CHANGING WOMEN IN A CHANGING EUROPE - IS DIFFERENCE THE FUTURE FOR FEMINISM

There are elements, in different contemporary feminist writings, that indicate a tendency to ground women's rights on their ''difference.'' This is not new, but what is new is the implicit claim that women shou ld retain all the parental rights over children. This raises the quest ion of the exclusion of half humankind from the care for the young of the species, but also that of the undue power of all adults over all c hildren. This trend toward a new ''mothers' right'' is examined in thr ee areas of feminist intellectual production: attitudes toward new rep roductive technologies, reconstructions of human evolution, and the te ndency to glorify motherhood as ''sacred bond.''