The Public/Private Dichotomy: Gendered and Discriminatory

Abstract

This paper argues that the malleability of the public/private dichotomy within liberal discourse is deployed by the state in order to mediate polarized interests. Even though anti-discrimination legislation does challenge the assignation of women to the private and men to the public spheres, the centrality of the dichotomy ensures that any changes which occur in the relations between men and women do not threaten the immunity accorded domestic life, the primary site of inequality for women. Selected aspects of the substance and procedure of anti-discrimination legislation will be used to illustrate the thesis. The examples are drawn from Australian antidiscrimination legislation, but the thesis applies equally to similar legislative models found in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America. While I have focused on the particular significance of the public/ private dichotomy for gender, many facets of the dichotomy apply also to race, sexual preference, disability and other proscribed grounds. I also do not discount the ways in which gender may be shaped by its intersection with multifarious situational factors, including those factors which constitute proscribed grounds.