Transcript Document 7343932

Gender
Politics
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Women’s rights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI9v38ywyvw
Gloria Steinem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmFxFmrcngk
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Women do two-thirds of the world’s work
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Women in developing countries on average carry 20 litres
of water per day over 6 km
Women in many cases are the primary care givers,
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but receive only 10% of the world’s income
and own less than 1% of land.
and balancing the challenges of work and family is complex.
Globally there is still a gender pay gap,
a lack of women parliamentarians,
and women's health overall around the world is worse than
that of men..
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Gender politics is an approach to the study of politics which
focuses on:
 the social construction of gender - masculinity and
femininity
 the role of gender in political and social life
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Biological differences between human beings, such as sex
and race, have traditionally been used as grounds for social
and political inequality, discrimination, subjugation, and
oppression
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The division of social roles between men and women in the
family is historically the earliest form of division of labour
It is also the earliest class division, which arises hand-inhand with the establishment of the institution of private
property
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Patriarchy (literally, “rule by the father”, now understood as
the dominant role of men in society) is the oldest form of
social inequality
Perception of patriarchy as a “natural order”. How natural?
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US President Nixon (1969-74) once said, in a conversation
with aides: "I’m not for women in any job. I don’t want any
of them around. Thank God we don’t have any in the
cabinet ... I don’t think a woman should be in any
government job whatever. I mean, I really don’t. The
reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And
emotional. Men are erratic and emotional, too, but the point
is a woman is more likely to be.”
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Until recent times, women’s issues, interests and concerns
had been excluded from the political arena, for two basic
reasons:
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The division between private and public spheres
The patriarchal assumptions of the language and practice of
politics
Women’s struggle for equality of rights has been one of the
key components of the global struggle for democracy
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), founder of modern feminism
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From Mary Wollstonecraft’s book A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792):
“If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act
according to the will of another fallible being, and submit,
right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?”
“The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings,
may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested
without danger.”
“I do not wish (women) to have power over men, but over
themselves.”
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Historian Henry Noel Brailsford, in Shelley, Godwin, and
Their Circle (1913), considered the Rights of Woman
"perhaps the most original book of its century."
"What was absolutely new in the world's history was that for
the first time a woman dared to sit down to write a book
which was not an echo of men's thinking, nor an attempt to
do rather well what some man had done a little better, but a
first exploration of the problems of society and morals from
a standpoint which recognized humanity without ignoring
sex."
Elizabeth Stanton (1815-1902), a founder of the women’s suffrage movement in the US
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Elizabeth Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, 1848:
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"The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in
direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over
her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.“
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The facts about gender discrimination, mid-19th century
Europe:
Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law
Women were not allowed to vote
Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in
their formation
Married women had no property rights
Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their
wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them
with impunity
Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no
rights to women
Women had to pay property taxes although they had no
representation in the levying of these taxes
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Most occupations were closed to women and when women
did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned
Women were not allowed to enter professions such as
medicine or law
Women had no means to gain an education since no
college or university would accept women students
With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to
participate in the affairs of the church
Women were robbed of their self-confidence and selfrespect, and were made totally dependent on men
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3 waves of the women’s liberation movement
1. 19th – early 20th century
 Main goal – political equality (right to vote)
2. 1960s – 1980s
 Main goal – social and cultural equality
3. 1990s –
 Continuing struggle for social equality
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In the most basic sense, political (electoral) democracies
began to appear in the world only with the extension of
political rights to women – in the early 20th century
Labour movements and socialist parties played a key role in
the struggle for women’s rights
“Every Socialist recognizes the dependence of the workman
on the capitalist, and cannot understand that others, and
especially the capitalists themselves, should fail to
recognize it also; but the same Socialist often does not
recognize the dependence of women on men because the
question touches his own dear self more or less nearly.”
August Bebel, Leader of German Social Democratic Party,
in: Woman and Socialism, 1883
Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), a German socialist feminist
Women’s suffrage march, New York, May 1913
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Suffrage (right to vote) in the USA
 1776: landed (owning real estate) white men over 21
 1920: women
Women allowed to vote:
 UK – 1928
 Canada – mid-1920s (in all provinces)
In 20th century revolutions:
Granting women the right to vote is a standard feature,
reflecting economic needs and women’s demands
Petrograd, Russia, February 1917. Women in line for groceries
spark the Russian Revolution
Russia, March 1917. Women’s demonstration: “Voting rights are not
universal if women don’t have them”
Larisa Reisner, Russian revolutionary and feminist leader (1895-1926)
Civil marriage registration, Russia, 1920s
Soviet poster,
1920s: “Down
with kitchen
slavery!”
Women mastering male professions,
Russia, 1920s
World War II: Soviet women
medics
Soviet women in the war: pilots
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The fundamental economic, social, and cultural structures
of patriarchy remain strong
Inertia and resistance
Continuing struggles for equality and justice
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Reproductive rights
Domestic violence
Maternity leave
Equal pay
Sexual harassment
Sexual violence
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The plight of girls in the Global South:
http://childreninneed.org/magazine/gender.html
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When a boy is born in most developing countries, friends
and relatives exclaim congratulations. A son means
insurance. He will inherit his father's property and get a job
to help support the family.
When a girl is born, the reaction is very different. Some
women weep when they find out their baby is a girl
because, to them, a daughter is just another expense. Her
place is in the home, not in the world of men. In some parts
of India, it's traditional to greet a family with a newborn girl
by saying, "The servant of your household has been born."
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In developing countries, the birth of a girl causes great
upheaval for poor families. When there is barely enough
food to survive, any child puts a strain on a family's
resources.
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But the monetary drain of a daughter feels even more
severe, especially in regions where dowry is practised.
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A new bride is at the mercy of her in-laws should they
decide her dowry is too small. UNICEF estimates that
around 5,000 Indian women are killed in dowry-related
incidents each year.
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The developing world is full of poverty-stricken families who
see their daughters as an economic predicament. That
attitude has resulted in the widespread neglect of baby girls
in Africa, Asia, and South America.
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In many communities, it's a regular practice to breastfeed
girls for a shorter time than boys so that women can try to
get pregnant again with a boy as soon as possible. As a
result, girls miss out on life-giving nutrition during a crucial
window of their development, which stunts their growth and
weakens their resistance to disease.
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Sex-selective abortions are even more common than
infanticides in India. They are growing ever more frequent
as technology makes it simple and cheap to determine a
fetus' gender. In Jaipur, a Western Indian city of 2 million
people, 3,500 sex-determined abortions are carried out
every year. The gender ratio across India has dropped to
an unnatural low of 927 females to 1,000 males due to
infanticide and sex-based abortions.
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China has its own long legacy of female infanticide. In the
last two decades, the government's infamous one-child
policy has weakened the country's track record even more.
By restricting household size to limit the population, the
policy gives parents just one chance to produce a coveted
son before being forced to pay heavy fines for additional
children.
In 1997, the World Health Organization declared, "…more
than 50 million women were estimated to be 'missing' in
China because of the institutionalized killing and neglect of
girls due to Beijing's population control program."
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Statistics show that the neglect continues as they grow up.
Young girls receive less food, healthcare and fewer
vaccinations overall than boys.
Not much changes as they become women. Tradition calls
for women to eat last, often reduced to picking over the
leftovers from the men and boys.
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Women in every society are vulnerable to abuse. But the
threat is more severe for girls and women who live in
societies where women's rights mean practically nothing.
Mothers who lack their own rights have little protection to
offer their daughters, much less themselves, from male
relatives and other authority figures. The frequency of rape
and violent attacks against women in the developing world
is alarming.
Forty-five percent of Ethiopian women say that they have
been assaulted in their lifetimes. In 1998, 48 percent of
Palestinian women admitted to being abused by an
intimate partner within the past year.
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In some cultures, the physical and psychological trauma of
rape is compounded by an additional stigma.
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In cultures that maintain strict sexual codes for women, if a
woman steps out of bounds —by choosing her own
husband, flirting in public, or seeking divorce from an
abusive partner—she has brought dishonor to her family
and must be disciplined. Often, discipline means
execution. Families commit "honor killings" to salvage their
reputation tainted by disobedient women.
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For the young girls who escape these pitfalls and grow up
relatively safely, daily life is still incredibly hard.
School might be an option for a few years, but most girls
are pulled out at age 9 or 10 when they're useful enough
to work all day at home.
Nine million more girls than boys miss out on school every
year, according to UNICEF. While their brothers continue
to go to classes or pursue their hobbies and play, they join
the women to do the bulk of the housework.
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Housework in developing countries consists of continuous,
difficult physical labor.
A girl is likely to work from before daybreak until the light
drains away. She walks barefoot long distances several
times a day carrying heavy buckets of water, most likely
polluted, just to keep her family alive. She cleans, grinds
corn, gathers fuel, tends to the fields, bathes her younger
siblings, and prepares meals until she sits down to her
own after all the men in the family have eaten.
Most families can't afford modern appliances, so her tasks
must be done by hand—crushing corn into meal with
heavy rocks, scrubbing laundry against rough stones,
kneading bread and cooking gruel over a blistering open
fire.
There is no time left in the day to learn to read and write or
to play with friends. She collapses exhausted each night,
ready to wake up the next morning to start another long
workday.
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Malala Yusufzai:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgjN0h-N7WM
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Feminist theory
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Even though the word ‘feminism’ implies a single monolithic
approach, in fact feminists argue and disagree with one
another quite strongly about the main sources of oppression
and what to do about them
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Liberal feminists: concerned with representation (and
primarily, the under-representation) of women within the
public spheres of modern life
 Why are women under-represented? How do we make
that representation more equal?
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Radical feminists: locate relations of inequality in patriarchy
 Women and men are essentially different from one
another
 They would agree with liberals that women need to be
more represented in the public sphere, but not on
equality rights grounds, but rather on the ground that
women bring a different voice to politics
 They would also expand the ‘sites’ of politics: not simply
the public sphere, but also the private sphere, the
bedroom, the family, the body
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Postmodern feminists agree that politics exist everywhere,
but resist the radical feminist impulse to define women and
men
 More interested in deconstructing the assumed
naturalness of various political categories, including the
category ‘woman’
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Critical feminists agree with postmodernists that the
prevailing discourses about femininity and masculinity are
essential to understand how both women and men are
oppressed,
 but argue for greater attention to the material conditions
of people’s lives – i.e. their real lived condition, which will
be affected by class, race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion,
and so on
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Islamic feminism
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aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender,
in public and private life.
advocates women’s rights, gender equality, and social justice
grounded in an Islamic framework.
Rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also
utilized secular and Western feminist discourses and
recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an
integrated global feminist movement.
Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply
rooted teachings of equality in the Quran and encourage a
questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic
teaching through the Quran, hadith (sayings of Prophet
Muhammad), and sharia (Islamic law) towards the creation
of a more equal and just society.
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Deepa Kumar:
“Colonial feminism is based on the appropriation of women’s
rights in the service of empire and has been widely utilised in
justifying aggression in the Middle East… A ubiquitous, takenfor-granted ideological framework that has been developed
over two centuries in the West. This framework, referred to by
scholars as colonial feminism, is based on the appropriation
of women’s rights in the service of empire. Birthed in the
nineteenth century in the context of European colonialism, it
rests on the construction of a barbaric, misogynistic “Muslim
world” that must be civilized by a liberal, enlightened West; a
rhetoric also known as gendered Orientalism.” –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrWYb7u3jKo
Deepa Kumar’s lecture:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/deepa-kumar/imperialistfeminism-and-liberalism
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Women’s rights and Islamophobia
Prof. Reza Aslan, U. of California, Riverside:
http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/09/29/on-cnn-reza-aslanexplains-how-the-media-is-fai/200942