9. recap - power struggles for equality

civil society & democracy

• = the space where people ‘do’ democratic politics

• not just elections, but also lobbying and activities in civil society

• play a key democratic role

  • advocating for rights & wishes (input)

  • checks and balances (accountability

civil society: what it does

• Provides space for contestation over meaning & dissent

• Shapes public policy (societal consensus)

• Supports interest aggregation (articulation, collection and representation of interests)

  • Bringing together different ideas, interests and needs from people into meaningful wholes.

• Constrain state power (accountability)

• Recruit and train tomorrow’s leaders

• Promote tolerance & compromise

• Maintains pluralism & coherence: cross-cutt cleavages

Women’s movements

• Made up of various kinds of groups and organisations but what binds them together is challenging the status quo (common political orientation)

• Challengers: change & transformation of laws and policies for establishing gender equality - ‘outside’, but also allies in the state cf ‘State Feminism’

• They differ in how they challenge the system, but there’s a shared goal

Women’s movements: three phases

Equal treatment 1970s → establish gender neutrality

• individual women treated the same as individual men – tied to liberal feminism with a focus of equal treatment of invidual women v a v individual men –

key argument: women are the same as men so there should be no discrimination

• anti-discrimination focus & focus on inclusion of women into existing rights and liberties

Positive action 1980s → acknowledgement of women being different from men

• no inclusion but reversal: what was een as negative about women (them being different) is foregrounded as an argument for women

e.g., the claim that women were too emotional is now embraced instead of denied (as in first phase) and seen as an argument to include women in politics.

Gender mainstreaming 1990s

• debate shifted from the individual (binary women vs men) to the institutional – institutions and gender roles are constructed and everything can be deconstructed. Male, female, masculinities femininities and the related politics are constructed

Gender mainstreaming

Every policy has a gender dimension, hence they all should be discussed from that angle to ensure there’s no inequality being established.

Gender mainstreaming: typology

integrationist GM (cf. inclusion 1970s)

• integration of gender equality in existing policy paradigms

• focus on experts (cf. WPA) & evidence-based knowledge

• aim = neutral policy making

• strength = effective integration

• weakness = rhetorical entrapment

  • ticking the box without actual change

  • technocratic tools → exclusion of non-experts

  • utility > justice

  • requires WM to detach from grassroots, professionalize and assimilate with the state and policy

Agenda-setting GM (cf. reversal 1980s)

• rethinking of existing policy paradigms from womens’ perspective

• participation and empowerment of disadvantaged groups

• aim = recognising marginalised voices

• consultation with CSO’s

• strength = recognition of groups’ perspectives and non-experts

• weakness = reification

  • freezing group identities

  • obscuring intra-group differences and inter-group commonalities

Transformative GM (cf. displacement 1990s)

• denaturalising institutionally accepted conceptions of equality by politicising them.

• integration of intersectional perspectives

• strength = sensitivity to diversity and intersectionality

• weakness = difficult to implement

Success of WM

• adherents

• material success (laws, quota, …)

Conditions for WM succes

1. Framing

• diagnosis → problem

• prognosis → solution

• motivation → call to action - how to get from problem to solution

framing = mobilising shared interests and values

• marginal vs master frame

• strategic framing

  • key to success

  • if WM can frame an issue in a way that corresponds with dominant policy issues (e.g., economy), they will be successful

  • BUT disconnects from the advocacy and policy work done by WM

2. Resource mobilisation

• material

• elite support

• legitimacy

• cultural knowledge

• language skills

→ each of these have structural inequality in access and mobilisation

3. Strategies and tactics

conventional (lobbying, formal organisations, …)

unconventional (petitioning, civil disobedience, …)

gendered tactics (naked protest)

4. Political opportunity structure

open / closed windows of opportunity

• exogenous shocks (e.g., war)

• instability of elite arrangements (e.g., landslide victory or loss)

• presence or absence of powerful allies (e.g., through quota)

• state capacity and propensity for repression

State feminism

= state being and ally o women’s movements

• Women’s policy agencies (WPA)

• Gender equality machineries (GEM)

→ units within governments or parliaments

→ statutory commissions

→ advisory and consultative bodies

• emergence → UN world conference Mexico City 1975

• three waves

  • pre 1970s → focus on women and employment

  • mid 1980s → focus on gender & gender mainstreaming

  • late 1990s → shift to diversity

State response to women’s movements

State alliance with women’s movements

State response & alliance → research findings

• dual response in 50%

• insider = highest

Do you need an insider WPA to have dual response?

• happens in 46% → helps, but not necessary nor sufficient!

• WM can be successful bc of…

  • openness of the policy context

  • WM priorities

  • left-wing parties in power have NO IMPACT!

  • insider WPA is vital when other favourable contexts are absent

Should WM invest in state inclusion?

• yes, especially in anti-gender times

• but, not a magic bullet

• dual strategy → lobbying both inside and outside the state

WM - intersectional problem

• Internal struggles with intersectionality of social movement organizations is an important part in this debate

• Many social movement organizations constantly have to evolve in response to external (e.g., windows of opportunities) and internal context (contestations, new requests, new understandings of equality, …)

• many SMO are unmarked in terms of identity

  • e.g., women’s movement → marked for ‘women’ but nothing else

  • prototypical → prototype is served, but claim to represent all women in their diversity

Lépinard: feminist trouble

Femonationalism

• feminist and gender equality issues are instumentalized for xenophobic and nationalist projects

• “we” are gender equal and “they” represent cultural differences, opposed to gender equality

Feminist whiteness

• white women’s interests are represented as universal

• racialization and othering of non-archetypical women is done through three activities:

  • Ambivalence: questioning of them being adequately feminist – putting the othered feminist on the defend, having to prove they are real, good, feminists

  • Benevolence: Constructing them as objects of care and help → they have to be saved and helped because they are perceived as feminists that still have to see the light

  • Anger → switch from benevolence – nostalgia to earlier, more simple feminism – melancholy

Lépinard argues for a feminist ethic of responsibility. Here, feminism is…

• A ‘political project’: values like autonomy, freedom and equality can mean many things (although not anything) – this disagreement turns it into a political project (diversity of perspectives)

• A moral project: promise to create a community, relations of equality with other feminists, shared goals & acting together (but political because of constant debates)

Here, intersectionality is an important tool to rethink the feminist project as a democratic, political one.

Collins: black feminism, intersectionality and democratic possibilities

The ‘problem’ is that ‘othered’ women (muslim, black, …) object to their being opressed and dominatd within WM. This creates a specific issue of loyalty for these othered women – if black women say they are part of the black community, they accept sexism within the community – if they do so with women’s movements, they are accused of allying with people that are racists → a loyalty problem

Collins argues for flexible solidarity → flexibility is completely acceptable (accusations of racisms / sexism should be let go) – we should accept that loyalty is flexible and can be reconfigured to having specific solidarities for specific issues

= acceptance of intersectional difference within the movement

This acceptance creates intersectional solidarity & democratic possibilities:

• Constructing political solidarity within black community across intersectional differences

• Solidarity among people of colour (political identity): bottom-up process, constructed around similarities – internal cross-intersectional solidarity (e.g., discussing & critiquing sexism within the black community or racism within the women’s movement BUT within a framework of solidarity – common political goals)

• With white allies (intersectional group as well – redefining white, rejecting white supremacy: white feminists important)

intersectional group-specific organisations

The aformentioned critiques have as also led to many intersectional groups leaving unmarked groups and create their own organisations.

Arguments pro:

• Better reflect specific needs and experiences

• Safe space for identifying experiences, and re-defining problems and solutions

  • ‘safe’ = absence of three mechanisms described by Lépinard

• ‘Self help’

• = similar reasons to why womens movements where once created

Arguments contra:

• Accusations of segregation, problematic distancing; seen as threatening, diluting ‘common stride’

• Resistance: set apart as ‘identity politics/movements’

• Loss of influence