The Sexual Difference Model
The difference model emphasizes the significance of gender differences and holds that these differences should not be obscured by the law, but should be taken into account by it. Only by taking into account differences can the law provide adequate remedies for women’s situation, which is in fact distinct from men’s. The difference model is in direct opposition to the sameness account which holds that women’s sameness with men should be emphasized. To the sameness feminist, employing women’s differences in an attempt to garner greater rights is ineffectual to that end and places emphasis on the very characteristics of women that have historically precluded them from achieving equality with men (for example, see the protective laws).
Read more about this topic: Feminist Legal Theory
Famous quotes containing the words difference and/or model:
“It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)