*The personal is political* in the light of feminist political theory

Introduction

The slogan is the best-known summary of the second wave of feminism. The question asks for its elaboration in the light of feminist political theory. It condenses a theoretical claim about what counts as political.

The personal is political

The slogan was coined in the second wave by Carol Hanisch, and it expresses the claim that the private world of women (the home, marriage, sexuality, the body, housework and care) is not outside politics but a field of power: personal lives reflect the deep political structures of a patriarchal society, and cultural and political inequality are closely linked. Radical feminists of that period accordingly placed the politics of the personal at the centre of their movement; protests against the Miss America pageant, which they likened to a cattle parade and saw as the objectification of women, are an example.

Why it matters for political theory. (1) It challenges the liberal division between a public sphere, to which politics belongs, and a private sphere left to individual choice. In the liberal view, the state should not interfere with the family; feminists reply that the claim of privacy has shielded domestic subordination from scrutiny. Note that NCERT states the same point: patriarchy assigns women to the private and domestic domain and men to the public domain, and feminists hold that this distinction should be abolished. (2) It widens the definition of power and of the political beyond the state, in line with the broad concept of politics as any relation of domination and subordination, "sexual politics" included. (3) It joins theory and practice: the demand for legal change on domestic violence, equal pay and sharing of household work grows from the claim that these are political issues.

Criticisms. Some feminists and liberals warn that stripping the private of its protection can expose women to state control, since privacy also guards choice about the body and marriage; and critics add that the slogan can reduce politics to personal grievance. Radical feminists are also criticised for generalising about women's experience across class and race. The best view is that the slogan identifies power in intimate life without requiring that all privacy be abolished.

Patriarchy as the underlying structure

The slogan rests on the view that gender inequality is produced by patriarchy, the social, economic and cultural system that puts men above women and gives them power over women, and is not natural. Feminists distinguish sex from gender to show this. The sense in which the personal is political therefore depends on the claim that gender roles, such as who does housework and childcare, are products of power and so can be altered by politics. The second wave extended the domain of feminist politics from rights to the private lives of women, and the radical feminists took the politics of the personal to the centre.

Conclusion

The personal is political does not say that every private matter is the business of the state. It says that arrangements in intimate life are shaped by power and so are open to political argument. It enlarged political theory's idea of its own subject matter, and its legal and social consequences, from laws on domestic violence to the sharing of care work, show that the theory had practical force.