The individualistic tradition of autonomy has been charged as “inimical to many women” (Code, 2000) in particular, for several reasons… Personal autonomy understood in the individualistic sense constitutes a resource that is unjustly denied to women, or even something that men often attain at the expense of those women (Lee 2)
- I never really thought about the inaccessibility of personal autonomy until having read this passage. This perhaps can answer to why in many cases, when a women choose to become the one who bring’s bread to the table, everyone’s focus or praise is all suddenly directed towards the man in the household.
Thus, her freedom is accompanied by censure; to avoid it, she would have to continue abiding by motherhood norms at the cost of her preferred life choices. This thereby places someone like Nora in an oppressive double bind not faced by men: whatever she chooses to do, she faces a negative outcome. (Hirji, 2021, p. 649) This is suggestive of the fact that the ideal of autonomy, as understood within the cultural imaginary, is extremely costly if not outright inaccessible to women against this background of oppression, whilst exclusively lionizing men who become ‘independent’ at the expense of social relationships and the supportive women who are expected to take up caring roles in their stead (Lee 3)
- This answers the question that I always had why are men who have this personal autonomy celebrated that much by our society? It’s because their “independence” and successfully career in the expense of the women in the household that makes many of us blind to the sacrifices made by the women and the selfishness of it all.
An overtly individualistic conception of autonomy runs the risk of promoting a “misguided and potentially oppressive male ideal of leading one's life.” (Baumann, 2008, p. 446) This is because the individualistic tradition discriminates against women: it can reinforce their oppression by excluding them from access to choices that may be taken up freely by men, for example, or by underrating caring values traditionally coded as ‘feminine’ traits (Lee 3)
- I now have a full picture of what I have been taught or understand of personal autonomy. The whole idea of personal autonomy is twisted in a way by society. Why must certain caring and positive values be labeled as “feminine”, while sacrifices, selfishness and other supposedly “masculine” values be the only way to attaining autonomy? The traditional set of values in personal autonomy seems to be all around discriminative against women.