Threshold Harm and Intergenerational Justice: Resolving the Non-Identity Paradox in Gendered Labor Policies
Abstract
non-identity problem, challenging conventional harm-based assessments of obligations to future generations. It argues that Derek Parfits
paradoxwhere future individuals cannot be deemed "worse off" by policies enabling their existencefails to account for non-comparative
harms and rights violations. Reconceptualizing harm as a threshold violation of impersonal rights (e.g., to equitable labor participation) reveals that policies perpetuating structural inequities, even if beneficial to some individuals, breach intergenerational duties to humanity as an
"inter-temporal community." Applying this framework to Mama Jobs, the analysis demonstrates how such initiatives institutionalize gender
essentialism by conditioning womens workforce participation on childcare burdens, violating autonomy despite short-term economic gains.
Through Reimans Rawlsian extension, the paper contends that rational actors behind a "veil of ignorance" would mandate universal childcare, equal parental leave, and anti-discrimination enforcement to dismantle systemic barriers. Ultimately, it advocates for rights-based policies that transcend Parfits paradox to liberate rather than confine mothers and future generations.
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[12] Ibid., 4-5.
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[21] Ibid., 810.
[22] Ibid., 812.
[23] Harman, "Can we Harm and Benefit in Creating?," 104105.
[24] Shiffrin, "Wrongful Life," 121.
[25] Ibid., 126.
[26] Ibid., 130.
[27] Larry Temkin, Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012),
333.
[28] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 431.
[29] Ibid., 360.
[30] Temkin, Rethinking the Good, 333.
[31] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "The Nonidentity Problem," accessed May 4, 2016, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonidentity-problem/.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.70711/rcha.v3i5.7381
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