S. Paulson, 18 April 2013
Why sex counts?
Virility, potency and changing political economies in Latin America
Abstract
Paulson looks at changing landscapes of employment and governance in Latin American, and
asks how these interrelate with changes in conditions that support men to feel and look virile and
potent in their personal and public lives. Drawing attention to struggles by all kinds of actors to
develop meanings and practices of masculinity adequate for their XXI century realities, Paulson
raises questions about research, policies and programs that focus gender work only on women
and women’s issues.
Latin American data show rapidly growing participation of women in education and the work
force, with much slower changes in political and reproductive realms. They also reveal small net
decreases in men’s work force participation, and significant relative decreases in men’s
educational attainment in relation to women. Alarming increases in the disproportionate number
of men who suffer disability and early death draw attention to violent regimes of masculinity in
which men in some countries are up to ten times as likely as women to be victims of homicide
and military violence, as well as the most intimate form of violence, suicide. Men also face
brutal and unsafe working conditions in mines, construction, forestry, commercial fishing, and
agroindustry.
Case of forestry engineer in Iquitos.
“I’m between the sword and the wall: both threaten my manliness.”
Neighbors: “sissy, maricon”
Colleagues: “pussy whipped”
Mother in law: “why couldn’t you marry a real man who would bring home the bacon rather than
wear the apron?”
This story demonstrates connections between two different meanings of “sex”:
1. biological dimorphism of the species
2. erotic practice and pleasure
And shows why they both count.
Conceptualizing gender in relation to sex and to sexuality
A socio-cultural system that provides structure, meaning and power to human roles,
relations and practices, and that influences the development, distribution and use of
resources and institutions, all with symbolic reference to sex and sexuality.
Dimensions of the system:
1
institutional
material
semiotic
Gender systems link meaning and power to a wide range of practices and characteristics. The
case of our forestry engineer shows that different forms of labor, spaces, earnings, clothing,
sexual acts, are linked not only to social roles identified symbolically with “male” or “female”
bodies, but also to ideas of sexual potency.
What does masculinity and virility have to do with development?
“With a few notable exceptions, men are rarely explicitly mentioned in gender policy documents.
Where men do appear, they are generally seen as obstacles to women’s development: men must
surrender their positions of dominance for women to become empowered. The superiority of
women as hard working, reliable, trustworthy, socially responsible, caring and co-operative is
often asserted; whilst men on the other hand are frequently portrayed as lazy, violent,
promiscuous and irresponsible drunkards.”
Cleaver, Frances. 2000. "Do men Matter? New Horizons in Gender and Development".
Development Research Insights 35: 1-2.
Masculinidades en movimientoTransformación territorial y sistemas de género
Large study that explores how changing dynamics of men’s sex and sexuality connect with
gender, understood as a historical and geographical phenomenon.
Historical frame of study is 1985-2010; multi-scale analysis on regional, national, territorial
levels
This period is marked by increased foreign direct investment and integration into global markets;
diverse forms of environmental degradation and conflict; the massive incorporation of women
into paid work; the continued dominance of men in political representation and decision;
extremely high rates of accidents, homicides, incarceration and alcoholism among men; the
demographic masculinization of many rural areas and the feminization of urban areas; a
distribution of economic resources that favors men; and access to secondary and university
education that favors women by a greater margin each year.
Obviously we can’t cover all aspects here, so I’ll sketch the framework and glimpse some
components, then you can choose which parts to explore more deeply.
Most of the regional statistics I am showing you come from ECLA
UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) -the Spanish acronym is CEPAL
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Regional conditions for women Latin America and the Caribbean
Trends of change between 1985 and 2010
Increase in formal employment (^70 million women)
Increase in educational attainment, absolute and relative to boys and men
Continued inferior pay and work conditions relative to men
Lowered maternal mortality and fertility rates
Longer lives for women
Growing gap in women’s life expectancy over men’s
Mixed trends in political representation
Women and girls continue to perform majority of “reproductive” labor
Significant increase in single-mother households, modest increase in divorces
Inferior access to natural and financial capital relative to men
Feminization of urban population
I will mention data behind two of these trends (politics and reproductive labor): take note of
others you wish to explore, and we will revisit them later.
Increase in formal employment (^70 million women since 1980)
Latin America experienced far greater growth in women’s labor force participation other world
regions,
Major economic shifts worked in favor of employing women, whose declining fertility and
willingness to accept low wages allowed them to “take advantage” of new opportunities
Mixed trends in political representation
Regional: ^representatives, ^presidents overall
The high profile of several women presidents has motivated discursive claims of greater gender
equity in Latin American politics
Chart: Ranaboldo y Solana (2008) con datos de Montaño (2007)
National: A dozen countries have gender quotas for council members (concejales), these have
made clear difference.
Ranaboldo y Solana’s work on women’s participation in politics in 25 LAC countries shows
significant increases in women’s representation on the consejal level, correlating with legislation
requiring gender quotas.
Local: Ranaboldo y Solana document the shocking intransigence of monopoly of men in
elecciones uninominales, such as those of mayors charted below, still over 93% men.
Trouble sustaining advances for women made in recent decades.
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Sociopolitical reaction/resistance against women’s changing roles.
Cutting ministries, changing legislation.
Traditional women’s and feminist movements are losing traction.
Concerns echoed in other world regions: see recent issue of Development on gender and
economic justice.
CASE: Yucatan, Mexico:
Mexican Federal legislation for sustainable rural development includes objectives of equity and
gender.
In a cluster of municipalities in Yucatan, implementation resulted in new political participation,
capitals and opportunities for men only. A small group of more powerful men motivated certain
gender discourses to exclude women from committee, and to not fund projects proposed by
women or providing jobs for women. They obtained gender-based loyalty of less powerful men
by supporting projects that offer them jobs, motivating masculinists discourses that make it seem
like all “guys” are on the same team.
We will return to this case later on.
Women and girls continue to perform majority of “reproductive” labor
Variety of time use studies demonstrate lack of expected change in balance of reproductive
burden
Trabajo del hogar chart:
“Time use data from Central and South America found that women spend on average triple the
number of hours on unpaid domestic and caring work as men” (ECLAC/ CEPAL>???, 2007).
All of our territory studies indicate that women are doing the vast majority of domestic and
reproductive labor. In 1980s, 90s, many countries reduced support for education, health, housing,
garbage collection, countless other aspects that supported activities identified as “reproductive.”
This situation is expressed in widespread tensions over distribution of labor burden, and
constrains potential of women to be politically & economically active.
Significant increase in single-mother households, modest increase in divorces
How does women’s overload of paid and unpaid labor relate with raising rates of divorce and
female-headed households?
Region-wide approximately 30% of households female-headed. We know almost nothing about
single father households.
4
In several Latin American contexts, access to paid work has been associated with women’s
increasing willingness to separate from male partners (Kabeer (2007). Although this is
sometimes taken as a measure of “empowerment,” the trend has contradictory implications for
women, and serious ones for men.
Silvia Chant (2008, 2009) argues that access to wages interact with policy climate to produce
trends in Costa Rica “where female headship seems to have become a more viable, and
sometimes, preferred, option among women on account of its role in enhancing well-being. This
is largely on account of social and legal changes that have contributed to making women less
inclined to tolerate gender inequalities at the domestic level.” Chant demonstrates ample
evidence of women whose situation improves when they are able to leave relationships with
men.
The question, of course, is what happens to those men who are left. We also need to ask what
happens to communities and territories when certain types of masculine behavior (refusal to do
domestic labor, drinking, violence) become some of the few ways available for some men to
experience or express masculinity.
So, although women’s decision to leave men partners is used as an indicator of “women’s
empowerment,” this study also explores its connecting with difficulties of men partners in
adapting to changing realities. Interpret this way, the widely publicized “breakdown of the
family” is not only a result of “women going to work” but also a sign of gendered constraints on
men’s resources and abilities to build family relationships fruitful for current (evolving) realities.
An overall decrease in “male-headed households” (which are actually biparental households) and
increases in “female-headed households” is visible in statistics of last 20-30 years.
Increasing separation of men and women into separate socio-economic units poses serious
challenges for women headed households in contexts where access to and control of capitals
essential for survival/thriving is distributed in highly unequal ways. Regional data, and detailed
territorial studies such as Nicaragua, show severe gender imbalances in the distribution of land,
loans, jobs with benefits.
Some interviewed people justify this situation with the argument that, as a social and economic
unit, each household depends on capitals y activos brought in the man and the woman. “Women
don’t need title to land because they will farm/herd on their husband’s land.” However, with
region-wide rates of 30% of households female-headed, this perspective emerges as a serious
barrier to positive development.
IN SUM
The remarkable increase in women’s labor participation has been good for businesses and for
economies. Proponents claimed that it would also be good for society, democracy, povertyalleviation, and even for women themselves.
5
Indeed, education achievements for girls have been rising across Latin America.
However, we have not seen parallel increases in women’s political representation, fairer wages
and benefits, more equitable distribution resources, or reduction of womens’ burden of unpaid
labor in the home and community.
Regional conditions for men Latin America and the Caribbean
Trends of change between 1985 and 2010
Slight decrease in workforce participation
Shift in type of employment away from primary sector
Shift from permanent full time work to temporary, part-time & informal work
Decrease of educational attainment relative to women
Growing gap between men’s shorter life expectancy women’s longer lives
Disproportionate homicide against men relative to women
More accidents and disabilities, including occupational, for men relative to women
Slight decrease in men’s greater political representation relative to women
Changing masculine hierarchies and hegemonies
Active social and legal discrimination against men fulfilling reproductive roles
Disproportionate control of natural and financial capital relative to women
Masculinization of rural population
Slight decrease in workforce participation
Shift in type of employment away from primary sector
Shift from permanent full time work to temporary, part-time & informal work
Relative and absolute reduction of opportunities for the kind of employment necessary for men
to earn respect in predominant value systems.
ILO says at points in the period up to 50% of work was informal.
Men who are forced to do work in conditions associated with femininity and/or in subordinate
relations with other men lose purchase on masculinity
Angst about unemployment and economic problems contributes to family conflict and rising
suicide rates for men.
Decrease of educational attainment relative to women
Men and boys are lagging behind in development of human capital via education
(chart)
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In some rural areas this is absolute. Millennium goals.
Growing gap between men’s shorter life expectancy and women’s longer lives
Life expectancy charts
In past 30 years, the gap in life expectancy favoring women in Latin American region has grown
from 51.8 years to 6.4 years
In 1970-75 51.8 years difference
In 2000-2005 Latin American average 6.4 years difference
Vivian Milosavljevic (2007, 80)
Para el período 2000-2005 se estima que en América Latina la esperanza de vida femenina
es de 75,2 años en promedio, mientras que la masculina sería inferior, de solo 68,8 años;
por tanto, la sobrevida de las mujeres alcanza a 6,4 años más. Hace 30 años, la esperanza
de vida para ambos sexos apenas superaba los 50 años, con un promedio de 51,8 años, y
las mujeres vivían, también en promedio, 3,4 años más que los varones.
Disproportionate homicide against men relative to women
Disproportionate accidents and disabilities, including occupational, for men, relative to
women
Men face occupational hazards in brutal and unsafe working conditions: get maimed or killed
in mines, construction, forestry, commercial fishing, agrochemicals.
We talk about the economic injustice of denying women jobs with the sexist justification that
they are “too dangerous for women.”
I also see gender injustice in the way capital promotes and takes advantage of ideology that men
are NATURALLY tough and brave, that bearing more pain and taking greater risks shows
greater virility.
Violent regimes of masculinity result in men suffering assaults, homicide (11 to 1), military
violence, while most intimate form of violence, suicides, show similar disproportion
Slight decrease in disproportionate political representation relative to women
Changing masculine hierarchies and hegemonies
Hierarchization of certain masculinities over others is taking new forms as growing classes of
businessmen and professionals establish powerful ways of being manly, often portraying local
farmers, fishers and workers as less civilized, brutish, inferior.
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Gini coefficient national and territorial level showed growing inequality in 80s and 90s, starting
to reverse. Gender disaggregated analysis shows larger and more quickly growing gaps between
earnings of groups of men.
Chiloe. Stereotypes.
Managers and workers interviewed in Chiloé, Chile, for example, workers characterized as
strong, clumsy and crude, prone to alcoholism and tardiness and able to take risk positions and
operating machinery (Macé, Bornschlegl y Paulson 2010, 21).
concept of “hegemonic masculinity,” developed by Robert Campbell (Campbell et al 2006) and
others to argue that both men and women are oppressed and constrained by patriarchy in social
systems in which men, as a group, experience certain advantages and powers over women, while
certain groups of men and forms of masculinities exercise dominance and advantages over
others.
The term “hegemonic masculinity” is used to identify models that dominate in given contexts,
in order to investigate the relationship between these dominant models (and the people who
embody them) and other forms of masculinity that may be subordinate, complicit, contestatory,
or marginalized.
Active social and legal discrimination against men fulfilling reproductive roles
Domestic labor Charts
I’m especially interested in young people: 15-19 year olds, 20-24 yr olds., children of the
generation in which 70 million extra women went to work. Charts by CEPAL suggest that these
tensions are not abating.
These charts show the widely publicized situation of women, who, in their cohort, are doing
virtually all quehaceres domésticas, studying more than young men, and also economically
active, although to a lesser degree than their male counterparts.
What few people have noticed is the extreme narrowing of young men’s lives: as teenagers many
are already economically active, they spend less than girls in education, and almost none are
gaining knowledge and experience in quehaceres domésticas.
How to address problems arising around and for men who have been socialized into
narrow alleys, some of which seem to finish in dead ends?
Social, political and legal pressure:
Remember the peer pressure exerted on our poor FORESTER?
It’s not just neighbors, it’s mass communication and advertisement, as well as legislation and
policy, communicating in myriad ways that “reproductive” work is feminine, virility-killer.
8
Chilean Labor Law Nº 18.620, 1987
“Every business that employs more than 20 women of any age or marital status should have an
independent day-care center attached to the workplace.”
by categorically denying childcare benefits to men employees, this policy sends a powerful
message that publicly legitimates women-only responsibility for childcare and reinforces the
stereotype that looking after young children is not a manly thing to do.
Many of you won’t feel that men are being hurt by exclusion from domestic and reproductive
realm; however I am observing that it is not fundamentally a gender advantage to come of age in
a context that makes you incapable or unwilling to do work fundamental to sustaining homes and
communities.
Disproportionate control of natural and financial capital relative to women
Masculinization of rural population
Regional conditions for women
Latin America and the Caribbean
Trends of change between 1985 and 2010
Regional conditions for men
Latin America and the Caribbean
Trends of change between 1985 and 2010
Increase in formal employment (^70 million
women)
Increase in educational attainment, absolute
and relative to boys and men
Continued inferior pay and work conditions
relative to men
Lowered maternal mortality and fertility rates
Longer lives for women
Growing gap in women’s life expectancy over
men’s
Mixed trends in political representation
Women and girls continue to perform majority
of “reproductive” labor
Significant increase in single-mother
households, modest increase in divorces
Inferior access to natural and financial capital
relative to men
Feminization of urban population
Slight decrease in workforce participation
Shift in type of employment away from
primary sector
Shift from permanent full time work to
temporary, part-time & informal work
Decrease of educational attainment relative to
women
Growing gap between men’s shorter life
expectancy women’s longer lives
Disproportionate homicide against men relative
to women
Disproportionate accidents and disabilities,
including occupational, for men, relative to
women
Slight decrease in disproportionate political
representation relative to women
Changing masculine hierarchies and
hegemonies
Active social and legal discrimination against
men fulfilling reproductive roles
Disproportionate control of natural and
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financial capital relative to women
Masculinization of rural population
After this rapid sweep of space-time, we are going to ask what these parallel trends have to
do with each other, then look more closely at how they influence struggles for virility and
potency.
WHICH set of TRENDS WERE you MOST FAMILIAR WITH? _ WOMEN OR MEN?
The development industry has directed our gender gaze toward women
Now there is emergent work on masculinities
Our challenge is to integrate them into a systemic vision
WorlD BANK has excellent data on all these trends mentioned in women’s conditions.
Work and Family: Latin American and Caribbean Women in Search of a New Balance 2011,
Laura Chioda and others
Documents remarkable changes in employment, education, fertility and longevity, and
emphasizes that these changes have NOT led automatically to more wellbeing and happiness for
women.
“The paper examines the uneven progress women have made in the Latin American and
Caribbean region in the last forty years. It examines issues such as health care, education,
work-life balance, and family planning. The report states that while women in the region
have made spectacular progress in the areas of education and health access, economic
development amongst women has become flat and there is a challenge for policy makers
to increase access to opportunities for women. This is especially apparent in the wage gap
between men and women found throughout the region.”
Identifies resistance in workplace, painful tensions at home, as women struggle to negotiate
work/family balance.
This thorough study urges new kinds of approaches, notably efforts to change norms,
responsibilities and policies surrounding paid work and reproductive labor.
First line of the forward, written by World Bank Vice President for LAC, Pamela Cox:
“Women are at the center of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) development today.”
2012 press release:
World Bank Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, Augusto de la Torre.
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“Gender policy in the region is at a crucial juncture. The evidence and analysis presented in this
study indicate that women in the region are increasingly facing the complex challenge of
balancing different roles, identities, and aspirations. These complexities have to be brought to
the center stage of policy design, with a greater emphasis on equity than equality.”
Women seek balance in their own lives
No mention of men
No mention of gender relations
No mention of power
Urge to de-emphasize equality
Is this a strategy to avoid “masculine backlash”? In a discursive field where gender has been
portrayed and perceived as a power struggle between women and men, as a zero sum game in
which empowering women means disempowering men, perhaps it is expedient to circumvent
men altogether
Look at cover of this report and other recent publications on gender and development
Not only to they show gender as only women, but portrayed by a single woman, conveying the
idea that gender is an essential quality of the individual being, rather than a social relation or
system.
focus on universal individual women’s rights certain has its purposes, but it also
1. limits our ability to understand sytemic dynamics of gender in historical and
geographical context
2. Depoliticizes gender by taking power relations out of the equation.
I agree with Chioda and de La Torre that it is time to launch a new stage of gender and
development.
Can we launch an approach that looks at all gender identities and roles? Supports them to
evolve interactively to achieve greater balance and sustainability in households,
communities, societies?
That means we need to figure out how to connect this type of study with the work that is
beginning to appear about men and masculinities,
Including: Bannon, Ian y María Correia. 2006. The Other Half of Gender. Men’s Issues in
Development. Washington DC: The World Bank.
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Many Latin American trends are echoed in other regions
Women’s issues: increased employment in inferior conditions, better education, contradictory
political participation
Men’s issues: worsening employment conditions, lagging education, destruction of human
capital
How we interpret and respond to relations between trends for women and trends for men
has major POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS.
By allowing the relations to remain under-theorized, we provide fertile grounds for
problematic interpretations and mythologies.
Namely: that women’s empowerment is BAD for men.
Do any of you perceive that this belief lurks in some corners of the world?
reactionary political and religious movements against women’s rights
torture and murder of women factory workers in Latin America and women who transgress
Sharia law in Middle East
rejection of affirmative action, equal rights amendment
neighbors who ridiculed our forester for doing the laundry
This interpretation of the trends is grounded in the assumption that regimes of masculinity
that subordinate women are good for men.
cases can be made! Stepford wives. 1975, 2004
However I’ve collected many types of evidence showing ways in which women’s subordination
correlates with problems for men, jeopardizes their potency and virility.
National trends
Chart: National level data on men’s and women’s conditions
Nation-state are important in establishing legislation, policies, programs that not only regulate
what happens, but give power and authority to certain gendered norms and ideologies.
Guatemala, big gender gaps disfavoring women, other big gaps disfavoring men.
The statistical tables of The Global Gender Gap Report (Hausmann et al. 2012) illuminate
differences between countries, regions
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Guatemala stands out as the Latin American country with the greatest gender gap at the expense
of women,
Made visible in the appendices, but not recognized in the index or the report is the fact that
Guatemala also has some of the largest gender gaps that disadvantage men.
10 Guatemalan men are murdered for each woman victim (United Nations Program for
Development - Guatemala 2007, 30) and 9 men kill themselves for each woman who does
(Jacobsen 2002, Annex Table 11).
Also: notable disadvantages for men in El Salvador and Colombia, two of the few countries in
the world (along with Nigeria, Mali and Tanzania) whose gap has grown between 2006 and 2011
in the variables that are harmful to women.
Colombia: 11 men murdered for 1 woman. 4 men commit suicide for one woman. (Suicide
rates 7.9 for men, 2.0 for women.)
Obviously, it’s hard to be potent if you are dead or disabled!
More deeply, contexts where many men have limited options and resources to feel and express
manliness in culturally valued ways seem to encourage efforts through increased risk taking and
desperate actions, including violence against selves and others.
Nicaragua; BIG EFFORT TO TRANSFORM MASCULINTIES, Hombres contra la
violencia --- dramatic change in gender gap for women.
The last decade has been marked by remarkable changes in gender conditions in Nicaragua. The
2006 Global Gender Gap Index ranked Nicaragua in the position 62 in the ranking of 135
countries worldwide in terms of the relative positions of women. In 2012 Nicaragua is located in
the ninth, the most equitable of the Americas, followed by Cuba which ranks 19 and the U.S. at
22.
In the shadow of decades of violent conflict, men and women in Central America faced
extremely violent masculinity regimes.
Recognizing the capacity for critical analysis as one of the greatest achievements of the
Sandinista revolution, Patrick Welsh (2010, 1) describes how this capability led some men to
link aspects of domestic work, violence, sexual and reproductive health and other gender issues
to work for social justice and human development.
It was in Nicaragua in 1993 where the Association of Men Against Violence emerged,
organizing workshops and activities such as the National Meeting of Masculinity and National
Men's March Against Violence.
Men Against Violence offered forums for men to think about their masculinity and promoted
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reflection with other men at the community and institutional level. The group is characterized by
heterogeneity and allowed the union of men of different ages, educational levels, social classes,
political ideologies, religious beliefs and sexual preferences. The only requirement for
participation is a personal commitment not to use violence against women (or men) and to
influence other men to do the same.
Also in Nicaragua,
We cannot think of development without changing the relationships between men and women in
all spheres of our society (family, church, school, business, political party, trade union
organization, armed forces, etc.). Changing those relationships means changing the relations
between men and men, particularly in the family (father and son), in organizations in general and
particularly in political parties and in public administration. Obviously, we also have to change
the relationship with ourselves.
Bolt Gonzáles, Alan. 2003. Masculinidades y desarrollo rural: una nueva manera de satisfacer
las necesidades humanas esenciales y defender la red de vida. Nicaragua: GAIA.
How might 20 years of mobilization around masculinity in various Nicaraguan contexts relate to
dramatic change in women’s conditions?
A few more pieces of evidence: sex and sexuality
Sex: distribution of males and females
Lack of opportunities for women has corresponded with the demographic masculinization of
most rural territories in Latin America: women, especially those with more education, are
concentrating in urban areas,
Men who are literally “left behind” in the countryside, may be heads of household, but less wives
and daughters to be head over.
Trends suggest that defensive clinging to institutions that distribute resources and opportunities
unequally in favor of men, and that overburden women with reproductive labor, lead to further
break-down of households and greater exodus of rural women.
producing imbalances that jeopardize social sustainability of rural homes and communities in
ways that pose increasing difficulties for rural men.
Sexuality: erotic pleasure and satisfaction
Bolivia repro health research I participated in during the 1990s.
large survey in which teams of researchers went to each household and interviewed a man and
woman simultaneously, results showed that men’s ideal family size was slightly smaller than
women’s.
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Assumption in much sexual and reproductive health literature was that the most salient aspect of
masculine pride amongst men in the developing world was ability to impregnate women.
Findings showed, for men surveyed, masculine pride is more strongly tied to ability to support a
family, which means fewer children.
Conclusions of this research:
1. In political economic conditions of the past 25 years, many men found that keeping wives
pregnant was not a priority for their masculine pride.
We also learned that
2. Repressing women’s sexuality did not seem to enhance men’s sexual pleasure and
satisfaction
In a focus group discussion, one middle class man spoke for his fellows: “We want our wives to
be pure like nuns, to just lie still on the bed while we make love to them; for sexual adventure,
we look to amigas.”
Problem: a large number of men surveyed say they find it difficult to maintain satisfying sexual
relations with their wives over the years.
In given context, Efforts to seek pleasure in other realms involve risks of disease, danger,
emotional costs.
Challenge: how can we identify and support correlations between IMPROVEMENTs in
conditions of women and improvements for men?
EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND ANALYTIC OPTIONS FORWARD
1. Question dominant perspectives on gender
2. Change frameworks for research and analysis
3. Learn about and support men’s efforts to feel potent and virile in rapidly changing
societies
Question dominant perspectives on gender
Multiple factors contribute to the formation, persistence and, in some cases, exacerbation of
conditions that limit and hurt men and women in different ways; amongst them are:
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colonial legacies of division and hierarchy,
certain processes of economic globalization
15
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media representations of hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine models and commodities.
COLONIAL LEGACY
“As European and then American capital established dominance through colonization, empire,
and today’s globalization, one of the cultural/structural forms embedded in that dominance has
been the identification of the male/masculine with production in the money economy and the
identification of the female/feminine with reproduction and the domestic. This ideological
construction starkly contrasts with the actual organization of production and reproduction, as
women were often as much “producers” as “reproducers.”
Acker, Joan. 2004. "Gender, Capitalism and Globalization". Critical Sociology no. 30:17.
Susan adds: many men also do valuable reproductive labor that is undervalued and ignored,
partly due to associations of manliness with performance in modern institutions:
“The colonial world saw the installation, on a very large scale, of institutions on the North
Atlantic model: armies, states, bureaucracies, corporations, capital markets, labour markets,
schools, law courts, transport systems. These are gendered institutions, and their functioning has
directly reconstituted masculinities in the periphery”.
Connell, R. W. 2000. The Men and the Boys. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Globalization
While global processes have been shaping Latin America for centuries, the last 25 years has seen
an increasing pace and penetration of movements of capital, production, people, and ideas across
boundaries of many kinds, widely referred to as “globalization.”
Conceiving globalization as political and cultural, as well as economic, Dianne Perrons (2004)
demonstrates how recent economic transformations have depended on, and taken advantage of,
mechanisms of gender, racio-ethnic, and spatial inequality, and have in turn impacted these in
ways that contribute to exacerbating inequalities within and among most parts of the world.
There has been ample documentation that expanding industries have motivated and adapted
gender hierarchies to incorporate women into lower paid positions with poorer terms of
employment (Deere 2005, Suarez, 1995, in Selwyn).
Capital has ALSO taken advantage of gender stereotypes of masculinity to incorporate men,
especially poor and rural men, into labor conditions that are tough, painful, dangerous,
unhealthy, and, for many, fatal.
This period has also seen an explosion of global messages and institutions encouraging rights
and empowerment for women, indigenous peoples, and GLBT.
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These processes raise consciousness and offer vocabulary, as well as institutional support and
power, which are influencing dynamics of change, and offering resources for ongoing
innovations. Unfortunately, unmarked men are largely invisible in these discourses, and few
resources are extended to support their rights and identities.
Labor unions have been greatly weakened: The organizations and discourses that did support
many of them in their unique social roles.
We cannot reverse these legacies, but we can influence the language and analytic approach
in our own research and teaching
The impact of colonial history in the way we view and think gender is, in some sense, even
more powerful than its formidable material impacts. A close look at the formation of historical
and geographical phenomena requires consideration of the influence of gender in science and
knowledge.
In the Introduction of the book Gender and Decolonization, Walter Mignolo (2008, 9) sees the
system as a form dominant colonial patriarchy and believes that ”Patriarchy regulates social
relations concerning gender and also sexual preference, and does so in connection with power
and economy, but also with knowledge: what can and should be known, who can and should
know.”
What is known and thought about gender today is limited, to varying degrees, by what nonEuropean analysts, including María Lugones, RW Connell and Walter Mignolo, have identified
as the colonial / modern gender logic. This is a dichotomous and hierarchical logic that
categorizes every sphere of life in two bodies, one of them placed at a higher level: men over
women, whites over non-whites, masculinities "legitimate" on masculinities "deviant" or
subordinate and so on.
That dominant vision is communicated via much work and literature on gender and
development:
dichotomous
hierarchical
essential
heteronormative
production (coded as masculine) divorced from reproduction (as feminine)
Limits scholarly and political visions and efforts:
1. Hierarchical dichotomy makes gender a power struggle and competition between men
and women (as opposed to, say, an ecosystem metaphor)
2. Unmarked dominance makes men’s gender realities and issues invisible.
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By establishing that the white person is the norm, scholarly and political concern about race has
focused on people of color. Men being the norm, gender attention has focused on women. And
with heterosexuality as the norm, the study of sexual identities has focused on LGBTI groups
(lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex).
This logic has made it difficult for all types of stakeholders, including academics, see and think
straight white men in terms of gender, race or sexuality.
This invisibility has limited the potential to recognize the systemic nature of these social
systems.
Dominant vision limits gender research and practice
Bad science leads to bad policy:
The belief that men "win" in current gender systems is promoted by academic practices that
rendered invisible the gender specific constraints men face. The Gender Gap Report is an
example of the kind of science biased in favor of women's issues.
One-sided discourse and policies that perpetuate the belief that subordination of women is good
for men (empowerment of women bad for men)
Together with lack of attention to men’s gendered challenges
Innacurate representation of empirical reality
limit chances of collaboration and transformation for gender change.
Change research frameworks: for example, statistical indices used as benchmarks for
governmental and non-governmental gender efforts
Thanks to feminist insistence on disaggregating data, we have a bounty of Rigorous and
extensive statistical data about men and women.
Problem is analytic frameworks that segregate or purposefully hide part of the data.
Gender Gap Report
Appendices of the report present much of the information I have just discussed, showing
disadvantages for men in some areas, for women in others.
In constructing the GENDER GAP Index, they categorically exclude from calculations all data
that show disadvantages for men, producing distorted indices suggesting that dominant gender
systems are bad for women and dandy for men.
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World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report 2011
Construction of the Index
Convert to ratios
First, all data are converted to female/male ratios.
Truncate data at equality benchmark
As a second step, these ratios are truncated at the “equality benchmark” . . . Truncating the data
at the equality bench-marks for each variable translates to assigning the same score to a country
that has reached parity between women and men and one where women have surpassed men.
Gender Gap chart:
The gaps disfavoring men in life expectancy and education that I just showed you have been
rendered invisible.
If we could see the whole picture, we would find evidence to contradict the belief that
subordination of women is good for men.
If the gender gap index and similar materials showed, for example, that gendered disadvantages
for Guatemalan women coincide with gendered disadvantages for Guatemalan men, it might
motivate some men to collaborate in changing the gender system. Rather than violently resist and
react against changes for women.
Learn about and support men’s efforts to feel potent and virile in rapidly changing
societies
Latin American men in varying conditions are dealing with scarcity of stable employment
understood as “masculine,” reduced autonomy over their own labor, entry into paid work of their
wives and daughters, being stereotyped as brutish clods, assigned dangerous and degrading
work, dealing with exodus of women from the countryside, and other challenges.
This is a vital opportunity! Research and policy can offer resources (ideas, discourses,
institutional support, etc.) for individuals and communities to develop their own ways to adapt
expectations of masculinities to 21st century conditions.
We can learn from creative initiatives supporting men to understand and deal with their gendered
constraints and challenges.
Las mujeres creando, Bolivia
Hombres contra la violencia, Nicaragua etc.
BACK TO YUCATAN CASE
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Initial interpretation of the data by field researchers: “this study shows that patriarchy dominates
everywhere and machismo always marginalizes women. “
Then we asked, what is going on w men in this specific historical and geographical context?
Chart of occupation by age
Nothing less than a cataclysmic reordering that undermines many key determinants of traditional
masculinities.
This effort to “defend” masculine control of economic opportunities takes place in a context of
dramatically shifting masculine roles: most men over 40, their fathers, grandfathers before them
are farmers on own land with own labor. After henequen crisis, young men work in factories and
service, their jobs are insecure and shifting, their labor is subordinated to managers, bosses.
More study of varying paths:
Yucatan, Mexico: Dynamics of masculinity work in networks connecting powerful men to each
other, and in their control over other men, that consolidate the kind of male-only local political
spaces depicted in Latin American mayors.
Cerron Grande, El Salvador: territory-based environment commissions are set up with purpose of
building more democratic spaces and more horizontal relations between some men and others.
In these spaces, participants are thinking about gender in creative ways. Talking about it not and
writing it into their plans not as a separate charity issue for women, but as a dimension of
environmental management, economic development, etc.
How can we support creative development of identities and norms that offer options to feel and
express virility and potency in ways that also work to forge just and sustainable arrangements?
How to:
Transcend the zero sum game in which women’s empowerment means men’s disempowerment?
Address resistance to considering men and masculinities gender and development community
that has seen men as a gender problem rather than as humans dealing with gender problems?
Engage men who (purposefully or unconsciously) resist changes in gender systems?
Operationalize gender not as a universally dual and hierarchical category but as a sociocultural
system that varies across time/space and that includes and impacts everyone?
Create contexts in which diverse actors find reason and motivation to critique, re-imagine and
adapt dominant systems in response to changing contexts and visions?
Support broader collaboration and coalitions among diverse gender groups and identities?
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