Feminist Theorizing for a Feminist World


			Frontiers of Women and Politics Research Seminar Wednesday 2nd September 1998 John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Feminist Theorizing for a Feminist World Mary Hawkesworth Over the past twenty years, a paradox has developed at the heart of the modern women's movement: on the one hand there is the generality of its categorical appeal to all women, as potential participants in a movement; on the other hand, there is the exclusivism of its current internal practice, with its emphasis on difference and division. (Delmar 1994:7) Feminist theory has been variously conceived as the intellectual inspiration and explication of the women's movement (Strachey 1928; Hawkesworth 1990; Grant 1993); as a mode of philosophical contestation, critique, and deconstruction (Kristeva 1980; Hekman 1990); and as a critical revisioning of the political (Hirschmann and Di Stefano 1996). Taking past, present, and future as our domain, feminist theorists have struggled to make sense of women's commonalities and differences, of the structures of power that constrain women's lives and possibilities, and of the complex processes through which women (and men) are socially produced. In that effort, feminist theorists have drawn upon markedly different theoretical traditions, canonical texts, methodologies, and analytic categories. And whether this diversity is noted with appreciation, apprehension or chagrin, most would agree that contemporary feminist theory cannot be easily defined either in terms of its object of concern (the conceptions of "women" and "gender" are subjects of thorough contestation) or of the nature of its theoretical activity. Given the richness of this field, conceptualizing the "frontiers" of feminist theory is a task far too daunting for any brief effort. In what follows then, I intend to abandon geographical metaphors and speak instead of several puzzles that I believe deserve the continuing attention of feminist theorists. Following Marx (1844: 71), my analysis will "proceed from an actual economic fact." Although celebrated by politicians, political scientists, and political theorists as one of the singular achievements of the late twentieth century, democratization produces gendered redistributions of resources and responsibilities that make women worse off. In Eastern Europe, women's presence in elected offices has plummeted as unemployment has skyrocketed and as access to childcare and reproductive freedom have been severely constricted. In Africa, Asia, and Latin America structural adjustment policies since the 1970s have imposed drastic cuts in social spending, contributing to the growing impoverishment of women and children. According to UNIFEM women constitute nearly 70% of the world's 1.2 - 1.3 billion poor. The 564 million rural women living in poverty in 1990 represented a 47% increase above the number of poor women in 1970. Despite 200 years of feminist political mobilization, women hold less than 10% of the formal political offices in nations across the globe. In more than 100 countries women hold no elected offices in their national assemblies. In a period coincident with the increasing strength of feminism as a global movement, how can we make sense of democratization's gendered dislocations? If democracy is understood as a mode of governance that respects the dignity of human beings, affords rights and immunities to individuals, fosters individual freedom and development, and encourages collective action to achieve political benefits, then why are these gendered effects so palpable? And how can such blatant inequities continue to fall below the threshold of visibility and concern for mainstream political scientists? Feminist theory provides clues to unravel this mystery. Mainstream political science is operationalizing democratization as a mode of liberal democratic elitism that combines rule of law, "free and fair"/competitive elections, and resurgent capitalism (economic privatization, deregulation, and market exchanges). Democratization "experts" are recycling the once-discredited "modernization theory." And political theorists are busily resuscitating de Tocqueville and pluralist conceptions of "civil society" as the key to "democratic" transition. Each of the constitutive elements of democratization have received sustained attention from feminist scholars. During the past thirty years, feminist theorists have advanced cogent accounts of androcentric bias in core concepts of liberal democracy, capitalism, and civil society. The conception of the self-interested maximizer, homo economicus, that plays such a central role in Lockean and Madisonian conceptions of liberal democracy, in Hegelian as well as Tocquevillean celebrations of civil society, as well as in classical and contemporary theories of capitalism has been shown to be gendered in subtle and not-so-subtle ways (Brown 1988; Di Stefano 1996; Hirschmann 1992; Scott 1996; Tronto 1993). The conception of the laissez-faire state presupposes conceptions of autonomy and obligation fundamentally at odds with women's experiences, the needs of citizens, and the beliefs of women political activists about the appropriate role of government (Hirschmann1992; Flammang 1997). To suggest that feminist theory provides clues for comprehending the inequitable character of democratization, is not to suggest that we have solved the mystery or identified solutions for the complex problems confronting women in the new global network economies. A good deal of theorizing is required if we are to understand these ongoing global developments, isolate the dynamics of gender regimes within them and change them. Western feminist theorists do not agree about the factors that contribute to androcentrism in academic disciplines or to persistent gender inequities in cultural practices. Post-colonial feminist theorists have challenged the hubris of Western feminists' construction of "Third World Women" (Mohanty 1991), the applicability to the cultural contexts of the global South of the psychoanalytic assumptions underlying much of the Western feminist critique of core concepts of liberal democracy, and the Western feminist "fixation" on sex, sexuality, the body, sexed embodiedness (Chow 1991; Gilliam 1991; Basu 1995). The growing rift between feminist theorists and feminist empiricists within political science further complicates the possibility of constructive scholarly collaboration to confront democratization's gendered dislocations. Despite these formidable obstacles, feminist inquiry frames a set of research questions for investigation and provides the lens that makes the gendered effects of democratization visible (Hawkesworth 1997). Feminist scholarship illuminates the complex interrelations between social structures, cultural practices, symbol systems, and subjective identities. Feminist scholarship also provides the conceptual vocabulary to sustain investigations that encompass the intricate relations constitutive of sex (culturally mediated experiences of the sexed body), sexuality (sexual behavior and erotic practices), sexual identity (a psychological sense of oneself as heterosexual/homosexual/ gay/lesbian/queer/bisexual/asexual), gender identity (a psychological sense of oneself as a man or as a woman), gender role (prescriptive, culturally specific expectations about what is appropriate for a man and for a woman), gender role identity (the individual's lived relation, whether harmonious or conflictual, to the cultural expectations concerning gender), gender power (a mode of privilege that accrues to men in sexist societies), gendered practices (routinized interactions that subtly or blatantly advantage men and disadvantage women), gendered institutions (established practices in which fixed organizational routines rely upon and reinforce gender power and contribute to regendering-the inculcation of different attitudes, habits, and skills in men and women), and gender regimes within specific cultural contexts (the prevailing relationship between gendered individuals, practices and institutions that amount to a macro-politics of gender [Connell 1987:139]). Using the analytical tools developed over the past thirty years, feminist scholars (theorists and empiricists) must investigate the regendering-the markedly sex specific skilling and deskilling-concomitant with globalization and democratization. In undertaking this monumental task, we must consider the implications of Foucault's (1977) warning that scholarly discourses are productive. Even as we analyze the complicity of political science in remaking a world of resurgent capitalism and virtually unconstrained corporate elites, we must also consider whether feminist discourses are implicated in the regendering process. Has the ritual celebration of differences contributed to the fragmentation of feminist efforts globally? Has the Western feminist critique of rights impaired the growth of an international consensus surrounding the strategic proclamation of women's rights as human rights (or affected the U.S. Senate's refusal to ratify the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW])? Has the Western feminist focus on sex, sexuality, and reproduction reinforced narrow constructions of women's spheres, "cut off from the general field of human endeavor?" (Delmar, 1994:19). Have the proliferation of conceptions of gender and equivocation about the meaning of gender within feminist analyses allowed systematic rediscription to masquerade as explanation of oppressive practices? If feminist scholarship is to fulfill its transformative aims, we must also theorize "equality work." We must identify the kinds of activities that can be undertaken by those quite convinced of human inequality (racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic people, i.e., people like us) and yet produce loyalists to an ideal of equality: feminist, anti-racist citizens who wish to translate their beliefs into practice, engaging in politics to redress persistent injustices. It could be argued that the conviction most widely shared by feminist theorists is the belief that equality is the product of a particular kind of activity, a mode of human inter/action through which individuals come to recognize and appreciate their equality and their individuality as they work together to eliminate structural inequalities. As feminists, many of us have had the good fortune to participate in political engagements that have changed our values, our self-understandings, and our identities over time. Our challenge is to theorize such transformative praxis-another daunting task in a postmodern world that has banished naive hopes for unilinear progress, fixed identities and transparent selves. For if equality work is understood within the framework of performativity (Butler 1990), as a "doing" or a performance that constitutes the identity it purports to be, then the instability of identity and the self's active resistance against the imposition of any fixed subjectivity combine to make equality work precarious indeed. To theorize equality work is to struggle to identify and to comprehend the dynamics of transformative endeavors that are at once subversive of the status quo yet resistant to the micro-techniques of power that Foucault labeled normalizing practices. To achieve such sophisticated theory would require feminist theory to do what our predecessors in the Western tradition have failed to do. So I end with a task as daunting as that with which I began, adding only a cogent reminder that a feminist world depends on our meeting this challenge. Mary Hawkesworth University of Louisville REFERENCES Basu, Amrita. 1995. The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Brown, Wendy. 1988. Manhood and Politics. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Chow, Rey. 1991. "Violence in the Other Country: China as Crisis, Spectacle, and Woman." In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed., Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, 81-100. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Connell, Robert. 1987. Gender and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Delmar, Rosalind. 1994. "What Is Feminism?" In Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed., Anne C. Hermann and Abigail Stewart, 5-25. 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