Sally Haslanger "Gender and Race"

In her work, Gender and Race, Sally Haslanger makes a claim that identifies her take on what the term ‘woman’ is. This topic seems to be the basis of what the modern day feminist movement speculates and argues for. The guiding concern behind this concept is to find an account for gender that is conscious of what seems to be similar as well as different amongst men and women and to find an answer that in inclusive of all women across varying cultures, races and more. To address this concern Haslanger proposes that gender, whether you are a man or a woman, is mainly based upon hierarchy, namely the occupation of certain social positions exclugin the unique physical or psychological features of a person. An outstanding key concept that Haslanger adds to her proposition is that occupying a certain social position as well as the outward appearance of oneself is observed or imagined to be male or female by society. Overall, Haslanger’s account of gender is as follows; “S is a woman if and only if (1)S is usually observed or imagined to have a female body (2) according to the custom of S’s society, those who have female bodies should occupy subordinate social positions (3) As a result of (1) and (2), S occupies a subordinate social position.” (pg.48) Haslanger also adds that “S is not a Woman if (1) S is female, but is not usually observed or imagined to have a female body, (2)S is female, but S’s society does not hold that those who have female bodies should occupy subordinate social positions” (pg.48). Through this Haslanger concludes that essentially a woman is seen as one if they are imagined as a woman and occupy a subordinate social position. A feminist objection to her proposition is that the problem of defining a woman will always be non-inclusive in the sense that it will marginalize certain females and benefit others. To this Haslanger replies by saying that her account only excludes the females that do not occupy a subordinate social role, thus those who are not treated as a part of the subordinate gender class in the first place.

            I disagree with Haslanger’s overall claim that a woman is defined by her subordinate social role. For example, a woman may outwardly portray all the characteristics of being a woman in modern day society and may also occupy the position of CEO at a big corporation. In this scenario I do not believe that she is any less of a woman who holds a much more subordinate social role. To this Haslanger may reply, as she did previously, by arguing that she excludes the females that do not fit into her description of a woman which is driven by her belief of the strong correlation between women and subordination. This serves as a problem on the mere fact that her account is not inclusive and ignores various other important defining factors across various domains of being a woman.