Woman and Cultural Universals

Bennett Brady

Blog post #2

October 25, 2016

Martha Nussbaum

            In Woman and Cultural Universals Martha Nussbaum aims to determine the best way to measure the quality of life. One of the most common approaches to this is simply to ask about GNP per capita. This approach however leaves out a lot of important questions that need to be asked, and is not helpful in trying to determine women’s quality of life. The first approach Nussbaum looked at that has been offered as an alternative to asking about the GNP per capita was the utilitarian approach. This approach has us ask people how well they think their doing. However, it isn’t a good measure because people will base their assessment on their expectations of how well they could be doing rather than how well they are actually doing. The second approach was the rawlsian approach which measures a small list of things like income. This isn’t a good measure either because two people could be making the same amount but one person may be much happier because they don’t have as many needs as the other person.

            While the utilitarian, and rawlsian approach both offer a good alternative to measure the quality of life Nussbaum offers her own approach, a list of capabilities. She argues that capabilities not functioning should be the goal of public policy. To figure out what capabilities to include in her list she answered two questions the first question was what capabilities are necessary to survive? The second question was what capabilities are necessary to have a good life? Nussbaum came up with a list of ten things that she thinks every person must have in order to live a full life. Nussbaum also points out that all things on the list are equally important, and relate to one another in a complex way.

            Some people may object to Nussbaum’s list of capabilities. These people would say that the things on the list are not all of equal importance like Nussbaum stated. People would argue that we should all have a choice of what is important to us, and some of us may find some of the things on the list have almost no importance to us whatsoever. Nussbaum would respond by saying that its not about actually having everything on this list, but the capability to pursue everything on this list so that people can decide for themselves whether or not they want these opportunities.

I found the numbers of how much lower a woman’s quality of life is compared to men’s, and their underrepresentation in this category startling. I think that instead of just asking people, especially woman if their happy that looking at Nussbaum’s list would be a better alternative. This list allows for people to see outside of their typical tradition, and see all of the opportunities that are out there for them that could make their quality of life much better then they originally imagined.