Gender Equality Meets Interdependence
On Leah Libresco Sargeant's "Dignity of Dependence"
(This post is about a four-minute read. To listen to instead, scroll to the bottom of the page.)
If you’ve been reading Counterparts for a while, you’ve probably heard me reference Leah Libresco Sargeant at least once. She’s an author and Catholic feminist whose thinking I continue to find refreshing and incisive. You can get a taste of her work on her Substack, Other Feminisms.
As I mentioned in my previous post, this is a multi-part series about two books that I think make interesting conversation partners on complex issues such as autonomy, equality, and interdependence. Today, we’re talking about Leah’s latest book, The Dignity of Dependence.
So let’s dive in.
Leah argues that our societies are inhumane when they don’t account for our needs and vulnerabilities, as well as the people who depend on us. As indicated in the book’s title, dependence is far from a bad thing; it’s a human reality and can thus be reframed with dignity.
Here’s a chunky quote from a chapter called “The Lie of the Lonely Individual”:
“For grownups, it can feel like revealing the need for assistance is revealing oneself as childish, something less than a full, free adult human being. We take autonomy as the pattern for human life, with childhood a brief, slightly embarrassing apprenticeship. Little by little, children graduate from their neediness, and, because we expect them to transcend their littleness, we are willing to overlook it and round them up to count as fully human.
This story of autonomy as the marker for full personhood necessarily cuts many people out of the human family. Some children will never “grow up” to be full, autonomous adults because they are marked from birth with genetic conditions that limit their physical or intellectual development. Other children seem like they’ll transcend the neediness of childhood, but illness or injury thrusts them back into a life of profound need. For those … who are strong for a long time, age can still strip them of their potency, whether through profound mental or physical weakness or simply … not being equal to everything that is asked of them.
For a man, it is easier to make it very far in life with only the brief, past period of babyhood as evidence that he does not stand fully alone. For women, the ideal of autonomy is much harder to attain. Even a woman who does not or has not yet borne a child knows that she may conceive. That potential may seem like a threat to be warded off or an opportunity deeply longed for, but in both cases it means a woman is acutely aware that the boundaries of herself are fuzzily drawn.”
The point here isn’t that autonomy or independence are bad; respecting individual choices, desires, and rights is dignifying and essential for flourishing. The problem comes when we idealize independence to the point of demeaning human need.
When we shape our sense of what’s valuable, equal, and aspirational on a false idea of an entirely self-sufficient human, the ones who are best able to fit that mould, for the longest period, are non-disabled adult men. Particularly, non-disabled adult men who have the financial means not to rely on others. The problem is, most of the human experience fits outside that narrow frame. A fully autonomous individual is actually a toxic myth, not the standard we should all be trying to live up to.
This argument is a cautionary flag for streams of feminism that say women’s equality hinges on not having to rely on men, or on out-sourcing pregnancy to a machine. The premise behind these ideas is that dependence—whether yours or someone else’s—is sub-human. By this definition, babies, people with certain disabilities, and seniors are all also less valuable. We are already on that murky path. The rights of those who are more dependent have always been, and continue to be, more contested than those with the greatest independence. I don’t think that’s the kind of world we want to live in.
Reproductive rights are at the centre of gender equality debates for a reason: pregnancy isn’t equally shared. The interconnectedness of mother and child creates a unique autonomy conundrum, and we need to reckon with the gendered asymmetry of these experiences. Some unequal outcomes can be mitigated (such as the right to return to a job after parental leave), but it’s misogynist to say that all outcomes should be mitigated, because that assumes that all these differences are bad ones (again, treating the male experience as the ideal norm).
For instance, Leah references Sophia Yen, a pediatrics professor at Stanford Medical School, whose vision is to make periods optional, believing that not having a menstrual cycle gives men a competitive edge. I’m all for more research and medical interventions to help women experience easier periods and reduce their risk of cancer (which is one of Sophia’s primary concerns). But I am against pathologizing women’s biology as the thing that’s “wrong” and in need of fixing so women can be on an even playing field with men. The underlying premise here is to help women fit a mould that isn’t ready to accept them as they are. Plus, as research psychologist Sarah E. Hill points out in her book This Is Your Brain On Birth Control, hormonally suppressing women’s cycles can introduce other side effects, including lower libido and orgasm intensity, blunted stress response, and even different social behaviour.
No matter what we do, we cannot escape our neediness. So, how does reclaiming the dignity of dependence change our understanding of gender equality? That’s the question I’m chewing on after reading Leah’s book. She argues that treating women’s gendered differences with respect, not as weaknesses to overcome, starts with fitting our social structures to the shape of varied human vulnerabilities and dependencies.
The Dignity of Dependence explores many examples for improving care (and while there are fewer social safety nets in the U.S., her examples are still relevant in Canada and elsewhere). For instance, she advocates for medical coverage for doula services, which are known to improve health outcomes for mothers and their babies. She discusses policies that give family caregivers adequate stipends for their work because such care often makes other paid work impossible. And she argues for zoning laws that make it easier to build home additions to host more people, especially non-family members, under the same roof. Every example calls governments to create or change laws to treat interdependence as normal and expected, rather than as an abnormal interruption to life.
This shift in vantage point creates a very different perspective on how to ease gender inequality. By starting with vulnerability, we’re no longer focused solely on how to make women more independent, but rather on how we can all recognize the necessity of interdependence and lean into it. In other words, we’re better off when women and men freely need and help one another, supported by laws and social systems that recognize and adjust to those needs. Our world is kinder and more caring when we temper autonomy with reciprocity and interdependence.
Leah’s work focuses heavily on the many ways our culture pathologizes women’s biological differences and the particular needs they create. I think her high regard for caregiving, the vocation of parenthood, and women’s reproduction offers important contributions to feminist thought, especially in secular or progressive circles. But I’m honestly still processing the many ideas and implications in this book, so this post just skims the surface.
My next post will take a different turn. Ruby Warrington’s Women Without Kids voices the stories of women who don’t readily fit the mould of mother. Some because they aren’t ready or able to become a parent, others because they feel their skills are calling them elsewhere.
The conversation continues!
Yes, this audio is AI generated (there are some wonky pronunciations in this one!).