The Politics of Gender

A Survey

Yoke-Lian Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136962950
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Mathematics General
• Index: Mathematics

This new title in the Politics of... series addresses the major theme of the politics of gender. Chapters on a variety of issues, contributed by experts in the field of gender, include Human Trafficking and EU Law, Gender in International Relations, the Gender Politics of Philosphy/Political Theory, the Construction of Masculinity in Hollywood Movies, the Politics of Law, and the Politics of Mainstreaming Gender in the Peace and Security Agenda of the African Union.

An A–Z glossary offers supplementary information on key terms, with entries including abortion, Commission on the Status of Women, ecofeminism, equal access, human rights, migration, population control, and sex tourism.

Essays

Introduction: the politics of gender

YOKE-LIAN LEE

‘It is important that we engage in dialogue with colleagues who work on gender issues from outside a feminist perspective …’

(Baden and Goetz 1997)

The title of this volume, The Politics of Gender: A Survey, obviously suggests an analysis of politics from gender perspectives. The purpose of this collection of essays is to engage with the question of to what extent gender, as a key principle, can help us to understand the politics of everyday life. In addition, it is about whether a gendered and, more specifically, feminist epistemology is capable of transforming the dominant concept of knowledge-making that has traditionally excluded women as subject of knowledge. These questions raise two immediate sorts of concerns. First, conceptual difficulties: ‘gender’ as an analytic concept is neither straightforward nor easy to define. It is located within a wide diversity of theoretical and philosophical traditions and approaches and, hence, can be read in multiple ways. Moreover, feminists also come from diverse social groups, each with their own social and political experiences and, thus, their conceptual frameworks are also distinctively different. Gender politics is typically rooted in masculine and feminine identities. However, some recent critical feminist theorists have suggested that not only are there no fixed gender identities—a point that most gender theorists would now accept—but that the very idea of a coherent identity is, after all, a cultural construction. This raises problems for the very idea of gender as a key principle of analysis.

Second, gender invisibility: there is also the larger issue of long-standing gender blindness and male monopoly of knowledge production, where feminist scholarship continues to be marginalized. Typically, feminist scholarship employs a ‘gender lens’ to ‘see’ different social and political realities by drawing on different epistemologies that seek to escape from the gender bias of conventional masculine theoretical assumptions. Although much mainstream academic scholarship continues to exclude gender from its conceptualizations, in the last two decades or so there has been a surge of feminist scholarship casting doubt on the role of traditional methodologies in the production of objective knowledge. Thus, feminists ask whether it is possible to produce, in Ann Tickner’s words, ‘a universal and objective foundation of knowledge’. Rather than viewing the traditional systems of knowledge production as an objective scientific inquiry, feminists urge us to think of knowledge production as a social construction, formed mostly by men, that is ‘variable across time, place, and culture’ (Tickner 1992, 30; Tickner 2001, 4). So, then, to what extent can the increasing visibility of women scholars and the development of feminist epistemologies and methodologies influence our conceptions of knowledge? These are some of the questions, among others, that this volume seeks to address.

The essays collected here emerge from a rather straightforward formulation: the authors were simply asked to address, with a degree of explicitness, the gender aspects of their own specialized fields of study or disciplines, and to interrogate and challenge dominant analytical categories and conventional methodologies from this point of view. No specific themes or topics were imposed on the contributors. This collection thus takes on a multidisciplinary approach that transgresses disciplinary boundaries. One of the key objectives of the volume has been to expand the boundary of gender analysis; not necessarily to exclude men and masculinity ideas, for the politics of gender, as Steans writes, ‘need not exclusively be about women, nor need it only be by women’ (see Steans’s chapter in this volume). Critical theory, for instance, warns against the knowledge claim made in the name of ‘women’. Inevitably, we have to confront the question of how we categorize women and whether there is an inscribed gendered identity. Who is included and excluded from such characterizations? One interesting point about grounding claims about women is that, as soon as the category of women is invoked, positing an ‘essence’ of women, arguments soon arise among feminists questioning that supposed essence. For example, some feminists claim that there is an ontological specificity: women as mothers. This categorization must form the foundation for a specific common legal and political representation. However, not all women are or want to be mothers, and not all mothers see that as the proper foundation for their legal and political identity. Moreover, women are always divided along a variety of class, ethnic, religious, national, racial and sexual lines. Gender politics, therefore, is heterogeneous and ‘should involve the analysis of power relations between men and women and the discursive and cultural construction of hegemonic masculinities and femininities’ (see MacGregor’s chapter in this volume). The inclusion of four male-authored chapters in this edition affirms the commitment to a more inclusive politics.

The analysis of gender politics can expose the structural instability of sexual identity, making possible a multiplication of possibilities in social and political life. Gender analysis enables us to understand how ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are not categorically separated, independent entities, but rather are mutually constituted and interdependent. This argument is crucial in challenging essentialism, reflecting instead the complexity, contingency and often contradictory process of identity formulation. The key to a gender analysis of politics, on this view, is to disrupt the dominant conception of the feminine within the gender dichotomy as a crucial step towards the displacement of gender hierarchy and undermining the role of gender distinctions in structuring the socio-political order. A common theme that emerges from this volume is that of subjectivity; to a considerable extent the various chapters seek to explore the many social and legal practices through which the subject is constructed.

There are, of course, differences among the contributors. Most noticeable, perhaps, is that between Jill Steans and Glen Newey; while they both discuss what they take to be ‘orthodoxy’, they have entirely different points of view. Steans’s critique of ‘malestream’ orthodoxy in international relations (IR), defines orthodoxy as a particular (male) mode of knowledge production; more precisely, as a disciplinary tool to tame feminist scholarship. Newey, on the other hand, makes an attempt to right orthodox feminists’ countless wrongs in misreading Hobbes’s political theory. In this sense, he turns feminist critique of male orthodoxy on its head. In defence of Hobbes, especially Hobbes’s view on women, family, sexual politics and rape, Newey argues that Hobbes’s political theory actually consistently displays ‘a basic commitment to original gender equality’, which is far more egalitarian than that which those dominant modern liberal political theorists, such as John Rawls, have managed to achieve. Newey charges that orthodox feminism, notably Carole Pateman, has misread the Hobbesian conceptions of the liberal sovereign individual and patriarchy. In defence of Hobbes, Newey asserts that Hobbes is ‘not a woman hater’ and he is wholly misunderstood with orthodox feminist reading of his work.

GENDER AND SUBJECTIVITY

One of the main objectives of the interrogation of the gendered subject has been to challenge some theorists’ underlying assumptions that there is a presocial, pre-cultural and pre-existing natural person waiting for law and politics to take cognizance of it, while masking the constitutive function of the social order in the formation of its subject. The process of production or construction of the gendered subject, as some essays in this volume suggest, can be viewed as a regulatory practice—a kind of cultural and political disciplinary practice/mechanism that helps to classify the human subjects in their ‘place’ within the social order.

The claim to a gendered identity, as Butler explains, is an exclusionary act that ‘is invoked with the unmarked dimensions of class and racial privilege intact in practice’. Further, ‘the insistence upon the coherence and unity of the category of women has effectively refused the multiplicity of cultural, social, and political intersections in which the concrete array of “women” are constructed’ (Butler 1990, 14, my emphasis). Several contributors in this book take up the theoretical analytical framework of intersectionality to address the structural tension and conflict between race, class and gender. Kruckenberg argues that intersectionality is a useful concept for examining gender politics in the complexity of Romani women’s diverse and marginalized position. Her chapter challenges the politics of identity by exploring the politics of difference through Romani women’s activism. She argues persuasively for an inclusionary gender politics ‘to find innovative ways to transcend simple identity politics by recognizing multiplicity’. Thus, Kruckenberg asserts that the use of intersectionality as a theoretical framework can help us to understand diverse and yet intertwined accounts of human subjectivity, ‘such as race, ethnicity, gender, class or sexual orientation and other categorizations’.

The intersection of subjectivity and body informs Fouskas’s chapter, highlighting in particular the construction of masculinity. He offers a neo-Marxian meta-narrative on the tragedy and vulnerability of the masculine body in and through three contemporary Hollywood action movies, namely Raging Bull, Heat and Miami Vice. For him, masculinity is embodied in the body that is not wholly secured: it is capable of becoming ‘fat and fit’ and, thus, ‘lives in a state of permanent insecurity inside and outside’. He shows how the intersection of violence, sexism, class and masculinity works in a dramatic maledominant capitalist world. However, as Fouskas observes, male-dominant movies often provoke a paradoxical ‘hegemonic presence’ of multiple and fragmented female figures. Scenes and lines of action are often punctuated and complicated by the entry or exit of these women. Domestic disputes and gender–relationship feuds—the different forms of conflict and battle between men and women—are a common theme. However, who gets to win the fight? In Raging Bull, Fouskas sees the complex inter-relationship of power and control between man and woman in the relationship between La Motta and Vickie: ‘Vickie was getting a beating, yes, but La Motta could not win this fight’. Women have figured largely in Hollywood action films alongside violence and aggressive masculinity: this illustrates how the gendered subjects are not categorically separated, but are mutually constituted and codependent.

GENDER AND KNOWLEDGE

There is considerable consensus among Steans, MacGregor, FitzGerald and Fowler that the construction of normative knowledge is gendered. Steans makes an important feminist intervention in the study of IR in noting a repression of feminist scholarship within the discipline. Her chapter offers a dialogical discourse analysis between feminists and mainstream (positivist) scholars through an assessment of the impact and status of feminist scholarship. Steans’s chapter shows us how the politics of gender is at work in the construction of IR knowledge; more precisely, the ways in which the ‘discipline’ has marginalized and continues to marginalize feminist work. Steans argues that the core assumptions of IR, noticeably realism and neo-realism, are deeply gendered in ways that serve to reify social structures, and which mask the ‘historical character of social and political relations’. She contends that IR as a discipline needs to take a more inclusive approach to broaden its scope of studies to accommodate feminist concerns and feminist modes of inquiry.

What, it might be asked, has gender got to do with climate change? MacGregor looks through the lens of gender politics and finds that ‘the concept of gender is almost completely absent in policy documents and research reports on climate change at all levels’. The exclusion of gender issues thus creates gender-blind analyses and responses in the ways that we ‘see’ environmental issues. Masculine environmental discourses play a decisive role in framing and shaping normative understanding of climate change. However, MacGregor argues that climate change is not simply a gender neutral issue, but it is a discursive cultural construct that is based on deeply-entrenched dominant gender discourses. The hegemonic construction of masculinity and femininity effectively legitimizes the masculine subject as subject of knowledge. Under the ‘current climate of gender politics’, MacGregor argues, ‘climate change has brought about a masculinization of environmentalism’, which in turn helps to shape the ecological modernization and environmental security agendas. So, what can the discourses of climate change tell us about contemporary gender relations? Fundamentally, MacGregor claims that ‘[t]he lens of gender politics brings into acute focus the process, norms and power relations through which we can recognize the working of hegemonic masculinities and hegemonic femininities in all social phenomena’.

Sharron FitzGerald questions the liberal feminist production of knowledge about trafficked female sex workers as the ‘victim subject’. She offers a critical analysis of the intersection of racialized class and gender in the construction of the non-Western female migrants as subjects of legal regulation. The politics of gender and feminist identity politics as mechanisms of knowledge and power help to sustain power relations between liberal (dominant) feminism and the female trafficked migrant. This, in turn, as FitzGerald argues, ‘reinforces a hierarchy of womanhood buttressed through colonial stereotypes of non-Western women. This neo-colonialism places Western feminists at the centre of the spaces of authority to advocate for all “Others”’. Consequently, feminist anti-trafficking initiatives and measures designed to protect and advance the human rights of non-Western female trafficked migrants become repressive law enforcement mechanisms—seeing all consensual women migrants as trafficked and thus rendering their border crossing as illegal. In conclusion, FitzGerald argues that unreflective neoliberal feminists’ ‘contemporary anti-trafficking measures are another cog in the transnational structures of governance and regulation’.

Fowler asks: what is the similarity between a 19th century woman travel writer, such as Beatrice Grimshaw, who writes in racial/colonial discourse, and John Miller, a Channel 4 liberal feminist reporter who writes about women’s rights? The similarity between them is their tendency to construct their narrative structure in simple, stark imperialistic and racial terms. Fowler is especially critical of the role of gender politics in the production and dissemination of ‘knowledge’ about the postcolonial female subject as part of an industry of ‘knowledge production’ in the publishing and media industries. Gender assumptions embedded in the ‘lucrative industry of Iranian and Muslim women’s memoirs’, often cast non-Western women as victims of cultural and religious oppression. Fowler shows how advocating equality and freedom as remedies for postcolonial women has unintended political consequences: progressive gender-specific legal measures that have been expressly designed to provide objective remedies are often, in practice, not responsive to women’s needs and experiences. Thus, Fowler shows how the emancipatory promise of women’s human rights can often have the unintended consequence of framing the legal status of women in narrow and unhelpful terms. Fowler’s analysis suggests that co...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• The Editor and Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Essays
• A–Z Glossary Gender and politics
• Bibliography