What can the ideas of an eighteenth-century feminist thinker contribute to contemporary debates around gender and care? How should law and social policy support caregivers and create a better balance between care, work and family life? Is Catholic feminism a contradiction in terms - and if not, what's distinctive about the perspective that it offers on care?These are some of the questions we discuss in this episode, with Erika Bachiochi. Erika is an American legal scholar who works at the intersection of constitutional law, political theory, women’s history, and Catholic social teaching. She is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center - and Professor of Practice and Director of the Mercy Otis Warren Initiative at the School of Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where she also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the online journal, Fairer Disputations. A 2018 visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, Erika is a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she founded the Wollstonecraft Project.Erika received a B.A. from Middlebury College in 1996, an M.A. in theology as a Bradley Fellow from the Institute for the Study of Politics and Religion at Boston College in 1999, and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 2002. The mother of seven children, Erika was a co-founder of St. Benedict’s, a Catholic classical school in Massachusetts where she served as President of the Board from 2013-2015. She has published numerous articles in legal and political journals and in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. Erika's book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, which offers a revisionist history of the early women’s rights movement, including a radical reassessment of the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, was published in 2021.We discuss the following topics in this episode:Erika's journey to becoming a legal scholar (03:02)Erika's philosophical, political and spiritual journey (08:33)The rationale for Erika's book The Rights of Women and its focus on Mary Wollstonecraft (17:28) The balance between rights and duties and the emphasis on virtues in Wollstonecraft's thinking (25:56)The lost legacy of first-wave feminism (37:30)Mary Ann Glendon's work on care, families, and social policy (43:35)Erika's critique of feminist care ethics, and her understanding of the distinctive role of fathers in care (49:38)The role of the state in supporting caregiving within families (59:34)A distinctive Catholic feminist position on care (01:03:37)Erika's plans for a sequel to The Rights of Women (01:07:33)Some of the writers, thinkers and activists mentioned in the episode:AristotleCiceroJohn LockeMary WollstonecraftWilliam GodwinJoseph PriestleyRichard PriceAbigail AdamsLucrecia MottJane AddamsSusan B. AnthonySarah Moore GrimkéBetty FriedanRuth Bader GinsburgMary Ann GlendonFranklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)Eva Feder KittayDorothy DayRachel Coleman Kate PhelanAbigail FavaleLeah Libresco SargeantHolly Lawford-SmithBernie SandersArticles by Erika Bachiochi cited in the episode'Embodied equality: debunking equal protection arguments for abortion rights' (2011)'Embodied caregiving' (2016)'Dobbs, Equality and the Contested Meanings of Women's Rights' (2023)Other publications mentioned in the episode'Declaration of Sentiments' (1848)Mulieris dignitatem (1988)Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (1991)Eva Feder Kittay, Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency (1999)'Catholic and Radical Feminism: a dialogue' (Fairer Disputations) (2024)Leah Libresco Sargeant, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (2025)Useful linksCatholic Social TeachingCatholic Worker MovementNew DealCommunitarianismNew DemocratsWorld Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) - and see Mary Ann Glendon's accountYou can download a transcript of the episode by following this link to the Careful Thinking Substack.
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