The Challenge of the Thought of Sexual Difference within Gender Mainstreaming

Abstract

My article intends to participate to the theoretical debate within gender mainstreaming focusing in particular on the epistemological basis of the feminist dichotomy sameness/difference within the conceptualization of gender equality.

I look, in the first instance, at the conceptualization of the sameness/ difference distinction within feminist philosophy. Then I analyze the paradoxes of equality within the logic of exclusion and homologation and the limits of liberal feminism theoretical framework. The core of my article is based on the “Thought of Sexual Difference” elaborated by French and Italian feminist philosophers. Through their work I intend to highlight the potential long-term risks of gender policies that fail to integrate sexual difference within a dual conceptualization of being.