The Breadth of Context and the Depth of Myth: Completing the Feminist Paradigm

In its quest for recognition that women are human beings, entitled to the freedom to think and act as human beings, feminist legal analysis has largely neglected its mythic dimension. Characteristics conventionally assigned to human beings - a unique capacity for reflective and rational thought that enables us to interpret and to imagine alternative realities, an ability to construct the world through choice, and a need to reconcile individual and social existence place all human beings, including women, in the dimension of myth. However, feminist theory has not fully explored the possibilities of using myth in order to argue on behalf of women. As a result, feminists have disadvantaged themselves both theoretically and practically.