
cluding the franchise and the right to do strenuous or dangerous work,
it is arguable that the dominant mode of injustice has been the
customary conferral of mandatory rights. With characteristic acuity,
John Stuart Mill summed up the predicament: "In the case of women,
each member of the subject class is in a chronic state of bribery and in-
timidation combined" (Mill 1971, 26). The role of wife, mother, and
homemaker can reasonably be portrayed as an advantageous one. The
wife whose husband is legally obligated to support her is relieved of
financial responsibilities; the mother makes a valuable social contribu-
tion and performs demanding and rewarding services for her children;
and the homemaker manages her own domain. What is curious about
marital norms, then, is that they arguably confer privileges on women,
and yet feminists have rightly objected to them.
To address this paradox, it is first necessary to examine the
historical record. Although the role of housewife and mother has been
imposed on virtually all women, only a small percentage of the alleged
right-holders have enjoyed the benefits this right is supposed to confer
(Berg, 1978; Rubin, 1976). It was not until recently, it must be
remembered, that unionization enabled many male workers to provide
adequately for their families. If the family is impoverished, it is no
benefit for the wife to be barred from alleviating this predicament by
working outside the home. Nor is it a benefit, if she is forced to enter
the labor market, to be segregated into stereotypically feminine jobs

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 diana t meyers

which are underpaid because they are done by women. In addition,

circumstances have often deprived women of the satisfactions of car-
ing for their children. Before child labor was prohibited, economic
necessity commonly took children out of the home and prematurely
halted maternal nurture. But even after legislation ended the exploita-
tion of children, women who lacked birth control and could not af-
ford nursemaids often found that they had so many children that they
could hardly care for any of them. Finally, it is important to recognize
that without a comfortable income domestic sovereignty reduces to a
desperate and incessant struggle to feed and clothe the family and to
keep marginal housing as clean as possible. Plainly, the feminine role
cannot be counted a mandatory right-it is Sisyphean duty-in the
absence of considerable economic means.
In light of the history I have just sketched, it is baffling how the ide
of the feminine role as a mandatory right could have persisted as long
as it did. After all, many women never benefited from it. Why was it
not dispatched long ago? Needless to say, this is much too complex
question to deal with fully here, but I shall point out how the idea of
mandatory right helps to explain the longevity of this conception.
Although it is true that countless women have not reaped the
benefits of the mandatory right to be a housewife and mother, it
also true that a highly visible group of affluent women has. The m
media have depicted this relatively small group of women as ex-
emplary bearers of a mandatory right (Berg 1978, Ch. 4; Friedan
1963, Ch. 2; Lerner 1979, 26-29). Wide dissemination of this view h
facilitated the spurious inference from the claim that certain wom
benefit from this assigned social position to the claim that other
women should blame their drudgery on their lack of ingenuity an
charm. The feminine role, it may be urged, is like compulsory edu
tion. Society bestows a splendid gift upon the right-holder, but t
right-holder must have certain talents and must exert a certain effort
in order to avail herself of this bounty.
What this comparison overlooks, as we have seen, are the social a
economic conditions which make it impossible for many women, their
abilities and determination notwithstanding, to benefit from enforce-
ment of the feminine role. Economically deprived women who stri
to replicate an idealized vision of the housewife and mother suffe
diminished self-respect when, inevitably, they fail. Furthermor
disadvantaged women who regard this mandatory right as a traves
resent the undeserved fortunes of affluent women and may ridic
the latter's claims to be oppressed (Bunch, et. al 1981, 157; Myro
1974, 38-39). Thus, the injury to self-respect this mandatory rig
has inflicted on poor women who embrace it and the cleavage it h

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 hypatia

reinforced between women of different classes provide two bases for

feminist criticism of it.
Still, whether advantaged women suffer any genuine injustice as a
result of this mandatory right remains to be considered. Here, it seems
advisable to leave aside such burdens as sexual subordination and
vulnerability to domestic violence. Though these liabilities are seriou
and not unrelated to the woman's dependency in the traditional mar
riage, they could in principle be corrected without freeing women
from their conventional role. The trouble with this role is not limited
to the price that is exacted for the benefits it grants. To see why en
forced housewifery and motherhood would remain objectionable,
even supposing the hidden disadvantages were removed, attention
must be focused once more on mandatory rights and their deleteriou
effects on self-respect. Because mandatory rights impose the
desiderata of the feminine role, women whose self-concepts conflic
with the requirements of these rights are obliged to sacrifice their
autonomy while women who would choose this course anyway gain n
self-respect from embarking on it. Thus, these women are at once
beneficiaries and victims.
A possible rejoinder to this account of the injustice mandatory
rights inflict on women stems from the evidence that some housewife-
mothers have lost self-respect as alternative roles have become
available to them. (Andre 1981, 125-26; Oakley 1974, 104, 124-25;
Lerner 1979, 136). These reports are certainly cause for concern. For
if the prognosis for self-respect is improved by discretionary rights,
the shift over the last decade away from compulsory marriage,
motherhood, and homemaking should have been accompanied by
commensurate advances in self-respect among women. Yet here is
testimony that the reverse has occurred. Furthermore, other classes of
individuals, notably seventeenth-century European aristocrats, have
held mandatory rights assigning them rigid social roles, but no one
classifies them as victims of cruel injustice. The implication that they
suffered from diminished self-respect seems incredible.
Taking the broad question of injustice first, the suggestion that an
aristocracy is victimized by mandatory rights seems frivolous because
these rights are self-imposed. If the idea of self-inflicted, self-
aggrandizing injustice is intelligible at all, these wrongs surely con-
stitute the least disturbing kind of maltreatment. Nevertheless, a dis-
juncture between the social and the individual perspective should not
be overlooked. Despite the fact that a person belongs to a powerful
social class which accords itself a mandatory right, that individual
may reject the right and either undergo the penalties for non-

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 dina t. meyers

conformity or conceal her disagreement. If the mandatory right un-

justifiably constrains individual autonomy, this person is treated un-
justly regardless of her privileged background. Though the damage
mandatory rights do to some individuals' self-respect does not always
stand in foremost need of rectification, it remains unjust.
To grasp the effects of mandatory rights on willing aristocrats, the
limits of the relation between self-respect and rights must first be
underscored. Mandatory rights do not render self-respect impossible
unless they leave no decisions to the individual. As long as the right-
holder enjoys some flexibility in executing an assigned role, this in-
dividual may use the role's opportunities for self-expression to give
voice to her own beliefs, values, needs, and so forth. Moreover, a per-
son whose role is highly specified may earn some degree of self-respect
from meeting the role's requirements with exceptional flair or efficien-
cy. Mandatory rights wrest from compliant right-holders the possibili-
ty of respecting themselves for their choice of a social role, but they in-
jure self-respect only insofar as they prevent persons from forming
their own life plans or when they oblige persons to reverse directions
they themselves have chosen.
Accordingly, there is no mystery in the observation that aristocrats
were not given to despondent self-contempt. Since these individuals
did not consider their inheritance of their exalted status to be
undeserved-they thought they had blue blood-democratic prin
ciples did not prick their consciences. Thus, they were able to ass
their roles and, in some cases, to fulfill them brilliantly without bel
ing their beliefs or sacrificing their standards. Still, it is by no mea
evident that mandatory rights did no damage to these aristocrats' se
respect. Since many of these individuals unthinkingly absorbed
prevailing hierarchical view of society, their beliefs about the
legitimacy of their patrimony were not strictly their own. In occupying
their expected positions, then, many of them conformed to social
norms which had preempted self-expression. Furthermore, to the ex-
tent that an aristocrat's self-approval depended on uncritical espousal
of highly implausible distinctions in the social ranks, well-varnished
self-delusion supplanted self-respect. (Saint-Simon's memoirs of life
at the court of Louis XIV recount many such departures from reality.)
To be sure, mandatory rights did not strip Europe's aristocracy of
self-respect. Nevertheless, egotism and the consolations of fitting in
must not be mistaken for self-respect.
The plight of the women whose automatic submission to the role of
housewife-mother has recently been called into question is
analogous in one respect to that of an aristocrat struck by the
realization that her blood was the same as everyone else's. What

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 hypatia

this modern woman had regarded as a natural and inevitable division

of labor, feminists have declared an option. Women who were re-
ceptive to this challenge despite long-standing, traditional marriages
often discovered that their major life choices had been made unre-
flectively and acquiescently. Some of these women then went on to ac-
cuse themselves of self-betrayal and cowardice while others became
convinced that they had settled upon satisfying and worthwhile life
plans. Whatever the outcome, these individuals moved from viewing
self-respect as a superficial question about how well a person does a
pre-determined task to viewing it also as a profound question about
whether a person's life is consonant with her self.
A person's discerning a mismatch in this latter regard which the per-
son is powerless to remedy detracts from self-respect. Insofar as man-
datory rights or unduly restrictive discretionary rights subject persons
to a contracted sense of self-worth, the society enforcing these rights
owes these individuals a reappraisal of the options it countenances. Of
course, nothing I have said entails that societies are obligated to en-
sure that every member's dreams can come true. Mature individuals
modulate their aspirations and expectations in accordance with a
realistic assessment of what is possible. However, if obdurate pre-
judice imposes unwanted benefits on some individuals and forces
them to classify reasonable projects as idle fantasies, the society spon-
soring these restrictions wrongs some of its members. It compels them
either to distort their personalities or to become pariahs.
While it is clear that self-respect is too personal a good to hold
societies accountable for their members' failures to respect
themselves, it is also clear that the sensitivity of self-respect to all
kinds of regimentation makes self-respect too vulnerable to societal
strictures to be ignored by the political process. Concretely, self-
respect is properly viewed as a political issue because social and legal
stipulations can be injurious to it without inflicting conspicuous
deprivations and because conversion to discretionary rights facilitates
self-respect. It may not always be feasible for a society to give priority
to the problem of self-respect, but societies that persistently subor-
dinate self-respect to other objectives deprive their members of
autonomous dignity.

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 diana t meyers

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