Women’s Rights in Liberal States: A Response

Gila Stopler

Gila Stopler is Full Professor of Law at the College of Law & Business, Israel

Once again, I want to thank Cora Chan and Rosalind Dixon for co-organizing the symposium on my book, and Mariana Brocca,  Rosario Grimà Algora, and Stefano Osella for their generous and rigorous engagement with my book. In this post, I will try to respond to their insightful posts, although the limited space makes my response necessarily sketchy.

Osella worries that my theoretical framework might have strategic downsides if its implications are not entirely fleshed out. He takes issue with the book’s allegedly      narrow definition of patriarchy as ‘the manifestation of male dominance over women in society’ and with its supposedly homogeneous understanding of men and women. I believe both these worries are unnecessary.

First, as I explain in the book (sec. I.2), male dominance over women is only one aspect of patriarchy. In the words of Sherry Ortner, quoted in this section: “Patriarchy is more than just “sexism.” It is a social formation of male-gendered power with a particular structure that can be found with striking regularity in many different arenas of social life, from small-scale contexts like the family, kin groups, and gangs, up through larger institutional contexts like the police, the military, organized religion, the state, and more.” Moreover, because the political order of the pre-liberal state was based entirely on the divinely ordained patriarchal power of the father (the king)      over his sons (subjects), I emphasize that patriarchy is a fully-fledged political order and must be understood and analyzed as such, if we are to understand its effects on women, on human rights in general, and on the structure of the liberal state itself. Liberalism assumed it could      confine patriarchy and the discrimination it entails to the private sphere of religion and the family, while still maintaining equality for all in the public sphere, but, as I show in the book, this assumption was wrong. Not only were women’s rights never fully protected in liberal states, but patriarchal religious, nationalist, and populist ideologies that have flourished and gained power in the private sphere now threaten the liberal democratic framework. Consequently, the current struggle between religious nationalism and right-wing populism and the liberal state, in countries such as the US and elsewhere, which I discuss in the book, is not just over the power of patriarchy over women, or its power in the private sphere.  The struggle is over the attempts of religious nationalism and right-wing populism to dismantle the liberal democratic state structure and to establish a modern version of what Max Weber calls a patrimonial state, which is based on the patriarchal rule of the father, or in the words of Brocca in her perceptive post, one that is based on “a politics of paternal restoration”.

Second, while Osella acknowledges that I discuss the disparate impact of the Dobbs decision on Black women at length, he still worries that I conceptualize gender dynamics in homogenous binary terms and that therefore my approach in the book is not productive “for developing synergies that foster holistic legal strategies for the betterment of all subjects targeted by right-wing populists in the West—women included”. Thus, he wonders whether my approach will help protect the rights of women from minority religions and of LGBTQI+ people, and whether it will      allow granting rights to men as caregivers.      My answer to these questions is a definite yes.

Although the book discusses the interactions between patriarchy, liberalism, religion, nationalism, and right-wing populism mostly from the perspective of the rights of women in Western liberal states and with respect to the future of these democracies, its analysis, insights, and suggestions for changes in liberal theory and practice have a far wider application, intended to eradicate patriarchy as a hierarchical system of power based on the political rule of the father. As Brocca shows, similar patterns of political patriarchal rule are also apparent in Argentina under Javier Milei and in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. By condoning anti-gender rhetoric, restricting comprehensive sex education, and expanding conscience claims, both      leaders have used the public/private divide to turn the so-called private sphere into an effective tool for governing the public one.

Grimà Algora and Osella observe that right-wing populists instrumentally use discrimination against women in minority communities to target these communities. Consequently, they worry that more state intervention in the private sphere, as I suggest, may be instrumentally used by right-wing populists against minority religions and women who belong to them. While I understand this worry, I believe that it only reinforces my claim that liberalism’s paralysis in the private sphere opens the door to the flourishing of misogynist, racist, and intolerant ideologies that result both in the subordination of women and in the strengthening of right-wing populism. I certainly agree that liberal state actions should be carefully crafted to prevent right-wing populists from misusing them against minority religions to gain support for their own misogynist racist ideologies, just like the state should avoid giving conservative religious minorities the authority to subordinate minority women. For this reason, in chapter 4, I discuss at length the rights of women in minority religions and offer a novel framework for conceptualizing and crafting religion-state relations that enables us to distinguish between state policies that respect the rights of religious minorities while at the same time protecting the rights of women in these minorities, and state policies that do not. This framework is similarly applicable to religious majorities, and it would allow the state both to critique those religions and to ensure that religious women, in both minority and majority religions, are given voice and participation in decisions pertaining to their respective religious communities, as Grimà Algora rightly insists.

Throughout the book, I also refer to the rights of LGBTQI+ people, both in terms of the harm caused to them by right-wing populists and in terms of the needed remedies. For example, I argue that “liberal states must prevent the misappropriation of rights such as equality and religious liberty by right-wing populists and religious conservatives, who use them to restrict the rights of women and other disempowered minorities such as LGBTQI+, racial minorities, and immigrants. They must also constitutionalize women’s right to equality, as well as the right of LGBTQI+ to equality” (p. 241).

As Grimà Algora notes, the theoretical and legal strategy that I propose in the conclusion to the book is in the tradition of the radical internal critique of liberalism, or humanist feminism, offered by Susan Okin. This form of feminism seeks to provide theoretical underpinnings for a liberalism that focuses heavily on the private as well as the public life. It aims to identify all gendered power differentials, and the oppression and the prejudices maintained and supported by patriarchal liberalism in both spheres, and to suggest proactive measures to change them. This strategy, which I discuss and defend in the conclusion, is very different from neutrality-based political liberalism, and even from equality-based political liberalism, which, in Dworkin’s words, holds that “[t]he liberal conception of equality is a principle of political organization that is required by justice, not a way of life for individuals”. 

The substantive egalitarian liberalism I propose in the book is not restricted to women’s rights. Because it requires the state to take active steps to remove all types of gendered power differentials that are supported and maintained by patriarchal liberalism in both spheres, it entails defending the rights of all sexual minorities, including trans and non-binary people, as well as ensuring that both men and women have the right to participate equally in the care of their children      and to have ample and equal assistance from the state in doing so. 

Let me end with Brocca’s eloquent phrasing of the question that drives the book and that will, in my view, determine the future of liberal democracy: “In the end, can a democracy call itself liberal when the private sphere lies beyond the reach of equality, or is that precisely where its future is decided?”

Gila Stopler is Full Professor of Law at the College of Law & Business, Israel

Suggested Citation: Gila Stopler, ‘Book Symposium – Women’s Rights in Liberal States: A Response’ IACL-AIDC Blog (18 November 2025) Women’s Rights in Liberal States: A Response — IACL-IADC Blog