Feminists have rejected the traditional notion of separation of public and
private spheres. In contemporary feminist‟s theory the fundamental
distinction between public and private is understood to be based on
subordination and oppression of women. Traditional notion of what is
politics is defined as the public sphere of life with the private or personal
sphere of life eluding it. Thus, feminists in their effort to gain
emancipation have sought to remove the distinction between public and
private spheres. The dominance approach to gender inequality is the
central issue of distribution of work in terms of public and domestic.
Besides this central issue the relationship within the family and
workplace is also a major concern. Mainstream theorists are cautious of
family relations and judge them in the light of standards of justice.
Classical liberals, for example, theorize the male headed family as
biologically determined unit.
In turn, the familial relationship is
privately governed by natural instinct or sympathy, in short in a nonrational manner, where emotions outweigh reason. Justice is then
understood to refer only to conventionally determined relations between
167
families, that is, the public realm. Justice refers to public realm where
men deal with other men in accordance with mutually agreed upon
conventions.
One of the major confrontations of the contemporary feminist
theorists is the denial of restricting the public sphere to men. Gender
equality continues to be assumed even today as in the classical liberal
theory to apply to relations outside the family. But restricting the female
to the domestic sphere overcomes the classical liberal leverage that could
be available. Theorists of justice continue to ignore relations within the
family that is an essentially natural sphere. For example, Mill
emphasized that women were being equally capable of achievement in
all sphere of endeavor, he assumed that women would continue to do
unpaid domestic and reproductive work. Contemporary theorists are
rarely as explicit as Mill, they implicitly share their assumption about
women‟s role in family.
The neglect of family by liberal political theorists by confining it
to the private sphere is attempted to be overcome by the much of liberal
feminism not through obliterating the demarcation of public and private
sphere but by opting for equality in the public sphere. One of the main
issues then taken up for emancipation of women was their being low-
168
paid or part-time workers forcing them into economically dependence.
However they did not considered even if economic disparity is removed,
injustice still remains intact since women are presented left with a choice
between family and career that men do not face. This is portrayed well
by Mill when he said that women enter in marriage and accept full time
occupation just like men enter a profession which is strikingly unfair.
Male philosophers preferred not to interrogate the gender division
of labor since they benefited from it. They worked with the assumption
that domestic roles are naturally and biologically fixed, an assumption
leading to claims of women‟s inferiority or to the more recent ideology
of the sentimental family. It is argued that the sentimental tie is natural
between mother and child that make women incompatible with the
character traits required to be in social or political life. Male theorists on
all points of the political spectrum have accepted that the confinement of
women to the domestic sphere is justified by reference to women‟s
particularistic, emotional, non-universal nature. Since she knows only
the bonds of love and friendship, she will be a dangerous person in
political life, so they would be prepared, perhaps to sacrifice the wider
public interest to some personal tie or private preference.
169
In early times, the duties of women were only restricted to
domestic sphere, while public life was reserved for men. In medieval
Europe, women did not have the right to study, to possess a property or
to participate in public life. In France, at the end of the nineteenth
century, women were forced to cover their heads in public and in
Germany, husbands had the right to sell their wives. Even, in early
twentieth century, women in US and in Europe could neither hold
elective office nor vote. Women did not have the right to run a business
without a male representative, who would either be a father, brother,
husband, legal agent or even son. Married women do not have right to
control their own children without their husbands permission. In
addition, women had little or no right to education and were excluded
from most of the profession. Even today, in some parts of the world
these restrictions on women continue.
There is an important Greek view that when women are married,
they disappear from public life behind the four walls of their homes.
They devote themselves to the care of their household and family. This
is the mode of life prescribed for women alike by nature and reason.
Many feminists have argued that this is at the root of the cultural
devaluation of women in our society. One important devaluation of
women‟s work, particularly in bearing and rearing children is the idea
170
that it is merely natural, a matter of biological instinct rather than
conscious intentions or cultural knowledge. Thus women are associated
with the merely animal functions of domestic labor whereas men achieve
truly human lives and true freedom.
However, even if these arguments are convincing it still needs to
be explained why domestic labor is not given greater public recognition.
The family is therefore, an important locus of the struggle for gender
equality. According to Pateman, the dichotomy between the public and
the private is all what feminism deals with. Liberals must give up either
their commitment to gender equality or their commitment to the public
and private distinction.
The public and private debate can be understood along with
Habermas who says,
“The public sphere as a sphere which mediates between
society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the
bearer or public opinion, accords with the principle of
public sphere – that principle of public information which
once had to be fought against the arcane policies of
monarchies and which since that time had made possible
the democratic control of state activities”.1
171
In political theory and practice where the preference is dependent on
rationality and reason, in short, modern theories, the idea of the public
spells out a sphere of human existence or situations where interaction is
dependent on certain expression of the rationality of the players. It is
thus political theory has been assumed to be concerned primarily with
the public sphere in opposition to the private sphere of individual desire
and responsibility, that is the non-rational aspect of human existence.
Habermas points out that,
“…the political public sphere in contrast, for instance, to
the literary one, when public discussion deals with objects
connected to the activity of the state. Although state
authority is so to speak the executor of the political public
sphere, it is not a part of it. To be sure, state authority is
usually considered “public” authority, but it derives its
task of caring for the well-being of all citizens primarily
from this aspect of the public sphere”.2
Young feels that as Habermas has argued,
“…one of the functions of this public life of mid-nineteenth
century was to provide a critical space where people
discussed and criticized the affairs of the state in a
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multiplicity of newspapers, coffee houses and other forums.
While dominated by bourgeois men, public discussion in
the coffee houses admitted men of any class on equal
terms”.3
And Pateman points out,
“…Habermas argues for public, shared communication so
that substantive political problems can be rationally
evaluated…”.4
And Wolin says that the „public‟ and „common‟ are “…synonyms for
what is political…is its relationship to what is “public””.5
The Eighteenth Century saw Rousseau conceive the public realm
and demanded its unification and homogenization for which he
suggested civic celebrations to be a useful way. In contrast to other
enlightenment philosophers Rousseau could not visualize human life
without emotion and fulfilling of needs and desire. The very nature of
man as a being with needs according to Rousseau is apparent in his
domestic life, where, according to him, the moral guardians are women.
Young argues that,
173
“…the public realm of the state expresses the impartial and
universal point of view of normative reason…the civic
public of citizenship rely on an opposition between public
and private dimensions of human life, which corresponds to
an opposition between reason, on the one hand and the
body, affectivity and desire on the other”.6
To understand the public realm, that is workplace and the market, cannot
be done without considering difference in gender. The public sphere is
constructed under the assumption of male superiority and dominance and
where females are presupposed to be responsible for domestic sphere.
Public sphere, also sometimes referred to as the political sphere,
is concerned with the areas of life that are, obviously, subjected to
political interference and regulated by the accepted principles of justice.
Baker points out,
“Arendt‟s conception of the public realm is opposed not
only to society but also to community: to Gemeinschaft as
well as to Gesellschaft. While greatly valuing warmth,
intimacy and naturalness in private life, she insisted on the
importance of a formal, artificial public realm in which
what mattered was the people‟s actions rather than their
174
sentiments; in which the natural ties of kinship and
intimacy were set aside in favor of a deliberate, impartial
solidarity with other citizens; in which there was enough
space between people for them to stand back and judge one
another coolly and objectively”.7
Political scientists fail to take their definition of political in the
notion of political power to its logical conclusion. Millett though agrees
with the identification but in contrast argues all power to be political.
Men exercise power over women in a multitude of ways in personal life
where it makes sense to talk of “„Sexual Politics‟ and „Sexual dominion
…provides [the] most fundamental concept of power‟”.8 Young argues
that,
“…dichotomy between reason and desire appears in
modern political theory in the distinction between the
universal, public realm of sovereignty and the state, on the
one hand, and the particular private realm of needs and
desire, on the other…In modern political theory and
practice this public achieves a unity in particular by the
exclusion of women and others associated with nature and
the body”.9
175
Rosaldo criticizes her own early work as well as that of her
cotemporaries that the private and public opposition was helpful in
explaining the social organization of gender.
She claims that these
things are now not important for the cross-cultural multiplicity in the
understanding of gender. Nicholson feels that in considering the supply
of what is needed of analysis such as public, domestic and the family,
“…we need to ferret out that which is specific to our culture from that
which might be truly cross-cultural”.10 Rosaldo wrote,
“…„a model based upon the opposition of two spheres
assumes – where it should rather help illuminate and
explain – too much about how gender really works‟, and
saw gender as instead „the complex product of variety of
social force‟”.11
Feminist point of view that emphasizes the relationship between women
and men is necessary as suggested by Rosaldo. It might be about the
particular structures of domination and subordination of women, in the
context of public and private interpretations. Okin argues that,
“…once the significance of gender is understood, neither
the public nor the domestic realm, in terms of its structures
and practices, assumptions and expectations, division of
176
labor and distribution of power, can intelligibly be
discussed without constant reference to the other”.12
The inequalities of men and women found in work and politics reflect
two layers of processes leading to inequalities within the family.
Nicholson stresses the importance of history to understand the public and
private distinction and gender. She opposes the political theory asserting
the materialization of public/domestic distinction and gender.
She
denounces the quality of timeless prescribed to these. Nicholson says
that gender structure is also affected by history and changes according to
the times. Nicholson says that,
“If we interpret such opposition as that between
“domestic” and “public” or “private” and “public”
historically – as separations rooted in history and not in
some biological or otherwise stipulated cross-cultural
division of labor – we might then acquire tools to help us
understand important components of our own past history
of gender. Moreover, by historicizing these separations, we
may be able to see what is wrong with much existing social
theory, which tends falsely to universalize aspects of these
separations.”13
177
Some feminist theorists have argued that irrespective of structure
and practices of the domestic sphere the political and economic outlook
has remained genderized. The genderazition has its ideological
underpinnings. Liberal theory can therefore only be read as an exposure
of the ideological functions the dichotomy of public and private has
served. However, Wolff interrogates the feminist struggle against the
public and private separation on the grounds that this establishes
assumptions about human nature in support of new forms of social
institutions. Pateman remarks that Wolff‟s objection is,
“…an oddly misplaced objection in the light of the
assumption about women‟s and men‟s nature embodied in
patriarchal-liberalism”.14
Benn and Gaus admit that the private and public are fundamental
issues to liberalism, but their arguments does not give reasons why
liberals contrast the private with the „public‟ and not with the „political‟.
Benn and Gaus suggest that liberal philosophers are ambiguous in
considering whether the civil society is private or public. The liberal
point of view considers the family as a paradigm of the private.
Therefore, for liberals civil society is private and they were not able to
specify the reasons for asserting that civil society is private, whereas,
178
civil society is the public sphere in terms of being an equal part of the
„political‟. Feminist critics of liberalism claim that overall separation of
public and private is an ideological tool of subordination in societies
where men with power dominate other groups and therefore there is no
effort to contrast the private with the „political‟. Baker points out that
Pateman feels,
“…unlike republican critics who seeks only to reinstate the
political in public life, feminist critics insist that an
alternative to the liberal conception must also encompass
the relationship between public and domestic life”.15
Some feminists have contested that because of the ideological
backdrop of liberal social life it is only possible to accept that both the
private and public sphere are indistinguishably interrelated and it leads to
the establishing of liberal patriarchies. It is for this reason hat liberal
philosopher decline the assertion that the natural characteristics of the
sexes are based on the separation of public and the private. Kamenka
argues that,
“…[the] „liberal‟ discussion of the relation between public
and private is set – though the discussion is certainly not
encouraged and though there are strong countervailing
179
trends in the direction of seeing both law and morality as
means
of
social
administration,
of
securing
the
preeminence of the alleged „public‟ interest over nowrecognized but still – subordinated „private‟ interests”.16
The liberal divide of the public and the private produced parallel
domains for men and women, which are surrounded by a series of binary
oppositions. Men were assumed to fit in the public sphere that is the
spheres of politics, reason, justice, philosophy, power, the universal and
freedom and the private sphere to be taken as nature, emotion, love,
morality and submission. Benn says that,
“…[liberals] understand morality to be a rational mode of
action and judgment, one that provides reason for action
and for assessments of action. All morality must be in
principle public; it cannot have the private standing of „gut
feeling‟, immediate, incommunicable as reasons, invoked at
best to explain actions, but unable to justify them except to
someone who happens to share those feelings…To that
extent a moral argument must be accessible in principle to
anyone! So my morals cannot be private to me, as my
emotions or my liking for artichokes might be. Morality is
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public at least in the rather special sense in which
Wittgenstein claimed that a language must be public: the
principles, the reasons for saying that you have got it right
or wrong, must be open to anyone”.17
Baker feels that the distinction between public and private is based
on socially constructed relationship. Both the private and public spheres
are constitutive outsides to each other; the public is not permitted to
destroy the private nor the private permitted to destroy the public. Baker
says that for Havel,
“Anti – political politics… is possible and can be effective,
even though by its very nature it cannot calculate its effect
beforehand. That effect, to be sure, is of a wholly different
nature from what the West considers political success. It is
hidden, indirect, long term and hard to measure. Often it
exists
only
in
the
invisible
realm
of
social
consciousness…”.18
The fundamental question about the public and private distinction asked
by some feminist how it is ignored that men are free to dominate over
women and children and that too violently within the patriarchal family.
181
The patriarchal coercion is interrogated by the feminist as a starting
point of their analysis. Pateman says that,
“…Firestone‟s The Dialectic of Sex, which also provides an
example of how one form of feminist argument, while
attacking the liberal separation of private and public,
remains within the abstractly individualist framework
which helps constitute this division of social life. Firestone
reduces the history of the relation between nature and
culture or private and public to an opposition between
female and male. She argues that origin of the dualism lies
in „biology itself – procreation‟ a natural or original
inequality that is the basis of the oppression of women and
the source of male power. Men, by confining women to
reproduction (nature), have freed themselves „for the
business of the world‟ and so have created and controlled
culture”.19
The emphasis that Pateman is placing is that the only difference between
men and women is their biological difference, but that cannot be
considered to be a reason to oppress women. The other differences are
182
socially constructed to fulfill the need of the society with a patriarchal
nature.
The common platform among the feminists is that the conventional
notion of public and private is unacceptable and thus they reexamining
the distinction between public and private. As per the traditional views
women and children need protection provided by men, who are
physically stronger. However, this strength is used by men to maintain a
stronghold in the domestic sphere, where it is argued laws should not
interfere declaring it to be private. This has left women and children
weak both in the home and outside it. Without male protection women
have not been and are not allowed, at least in some cultures, to
appear
in public. There is substantial number of cases of women still being
subjected to domestic and other violence mainly due to the public realm
of law failing to protect them. Young points out that,
“The split between the public realm of citizenship and the
private realm of individual desire and greed leaves the
competition and inequality of that private realm untouched.
In capitalist society application of a principle of
impartiality reproduces the position of the ruling class,
because the interests of the substantially more powerful are
183
considered in the same manner as those without power.
Despite this critique, as powerful as it ever was, Marx stops
short of questioning the ideal of a public that expresses an
impartial and universal normative perspective; he merely
asserts that such a public is not realizable within Capitalist
Society”.20
The public and private debate is one of the most significant examples of
feminist attack to bring the need to empower women. The patriarchal
view point, resisted by women, has always been justified by upholding
the domestic sphere as a need in the society, which separated the women
from public life. For instance, many anti-suffragists were readily willing
to educate women with the intention to have them as good mothers,
engaged at the most at local politics and voting was ruled out not being
direct extension of their domestic tasks.
Evans says that Mary Wollstonecraft in „A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman‟, identified the assumptions that supported the ousting
women from the public life. She argued against Rousseau who idealized
the lonely-man-in-nature and with it suggests marginalization of social
ties. Thus Evans quoted Wollstonecraft,
184
“Public education, of every denomination, should be
directed to form citizens; but if you wish to make good
citizens, you must first exercise the affections of a son and a
brother. This is the only way to expand the heart; for public
affections, as well as public virtues, must ever grow out of
the private character”.21
Mary Wollstonecraft, liberal feminist and some like minded men argued
that public and political life devoid of women contradicts the liberal
democratic ideal of emancipation and equality for all. Therefore they
demanded equal treatment for women in public life otherwise dominated
by men. In the late Eighteenth Century, Wollstonecraft‟s work showed
the relations between the public and the private sphere. She argued that
liberal society on the one hand depended on the possibility of
citizenship, justice and participation in government, on the other
hindered such a possibility through unequal gender relations. Feminists
have critiqued the relation between the public and the private, with
reference to familial and gender relations which form part of the
organization of waged work.
Rosaldo suggested that the distinction between public and private is
universal for it is to be found to more or less degree in all the social and
185
ideological systems. This presence nevertheless provides universality for
the activities of the sexes. Cecilia Sjoholm says that,
“…increasing distance between private and political is
discussed as a „malady of death‟. The politics of the public
sphere has withdrawn from the reality of life, whereas the
private sphere has become hypertrophied as the only
concern of modern man. At this point, Kristeva has no
conception of sphere of singularity that would cross both
these domains and produce another form of sharing”.22
The liberal view is that participation in the public sphere can only
be understood in the light of universal, impersonal and conventional
criteria, including of achievements, interests, rights, equality and
property. However, it should not go unnoticed that all these are
applicable only to men. Another noticeable feature of liberal theory is
that this view of the private and public is conceptualized and discussed
the public world or civil society separately from the private domestic
sphere. Catherine Hall feels that,
“There was no split between the public and private – the
family was politicized and the state familiarized. Hobbes
and Locke both rejected familial authority as the paradigm
186
for political authority and rejected divine sanction in favor
of rationality. Locke saw the development of rationality as
going together with a split between public and private.
Reason was for him separate from passion. Reason existed
in the public world, where individuals were free and equal
and made contracts. Passion or desire survived in the
private world, a world in which contracts and rationality
had no place”.23
Traditionally, the public sphere is seen as the human sphere in which
man go beyond his animal existence, while the private sphere of
domestic life is supposed to be governed by demands of nature and
where women are required for propagation of the species. Virginia Held
points out that,
“Feminist have...criticized deeper assumptions about what
is distinctively human and what is “natural” in the public
and private aspects of human life and what is meant by
“natural” in connection with women”.24
Okin argues that,
“…Roslado…argued on the basis of cross-cultural research
that the degree to which women are subjected to the
187
authority (culturally legitimized power) of men in a given
society is correlated with the degree to which the
public/domestic dichotomy is stressed. And Ortner argued
that there was a more or less universal association in
human societies among the dichotomies male/female,
cultural/ nature and public/private”.25
Wolff asserts that feminists are mainly concerned with transcending
the separation of the public and private realm, which appears to be sui
generic problem. Wolff felt that this effort will not come to fruition and
therefore one can only hope to achieve an ad hoc adjustment to prevalent
social conditions. Wolff argues that the public and private division is
inferred from two,
“…equally plausible and totally incompatible conceptions
of human nature [first]…man as essentially rational,
atemporal,
ahistorical;
essentially
time-bound,
and
[secondly]…man
historically,
culturally
as
and
biologically conditioned”.26
Throughout history male has been considered to be independent and
dynamic, while females have been relegated to domestic responsibilities
188
justified by pointing to the biological difference. Thus women were
confined to the private sphere, as Rosalind Petchesky points out,
“…a further analytical insight [was] that “production” and
“reproduction”, work and the family, far from being
separate territories like the moon and the sun or the kitchen
and the shop, are really intimately related modes that
reverberate upon one another and frequently occur in the
same social, physical and even psychic spaces. This point
bears emphasizing, since may of us are still stuck in the
model of “separate spheres” (dividing off “women‟s
place”, “reproduction”, “private life”, “the home”, etc.
from the world of men, production, “public life”, the office,
etc.). We are now learning that this model of separate
spheres distorts reality, that it is every bit as much an
ideological construct as are the nations of “male” and
“female” themselves. Not only do reproduction and
kinship, or the family have their own historically
determined products, material techniques, modes of
organization, and power relationships, but reproduction
and kinship are themselves integrally related to social
189
relations of production and the state; they reshape those
relations all the time”.27
In classical Greece, the public was entirely separated from both
production and reproduction because public seems to be purely political.
Political life was only led by males and both production and
reproduction were focus of the domestic life. The Greek household was
seen to be the private sphere, which was established around the family
and was totally free from the market forces, the world of business and
the world of politics. There is a paradox in liberalism both in theory and
practice. The liberalism in theory is based on the principle of equality for
all but the practical regime keeps the women out of public sphere and
therefore depriving them of equal treatment. Wolff, keeping this in mind,
argues that women as public individuals come into conflict with the
practical regime of universalization of liberalism. The feminist
achievement is bringing to light the ambiguities and contradictions
resulting from the liberal conception of the private and public. The
feminist effort has further exposed the patriarchal character of liberal
practical regime. The dichotomy between the private and the public
therefore is an essential ingredient to be explored and is yet to be
providing an analysis of the implications of now realized double
190
separation, that is, of domestic life from civil society and of the private
from the public within the civil society.
A number of feminists have favored considering social relations in
terms of private sphere, where issues are settled in a more personalized
manner. They advocate no emphasis on public sphere and thus shifting
focus. This they suggest might be a way that may emerge as the postpatriarchal society and in turn would have implications for political and
moral theory. Pateman argues that,
“More fruitfully, the feminist rejection of „masculine‟
power also rests on an alternative conception of the
political. It is argued that the political is the „area of
shared values and citizenship‟ or that it „includes shared
values and civic concerns in which power is only one
aspect.‟ These conceptions remain undeveloped in feminist
writings, but they are closely related to arguments of the
critics of liberalism who deplore depoliticisation of civil
society or liberalism‟s loss of distinctive sense of the
political”.28
Pateman agree with Benn and Gaus to remark that the dominant mode of
liberal theory and discourse throws up the private and the public that
191
present themselves as the „obvious‟ pair of liberal categories. The
prescription is that there is a need to strip the public of its ideological
clothing and only then civil society can be seen as the actual sphere of
furtherance of private interest, private enterprise and private individuals.
Pateman says that,
“The domestic relations of master-slave and masterservant, relation between unequal, have given way to the
relation between Capitalist…and…worker. Production
moved from the family to capitalist enterprises, and male
domestic laborers became workers. The wage labourer now
stands as a civil equal with his employers in the public
realm and the capitalist market”.29
DuBois suggests that women‟s demand for equal status with men,
“…exposed and challenged the assumption of male authority over
women”.30 Feminist suggests that the family or household is a centre
where we fight for sexual equality and with the effort for sexual equality
we must go beyond the public biases. We should talk about the
abundance that family should be private or the public. But feminists
suggest that apart from this a family can be in the public sphere where
192
one can perform as fathers and sons. In liberal feminism, we have seen
the abandoning of family, thus Evans points out this abandon,
“…accepted the division between the public and private
sphere, and chose to seek equality primarily in the public
sphere”.31
Kymlicka asserts that,
“…however liberals refuse to intervene in the family, even
to advance liberal goals of autonomy and equal
opportunity, because they are committed to public-private
distinction and because they see the family as the centre of
the private sphere…in other words, liberals must give up
either their commitment to sexual equality or their
commitment to the public-private distinction”.32
Locke‟s theory presents a conflicting status of men and women, that
is, the natural subjugation of women in contrast to free individualism,
which shows the relation between the private and public spheres.
Pateman points out that,
“Firestone‟s argument reduces the social conceptions of
„women‟ and „men‟ to the biological categories of „female‟
193
and „male‟, and thus denies any significance to the complex
history of the relationship between men and women or
between the private and public spheres. She relies on an
abstract conception of a natural, biological female
individual with a reproductive capacity which puts her at
the mercy of a male individual, who is assumed to have a
natural drive to subjugate her”.33
The right to political equality only draws an image of according
equality and distributing power. However, this is not the case, for
political equality does not provide for women as partners and
constituting the political realm where they play their roles. The argument
for equality it appears camouflages and women of their equal position in
society. Evans says that,
“…women and children have to depend on the state, in the
absence of secure male employment and that for many
women dependence on state benefit, however limited, is
infinitely preferable to dependence on an individual man
who may equate economic provision with personal
domination”.34
194
For Mary Wollstonecraft man and women should be treated equally be
that in education, work opportunities and politics. She argues that
women should also be treated with the moral standards as are applicable
to men. In short, both men and women should be treated equally in all
respects.
The notion of political equality leaves untouched the dichotomy
of the public and private life in terms of the separation of understanding
and desire. Political equality ignores the arguments where reasoning, the
assumed higher domain, is restricted to men and women are kept at the
level of emotions and desires. It therefore ignores the whole argument
that men when desiring become private beings.
Okin says that,
“…[Weinstein] draws a useful analogy between publicness
and privateness and the layers of an onion; just as a layer
that is outside one layer will be inside another, so
something that is public with regard to one sphere of life
may be private in relation to another. While Weinstein is
correct in pointing out that the distinction therefore has a
multiplicity of meanings, rather than simply a dual
meaning, the state/society and the non-domestic meanings
195
are those most frequently used in political theory, where
both play major roles”.35
In most parts of the world, still today women are only confined to
the domestic sphere, while public realm is reserved for men, they have
full freedom to do anything but women are not allowed to live their life
according to their choice. Women had little or no access to education
and were restricted from most of the profession. These practices still
continue today in some parts of the world. This partiality with women
will stop if the private-public spheres are rethought and reorganized.
Women should receive the same treatment as men in education, work
opportunities and politics and each sphere of life.
It is also true that women have never been completely excluded
from public sphere nor have they been confined only in domestic or
private sphere. But this does not absolve the society of unequal treatment
that is the usual practice. In short, women should have right to perform
both in public and private spheres.
196
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