Property rights can improve a woman's ability to stand up to violence in the home. You might think education and employment are important because they give women exit options, but property is as well. Give women equal property rights to inherited land, then they have an asset they can take out of the marriage. This gives husbands strong incentives to not beat them.
Martha C. NussbaumBusiness leaders love the humanities because they know that to innovate you need more than rote knowledge. You need a trained imagination.
Martha C. NussbaumIf you really do want to increase women's status, you could focus on just that, but you'd probably better focus also on women's education. Access to artificial contraception, I would say, is also a very important determinant of women's status.
Martha C. NussbaumI think that's what we really need in America, for people to hear each other. And I think philosophy could do a little bit better on that.
Martha C. NussbaumThe GDP approach doesn't address many aspects of human life: health, education, political liberty, religious liberty, employment opportunities. And these are not all that well correlated with gross domestic product. We also have to think about equality among groups. And freedom of speech and religion. China always ranks near the top of developing countries these days, but there are lots of things we might see as lacking in China.
Martha C. Nussbaum