Research

Abstract: Working from home has rapidly become commonplace in recent years, expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper asks whether a default employee entitlement to work from home would promote or hinder the pursuit of gender justice. While such a policy would likely improve the employment prospects of women with significant caregiving responsibilities, this could come at the expense of creating a new glass ceiling and exacerbating the gendered division of labour. I argue on pragmatic grounds that feminists should nevertheless endorse the policy, in tandem with measures to mitigate these negative effects.

Abstract: Realist ideology critique (RIC) is a strand of political realism recently developed in response to concerns that realism is biased toward the status quo. RIC aims to debunk an individual’s belief that a social institution is legitimate by revealing that the belief is caused by that very same institution. Despite its growing prominence, RIC has received little critical attention. In this article, I buck this trend. First, I improve on contemporary accounts of RIC by clarifying its status and the role of motivated reasoning. Second, I show that realist ideology critics face a dilemma: either their account makes deeply implausible epistemological assumptions, or they temper its epistemology at the expense of rendering it toothless. I argue for each horn in turn before revealing the dilemma to be a false one by making a novel distinction between varying strengths of RIC based on their underlying epistemological assumptions. I propose Moderate RIC as a solution: upon discovering that one reason for your belief that a social institution is legitimate is likely malignantly epistemically circular, the belief should undergo further epistemic testing. I respond to three potential objections and suggest that Moderate RIC would make a fruitful addition to political theorists’ methodological toolkit.