Research by Assistant Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies Liza Taylor into the democratic feminist politics of renowned feminist theorist Susan Okin has won the “Polity Prize” for the best research article in 2019.
Assistant Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies, Liza Taylor, recently won the 2019 Polity Prize for her article reclaiming one of contemporary feminist theory’s most controversial figures, Susan Moller Okin.
The award is presented annually by the Northeastern Political Science Association to the best research article published in the previous edition of Polity, the association’s annual journal. In addition to receiving a monetary prize, Taylor receives a plaque and will be the association’s guest at its annual meeting.
Heavily criticized for imposing her liberal feminist values on women from minority cultures residing in Western democracies, Okin’s 1997 essay, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” is easily among the most debated essays in contemporary political theory.
In a clever wordplay that foregrounds her central argument, Taylor’s article, “Is Liberalism Bad for Women? Reclaiming Susan Okin’s Democratic Feminist Thesis,” excavates a democratic (rather than liberal) feminist thesis from Okin’s provocative essay. Taylor does this by revealing beneath the conspicuous and troubling “othering” language that has landed Okin in such hot waters with Third World feminists and feminists of color, an imperative to treat “culture” as a political—as opposed to private—matter and to privilege the voices of women within minority cultures. As such, Taylor locates in Okin’s controversial essay a position against treating liberal principles as trumps over the voices of the most vulnerable, thereby exposing Okin’s democratic—as opposed to liberal—leanings.
In addition to forcefully reclaiming a much-debated article, Taylor’s findings urge contemporary political theorists in a direction that contrasts sharply with Linda Zerilli’s recent calls to “outsider liberal judgment” wherein she advocates judging minority cultures from without rather than elevating the voices of actual people within such cultures. By putting Okin’s newly exhumed democratic feminist thesis in conversation with women of color feminism, Taylor invites contemporary political theorists to consider the extent to which liberalism in the form of outsider judgment might be bad for women and to align instead with the insider democratic dialogues typical of U.S. women of color feminism in the 1980s.
Taylor’s article, “Is Liberalism Bad for Women? Reclaiming Susan Okin’s Democratic Feminist Thesis,” was published by Polity in April 2019 and was awarded the prize this past month.