Leaning in and Lying Down: How Workplace 'Equality' has Failed to Result in Equality of Work-Life Balance

• Author: Shannon Buckley Barnes
• Position: Senior Sophister LL.B. (Pol.Sc) Candidate, Trinity College Dublin
• Pages: 148-161

© 2017 Shannon Buckley Barnes and Dublin University Law Society

LEANING IN AND LYING DOWN:

HOW WORKPLACE ‘EQUALITY’ HAS FAILED TO

RESULT IN EQUALITY OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE.

SHANNON BUCKLEY BARNES*

Introduction

‘First I was a lovely wife, picturesque and pensive, showed no signs of

inner life beyond the slightly inoffensive. Now I must assert myself and

break out if I can, which isn’t easy for a woman written by a man.’

1

In examining the existence of gender inequality and the way in which it

has been retained and perpetuated throughout the ages, it is necessary to

look at the law and the role it has played in reinforcing and shaping this

inequality. Indeed, it would seem that with regards to gender equality for

women, the law has been ‘written by a man.’ McKinnon advances the

theory that ‘the state is male’,

2

and it is this inherent maleness of the

state that has resulted in a law which is masculine in its outlook.

Consequently, the law has failed to consider the female experience, and

thus identify and acknowledge it in as great a capacity as that experience

which is male, and is unable to view such inequality and work to remedy

it within a context that considers both a male and female understanding.

The law will ‘always start in a particular culture’

3

and it is this overriding

masculine culture of the male state through which the law has prioritised

the male perspective. As a result, the male experience has become the

lens through which many of the rules, customs and norms in society are

* Senior Sophister LL.B. (Pol.Sc) Candidate, Trinity College Dublin. The author would like

to dedicate this article to all women. The author would also like to thank Senator Ivana

Bacik, Brónach Rafferty, and Caroline Murphy for their suggestions and guidance on this

article.

1

Peter Crawley, ‘Culture Shock: Is it really so hard to write about women?’ The Irish Times

(Dublin, 27 November 2015); Arthur Riordan and Bill Whelan, The Train, quote from

is-it-really-so-hard-to-write-about-

women-1.2446131> accessed 13 February 2017.

2

Catherine A MacKinnon, ‘Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for

Theory’ (1983) 8(4) Signs 635, 644.

3

James Boyd White, ‘Law as Rhetoric, Rhetoric as Law: The Arts of Cultural and

Communal Life’ (1985) 52 U Chi L Rev 684, 695.