The dichotomy between the private and the public has been the main issue of feminist writing and political struggle for almost two centuries; "it is what the feminist movement has been all about" (Pateman, 1989:117). Feminist criticism has been e has been essentially directed at the separation between the public and private spheres in liberal theory and practice.

There is an extremely close relationship between feminism and liberalism. The roots of both have come from the concept of individualism as a general theory of social life, both dealing with equality and both opposing arbitrary power. However, even though liberalism and feminism share a common origin, there has been opposition between them over the past two centuries. Feminist criticisms of liberal definition of the public and the private have varied in the different phases of the feminist movement. Feminists and liberals disagree about where and why the dividing line should be between the two spheres, or whether it should exist at all (Pateman, 1989:118).

Feminism is often seen as "nothing more than the completion of the liberal or bourgeois revolution, as an extension of liberal principles and rights to women as well as men" (Pateman, 1989:118). The demand for equal rights has always been an important part of feminism and the one liberal feminists emphasize most. Anne Phillips tries to distinguish between  the public and the private spheres according to which sphere deals, and should only deal with, what kinds of issues. According to Phillips (1991:93), politics is about public decisions that take place in a public space, and she refers to politics as "ministers and cabinets, parliaments and co, parliaments and councils". According to her, under the title of public opinion, the concept can go beyond this to take in the media, political culture, and schools. "But politics is not a question of who looks after the children and who goes out to work, or of who addresses the meeting and who makes the tea, these are private affairs" (Phillips, 1991:93).

Liberal feminists' claim concerning equality of sexes in the public and the private spheres is relevant to liberal theory because according to this theory every individual should be equal before the law. Liberal feminism simply extends this principle into the private sphere. However, the question remains as to whether the liberal feminists' analysis is possible in practice.

Liberal theory of the public and private spheres

Classical liberals assumed that the family, with the male as the head, is biologically determined, and justice only refers to the relationships between families (Pateman, 1980: 22-4, in Kymlicka, 1990:247). Fathers are representatives of families, and the social contract they speak of deals with relations between families. Justice refers to the public realm, where men deal with other men. They viewed familial relationships as private, governed by "natural instinct and sympathy" (Kymlicka, 1990:248). Liberals refuse to interfere in the family because they see the family as the centre of the private sphere. The e private sphere. The liberal right to privacy
encloses and protects the personal relationships of the home, the family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, and child rearing; thus any liberal interfering in the family would mean going against the concept of the family as the centre of private life (Jaggar, 1983:199 in Kymlicka, 1990:250).

The Athenians sacrificed private liberty benefit of political life; liberals view politics as protecting their private life. Liberalism constrains modern liberty by sharply separating the public power of the state from the private realm, putting strict limits on the state's ability to intervene in the private realm (Kymlicka, 1990:251). The liberal goal of private life was not to protect the individual from society but to avoid political interference in society. Liberals "rated social life the highest form of human achievement and the vital condition for the development of morality and rationality'", while politics was reduced to "the harsh symbol of coercion necessary to sustain orderly social transactions" (Wolin 1960:363, 369, 291; cf. Holmes 1989:248; Shwartz 1979:245 in Kymlicka, 1990:252).

Kymlicka (1990:252) asks the question "why did liberals, who opposed ascriptive hierarchy in the realm of science, religion, culture, and economics, show no interest in doing the same for the domestic sphere?" He gives the explanation that male philosophers had no interest in questioning a sexual division of labour from which they benefited, and thus thought that domestic roles were biologically fixed.

Liberals believe in the right to privacy. However, this right deals with families and not individuals; thus the state will not interfere in the couple's relationship within the household, and the individual within the household cannot claim the right to privacy (Kymlicka, 1990:259).

Liberal Feminism

Modern feminism originates in the eighteenth century, when women could not vote, seemed unsuited for education, and were excluded from many occupations. Legally, they were regarded at the same level of children, and married women could not own property of their own (Bryson, in Eatwell:193). During the eighteenth century there were many important theorists who did point out the inequality of women, and whose ideas have and whose ideas have contributed to the women's movement since. One of these theorists, Wollstonecraft (1759-97) argued that "women are, like men, rational individuals and that, as such, they should have equal rights" (Bryson in Eatwell:193) and she established the principles underlying later campaigns for women's right to  education, employment, property and the vote. There was a growth of equal rights feminism throughout the industrializing world (Bryson in Eatwell:193).

The central claim of liberal feminism is that women are individuals who can reason, thus they are entitled to full human rights, and therefore they should be free to choose their life, and to compete equally with men in politics and waged employment. Liberal feminists, such as Susan Moller Okin, are concerned to overcome gender difference in order to secure impartiality (O'Leary in Kenny and Kinsella, 1997:51 - 52; Phillips, 1987). Their approach is of women "going public", which means an individual approach to fight for power and influence on equal terms with men without changing the existing "rules of the game" (Siim in Jones and Jonasdottir, 1988:165; Bryson in Eatwell: 200). They did not seek to annul the economic, social or political system, nor morality and family values (Bryson in Eatwell: 200) but rather to favour changes in laws, customs, and values to achieve the goal of equality (Unger and Crawford, 1992:6; Haste, 1993:114).

Liberal feminist theory on public and private spheres

To clarify certain confusions in feminist theory it is necessary to examine the use of the categories "private" and "public". The state is a form of public patriarchy, and the family is ultimately a part of private patriarchy. This distinction is what the feminist movement is concerned with and plays correspondingly important role in feminist theory.

The particular distinction between the public and the private that developed with industrial capitalism in western societies resulted in women's exclusion from the right of citizenship, and therefore constructed them as less than full individuals. The predominant ideology was that men would govern society and the women the homes within it (McDowell and Pringle, 1992:15). In this situation, John Locke believed that the "family was not capable of presenting or solving the problems arising among individuals who are not members of the same family" and believed that "this can be done only by the state" (McDowell and Pringle, 1992:39). He argued that the family was the institution designed for satisfying basic needs, such as intimacy, affection, sexuality and all kinds of aid. Within liberal theory, though, there has been much diversity in the description of the extent and nature of differences in families and state (McDowell and Pringle, 1992:39).

Liberal feminists give importance to pive importance to personal privacy and embracing the private sphere as "occasions for privacy" (Hirshmann and Stefano, 1996:202). Liberal feminists oppose types of home life, stereotyping sex roles, and sexual ties that exclude privacy options for women. "Although mindful of the ways in which traditional marriage, family life, sex roles have resulted in inadequate privacy for women, liberal feminism does not oppose marrying, mothering, and heterosexual relationships" (Hirshmann and Stefano, 1996;203)
"The family life and the decision to have children should be the individual's free choice, and those who choose to have children should be responsible for them. Liberal feminism demands that those be women's only options and that sex, marriage, and childbearing be reconstructed consistent with sexual justice, through legal, economic and attitudinal changes. The liberal feminist favor upon decisional privacy in the context of contraception and abortion, because she views it as a tool of female autonomy and privacy." (Hirshmann and Stefano, 1996:203; see also Weedon, 1997:16).

Recently, neo-liberal feminists have opposed too much state control or too much social service support because "it undermines individual responsibility", but are aware that they still need the state to achieve natural rights ( Haste, 1993:116). They also place great emphasis on self-development, their goal is "wholeness, realization of one's own full potential" (Haste, 1993:117).

Rosalind Petchesky stated that the separation between the public and the private, between family and work is ideological. Their slogan is "the personal is political", and this may aid us in seeing similarities between political and personal relationships, and between families and state (Petchesky in McDowell and Pringle, 1992:43). This slogan has drawn women's attention to the way in which they are encouraged to see social life in personal terms (Pateman in Phillips, 1987:103). The popularity of the slogan and its strength for feminism arises from the complexity of women's position in contemporary liberal societies (Pateman in Phillips, 1987:117).

The private and the public realms held to be separate and irrelevant to each other; women's everyday experience confirms the separation, yet it both denies and affirms the integral connection between the two spheres (Pateman, in Phillips, 1987:119). The separation of private and public are part of their lives as an ideological mystification of liberal patriarchal reality.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the economically dependent wife has been presented as ideal for all respectable classes of society. Women have never been completely excluded from public life, but the way they were included is grounded on patriarchal beliefs. "For example, even many anti-suffragists were willing for women to educate themselves to be a good mother and for a good mother and for them to engage in local politics because these activities could be seen but as voting could not, as a direct extension of their private task" (Pateman in Phillips, 1987:118).

Feminists are trying to develop a theory of a social practice that includes women and men equally grounded in the interrelationship of the individual to collective life, or personal to political life, instead of their separation and opposition. Feminists claim that if women participated fully as equals in social life, men have to share equally in childbearing another domestic tasks. (Wolff in Gould and Wortofsky, 1976:137,142, 143).

Equal parenting and equal participation in other activities of domestic life presupposes some radical changes in public sphere and in the organization of production, that is meant by "work" and the practice of citizenship. The feminist critique of the sexualf the sexual division of labour in the workplace and in political organization of all ideological persuasions and its rejection of the liberal patriarchal conception of the political, extends and deepens the challenge to liberal capitalism posed by the participatory democratic and Marxist criticism for the past two decades. (Pateman in Phillips, 1987:122).

According to Phillips (1991:99), political equality between men and women must include a major change in the private sphere, for example, the equalization of the working hours; a shift in the responsibilities; breaking the patterns that divide men and women of inequality between work in the home and work outside.

Sweden is the only society in the world that has an official goal in the equal participation of fathers and mothers in child care. "Sweden also has the oldest and most generous paid parental leave policy" (Chow and Berheide, 1994:2). Families in Sweden are affected by a range of public policies more directly concerned with the family's day care, and parental leave. Conscious policy decision made many changes in the family. Increasing the labour market participation of women has been public policy in Sweden since the 60's, when labor shortages began to be met by recruiting women. Feminists claim that women would not be equal to men unless they are financially independent from individual men. Income tax reforms furthered the financial independence of women whependence of women which facilitated the entry of them into employment

Conclusion

Many theorists, in particular radical feminists, criticise liberal feminism for not placing enough emphasis on the private realm and placing too much on the public realm. Another major objection to liberal feminism is that it is concerned only with the fields of "success" "in the male defined and male-inhabited world" (Haste, 1993:114). Therefore, according to Haste (1993:114), it is both elitist, because it ignores women who are not middle class or educated, and individualistic, because there is an underlying belief that one changes the system by adding increasing numbers of individuals to the "club", rather than by adding the social system as a whole which would provide discrimination.

Another criticism is that many theorists, such as Rousseau, Hegel, Pateman, and Elshtain, agree that it is necessary to separate the public and the private spheres because they believe that passion and emotions, which symbolize women, are "too dangerous- or too private- to be let loose in the public sphere dominated by rationality" (Siim in Jones and Jonasdottir, 1988:166). Siim (1988:165) also argues that "going public" is an idealistic approach on which to base the "separate but equal spheres."

However, liberal feminism is primarily represented in the pages of the news media and policy documents where acceptable ents where acceptable versions of change and pressure for change can be presented (Haste, 1993:114). Equality in the household is not really a matter of regulation, imposition or guarantee. There are also many kinds of social intervention that can help relations between sexes become more democratic, and various ways in which public policy or public resources can contribute to change. The provision of refuges and affordable accommodation can give more women a choice about leaving relationships; changes in the practice of mortgage companies, landlords and insurance offices can give women more of a say. All these can empower women by making it more possible for them to claim their place as equals and encouraging democracy in the home. None of these, however, can impose what should go on between the husbands and wives, and most people prefer it this way. Thus, in the end, what happens will depend on the individuals themselves and how much they insist on change. (Phillips, 1991:111).

We cannot say that equality in marriages is impossible. Studies of power in marriage have found that a small number of couples do manage to have long-term equality in relationships. Although this is a small number, it does not mean that it is impossible for humans to achieve this equality. (Unger and Crawford, 1992:396).

Liberal feminists have also achieved a lot in the public realm. In the 1960s and early 1970s, liberal feminism influenced many of the majored many of the major political programs in the American women's movement. Betty Friedan, a liberal feminist, founded the National Organization of Women n 1966, which campaigned for equal rights, equal access to education, to health and welfare, and equal pay for women. (Humm, 1992:181).

As a result, liberal feminists' claim for equality of opportunity is relevant to the liberal theory of equality of opportunity. As for whether their theory can be put into practice, experience has proven that it is not impossible. The state can only intervene to a certain extent, but in the end it is up to the individuals themselves, and this choice is something which liberal feminists have always emphasized. Their strategy is "going public" and their ideal is to compete with men for power without changing the rules by obeying them'; thus, again, it is left to the individual rather than the state to ensure this competition. However, it is only the state that can make the area for equal competition possible.

Bibliography:

 Eatwell, R. Feminism.
 Chow, E. N. and Berheide, C. W. (1994) Women, The Family, and Policy. Albany: State University of New York Press.
 Haste, H. (1993). The Sexual Metaphor. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney,Tokyo, Singapore: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
 Jones, K. B. and Jonasdottir, A. G. (1988) The Political Interests Of Gender. London, Newbury, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
 Kymlicka, W. (1990) Contemporary Political Philosophy: an Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Oxford University.
 O'Leary, C. M. in Kenny, S. J. and Kinsella, H. (ed.) (1997) Politics and Feminist Standpoint Theories. New York, London: The Haworth Press, Inc.
 Pateman, C. (1989) The Disorder Of Women: Democracy, Feminism And Political Theory. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
 Pateman, C. in Phillips, A. (ed.) (1987) Feminism and Equality. Washington: New York University Press.
 Phillips, A. (1991) Engendering Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
 Phillips, A. (1987) in Humm, M. (ed.) (1992) Feminism. New York: Columbia University Press.
 Unger, R. and Crawford, M. (1992) Women And Gender. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
 Wolff, R. P. "There's Nobody Here But Us Persons."' In Gould, C. and Wortofsky, M. (1976) Women And Philosophy.

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