Judith Squires

From state feminism to market feminism

This article argues that the concept of ‘state feminism’ no longer adequately captures the complexity of emerging feminist engagements with new forms of governance. It suggests that ‘market feminism’ offers a new conceptual framework from which feminist engagements with the state can be analysed and evaluated, and the changes within state feminism can be understood. The article documents the growing feminist embrace of the logic of the market, which manifests itself in changed practices and priorities. The article gives examples of ‘market feminism’ and argues that the move from state feminism to market feminism impacts on both the political practices and policy priorities of women’s policy agencies.

Discourses Surrounding Prostitution Policies in the UK

This article examines discourses invoked in the UK debates about prostitution and trafficking in women. The authors suggest that there are three striking features about these discourses: (1) the absence of the sex work discourse, (2) the dominance of the public nuisance discourse in relation to kerb-crawling and (3) the dominance of moral order discourses in relation to trafficking. At a time when the UK is about to revise its sex laws, it is important to consider the discourses that frame prostitution policies in other European countries, with a view to broadening the range of policy options. In this context, the authors compare the UK with the Netherlands, where a sex work discourse has framed debates. This comparison indicates that UK prostitution discourses could be shaped by discourses other than those of public nuisance and moral order and may open up new policy options.

Gender Quotas and Models of Political Citizenship

Gender quotas have spread rapidly around the world in recent years. However, few studies have yet theorized, systematically or comparatively, variations in their features, adoption and implementation. This article surveys quota campaigns in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. It proposes that one or more sets of controversies influence the course and outcomes of quota reforms. These revolve around (1) competing principles of equality, (2) different ideas about political representation, and (3) various beliefs about ‘gender’ and its relation to other kinds of political identities. The article draws on these distinctions to identify four broad models of political citizenship that determine the kinds of quota policies that are pursued and their prospects for bringing more women into political office.

Intersecting Inequalities: Britain's Equality Review

Britain has recently undergone significant change in relation to its equality laws and institutions. This paper documents these changes and evaluates the extent to which the reforms facilitate the recognition of ‘intersectionality’. It concludes that the creation of a single equality body and the move to streamline legislation into one bill may do more to highlight conflicts between different equality categories than to address cumulative and combined inequalities. However, it also suggests that the introduction of a multiple discrimination provision within the anti-discrimination framework, coupled with requirements upon public authorities to take positive steps to promote equality, may together represent a productive twin-track approach to recognizing intersectionality.

Private Lives, Secluded Places: Privacy as Political Possibility

The theoretical writings that underpin contemporary liberal democracies have all, in varying form, stressed the value of privacy as fundamental to the realisation of a civilised society, Yet it is ever more evident that privacy is now so threatened as to be practically lost to us already. Unless we turn our attention to the task of rethinking the nature of our concern for privacy, and to the possibilities of its realisation and preservation, we may indeed find ourselves bereft of one of our most fundamental values. I make this claim in recognition of the fact that the condition of postmodernity is characterised by forces that would erode many of the spaces and places in which privacy was previously grounded.

Representing groups, deconstructing identities

This article explores feminist arguments for group representation and suggests that there are three distinct theoretical frameworks on which these arguments are based: an equality perspective leading to a strategy of inclusion, a difference perspective leading to a strategy of reversal and a diversity perspective leading to a strategy of displacement. I focus in particular on the defence of group representation developed by Iris Marion Young, because this is made from a diversity perspective, which offers the most theoretically satisfying account of subjectivity but is (perhaps because of this) least likely to endorse group representation. Young’s thought is particularly interesting because it attempts to resolve some long-standing dilemmas in feminist political thought. In particular, Young aims to combine a deconstructive strategy of displacement with a model of group representation by developing a relational (rather than interest or identity-based) conception of social groups, by using theories of deliberative democracy. To do so she develops a second conception of objective judgement, which displaces the apparent dichotomy between impartiality and particularity. Although the concept of social groups is compelling, the concept of objective judgement is less so and further work could usefully be done to establish whether a diversity perspective can successfully displace the dichotomy between impartiality and partiality, and so offer a coherent defence of group representation.

The Challenge of Diversity: The Evolution of Women's Policy Agencies in Britain

Britains use of state agencies to address gender relations has evolved significantly over the past 30 years and is currently entering a new phase, characterized by a commitment to a generic equalities, or “diversity,” approach in which multiple equality strands are to be addressed via a single equalities body, the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). The CEHR will replace three existing equality commissions that focus on gender, race, and disability, respectively. This shift appears to involve the demise of a singular focus on gender equality and with it the justification for separate womens policy agencies.

Contesting Citizenship: Comparative Analyses

Abstract The pursuit of equal citizenship has been complicated by two recent developments: the emergence of multi‐level governance (and with it the growing importance of local, regional and global levels of citizenship practices) and the emergence of group recognition claims (which signal the growing importance of particularised experiences and multiple inequality agendas). These developments shape the way citizenship is both practiced and analysed. Mapping neat citizenship models onto distinct nation‐states and evaluating these in relation to formal equality is no longer an adequate approach. Comparative citizenship analyses need to be considered in relation to multiple inequalities and their intersections, and to multi‐level governance and trans‐national organising. This, in turn, suggests that comparative citizenship analysis needs to consider new spaces in which struggles for equal citizenship occur and new dynamics interactions between them.

Negotiating Equality and Diversity in Britain: Towards a Differentiated Citizenship?

Abstract This paper interrogates the promotion of diversity in relation to contemporary developments within Britain, considering whether the increasingly common public affirmation of ‘equality and diversity’ signals the emergence of British citizenship practices based on a vision of ‘differentiated universalism’. I explore this question in relation to the recent UK Equality Review and the proposed creation of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, focusing in particular on the consultations with the equality agencies. The article suggests that the recent equality review conducted in Britain represents a significant attempt to develop citizenship in the light of a commitment to both equality and diversity, moving beyond an earlier focus on formal anti‐discrimination legislation to embrace a positive duty to promote substantive equality whilst attempting to manage diversity via the creation of a new single equality body. This represents a modification of the formal liberal citizenship model frequently attributed to Britain.

Addressing the ‘Dismal Disconnection’: Normative Theory, Empirical Inquiry and Dialogic Research

This article engages with recent methodological debates in political theory concerning the role of political theory and in particular the criticism that ideal normative theorising is too abstracted from the real-world circumstances that it hopes to change. These debates raise questions concerning the proper relationship between normative political theory and empirical inquiry. We suggest that feminist research has an important contribution to make to these questions, which has tended to be under-recognised within mainstream debates. Specifically, feminist critical theory points to important limitations within both ideal political theory and orthodox empirical social science. Rather than trying to combine these two approaches, feminist critical theory offers an alternative approach to standard political research methods. The central concerns of critical feminists with the social conditions of inclusion and democratic participation, the forms of power that can invade theory and practice in politics, and the need to create an ‘undistorted space’ in which the voice of those subjected to injustice can be heard, predispose it towards an applied approach to normative theory, while at the same time remaining highly attuned to the possible conservative implications of such a move. This dual focus has led many feminist critical theorists to endorse a dialogical approach. In this article, we detail this approach and recommend it as a resource to mainstream political theorists.