Feasibility of Gender Justice in Theories of Justice: Western Philosophers in the Twentieth Century

This article seeks to study the feasibility of gender justice in common theories of justice by raising two questions: first, do these theories support gender justice?   Second, which category of justice research does the gender justice belong to? This study aims to prove, reject or explain the theoretical foundation of gender justice as a derivative of the rule – or value – of justice, which is conducted according to significant theories on the realm of justice. Thereby, theories of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, Alasdair MacIntyre and some others are briefly discussed and their relation with gender analysis is explained. These theories are presented within three categories of exemplarist, non-exemplarist, and non-universal theories, which include local (pluralist) and divine theories of justice. The findings of the study indicates that gender justice is a strategy based on structure engineering and individual will; so, it is considered as an exemplarist theory in this regard and can be supported by such theories. However, it receives no theoretical support from non-exemplarist theories, including the critics of exemplarism and universalism. It is noteworthy that although majority of these theories are related to the 20th century, no direct gender analysis can be found in the wide range of literature of these theories- even the exemplarist ones.