Abstract rights alone cannot guarantee women a concrete hold on the world

Evidence

This will is being fulfilled. But this is a period of transition; this world that has always belonged to men is still in their hands; patriarchal civilization’s institutions and values are still, to a great extent, alive. Abstract rights are far from being wholly granted to women: in Switzerland, women still cannot vote; in France, the 1942 law upholds the husband’s prerogatives in a weaker form. And abstract rights, as has just been said, have never been sufficient to guarantee woman a concrete hold on the world: there is not yet real equality today between the two sexes. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 292

Categorization

• XREF: The abstract-rights-vs-concrete-possibility distinction prefigures later feminist legal critique (MacKinnon on formal vs substantive equality); also echoes the trust literature’s point that formal institutional guarantees still need concrete enforcement mechanisms. — connects to: Abstract legal recognition of rights fails to overturn women’s concrete economic inferiority — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 57; Ideological and cultural movements do not cause female liberation. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 209; Economic emancipation alone does not place women in a situation identical to men’s — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1920 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how Beauvoir’s ‘concrete possibilities’ formulation anticipates contemporary capability-approach theory (Sen/Nussbaum).
• ADDENDUM: The 1942 French law upholding husband’s prerogatives functions as the legal-structure counterpart to the class/identity politics analyzed in the ‘immodesty’ article — codified hierarchy of one sex over the other.

Broader Connections

• Economic emancipation alone does not place women in a situation identical to men’s #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1920
• Freedom has concrete content only when engaged in the world #expands (0.80)
• Female emancipation will not produce uniformity between the sexes #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1981