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Feminism | Government | Political Thought
The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
6:00 pm EDT - 7:00 pm EDT
Catholic Information Center
1501 K Street NW
Washington,
DC
20005
United States
Co-sponsored with:
Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC)
The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture
Description
Have the gains achieved by modern feminists in the political and economic spheres relied on a too-narrow idea of liberty and equality at the expense of a richer understanding of the natural duties that we owe to one another? If so, what are the costs of this, and can the proper foundation of equal rights be reclaimed?
Erika Bachiochi will offer remarks reflecting on the themes of her new book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, which offers an original look at the development of feminism in the United States and proposes a philosophical and legal framework for rights grounded in our responsibilities.
The event will be moderated by EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson and will include responses from Mary Eberstadt and Ashley McGuire.
This book is being published in the de Nicola Center’s book series with University of Notre Dame Press.
About the Book
In The Rights of Women, Erika Bachiochi explores the development of feminist thought in the United States. Inspired by the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Bachiochi presents the intellectual history of a lost vision of women’s rights, seamlessly weaving philosophical insight, biographical portraits, and constitutional law to showcase the once predominant view that our rights properly rest upon our concrete responsibilities to God, self, family, and community.
Bachiochi proposes a philosophical and legal framework for rights that builds on the communitarian tradition of feminist thought as seen in the work of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Jean Bethke Elshtain. Drawing on the insight of prominent figures such as Sarah Grimké, Frances Willard, Florence Kelley, Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Mary Ann Glendon, this book is unique in its treatment of the moral roots of women’s rights in America and its critique of the movement’s current trajectory. The Rights of Women provides a synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern political insight that locates the family’s vital work at the very center of personal and political self-government. Bachiochi demonstrates that when rights are properly understood as a civil and political apparatus born of the natural duties we owe to one another, they make more visible our personal responsibilities and more viable our common life together.
This smart and sophisticated application of Wollstonecraft’s thought will serve as a guide for how we might better value the culturally essential work of the home and thereby promote authentic personal and political freedom. The Rights of Women will interest students and scholars of political theory, gender and women’s studies, constitutional law, and all readers interested in women’s rights.
What people are saying
“The Rights of Women brilliantly articulates what should be a central concern and debate for feminists today.”
Helen M. Alvaré
Author of Putting Children’s Interests First in U.S. Family Law and Policy
“Bachiochi flips effortlessly from legal analysis to philosophical arguments to sociological observations to characters from classic literature in a way that is almost invisible to the reader . . . in a work that I would describe as, in many places, almost achingly beautiful.”
Elizabeth R. Schiltz
Co-editor of Feminism, Law, and Religion
“Bachiochi adds an important new voice to the conversation criticizing the nation’s turn to revering market profit and the freedom to be left alone above all else. Feminists may not agree with all of her critique of contemporary feminism, but they would do well to engage with her powerful argument that conceptualizing the movement’s goal as sex equality in the workplace is too narrow.”
Maxine Eichner
Author of The Free-Market Family
“Erika Bachiochi is one of the most brilliant and refreshingly original feminist legal scholars writing today. Uncowed by today’s momentary orthodoxies, Bachiochi blends a rich understanding of tradition with compelling insights into present-day issues. No one writing in the field exceeds her gifts of insight, clarity, and scholarly fearlessness.”
Michael Stokes Paulsen
Author of The Constitution: An Introduction
“With clarity and boldness, Erika Bachiochi shows how the moral purpose underlying the case for truly equal rights has been lost even as those rights have been gained. Although it recounts a story of decline, The Rights of Women is ultimately filled with hope because it offers an alternative―a way to recapture the ideal of dignity that gives meaning to equality by grasping that the ultimate purpose of freedom is human flourishing and excellence.”
Yuval Levin
Author of A Time to Build
About the Speakers
Ashley McGuire is a Senior Fellow with The Catholic Association and the author of Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female. Ashley writes and speaks widely about religious freedom, Catholicism, and women.
Erika Bachiochi is an EPPC fellow and legal scholar specializing in Equal Protection jurisprudence, feminist legal theory, Catholic social teaching, and sexual ethics.
Ryan T. Anderson is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Founding Editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey
Mary Eberstadt holds the Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC, is Senior Research Fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute, and is an American writer whose contributions to the intellectual landscape traverse several genres.
