On Treating Women Better than Men are Treated

One of the weaknesses in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is that it often makes it sound as if the primary thing were to treat women as men are treated. The reason this is a weakness is that, looking around at the world, men aren't really treated that well. Indeed, you can't appreciate just how terribly women are treated unless you see just how poorly men are treated, and see the scandal that women often don't even have the very limited advantages of most men. However, sometimes Beauvoir shows recognition of this problem, particularly when her socialism comes to the fore, as in this passage on working-class women:

We must not lose sight of those facts which make the question of woman's labor a complex one. An important and thoughtful woman recently made a study of the women in the Renault factories; she states that they would prefer to stay in the home rather than work in the factory. There is no doubt that they get economic independence only as members of a class which is economically oppressed; and, on the other hand, their jobs at the factory do not relieve them of housekeeping burdens. If they had been asked to choose between forty hours of work a week in the factory and forty hours of work a week in the home, they would doubtless have furnished quite different answers. And perhaps they would cheerfully accept both jobs, if as factory workers they were to be integrated in a world that would be theirs, in the development of which they would joyfully and proudly share.

[Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Parshley tr.) p. 680]

And this, I think, close to the point: it's not enough to treat women as men are treated now; both women and men need to be treated better than men are treated now. In many cases it is more clearly crucial in the case of women; and as an interim measure, the goal of equalization is quite reasonable. But equalization is a means, not an end, because we should not stop moral progress at mere equality. People can equally be treated badly; and this is just not good enough.