Paper short abstract:

This paper challenges the capability approach’s respect for individual choices in the domain of politics. It does so from the viewpoint of gender equality and argues for capabilitarians’ strategic alliance with advocates for compulsory voting.

Paper long abstract:

This paper challenges the capability approach’s respect for individual choices in the domain of politics. It does so from the viewpoint of gender equality and argues for capabilitirians’ strategic alliance with advocates for compulsory voting.

As the liberal founders of the capability approach, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have stressed the importance of capabilities, not functionings. In Sen’s approach, political freedoms such as civil and political rights are taken as having intrinsic values (Sen, 1999). They are essential in preventing famines, spotting injustices, and creating agency (Sen, 2009). In Nussbaum’s approach, “having the right of political participation” under the heading of “Control over one’s political environment” is part of Central Capabilities to which every member of a polity is entitled (Nussbaum, 2006). In short, “Sen and Nussbaum’s writings on the capability approach are liberal in the philosophical sense, which refers to a philosophical tradition that values individual autonomy and freedom” (Robeyns, 2017, p. 196).

Thus, the capability approach generally keeps distance from making judgements about the good or bad of converting a capability into a functioning. The aim of empowering individuals is to make them free to choose what they have reason to value. The same is true with political capabilities. With respect to the right of political participation, what matters is that you can vote. Whether or not you actually exercise the voting rights is beyond the scope. You may choose not to vote based on your conception of good life, as Nussbaum suggests in her account of the Amish case (Nussbaum, 2003).

Does this respect for individual choices help battling with existing gender inequality? Take Japanese society as an example. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), Japan ranks 125th out of 145 countries. It does relatively well in the domains of education and health. In the GGGI’s Educational Attainment subindex, it scores 0.997 and ranks 47th. In the Health and Survival subindex, it scores 0.973 and ranks 59th. However, in the domains of economy and politics, it does very bad. In the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, it scores 0.561 and ranks 123rd. In the Political Empowerment subindex, it scores 0.057 and ranks 138th.

There can be several explanations for this gross gender inequality in the domains of economy and politics in Japan, such as the absence of legal statutes that prohibit discrimination against women or the enduring background traditional culture that finds beauty and virtues in women’s passiveness. Whatever the main reasons are, the fact is that women themselves are generally quiet. When it was exposed in 2017 that some medical schools in Tokyo had secretly taken away points from female applicants’ entrance exam scores, there wasn’t really a public burst of rage. Also, Japan is the only country in the world where legally married couples have to have the same surnames and 95 % of couples have chosen husband’s surnames. Moreover, a recent study shows how modern sexism may be involved in the thin public support for electoral gender quotas in Japan (Miura, McElwain, and Kaneko, 2023).

This stagnation in gender equality has certainly discouraged women and they seem to have developed what psychologists have called "leaned helplessness". In fact, a recent empirical study in Japan shows that ‘emotions’, together with ‘other species’, among Nussbaum’s list of the Central Capabilities were not mentioned at all by unmarried non-regular female workers as ‘necessary functionings’ in their lives (Yamamoto, 2019). As Nussbaum describes the capability to emotions as “in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety” (Nussbaum, 2006, pp. 76-77), emotions, being eudaimonistic (Nussbaum, 2001), are essential to one's well-being. Why are women quiet? Are they silenced or acting on their virtues?

One way to ascertain the capability approach’s potentials as a theory of gender justice, I suggest that capabilitarians ally with advocates for compulsory voting. Compulsory voting is a means for full participation (Birch, 2009). It not only gives women voices and opportunities to function as agents but also enhances the authenticity of democracy. Moreover, though it forces individuals to function in certain ways, compulsory voting does not necessarily violate ”the principle of each person as an end”, the principle Ingrid Robeyns emphasizes as the core of both a liberal theory and a capability theory (Robeyns, 2017, p. 197). Therefore, though compulsory voting may at first seem illiberal and paternalistic, capabilitarians should accept the instrumental value it has in achieving gender equality.

Keywords: compulsory voting, gender equality, the capability approach, Japan, learned helplessness