Sex Equality

Abstract

During the 1980s, North American feminist and feminist legal scholarship came to be dominated by what is now referred to as the sameness/difference debate. At issue were diverging opinions on the appropriate legal and political strategies to achieve women’s equality. Should women focus on their similarity to men or should women emphasize (and perhaps even celebrate) their differences? Framed as mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed approaches, there seemed to be no common ground or space for dialogue between the two. In the end, the debate was not so much solved as it was eclipsed by more divisive debates on differences amongst women. Challenges to the presumed homogeneity of the category ‘woman’ resulted in fragmentation and a proliferation of multiple, particularized identities; rendering the language in which the sameness/difference debate was conducted unintelligible.