Iris Marion Young's Inclusion And Democracy

Iris Marion Young voices her views on the lack of equality in our society in her book, Inclusion and Democracy. Young asks us to rethink the idea of a descriptive democracy, which is where elected representative in democracies should represent not only the expressed preferences of their constituents. In a descriptive democracy, representatives should also represent the descriptive characteristics that are politically relevant like occupation, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. Not all groups of people in our society are being equally represented by the government officials elected by them. Something needs to be done to adjust the way things are run in a representative type government system. Young says, “Members of a gender or racial group have life historians that make them very different …show more content…
I believe he is trying to tell us that inequalities have developed in our modern society because of the process of human evolution, and as a result, have corrupted man’s view. There are only two types of inequalities according to Rousseau, “Natural or Physical” (Rousseau 131). Rousseau says, “The other, which may be called moral, or political inequality, because it depends on a sort of convention, and is established, or at least authorized by Men’s consent” (Rousseau 131). The only natural inequality between men relates to physical differences not social. Rousseau believes man is grounded in society by two things, pity and self-preservation, so he does not need much in our society to keep him together. According to him, moral inequalities are created by more than just one person and are differences in wealth, power, or status in society. Based on Rousseau’s ideas, we can see that these social inequalities are not the product of natural inequality, and more a result of the social relationships established in our