Women making choices: masked but aware?
- 2007
- p.409-37.
- Sep-Dec
Amartya Sen's capability approach is very useful to analyse how choices affect the potential of women, once the position that women lack self-awareness when they make their choices is dropped. Women's agency is underestimated. Women's other-regarding choices are not irrational because altruism has not only instrinsic, but also instrumental value as a source of social capital; it may even increase some types of freedom. The mask of conformity women wear in preferring less to more can be mis-interpreted as a lack of awareness. The rapidity with which even poor women make use of opportunities that suit their other-regarding choices and the special modes of functioning they have developed as a result prove that the mask of women's conformity is a shallow one. - Reproduced.