Author: Nupur Ray
Author Affiliation: Department of Political Science, Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi
Abstract: Vast feminist literature has emerged in the past few decades where various political, social and cultural institutions/ ideologies have been reexamined through a critical feminist lens thereby unraveling the patriarchal assumptions underlying these structures. This paper focuses on a feminist critique of the institution of family as a site of gender justice and thereby unfolds its patriarchal underpinnings and sources of injustice. It specifically emphasizes on notions of self and responsibility within family, constructed and internalized through shared moral understandings amongst members in terms of roles and responsibilities vis-a-vis each other and of themselves. Further, it explores the scope of Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach as an analytical tool to question the gendered moral understandings of self and responsibility in family. The Capabilities approach along with a list of basic capabilities as a necessary condition for true realization of gender justice, proposed by her, is further contexualized to redefine these ideas (self and responsibility) in the institution of family.
Keywords: Self, Responsibility, Family, Women and Justice.