Class Handout-2

PUBLIC/ PRIVATE SPHERE

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The concept of the public and the private portrays social relations as comprised of two, largely separate,
realms.

The public realm is characterised by activities individuals undertake in wider society and in common
with a multitude of others, such as-

i.) engaging in paid work, and

ii.) exercising political, democratic rights, under the overall jurisdiction of government and the
state.

In contrast, the private realm is characterised by activities undertaken with particular others,1 relatively
free from the jurisdiction of the state.2 It is the realm of the household, of home and of personal or
family relationships.

GENDER AND PUBLIC PRIVATE DICHOTOMY

Within gender studies, interest in the public/private dichotomy arises from its gendered nature, from
the association of masculinity and the public; and of femininity and the private. Historically, it is men
who have acted within the public realm and have moved freely between it and the private realm, while
women (and children) have been mostly restricted to the private realm, and subjected to the authority
of men within it.

Within contemporary society, the public and the private remains a concept with ‘powerful material and
experiential consequences...a basic part of the way our whole social and psychic worlds are ordered’
(Davidoff 1998:165). The liberal political origins of the public/private concept lie in the writings of the
social contract theorists, such as Hobbes and Rousseau, and their attempts to explain the genesis of the
legitimacy of government and the state. In such writings, the new social order that emerged from the
social contract comprised two spheres: the one, public and political, and the other, private and removed

1 Note the use of term ‘with multitude of others’ in case of activities undertaken in the public realm; and ‘particular
others’ in case of activities undertaken in the private realm.
2 The private sphere is relatively free from the state jurisdiction. Note that it is difficult to make personal laws

which is a more contested domain.

from politics. Importantly, in classical social contract theory, these spheres were gendered spheres
(Pateman 1989). Only men were deemed to possess the capacities for citizenship and thus the public
realm was necessarily a masculine one. For the social contract writers, women were beings whose
sexual embodiment prevented them from having the same political standing as men. Therefore women
were incorporated into the new social order differently from men, via the private sphere.

In the writings of the classic social contract theorists, then, we have a clear example of the ideological
function of public/private concept. In other words, the public and the private have together formed a
justifying rationale for the development and maintenance of social relations in which most men are
privileged over most women.

FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE

Feminist writers have engaged with the public and the private in a variety of ways.

i.) Some have undertaken historical or anthropological analyses of the origin and development
of the public/private dichotomy. For example, Davidoff (1998) focuses on the concept of the
public and the private as it was understood in nineteenth-century England. She examines
the gendered nature of various concepts directly related to the public and the private
(including ‘the individual’ and ‘rationality’) and shows how these have structured, in
particular, women’s relation to the public sphere.
ii.) Ortner’s (1974) classic essay explains women’s association with the private, domestic sphere
in terms of the way, in societies across the world, femininity is constructed as being closer to
(devalued) nature, whereas masculinity is constructed as closer to the more highly valued
culture.
iii.) The concept of the public and the private has also had a role in the development of theories
of women’s subordinated status. For example, some feminist writers have drawn on
Marxism to account for women’s secondary status in the public sphere, in combination with
theories of patriarchy to account for women’s subordination within the private sphere (for
example, Hartmann 1979).
iv.) Similarly, Walby (1990) employs the concepts of the public and the private in her
explanation of the changes in women’s status in Britain. According to Walby, in private
patriarchy, the oppression of women is based around the household and involves individual
men exploiting individual women. Under this form of patriarchy, women are excluded from
 participation in wider society. In the public form of patriarchy, the formal barriers to
women’s participation in, say, paid work and politics, are removed. Women may no longer
be excluded from participation in wider society, but patriarchal strategies of segregation (for
example, in paid work) and subordination (for example, sexual harassment) mean that they
face inequality and discrimination within it. As Walby puts it, ‘Women are no longer
restricted to the domestic hearth, but have the whole of society in which to roam and be
exploited’ (1990:201).
v.) In a range of studies, researchers have uncovered the myriad ways in which the ideology of
the public and the private continues to construct the lived experiences of women and men
as gendered beings. For example, in the field of criminology, research has revealed that
notions of the public and the private are drawn upon by criminal justice professionals in the
investigation and prosecution of domestic violence (Dobash and Dobash 1992). For example,
studies by Grace (1995) and by Wright (1995) together suggest that, in the processing of
cases of domestic violence by the police and the courts, notions of the privacy of marriage,
home and the family mean that violent masculine behaviour is often neutralised and
decriminalised. Cohen (2000) analyses legislation which imposes a ‘duty of privacy’ on gay
and lesbian military personnel in the USA. This is a restriction on the expression of sexuality
in the public sphere not required from heterosexuals. In studies of the labour market,
researchers have shown how ideas about the public and the private act to structure the
experiences and opportunities of women and men, whether in relation to forms of paid
work (part-time or full-time), occupational groupings, training and promotion, or pay (see
Crompton 1997 for an overview).
Such empirical studies on a range of issues have revealed that, rather than being separate
realms, as suggested by their traditional depiction as binary opposites, the public and the
private are mutually interdependent sets of social relations. For example, studies of gender,
household work and paid work have shown that men’s advantaged position in paid work
cannot be understood separately from the fact that women continue to perform the bulk of
housework and childcare.
vi.) Much of the analysis of the effects that constructions of the public and the private have on
women’s and men’s experiences and opportunities can be drawn together using the
concept of citizenship. Lister (1997) examines how the ideology of the public and the private
has effectively served to exclude women from the category of citizen, with consequences
 for their political participation (for example, representation in parliament and other formal
political institutions), for their economic dependency (via their relationship to paid work and
to the welfare state), and for their bodily integrity (for example, in cases of domestic
violence, rape or sexual harassment).

In the light of evidence such as that cited above, most writers are critical of the role played by
constructions of the public and the private in the perpetuation of gender inequalities.

Despite the powerful role played by conceptions of the public/private divide in reproducing gender
inequalities, and the inadequacies of its traditional liberal formulation, most writers argue that what
is required is a rearticulation of the concept, rather than its complete abandonment.