Gender Politics

Gender Politics and the International Political Economy Written by: Shawn Monaghan (critical on Scribd.com) February 14, 1995 Gender is a relevant concept in analysis of the global political economy just as class and ethnicity are considered relevant as concepts for analysis. Class is considered relevant in that members of different classes are affected differently by the political economic system. For example opponents of liberalism often oppose liberalist ideals on the basis that the capital class is "rewarded disproportionately to labour in the world economy", and to extend ourselves beyond the realm of class differentiation to the realm of gender differentiation: ... then men are being rewarded disproportionately to women; a 1981 Report to the UN Committee on the Status of Women states that although women represent one-half of the global population and one third of the paid labor force, and are responsible for two-thirds of all working hours, they receive only one-tenth of world income and own less than one percent of world property. Although much of women's work is performed outside the formal economy, even when they enter the market economy these data suggest that women are not being rewarded to the same extent as men; earning lower wages and owning an insignificant proportion of the world's i capital puts women at an enormous disadvantage in terms of power and wealth. So in Tickner's conceptualization not only is class an important distinction for understanding the workings of the political economy, gender is also important. Just as class is considered relevant because of the different experiences and positions of various classes within our political economy, gender should be considered relevant because of the different experiences and positions of men and women within our global political economy. In this particular situation one might think it is better to dispose of concepts of gender and just subsume women's differing experiences within class distinction. In keeping with class distinctions along the boundaries of differing experiences and opportunities the class of 'women' could be included within the hierarchy of classes like so: Upper classes (capital owners), middle class (wage labourers with somewhat less capital accumulation), lower or working class (wage labourers with little or no capital accumulation), and finally, the lower working class or women (wage labourers with lower wages for equal work and even less capital accumulation). Clearly this conceptualization does not work very well. Instead of simply including women on the bottom rung of the class hierarchy gender theorists chose to deal with women as a differentiated group among the many classes because it is not strictly accurate, nor analogically appropriate, to group all women in a class below all men. Some women work for very high wages and accumulate a great deal of capital stock, while others could be considered middle class, still others could be considered working class, finally others could be considered sub-working class. Women as individuals transcend the boundaries of class making it impossible to include them within the list of a class hierarchy as a separate group. What then of the above quotation listing women as a group with less than 1 percent of world property and one-tenth of world income? This becomes complex, women as individuals transcend class boundaries but it would seem as a group are at the bottom rung of the class hierarchy. Perhaps if we were to look at another group of peoples without gender distinctions things will become clearer: members of developing countries represent larger than half the population of the world and represent less than half of world income and property. The above

condition of 'third-wold countries' has led to a relatively new class of political studies called development theories. It is recognized that as a group developing countries are disproportionately poor in comparison to developed countries, and this group is treated as a class of people whose anomalous position in our world requires study and explanation. Why then would it not be reasonable to study women as a group with a demonstrably differentiated position within the international political economy, just as developing peoples are considered a differentiated group? The problem seems to stem from the fact of gender. The question has been asked; why should women be treated differently from men in our political economy? The only answer to this question could be: because women have a different experience within our political economy. Women are relegated to low paying, low status positions as a group world-wide, while men enjoy greater access to high-paying, high-prestige, elitist positions. The differences in access and opportunity of men and women presumably do not derive from different abilities or biological inheritances, Western society has not discovered any genetic links between men and maleness and women and femaleness. Attributes of masculinity and femininity are relegated to men and women through culture and socialization and not biology. If the abilities of women and men cannot be shown to be differentiated in any other way than through socialization, and we can recognize a difference of condition (standard of living, wealth) of men and women within our society, we must accept that this difference of condition stems from culture and not from some natural state of being. This is where the critical theory of feminism takes its standpoint. A critical theory as represented by Cox involves focusing on changing the world as a primary goal. Part of the process of establishing a critical theory is to look at the present order of dominant paradigms and attempting to understand how they came about understanding and ii revealing any fundamental assumptions. Gender theory, as represented by Feminist critical theory does just this with current dominant paradigms and assumptions. Tickner (quoted above) analyses several dominant political-economic paradigms like liberalism and argues that though the proponents of these theories claim gender-neutrality they clearly are biased in favour of the dominant male gender. As mentioned above Tickner claims that Liberalism is "biased toward a masculine representation", she also claims that Marxism is biased similarly: For classical Marxists, procreation was seen as a natural female process fixed by human biology. Therefore a division of labor, whereby women are primarily responsible for the rearing of children, was also seen as relatively fixed. Because Marxism assumed that women's roles as caretakers of children was natural, an assumption questioned by many feminists, classical Marxism omitted women's roles in the family from its analysis. Feminists argue that ignoring women in their reproductive and childrearing roles, an omission common to all approaches to political economy, leaves all the unpaid labor that women perform in the family outside of economic analysis. By ignoring women in their domestic roles, Marxists and non-Marxists alike neglect certain issues that are peculiar to women regardless of their class position. In most cases, when married women move into the labor force, they continue to be responsible for most of the housework and childrearing. Besides the lack of respect for unpaid housework and the dependence of full-time housewives on the income of their husbands, women, including those in the workforce, usually suffer a severe decline in income should their marriage end in divorce.

Economiciiidependence may force women to stay in marriages in spite of violent and abusive treatment. In fact Tickner claims that by not including the domestic sphere of childrearing and housekeeping as a part of our economic analysis we are unfairly ignoring women's contribution to the international political economy (IPE), and by so doing we are inflicting gender-specific hardships on women. This then is the meat of the matter. Because of the relegation of the domestic sphere as economically irrelevant we are relegating 'women's work' to the economically irrelevant sphere. This is clearly a gender bias within the world economy that should not continue. In this world of economic and political aide, we are constantly searching for a way to understand the political and economic process of development. Development is measured among other ways as a product of GNP, low GNP in one sector shows the area of the developing economy that should be boosted with investment, but what of this entire sector of hidden GNP? Perhaps this sector of the economy is holding back the growth of the rest of the economy. Questions of how and why the Western world developed, along with questions about the aberration of Third World development are at the centre of political-economic debate these days. Why do not Third World countries develop at the pace we expect? How do we get the Third World to develop as quickly and painlessly as possible? Perhaps some of our problems stem from the fact that we ignore the 'domestic' industry and consider this entire sector of all societies as irrelevant. Perhaps by ignoring the female sector of developing countries we are ignoring viable roads toward development. Consider the development potential if aid packages included loans to women for establishing simple daycare business services for the sectors of society that are labour intensive. Women, who could not work before such an aid package would be enabled to work by the relief of labour intensive childcare during the day with the increased benefit of a new business trade and improved monetary circulation. Alternatively, consider the position of many families of Western Africa. For a relatively large group of families the man's role has become that of migratory seasonal labourer, while the women remain home and struggle to keep the family fed between pay-cheques. A few well placed loans with these women could greatly enhance trade as well as their ability to subsist as a family unit. This type of situation is by no means rare and yet men have been the primary group of Africans to receive loans, often even in cultural groups where women are the primary actors in the public sector. Although a specific citation escapes me at this point (can't find it anywhere) I have read of a case in which an African society was egalitarian before aid organizations attempted to 'develop' it. The result was the complete shift of societal power from the shoulders of both men and women to the shoulders of the men alone. This so-called development actually turned out to be a complete reversal of anything approaching progress from the standpoint of the women of that African society, and also from current standards of progress. But why does this gender bias continue despite at least 40 years of feminist theory within the Western world? The problem appears to derive from the complicated nature of gender as a concept and as a political and social force. Gender can be defined as the socially and culturally defined roles that affect the way people are iv perceived and expected to behave within a specific social structure. Attempts by feminist theorists over the years to question and redefine gender have been met by much political and social criticism and backlash. The political is personal -- as the old cliche goes. Discussions of

gender-bias within our society and attempts to change gender conceptualizations has generated what many call; the War of the Sexes. The process of changing gender roles has unfortunately been focused on the female gender structure while the male gender conceptualization is ignored with little attempt to change it. The result is a feeling by many men that women are attacking them and trying to take away their social and political power: The lady writer on the TV felt free to say that 'men are pretty useless'... When she explained that she was not speaking personally but was referring to men in general, her interrogation ceased. No further explanation was necessary or called for. It was perfectly okay for her to be running down a gender of humanity so vlong as she wasn't taking a dig at her own man nor, by implication, yours (his italics). It seems that women sometimes feel that it is perfectly fine to call all men (2.5 billion human beings) "useless". In situations like the above it seems perfectly reasonable for men to feel feminists are attacking them personally. Unfortunately the tendency to lump all feminists into a group of 'anti-men activists' is a poor assumption and a blatant generalization. However, what often goes unsaid in gender discussions is that men also suffer from gender roles being inflicted on their personalities and political life. A good understanding of the impact gender roles have on our society requires understanding of both the male and the female gender roles. Contributing to the complexity of understanding gender roles in the global political economy is the fact that they are derived from culture, and each culture has its own power structures. Enriche Cardosa's (proponent of 'sophisticated' dependency theory) criticism of dependency theories is that they tend to generalize the conditions and structures within developing countries to the point that their theories are counterproductive and false. According to Cardosa dependency theories must take into account the huge differences between developing countries in order to achieve any vi degree of truth when using a theory that includes them all. By the same token, to apply gender theories to the IPE, an understanding of all of the gender roles within the many individual cultures would be required in order to attain accuracy. A broad theory of gender within the global political economy could not possibly approach accuracy, because as we know gender construction is designed by culture, vastly different cultures must surely have vastly different gender constructions. Women are not a unified force across the world, but one thing that does unite all women and men in the IPE is that they must everyday deal with and live with the gender constructions of their society. If we wish to understand the IPE we must accept this fact and make allowances for the institutions of gender construction just as we must deal with other political institutions within our global system (such as ethnicity and class). How can there be only one feminist gender analysis theory with so many different cultures to deal with? Terry Winant deals with this problem by introducing a distinction between a feminist philosophical stance and a feminist standpoint, arguing that there is one of the former and many of the latter. She defines "standpoints" as locations in the political and cultural world that carry with them specific commitments to projects for political and cultural transformation. Obviously, vii these will vary from feminist to feminist according to her specific location. The important distinction to make here is that Western feminists should not be the primary theorists for developing countries, as they bring their own cultural baggage with their specific

standpoints to the theory. For example a central issue for women in North America has been abortion, while for women in Central America it would seem the issue is by no means central, in fact many women in refugee viii camps who have lost their children will likely want more not less making abortion a non-issue. Thus gender theory is something that a great many people should be involved in, allowing theorists greater influence in their local theory and focusing on the importance of a multiplicity viewpoints. Another problem with using gender as a variable is the complexity of individuality. Some critiques of gender analysis claim that so-called 'Iron-Maidens', like Margaret Thatcher who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a number of years, prove gender construction theory to be false. The problem is that women like Margaret Thatcher do not fit into what is considered to be the gender construction of women. Women are supposed to be more cooperative, emotional, irrational, and empathic than men, yet women who have attained power (like Margaret Thatcher) seem to have all of the masculine traits that gender construction should have disallowed. This is not really a problem with gender analysis per se, but a problem with our conceptualization of gender. Instead of seeing gender construction as male and female it should be seen as masculine and feminine. Not all women are the embodiment of femininity nor are all men the embodiment of masculinity, in fact we are all composites of the two polaric gender constructs. Gender identity is one way of representing ourselves. By labelling myself a "man" or a "woman" I am also conjuring up a range of possibilities presented to me in my culture and language. If I stay within conventional bounds I will create a self on the basis of what is offered me. If I am more adventurous, I will push beyond conventional bounds, thus adding to my culture or language new possibilities of what a man or woman could be. Caring about the significance of ix my life as a whole means creating self and world interpretations that work for me. So when one says women are more cooperative then men, and the result of greater female participation in the IPE would be unprecedented cooperation and nurturing within the political sphere, what is really being suggested is that women generally have a better conceptualization of the other than men. As a means of forming their self-identity women must more often conceive of themselves as the other within our society in order to deal with the roles relegated to them by gender constructs. In the classic conceptualization of 'us and them' the 'self and the other' the masculine approach is often to have a strong sense of the self and to rarely embrace the other. Now this does not to mean that all women are more cooperative than men, what is suggested is that many women have a better idea of what it means to be in the role of the 'other' and they therefore have a certain empathy that enables greater understanding of different viewpoints. The feminine self-strategy is based in connectedness... She must always be connected to an other who informs her, giving her her meaning and her function by xdemanding that she play the role of other. She reflects back to {a} self the image it desires to see. The masculine self-strategy is based on opposition. The self who maintains himself with a xi masculine self-strategy must always oppose himself to those around him.

I have delineated these two self-strategies as extremes approaching the limits set by the two poles. A self that used only the feminine self-strategy would be so pliable, so dependent on others to determine her form for her, that she would take on absolutely any form some other in her vicinity desired of her,... A self that used only the masculine self-strategy would so rigidly adhere to his own fixed conception of himself that he could never change but had to repeat xii continually, with no variation, the same self/other pattern. The use of gender specific pronouns in the above quotations are misleading, out of context, as men and women must use both the feminine and the masculine self-strategies on a daily basis. The continuum of masculine and feminine is not merely that of the two poles, as suggested by Lorraine, for the two extreme positions would only be exhibited in very unstable individuals. This suggests that each person is actually somewhere along the continuum between the masculine and the feminine poles, most men and women being slightly closer to their respective masculine and feminine poles. Cases of people like Margaret Thatcher seeming very 'masculine' can be seen as exceptions that prove the rule rather than exceptions that deny the rule. Female self-identity seems to require a greater degree of flexibility in self-perception and so it seems not unreasonable that a woman can bend into the dominant role of masculinity as a matter of course when it is required of her. It seems more likely that this sort of 'masculinization' will be the most popular among women for many years to come in the political arena,xiiias our society consistently marginalizes any positive view of traditional feminine self-identity. If any change is likely to happen in the near future Lorraine's position implies that perhaps with a wider range of female public figures in the xiv political arena our choices of self-conception will be diversified. Perhaps we will see a shift of our societal norms along the continuum toward the middle-ground between the masculine and the feminine poles, shifting from right of centre (ie. masculine dominant) to something more central (ie. masculine-feminine balanced). (However, the increased 'masculinization' of female public figures at first will likely make the shift a very slow process.) Certainly this seems to be the ultimate goal of gender analysis, for the larger the number of people who are represented in societal norms and paradigms the greater the chance of achieving social, economic, and political cognizance and through our improved understanding and knowledge of the global system -justice?

iFrom J. Ann Tickner's "On the Fringes of the World Economy: A Feminist Perspective" p.195 iiParaphrasing from class lectures on January 24th/1995. iiiTickner. p.200-201 ivDefinition derived from class notes January 26/1995. vNeil Lyndon, No More Sex War (Sinclair-Stevenson, Great Britain, London, 1992) p20 & 23 viClass lectures on Gender January 26/1995

viiTamsin E. Lorraine, Gender, Identity, and the Production of Meaning (Westview Press, San Francisco, 1990) p.21 viiiMiranda Davies ed. Third World - Second Sex Volume 2 (Zed books Ltd., London, 1987) p.64 ixLorraine p.17 xLorraine p.185 xiLorraine p.186 xiiLorraine p187 xiiiLorraine p.203. "Feminine self-strategies in various forms obtain for roughly one half of the population, and yet, according to the dominant discourse, they are still considered "marginal"." xivLorraine p.196. Greater understanding of the two main self-strategies can lead to improved connections and rapport amongst the members of our complex society.