Many papers on gender inequality focus on one or more respects in which women, as a group, fare worse than men, with some also noting respects in which gender discrimination and oppression is bad not only for women and children but also, as John Stuart Mill recognized, for society as a whole (1869: eg. 471-5, 558, 564). All this is, of course, consistent with men being harmed by patriarchal institutions or worse off than women in some respects either because of those institutions or for independent reasons. In his controversial paper “Four Puzzles on Gender Inequality,” based on a provocative talk presented at a feminist forum, Philippe Van Parijs lists some peculiar gender inequalities. Such inequalities are puzzling not because they indicate dimensions in which women fare better than men but because they show a lack of shared and clear criteria to determine when inequality involves injustice, which is not due to predictable differences between Left and Right. Whether some inequalities require some sort of compensation or institutional reform is unclear even within a single position in distributive justice, including positions as elaborated as that of John Rawls. As readers will notice, the paper is different from the standard scholarly pieces that appear in academic journals like LEAP. However, it still serves a valuable philosophical function because the puzzles it describes raise important questions regarding which statistical differences between two social groups identify an injustice and which merely contain information that is either irrelevant or that bears a more indirect relation to social justice. The value of discussing these questions, stressed by Van Parijs’ response “Real Freedom for All Women (and Men),” thus extends well beyond feminism. In addition, each instance of gender inequality Van Parijs describes is also intriguing in its own right, and not only as an illustration of the general problem just described. So, the discussion published here aims to contribute to an exchange that is informative and engaging not only for those interested in gender but also for those working on distributive justice more generally.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (Grant Agreement Number: 648610).