"Sex equality" is an elusive phrase.

Depending on con text, it can

he vitally significant or virtually meaningless. It categorizes women
according to both difference and sameness-indicating that
women are either completely dete rmined by their biological sex or
entirely free of it- but in both cases men set the standard. In nei·
ther instance does the female body displace the silent privileging
of the male body. If equality is not to be relegated only to economic
or legal uses, we must recognize the specificity of the female body.
This refocusing necessarily challenges the idea that treating
women like men is equivalent to treating women and men equally.
I will argue here that no Western viewing of sex equality explicitly
theorizes the specificity of e ither the male sexlbody or the
female sex/body. By focu sing on the body, therefore, I intend to
reconceptualize the meaning of equality and, with it, the meani ng
of difference. In particular, my focus rein troduces the pregnant
body in order to decenter the privileged position of the male body.
This approach contrasts markedly with the dominan t discourses,
which use pregnancy to differentiate women and subordinate them
to men.
I do not mean to imply, of eourse, that equality requires thai
everyone is, or should be, pregnant. This implication would be
problematic on two counts. Firs t, pregnancy cannot apply as a
standard for everyone, especially not for males. Second, it posits
the kind of homogeneous view of the body that is the trouble to
begin with. The ultimate Significance, then, of the pregnant body
for developing a theory of sex equality is that it reminds us of at
least a potential difference between females and males that makes
sameness, as the standard for equality, inadequate. In a more general
sense, it reminds us of diversity. My refocusing, therefore,
does not establish a new homogeneous standard but rather denies
the validity of having one at all. If diversity is privileged in and of
itself, it undermines anyone preferred standard.
In Western theory, as in law, the female body is most often assumed
to be like the male body when the equality of women and
men is being asserted; by the same token , the female body is most
often explicitly said to be "different"' from the male when the
equality of women and men is being denied. In neither locus is the
woman both integral and homologous, nor is the male/man ever
considered to be the "differenC one. Woman is not recognized as
both female-as a physical creature whose sex can be biologically
categorized-and gendered through the culture- as an individual
who can be socially categorized. Instead, gender is regarded as
biologically determined: the female is the woman; the pregnant
body is the mother and perhaps wife. So being a wolman or being
fe/male is "different" from being a man or a male. It is a lesser
variation. The female body is engendered with "difference"; sexual
(as biological) identity is not specified; and the resulting "equality"
both assumes and silently denies the man or male as the standard.
It will help here to explicate the peculiar relationship between
sex and gender. For my discussion , "sex" represen ts the biological
female, and "gender" designates the cultural interpretation of what
it is to be female. As we shall see, the distinction is problematic.
Yet, if we reject received opinion that the two are one and the
same, then we must acknowledge both what distinguishes them
and what interrelates them. Just as biology is never devoid of its
cultural definition and interpretation , so sex itself, as a biological
entity, is partly defined in and through culture. And just as biological
constitution is never irrelevant to the definition of individual
identity, so gender is never completely distanced from biology.
Biology is, in part, gendered-which is, in part, culture; and gender
is, in part, biological-which is also, in part, cultural. If we
accept these premises, then we must realize the pregnant body is
never merely that: it is also, in part, gendered as the mother's
body. And herein lies the problem. Gender is a mix of both woman's
unique biological potential and its cultural reduction to her determined function,
The female as "mother" is constituted of both
these mean ings, and a third as well. In this third meaning, some of
her potential uniqueness is seen as dwelling with ill the engendered
biological "part" of her being.
Gender, as an idea, registers the role of society and culture in
defining the (biological) "female" as a "woman." The problem arises
when this definition of "a woman" is in tum subsumed under "the
mother," when culture is supposedly determined by biology rather
than constituted as part of it, when cult ure is not recognized as
definitive in interpreting the body. In sum, when the pregnant
hody is conRated with the "idea" of the mother, we are left with
the e11gendered meaning of sex "differe nce," which attributes the
hierarchical opposition of "woman" and "man" to nature. To recognize
that sex and gender are interconnected and that differences
between women and men exist is not the same as to accept the
engendered definition of "woman" and "man." Rather, this recognition
entails the acknowledgment that, considering female bodies
and the specific placement of women in society, some women are
more different from men than similar to them, and some women
are more similar to men than different from them. Hecognizing
that gender differences exist is a way of acknowledging that biology
exists, but gender differences need not be reduced to or determined
by biology. Certain gender diffe rences may not be sexually
determined at all. In contrast, the supposition of engendered sex
"difference," pretending differences between the sexes are natural,
not cultu ral , homogenizes each sex and both genders- ostensibly,
this supposition establishes gender on the basis of biology. To presume
engendered sex "difference" is to assume that sex and gender
are one. And in the engendered view of "'difference," differences
among women are silenced and difference between men and
women privileged; the sameness among women is presumed and
the sim ilari ty between men and women denied.