The state, gender and sexual politics / R. W. Connell
Goal: To illustrate the public dimension of power relations and to incorporate the issue of
gender explicitly into the discourse of state theories.
1. Exploration of the main ways of thinking about gender, sexuality and the state
(English-language sources in 90s)
2. Providing a generalized framework for theorizing the interplay of gender
relations and state dynamics.
Gender in this context: is a collective phenomenon, an aspect of social
institutions and is internal and external in relation to the state.
Sexuality is part of the domain of human practice organized (in part) by gender
relations.
Sexual politics is the contestation of issues of sexuality by the social interests
constituted within the gender relations.
The state is a part of a wider social structure of gender relations.
States include local government, regional, provincial, national and international
levels (NAFTA, EU, UN)
The state is the set of institutions currently subject to coordination (by
administrative or budgetary means) by a state directorate.
The state is a process (not a thing), its form and realm change historically.
State institutions:
 taxation, departments, courts
 medical associations, universities, unions, welfare agencies? (Realm of the
state)
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Liberal feminism:
 Stresses rights and equality.
 Opposes prejudice.
 The state should be neutral. It is gendered.
 Men run the governments, armies etc.
 Operates with a theory of "sex roles".
 Discusses sexism (e.g. women in the military is a positive move)
Implications:
 Patriarchy is treated as an accident.
 Men are understood as a category.
 Failure to see gender as an institutional or motivational system.
 Failure to provide coherent analysis of the state apparatus and its links to a social
context.
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Radical feminism:
 Challenges social system/"patriarchy".
Patriarchy: historically produced situations in gender relations where men's
domination is institutionalized (i.e. men's overall supremacy is generated by the
economy and reproduced in the family, work, school, media and "churches".
Socialist feminism:
 Stresses the link between the family and the economy
 The state can appear gender-neutral and this is vital for its legitimation.
 The state is an indirect oppressor of women
(through regulating systems such as the family and wage labour).
 The state is central in social reproduction.
 The state constitutes the categories of social structure.
 Femininity and masculinity are produced as effects of state policies and structures
(schools, families).
New feminist focus on sexual violence:
 The state itself is the oppressor (men as a category are not constituted outside of
it).
 State institutions are patriarchal through the way the entire structure of laws
operates (the more objective they are in procedure, the more patriarchal they are,
e.g. rape in the courts).
 Patriarchy is embedded in the state's way of functioning, in procedure.
 Puts sexual politics in the realm of action.
 Invites a focus on state apparatus.
Connell's theoretical framework:
1. The state is constituted within gender relations as the central institutionalization of
gendered power. Conversely, gender dynamics are a major force constructing the state,
both in the historical creation of the state structures and in the contemporary politics.
 The state is a structure of power, institutionalization of power relations.
 embodies violence or other means of control.
 laws set limits to the use of personal violence, protects property, criminalizes
stigmatized sexuality, embodies masculinized hierarchy, organizes collective
violence (policing, prisons, war).
 The hegemonic masculinity of the old regime → rationality, calculation,
orderliness
 The state historically underestimated women's economic activity
2.
As a result of this history of the state is a bearer of gender. Each empirical state has a
definable "gender regime" that is the precipitate of social struggles and is linked to the
wider gender order of society.
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Gender regime: women and men tend to occupy particular positions within the state,
and work in ways structured by gender relations.
 A gender division of labour (at the collective level)
 A structure of power
 The structure of cathexis (the gender patterning of emotional
attachments)
3.
The way state embodies gender gives it cause and capacity to "do" gender. As the
central institutionalization of power the state has a considerable, though not unlimited,
capacity to regulate gender relations in the society as a whole.
 legislation on women's work
 indirect control of division of labour through education system etc.
 obscures marriage as an institution that generates violence
4.
The state's power to regulate reacts on the categories that make up the structure being
regulated. Thus the state becomes involved in the historical process generating and
transforming the basic components of the gender order.
 Regulates sexuality (creates new categories and historical possibilities
e.g. "prostitute" as socio-legal category)
5.
Because of it is power to regulate and its power to create, the state is a major stake in
gender politics; and the exercise of that power is a constant incitement to claim the
stake. Thus the state becomes the focus of interest-group formation and mobilization of
sexual politics.

6.
Family policy, population policy, labour force and labour market
management, housing policy, regulation of sexual behaviour and
expression, provision of child care, mass education, taxation, income
distribution, creation and use of military forces
The state is constantly changing; gender relations are historically dynamic; the state's
position in gender politics is not fixed. Crisis tendencies develop in gender order,
which allow new political possibilities.
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