***Link Debate
Link – Cuba
State driven approaches to equality have only exacerbated inequality – only grassroots
movements can solve.
Osmond, Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida State University, 91 (Marie Withers
“WOMEN FACTORY WORKERS IN CONTEMPORARY CUBA: STATE POLICIES AND
INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTIONS” International Review of Modern Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 2.
International Journals)
There are three principal features of contemporary Cuban society which may be regarded as
hindering the equality of Cuban women. First, the revolutionary goal of radical structural change
(class and job equality, etc.) was halted by economic and political situations which resulted in a
call for maximum productivity. Economic resources are increasingly targeted for the
development of heavy industry and military expenditures. Reports from Cuba, in the early 1990s,
underscore increased economic cuts and expanded rationing of food, gasoline, electricity, etc.
(Whitefield, 1990). The expansion of that part of the service sector which particularly affccts
women (offering employment opportunities as well as assistance in domestic responsibilities)
currently has minimal support in the Cutían national budget. These priorities tend to increase
women's inequality in employment and income and, thus, serve to preserve the traditional
family. The impact is strongest on unskilled and semiskilled women who have few alternatives
with regard to jobs or family lives. Second, the fact that the, decision to change women's roles
has been governmentally based, rather than a goal emerging from a 'grass-roots' movement,
together with the absence of an autonomous women's organization, has limited women's
consciousness of gender inequality. The issue of female subordination is hidden behind the
FMC's consistent emphasis on the legal equality that women have acquired and the public
endorsement of those women who have advanced in previously unconventional occupation. As
our data indicate, there are at least two distinct strata of women workers. Technically skilled and
professional women are likely to be actively involved in the FMC and believe that they have
already been emancipated. Women who are less skilled or educated, on the other hand, are bound
economically and ideologically to family and proclaim that there is no need for women's
liberation Third, the power of machismo within Cuban culture continues to be a deeply-rooted
and little questioned area of women's subordination. A common ideology among both strata of
women workers is that Castro and his fellow-leaders sincerely have 'women's best interests at
heart.' Our data point to the fact that even if men are concerned, they do not (and, perhaps,
cannot) understand women's interests and women's worlds and the fundamental division of labor
(both social and economic) by gender. One significant difficulty lies in the failure to redefine
men's roles in a manner parallel to the redefinition of women's roles. While the Family Code
legislates that men take equal responsibility for housework and child care, it provides no
incentives for them to do so. There are no "paternity leaves" or "shopping bag plans" for
husbands/fathers. There are no communist awards given to husbands whose wives take jobs.
There are no educational campaigns to train boys in housework or child care nor any enticements
to lead them into "female" occupations. The media continue to accentuate male-female
differences along traditional lines. As the Cuban case vividly illustrates, the issue of women's
"equality" is complex in that it involves change in both structural institutions that are pivotal to
social order as we know it in both socialist and capitalist societies. Calls to change are often
framed as either-or dualisms: the government or women, themselves, should take the
responsibility (and the blame if unsuccessful). The data on Cuba show that change cannot simply
come from the top down. Cuba has come closer than most societies to implementing policies that
reveal the enormous economic (much less social)costs involved in assuming responsibilities for
women's "care work." The persistence of the traditional family is not primarily the fault of the
State. On the contrary, the State has executed policies that are potentially threatening to gendered
family roles (such as the family code, education and employment for women, free abortion and
birth control, day care, etc.).
Cuba’s women’s liberation programs will inevitably fail as long as the underlying
assumptions of gender roles persist.
Osmond, Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida State University, 91 (Marie Withers
“WOMEN FACTORY WORKERS IN CONTEMPORARY CUBA: STATE POLICIES AND
INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTIONS” International Review of Modern Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 2.
International Journals)
The claim is made that Marxism is the only social philosophy that formally acknowledges the
equal status of women (Wheeler, 1979). Official communist theory on women's subordination is
based on two major sources: Engels' Origins of the Family , Private Property and the State and
Lenin's On the Emancipation of Women. These texts provided the thesis that women's
oppression results from economic conditions that are determined by the development of class
society and capitalism. The major policy implications of this thesis were to: bring women out of
the home and into the economy; develop communal services to alleviate domestic work and child
care; and provide equal opportunities for women in the labor force (Molyneux, 1981). Cuba's
post-revolutionary programs reflect these goals in social policies on women (Huberman and
Sweezy, 1969). However, the attempt to translate Marxism into measures for women's liberation
involved a number of questionable assumptions. The inequality of women is claimed to derive
from the same source (class relations) as is the exploitation of men. Thus, when private property
is abolished, class relations will disappear, "the family" will be socialized, and male/female
"workers" will share equal rights. As a number of writers have pointed out, this argument is
problematic (Eisenstein, 1979; Hartmann, 1979; Kuhn and Wölpe, 1978). First, there is
considerable evidence that female subordination cuts across class divisions. Second, no empirical
link has been substantiated between the amount of productive work that women perform and
their status relative to men. Third, the theory disregards the strong interconnection of family and
economy. The attempt to deal with the problems of domestic labor and child care simply through
calling for the collectivization (or State assumption) of a part of this work ignores the economic
costs as well as the cultural resistances associated with such changes. Castro gave specific
emphasis to the entry into wage work as a key to solving women's problems. In practice, this can
be seen as a rather limited view of the process whereby women's material circumstances are
improved and their consciousness raised. First, the theory excludes analysis of ideological forms,
of economic relations and practices, and of the relations between the sexes, in such a way as to
fail to account for important mechanisms through which women continue to be subordinated
even when they are involved in "productive" work. Second, continuing economic variations and
crises promote state policies that downplay women's problems. The following subsections briefly
examine goals and implementation in four areas of state policy that bear specifically upon
changes in women's opportunities: legislation; education; political representation; and economy.
The rationale for this review is to highlight the major structural influences on the lives of the
interviewees which, as we shall discuss, offer differential constraints and opportunities for
women in different socioeconomic strata. Legislation With regard to legislation on issues that
have an impact on Cuban women, the major point is that while Cuban laws are more equalitarian
than those in many other societies (including America), a number of them still include basic
ideological assumptions about women's roles that are deleterious to women's equality; in
particular, protective legislation, the Maternity Law, and the Family Code.
Cuba has ignored gender inequality in favor of the “requirements of the economic
development of the nation – this has perpetuated inequality.
Osmond, Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida State University, 91 (Marie Withers
“WOMEN FACTORY WORKERS IN CONTEMPORARY CUBA: STATE POLICIES AND
INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTIONS” International Review of Modern Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 2.
International Journals)
Probably the major change in post-revolutionary Cuba has to do with the possibility of economic
independence for women. One of the earliest goals of the FMC was the massive incorporation of
women into production, be it agricultural, industrial or related services.6 A major obstacle has
been persistent economic crises as Cuba struggled to overcome underdevelopment, to pay off
debts, and to import sufficient capital goods to implement industrialization (Fitzgerald, 1978;
Huberman and Sweezy, 1969; Ritter, 1974). The United States' blockade (in the early 1960s) was
an additional economic disaster for Cuba. By 1970, it was obvious to the Cuban leadership that
serious changes had to occur for economic survival. One change, directly aimed at women in the
labor force, was a renewed focus on the problem of women's "second shift," housework and
child care (King, 1977; Larguis and Dumoulin, 1971). There was an effort to increase the quality
and quantity of day care centers (Children's Circles)7. A shopping bag plan (plan jaba) was put
into effect to give working women priority service at local grocery stores. What continues to be
the assumption, however, is that women do the grocery shopping, etc. What all the "solutions"
have in common is that, since they are designed to enable women to combine home duties with
paid employment, they may only serve to deepen women's inequality by making it more feasible
for her to be the one to continue working a "double shift." Another problem with women's
"double burden" is the lack of time women have after the work day to attend assemblies,
meetings, etc. - activities that lead to job advancement (Madrigal, 1974). A second, and more
fundamental change with regard to economic distribution in Cuba, was an officially proclaimed
shift (by the Thirteenth Workers' Congress, 1973) from the communist principle of distribution
according "to need" to the socialist principle of distribution according "to work" (Nazzari, 1983).
Wage differentials were defended as a "means of motivating those with labor skills, heavy
responsibilities and tough or dangerous jobs" (Mesa-Lago, 1981:150). Wage scales (for specific
jobs) were established. Wages were linked with work quotas. The work quota system allowed for
variation in remuneration according to productivity (rewards given to workers who produced
beyond their quotas). Paid overtime work was increasingly rewarded. In essence, the State was
demanding that industries produce profits . The consequences for women workers were
increased job segregation, income discrimination, and the threat of unemployment. The female
labor force, however, more than doubled in the period 1970-1979 (Brundenius, 1984). In the
1970s, an overwhelming majority, almost two thirds, of women workers were absorbed in the
service sector (e.g., education and health). Private employment of domestic servants is officially
prohibited but women continue to work in servant capacities for hotels, schools, hospitals, etc.
Women workers comprised 65 percent of workers in education, 62 percent in public health and
welfare, 48 percent in administration, and 78 percent in the garment industry in 1975. Further,
there was (and continues to be ) a conspicuous lack of women in leadership and supervisory
positions even in areas where women workers are the majority. For example, in 1975, women
constituted 78 percent of the workforce in the branches producing ready-made articles yet they
comprised only 52 percent of the leadership in these branches (Federation of Cuban Women,
1975). Because of the concentration of female labor in the service sector, we can assume that, at
least at the level of minimum wage work, women's average wage is lower than men's. Existing
data (for 1979) show that the lowest-paid workers in Cuba are women in cleaning jobs (monthly
average, 75 pesos) or in day care centers (average, 98 pesos). By contrast, the monthly average
for a physician is 600 pesos, a university professor 500 pesos, a cement plant worker 250, and a
longshoreman 140 (Mesa-Lago, 1981). Also notable the average military wage is 17 percent
above the civilian one. This is not to overlook the fact that there are a number of female
professional workers in Cuba. The FMC claims that over 30 percent of all women employed in
Cuba in 1979 were technicians, professionals, or managers (Federation of Cunan Women,
1980c)8 This means that there may be a possible extreme wage differential of about ten to one
among working women in Cuba (much higher than the often quoted national ratio of 3.5 to 1.0).
In sum, the position of relatively unskilled women in the Cuban economy is especially
precarious. Espin (Federation of Cuban Women, 1980a: 10) reports that even highly trained
female technicians are having difficulties finding jobs. When full male employment (which is
guaranteed) is viewed against the shortage of jobs, women are hired only as needed. As Espin
(1980) declares, expansion of the female labor force will not be able to continue rapidly because
women's participation in employment depends on the "requirements of the economic
development of the nation." One recent consequence of the "nation's needs" has been the
reduction of the service sector, thus fewer "women's jobs." A significant portion of capital that
could have gone into the further development of services has been used in national defense and
military involvement abroad. The uncertainties and the limitations of their positions in the labor
market force the majority of women to depend basically on marriage and family for economic
security
Link – Democracy
Democracy is counter productive in resolving women’s subordination in social and political
realities.
Montecinos, Ph.D in sociology, 2000 (Veronica “Feminists and Technocrats in the Democratization of Latin America: A
Prolegomenon” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 15, No. 1, Risks and Rights in the 21 st Century: Papers from the
Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program Symposium, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Springer)
Under what conditions can the process of democratization go beyond the legitimization of
women's claims and bring about effective changes in the political, economic and social status of
women? What can we learn from the experience of women in other democratic systems?
Transition studies add a rich new dimension to more general treatments of the relationship
between gender, citizenship and democracy (Pateman, 1989; Phillips, 1992; Vogel, 1991, 1998;
Dietz, 1992; Mendus, 1992; Lister, 1993; Voet, 1998). This literature shows that existing
democratic theory and practice everywhere have failed to explain and resolve women's persistent
subordination. The barriers to political equality originate in women's unequal legal status, their
lack of independent and secure income, their concentration in unpaid activities, their inferior
position in the labor market and the consequent scarcity of social prestige, personal autonomy,
time and even physical mobility. Models of liberal democracy employ universalistic assumptions
that equally apply to women and men. But social and legal provisions that excluded women from
the political community openly contradict those assumptions. The history of modern democracy
has proceeded on the basis of abstract principles of freedom and equality, yet women have been
stereotyped and treated as inferior, unable to secure a fair distribution of resources. All over the
world the exercise of formal rights remains problematic. Women are still strongly underrepresented in trade unions, in top management positions, in legislative and governing bodies. In
1995 women occupied only 9.4 percent of the senate seats and 11.6 percent of the lower house in
the world's national parliaments. Democracy has failed to "serve women well" (Phillips, 1992),
even in countries that are now taken as models to be emulated by the new Latin American
democracies. Although most democratic systems now recognize the formal legal and political
equality of women, obstacles to women's exercise of their rights as citizens, largely shaped by
the sexual division of paid and unpaid labor, remain untouched. Feminist critiques of the theory
and practice of democracy differ (Voet, 1998), but they concur on the need to reconceptualize
citizenship and broaden the meaning of politics by redrawing the boundaries between the public
and the private spheres. The apparently gender-neutral language used in liberal theories of
democracy perpetuates existing disadvantages in the participation of women in social and
political decision-making. Historically, women's access to citizenship has been gradual, often
through distinctively separate criteria. This has not eroded discrimination, but reinforced political
marginality (as in the post-suffrage silencing of women's groups lasting from the end of the first
feminist wave, in the 1930s and 1940s, until the 1970s) and increased dependency (as in schemes
that link social security benefits to motherhood and marriage). How can the current wave of
democratization in Latin America open up opportunities to depart from formulas that have yet to
alter gender hierarchies in families, markets, and politics in other parts of the democratic world?
The connections between democratization and gender equity are still largely ignored by
mainstream political analysts (for exceptions, see Schmitter, 1998 and Foweraker, 1998). Not
surprisingly, the gendered nature of transition politics has been addressed primarily by feminist
scholars (Jaquette, 1989; Alvarez, 1990; Waylen, 1994, 1996; Jelin, 1996; Jaquette and Wolchik,
1998; Friedman, 1998). In the past couple of decades, feminist theorizing has gained standing in
the academic world, influencing new fields of study, challenging the foundations of existing
disciplines, often making explicit the link between academic work and political reform. But
resistance to feminist scholarship persists, especially in some disciplines, and segregated
research continues to produce unsatisfactory accounts of the gendered character of social and
political realities. This is an ominous trend. Knowledge elaborated under these conditions is
likely to lose much of its transformative potential. It tends to reach self-selected audiences, the
biases and distortions of conventional thinking remaining fortified behind hierarchies of
professional prestige, the complacency of academic routines, and the modest rewards for
scholarly cooperation. The prospects of gender-awareness in policy-making and institutional
reform will improve when scholarship be comes less segregated, allowing mainstream analysts
to explore the broad implications of gender relations in all areas of economic and political life,
and giving advocates of women's rights continuous participation in the design and
implementation of social, economic, and political reforms.10
Link – Economics
US economic dominance infringes on Feminist movements in Latin America
Carr, Ph.D Faculty Researcher, Center of Excellence/Center for Women, Economic Justice and Public
Policy, Grant for Collaborative Research, 90
(Irene Campos, Women's Voices Grow Stronger:
Politics and Feminism in Latin America, NWSA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer, 1990), pp. 450-463,
Accessed from JSTOR)CTL
The experiences of feminists in Mexico illustrate the various perspectives and strategies women use to reach their goals. Mexico's current ¶
economic crisis began in the 1970s. During these years workers and ¶ peasants held demonstrations and began to consolidate themselves in ¶
popular movements; in
the wake of the insurgence of the exploited and ¶ oppressed, the feminist movement
also reemerged. Consequently, many ¶ feminist organizations were initiated by political movements, workers' ¶ unions, and women's
groups and organizations.3 Many of these early feminist organizations in Mexico were consciousness-raising
groups (grupos de conciencia) in which a small number of ¶ women, primarily middle class and often university graduates, met to ¶ talk about
themselves as females. The main objective was to rediscover ¶ their silenced voices and to speak of their daily lives
from a feminist ¶ viewpoint. Although these consciousness-raising groups helped many ¶ women to gain awareness of their oppression, the
groups did not lead ¶ to specific activities that would take this new awareness to women of ¶ the sectores populares (the masses). Eventually they
realized the continual ¶ discussion of their sexuality, families, love relationships, and other preoccupations had validity but were too confining to
allow the development ¶ of a global perspective that could affect their sisters at differing levels ¶ of society. The
group, thus, began to
use new methods to reach a larger ¶ number of women in order to raise consciousness and promote
social ¶ change. The implementation of workshops was one of the strategies ¶ used to forge links with workers' unions, grass-roots
organizations, political parties, and isolated women struggling to survive. Applying the ¶ techniques of educacion popular, the leadership began
conducting work- ¶ shops to impart skills, discuss health and nutrition, assist in the formation ¶ of cooperatives, and most importantly, develop
new leaders to coordinate ¶ and facilitate the workshops.4 ¶ In another part of the country, the state of Colima in west central ¶ Mexico, in the city
of Colima, a group of thirty-five women formed the ¶ Colectivo Feminista Coatlicue (Coatlicue feminist collective) in 1979. As ¶ they
began
to analyze their oppression, four important items emerged: ¶ lack of equal opportunity in education
and at the workplace, the double ¶ shift (la doble jornada) at work and the home, imposed motherhood,
and ¶ sexual aggression. The following year the Colectivo went public, staging ¶ a political campaign with much press and radio
coverage. They demanded ¶ the production and distribution of safe contraceptives, the cessation of ¶
forced sterilization, research on the causes of sterility, and legal, free ¶ abortion. A fiery public debate in the
newspapers and other media ¶ publicized the dispute about women's rights to make decisions affecting ¶ their own bodies and the number of
children they wanted to have. As ¶ a result, the
state government made some declarations in favor of lesser ¶
penalties for abortion and greater ones for sexual crimes; however, the ¶ governor of the State of Colima (a female)
denied the declarations and ¶ proposed education as an alternative to abortion. Only the Colectivo in Colima seemed to be in favor of the reforms
as they faced the reactionary ¶ forces in society-the Church, the State, and the Family. With the help of national feminist organizations, the
Colectivo continued to lobby state legislators, bar associations, and important officials.
They also coordinated feminist
conferences where the participating ¶ women subsequently rejected the interference of church and
state in ¶ the decisions affecting their own bodies. The second conference was ¶ attended (to the surprise of the participants)
¶
by the governor, the ¶ secretary of state, and some justices of the state supreme court who ¶ heard presentations asking for the modification of the
State Penal Code ¶ relating to sexual crimes and the establishment of houses for battered ¶ women. Subsequently, new
laws were
enacted to implement some of the ¶ demanded changes. For example, in addition to facing heavier penalties, ¶ the
perpetrators of incest or battery against spouses (consensual or ¶ otherwise) could no longer leave jail under
bond; this thereby allowed ¶ the victim to feel free to make a formal legal complaint. State funds ¶ were also
allocated for a center for raped and battered women, Centro ¶ de Apoyo a la Mujer (Women's support center). This center has continued to this
day with the Colima seemed to be in favor of the reforms as they faced the reactionary ¶ forces in society-the Church, the State, and the Family. ¶
With the help of national feminist organizations, the Colectivo continued to lobby state legislators, bar
associations, and important officials. ¶ They also coordinated feminist conferences where the participating ¶
women subsequently rejected the interference of church and state in ¶ the decisions affecting their
own bodies. The second conference was ¶ attended (to the surprise of the participants) by the governor, the ¶
secretary of state, and some justices of the state supreme court who ¶ heard presentations asking for
the modification of the State Penal Code ¶ relating to sexual crimes and the establishment of houses for battered ¶ women.
Subsequently, new laws were enacted to implement some of the ¶ demanded changes. For example, in addition to facing heavier penalties, ¶ the
perpetrators of incest or battery against spouses (consensual or ¶ otherwise) could no longer leave jail under bond; this thereby allowed ¶ the
victim to feel free to make a formal legal complaint. State funds ¶ were also allocated for a center for raped and battered women, Centro ¶ de
Apoyo a la Mujer (Women's support center). This center has continued to this day with the assistance of the Colectivo, which has become ¶ its
administrative arm. The center staff is comprised of a psychologist, ¶ social worker, lawyer, physician, and related office employees who work ¶
to lend support to women who have been raped, battered, sexually ¶ abused, verbally abused, or abandoned by their mates. The center also ¶
functions as a headquarters for research and analysis of situations pertaining to women; in addition, it disseminates this information and creates ¶
public awareness of the oppression of women.5 ¶ Other women leaders in Mexico work with the sectores populares, ¶ women at the bottom of the
socioeconomic ladder in rural and urban ¶ areas who are exploited by men as well as the economic structure. For ¶ example, Mexico's Centro para
Mujeres Comunicacion, Intercambio y ¶ Desarrollo Humanos en America Latina (Communication, exchange, and ¶ human development in Latin
America [CIDHAL]) promotes the training, ¶ development, and organization of community leaders. Educational pamphlets, distributed by
CIDHAL directed to the peasant women (campe- ¶ sinas) attending the organizational workshops, express ideas and concepts ¶ in a simple
manner. One of their 8-by-10-inch booklets has vivid, realistic ¶ drawings to illustrate each two or three sentence caption. Titled Las ¶ Mujeres
Campesinas en la Lucha Popular (Peasant women in the people's ¶ struggle), the training manual devotes its first pages to the problems ¶
campesinas face if they choose to participate in community organizing. ¶ Some of these include: assistance of the Colectivo, which has become ¶
its administrative arm. The center staff is comprised of a psychologist, ¶ social worker, lawyer, physician, and related office employees who work
¶ to lend support to women who have been raped, battered, sexually ¶ abused, verbally abused, or abandoned by their mates. The center also ¶
functions as a headquarters for research and analysis of situations per- ¶ taining to women; in addition, it disseminates this information and
creates ¶ public awareness of the oppression of women.5 ¶ Other women leaders in Mexico work with the sectores populares, ¶ women at the
bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in rural and urban ¶ areas who are exploited by men as well as the economic structure. For ¶ example,
Mexico's Centro para Mujeres Comunicacion, Intercambio y ¶ Desarrollo Humanos en America Latina (Communication, exchange, and ¶ human
development in Latin America [CIDHAL]) promotes the training, ¶ development, and organization of community leaders. Educational pam- ¶
phlets, distributed by CIDHAL directed to the peasant women (campesinas) attending the organizational workshops, express ideas and concepts ¶
in a simple manner. One of their 8-by-10-inch booklets has vivid, realistic ¶ drawings to illustrate each two or three sentence caption. Titled Las ¶
Mujeres Campesinas en la Lucha Popular (Peasant women in the people's ¶ struggle), the training manual devotes its first pages to the problems ¶
campesinas face if they choose to participate in community organizing. ¶ Some of these include: We
have much work inside and
outside the house, carrying water, ¶ cutting wood, raising animals, cooking and cleaning, working in
the ¶ cornfield, washing clothes in the river, selling our produce and animals, ¶ making pottery. And
sometimes we have problems because our husbands ¶ don't like us to participate out of jealousy, or
because he drinks or is ¶ very demanding and then he hits us and forbids us to leave the house, ¶ or because they [husbands] think
that we women are not able to defend ¶ ourselves when other men approach us.
Macroeconomic policies are not gender neutral – they’ve empirically
been shown to unequally burden women.
Berik and Rodgers 2008
(Günseli Berik, Department of Economics University of Utah, and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Professor and Graduate Director in
the Women's and Gender Studies department at Rutgers University “Engendering Development Strategies and Macroeconomic
Policies: What’s Sound and Sensible?” in Social Justice and Gender Equality: Rethinking Development Strategies and
Macroeconomic Policies.
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/91E1E3A0620D9D72C12578D5005447DA/$file/1BerikRodgers.pdf)
Gender-aware evaluations of the consequences of economic crises and the subsequent
macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment programs problematized the use of
gender-blind macroeconomic models to guide policy. Since the early 1980s, both developing and
¶ industrialized economies have adopted policies that accelerated their integration in the
international economy and reduced government regulation over the domestic economy. The
debt crisis that many developing countries experienced during the early 1980s was a turning
point, marking the shift from inward-looking to outward-looking strategies under the policy
guidance of the IMF. Macroeconomic stabilization policies in the IMF conditionality sought to
bring under control inflation, the budget deficit and the balance-of-payments deficit through
restrictive monetary and fiscal policies and currency devaluation. Subsequently, trade
liberalization, export orientation, openness to FDI, capital account liberalization, the
deregulation of government controls and the privatization of public services and state-owned
enterprises (SOEs) were phased in as structural adjustment programs that aimed for long-term
growth. Feminist economists argue that the lack of policy attention to gender and class
differences was responsible for the uneven burdens and economic inefficiency generated by ¶
these programs (Çağatay et al. 1995). One particular insight concerns the implicit assumptions ¶
about unpaid caring labour. Focused as they are on the monetized economy, macroeconomic ¶
policies do not pay attention to the impacts of policy changes on the unpaid reproductive
economy, in effect assuming an unlimited supply of reproductive labour. As a result policy
makers do not fully assess the costs of stabilization and adjustment measures. Feminist
economists show that increases and intensification in unpaid household labour made up for the
¶ shortfalls in public services due to cuts in health and education budgets, and that these cuts
also ¶ had human resource costs in an intergenerational sense.4 Moreover, two particular
outcomes ¶ associated with these programs are likely to have deleterious effects on the well-being
of lowincome groups and women in particular: the “deflationary bias” of the recommended
macroeconomic policies tends to hurt these groups through shrinking budgets for basic services,
¶ while their “commodification bias” means that women have to increasingly rely on cash
incomes ¶ to provision their families (Elson and Çağatay 2000). Implemented in an institutional
context that favours male breadwinners, gender-blind reforms further exacerbate these adverse
effects on well-being. Feminist economists argue that “engendering macroeconomics”—that is
making visible the way gender relations permeate the workings of the economy—is the first step
toward ¶ producing alternative policies that reduce gender, class and ethnic inequalities and
promote ¶ human well-being (Çağatay et al. 1995; Grown et al. 2000). Thus this project does not
solely ¶ entail adding gender awareness to the existing neoliberal paradigm but rather to
transform it. ¶ Underlying this perspective is a redefinition of the economy as the totality of
interconnected paid and unpaid activities required for provisioning of human beings (Nelson
1993; Benería 2003; Power 2004). While well-being is a multidimensional concept that
encompasses income, health, education, empowerment and social status, feminist economists
increasingly rely on Sen’s capability approach to gauge improvements in well-being. Sen has
argued that the goal of ¶ development policies ought to be to promote human capabilities,
understood as each individual’s potential to do and be what they may choose to value (Sen
1999). In contrast to other approaches to well-being, most notably utilitarianism and incomebased approaches favoured by most economists, the capability approach shifts the attention
from subjective assessments or maximization of access to resources to actual outcomes that
individuals are able to attain (Nussbaum 2003). Thus, successful policies are to be gauged in
terms of their ability to deliver individuals a healthy life, knowledge, bodily integrity, a life free
from discrimination and a host of other capabilities, and to reduce inequalities in these
capabilities. Attention to policy ends also forces scrutiny of the means for individuals to achieve
their livelihoods (that is, their entitlements through the labour market, the state and the
community) so that they can expand their capabilities. Hence the capability approach links the
concern about the adequacy of and ¶ inequalities in entitlements with concern about unequal
capabilities and problematizes development strategies and their component macroeconomic
policies.5 The focus on gender necessitates attention to class, ethnicity and other social
differences since these social stratifiers shape the actual meaning of being a woman or a man in
a given society. These differences are relevant in the design of macroeconomic policies as well.
Feminist economists point out that economically powerful groups have considerable influence in
shaping the policy mixes and supporting a definition of “sound” macroeconomic policies that
protect their interests and leave less powerful groups to bear the costs of these policies (Elson
and Çağatay 2000). Specifically, when soundness is defined in terms of exchange-rate stability
and low inflation targets, these policies take on a deflationary character that aims to attract
creditors. Such policies also protect the real returns for the holders of financial assets and the
internationally mobile groups, such as multinational corporations and wealthy households.
Feminist economists have argued for judging the soundness of policies on the basis of their
ability to bring society toward social justice and produce improvements in people’s lives, and
thereby they have sought to integrate social policy goals in macroeconomic policies. Goals for
social justice include distributive fairness, equity, the universal provisioning of needs,
elimination of poverty, freedom from discrimination, social cohesiveness, and strengthening of
human capabilities (Elson and Çağatay 2000; Benería 2003). Thus, enhancing gender-equitable
well-being is integral to promoting social justice.
Economic growth in Latin America without including gender in it’s revisionist project only
results in further inequality between men and women.
Montecinos, Ph.D in sociology, 2000 (Veronica “Feminists and Technocrats in the Democratization of Latin America: A
Prolegomenon” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 15, No. 1, Risks and Rights in the 21st Century: Papers from the
Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program Symposium, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Springer)
Feminist scholars object that the subject matter of economics is too narrowly centered on the
analysis of exchanges in competitive markets. Economics neglects, undercounts, and
undervalues economic activities (production and reproduction) performed in other contexts, most
notably the work of women in households where labor is unpaid. Economists unreflectively use
assumptions that correspond more closely to the experience of men. Their unit of analysis is not
groups, institutions, or society, but individuals. Humans are characterized as self-interested and
rational maximizers involved in exchanges with equally motivated and unconnected actors.
Models based on universalistic, gender-blind premises cannot recognize or account for the
clearly distinctive patterns of behavior that women exhibit as workers and consumers. Models
that conceive economic exchanges as separate from social controls, cultural values, power and
coercion cannot adequately explain the unequal rewards of men and women or the interaction
between families and markets. The biased distribution of resources within families escapes a
convincing analysis. The image of female altruism is unrealistic. Women's ability to participate
in markets and respond to price signals is constrained by their subordinate position in society and
the cultural pressures to assume greater responsibilities in the domestic sphere. The professional
socialization of economists prepares them to regard their work as a scientific enterprise, removed
from particularistic or political concerns, and detached from emotions or other unquantifiable
phenomena. As economics continues to be practiced within a single dominant paradigm,
conceptual and methodological dissention is suppressed or discouraged. Calls for a more
humanistic, interdisciplinary, ethically-minded, gender sensitive economics are disregarded,
particularly when these unorthodox discourses target the very (masculine) identity of the
discipline, its core values of objectivity and rigor and its place in the hierarchy of scientific
disciplines (McCloskey, 1993, 76; Nelson, 1996). Thus the systematic inclusion of gender as a
core dimension of economic life is resisted. The marginalization of "women's issues" not only
reinforces economists' preference for abstract theories, but leads to policies that are inadequate,
and too often overtly (even if not deliberately) biased against women's interests. Economics'
unfriendly stand towards gendered analysis is clear in the representation of women in the
profession. There are few women economists, and a woman in a position of professional prestige
is a rarity (Albelda, 1997). Whether a larger contingent of women economists could make a
difference in the practice of economics is not self-evident. Some expect that larger numbers of
women economists could enrich the research agenda with new questions and methodologies and
build a more effective lobby for feminist economic analysis through conferences, publication
outlets, and the like. Others caution that women are as likely as men to be pressured into
disciplinary conformity. Women economists may be as hostile as their male counterparts to new
concepts and methods. The assumption that men and women think differently places too little
emphasis on the power of professional socialization (Nelson, 1996, 87). Similar arguments have
been made regarding the socialization of female politicians. It cannot be expected that women in
positions of power will represent the interests of women above other considerations as it cannot
be argued that the interests of all women could be unambiguously reflected in a demarcated set
of preferences. In creasing the number of women in politics and in the professions is in itself
positive, but does not guarantee changes in the content of scholarship and institutional actions.
Nothing less than a new economics seems necessary to reverse the trends that keep women's
economic contribution invisible and feminist scholarship unable to gain greater theoretical and
policy influence. Feminist economics has made significant strides in the past decade (Albelda,
1997). The Inter national Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), formed in 1991, has
sponsored research projects, organized conferences, and launched publications, and is beginning
to receive greater attention in the profession. Many economists, especially Keynesian, Marxist,
and institutional economists, agree that reforms in the economics profession are overdue.
Progress has been already made with the production of gender sensitive statistics. The Asian
crisis of the late 1990s has weakened the notion that no alternative exists to neoliberalism
(Beneria, 1995, 1999). In Latin America, however, the dialogue between feminists and nonfeminist critics of mainstream economics is still incipient. In the 1950s and 1960s, during a
region-wide cycle of political democratization, efforts to reform orthodox economics flourished
in Latin America; there were ambitious attempts to produce alternative theoretical paradigms,
foster interdisciplinary cooperation, generate new avenues for teaching economics, and support
the implementation of progressive policies. No similar endeavor has emerged in the current
climate of democratization. Latin American economists are closely following the dominant
trends in the profession and the Americanization of economics education prevails even in
countries that previously hosted the most prominent niches of heterodox economic thinking.
Neostructuralism (Sunkel, 1993) promises a revival of Latin American economic heterodoxy, but
gender has not been included in this revisionist project (Sunkel, interview, 2000).
Economics have historically burdened women with more labor with
less benefit.
Wright, Professor of Human Rights, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1995
(Shelley "Women and the Global Economic Order: A Feminist Perspective." American
University International Law Review 10, no. 2. 861-887)
Women's position within international economic law is an extremely complex
story. Women are affected in different ways by the operation of economic systems depending
on their class, race, nationality, religion, language, disability, sexual preference and education!'
This last point, education, is one of the most crucial determinants of women's capacity to
operate effectively in economic terms.' Although the enormous diversity among women
makes the picture of their economic burdens and contributions more complicated,
the theoretical application of differences among women should not obscure the
harsh reality that women universally perform a disproportionate amount of the
world's work for a very small share of the world's resources. The Joint Consultative
Group on Policy (an umbrella organization coordinating policy studies for various United
Nations bodies) has found: Numerous studies provide unassailable evidence that the
stereotypical gender division of labor is a reality throughout the world. There are
only minor variations from place to place, mainly in the extent to which women have
responsibility for providing as well as preparing food and in the scale of remunerated activities
they undertake in addition to household tasks. Women almost universally work longer
hours than men. The addition of remunerated activities to women's workload leads to little or
no reduction in their domestic tasks.' The ideological construction of the world into public and
private spheres is also important. Western liberal theory has constructed the private
sphere of home, children and domesticity as the space where women live and work
for much of their time. This sphere tends to be hidden-invisible to the public world
of law, governments, States, international institutions and transnational
corporations-the sphere where men are said to live and work.4 Men typically have
access both to the private world and the public world of international law and legal
structures. But women have greater difficulty in penetrating the public sphere. In
addition, this Western division of the world into public and private spheres helps
maintain an international economic order which perpetuates social dislocation
and poverty both in First World countries and the Third World. The private world of the
North American housewife, as well as the public worlds of law, business and
government, rely on the labor of low-paid workers, female and male, on farms and
factories throughout the world.' One of the consequences of the United States/Canada
Free Trade Agreement and the subsequent North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
has been to increase the mobility of capital in North America, thereby making jobs
in the workforce extremely vulnerable to corporate decisions to close factories and
relocate businesses to regions or countries where costs (especially labor costs) are
lower.6 For Canada, this phenomenon has meant relocation of industries to the southern
regions of the United States. One of the fears NAFTA generated in the United States is that jobs
will continue to migrate south to Mexico.7 Although women, as a source of cheap labor, may
benefit from access to these relocated jobs, this work is highly exploitative and features
low wages, poor working conditions, suppression of trade unions, and little
opportunity for security or advancement.8 The Chiapas indigenous peoples' uprising of
January 1, 1994 contains some hidden lessons with regard to the way in which the international
economic order operates, particularly in relation to its "new" seemingly progressive
transformation toward free trade and a global market.9 The revolt appeared to be a response to
NAFTA's enactment in Mexico. There is no doubt that Chiapas is an extremely poor province of
Mexico where the indigenous peoples have suffered oppression, poverty, and discrimination for
centuries. One analyst has suggested that NAFTA poverty, and discrimination do not fully
explain what is happening in Mexico: "Mexico is at least two nations: the one present at the
NAFTA coming-out party in Washington, and the one that reared its head in San Cristobal de las
Casas on New Year's Day."'" Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had, in fact (in
conjunction with the World Bank), used Chiapas as a showcase for an anti-poverty campaign."
Women are often the most vulnerable to repressive state policies affecting the
economic viability of their regions. Regardless of external pressures, women
continue to have the major responsibility for caring for children and the elderly,
providing basic services and trying to maintain the cohesion of decimated families
and damaged communities. Wherever male heads of families are arrested or
killed, women must take over traditional male tasks as well . The most disturbing
feature about the Chiapas revolt and various analyses thereof, is that the new international
economic order is not only able to function very well within existing authoritarian
(including patriarchal) structures, but may, in fact, depend on the continuing
existence of these structures.' 2 The closure of traditional male "breadwinner"
jobs in developed economies also has a major impact on women. Women who have
relied on the traditional role of housewife and mother within a monogamous
marriage are vulnerable to poverty, marital violence and disruption as the
shutting down of traditional male jobs increases. Such women are forced to look
for work which is often low-paid. The alternative is social assistance. Women's
responsibilities for feeding, clothing and providing shelter and education for their
children again remains the same. Western women who engage in paid work generally
spend around thirty to forty hours per week on housework. This expenditure occurs regardless
of whether or not they have remained in a relationship with a man. Their paid work tends to
earn considerably less than men's work so that women are underpaid for one job and unpaid for
their second. It is estimated that even in a wealthy Western country, such as Canada, women
receive only thirty-five to forty percent of the total income paid to all male and female recipients.
Link – Environment
Their
sexist-naturist-warist
destruction.
Warren and Cady 1994
language
incites
environmental
(Karen J. and Duane L. “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections” Hypatia, Vol. 9, No. 2,
Feminism and Peace, pp. 4-20. Wiley.
Much of feminist critique regarding war and violence focuses on language, particularly the
symbolic connections between sexist-naturist-warist language, that is, language which
inferiorizes women and nonhuman nature by naturalizing women and feminizing
nature, and then gets used in discussions of war and nuclear issues. For example,
naturist language describes women as cows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches,
beavers, old bats, pussycats, cats, bird-brains, hare-brains. Sexist language
feminizes and sexualizes nature: Nature is raped, mastered, conquered,
controlled, mined. "Her" "secrets" are "penetrated," and "her" "womb" is put into
the service of the "man of science." "Virgin (not stud) timber" is felled, cut down.
"Fertile (not potent) soil" is tilled, and land that lies "fallow" (not cultivated) is
"barren," useless. Language which so feminizes nature and so naturalizes women
describes, reflects, and perpetuates the domination and inferiorizationo f both by
failing to see the extent to which the twin dominations of women and nature
(including animals) are, in fact, culturally (and not merely figuratively) connected (Adams
1988, 61).
Link – Foreign Policy
US foreign policy is driven by the drive to appear masculine – this
leads to war mongering and unnecessary military intervention.
Enloe 2004, PhD Berkeley, professor at Clark University (Cynthia, “The Curious Feminist:
Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire”, p. 122-124 DJ
Many observers have remarked on the peculiar American contemporary political culture
that equates military experience and/or military expertise with political leadership. It is
this cultural inclination that has made it very risky for any American public figure to
appear less “manly” than a uniformed senior military male officer. It is a culture—too
often unchallenged by ordinary¶ voters—that has given individuals with alleged military
knowledge a disproportionate advantage in foreign policy debates. Such a masculinized
and militarized culture pressures nervous civilian candidates into appearing “tough” on
military issues. The thought of not embracing a parade of militarized policy positions—
to launch preemptive war, increase the defense budget, make ATO the primary
institution for building a new European security, expand junior officer training
programs in high schools, ensure American male soldiers’ access to prostitutes overseas,
invest in destabilizing anti-missile technology, justify past crippling but politically
ineffectual economic sanctions and bombing raids against Iraq, accept the Pentagon’s
flawed policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue,” and finance a military driven antidrug policy—would leave most American public officials (women and men) feeling
uncomfortably vulnerable in the political culture that assigns high value to masculinized
toughness. The result: a political competition to appear “tough” has produced U.S.
foreign policies that severely limit the American capacity to play a useful role in creating
a more genuinely secure international community. That is, America’s conventional,
masculinized political culture makes it unlikely that Washington policy-makers will
either come to grips with a realistic analysis of potential global threats or act to
strengthen those multilateral institutions most effective in preventing and ending
conflicts. A feminist analysis turns the political spotlight on the conventional notion of
manliness as a major factor shaping U.S. foreign policy choices. It demonstrates that
popular gender presumptions are not just the stuff of sociology texts. Every official who
has tried not to appear “soft” knows this. For example, early in his administration, Bill
Clinton made known his abhorrence of land mines and his determination to ban them.
But by 1998, he had caved in to military pressure and stated, instead, that the United
States would not sign the widely endorsed international land mines treaty until the
Defense Department came up with an “alternative.” Feminist questioning also produces
a more realistic accounting of the consequences of “macho” policies. Despite slight
increases in the number of women in policy positions, U.S. militarized policies in the
post–Cold War era have served to strengthen the privileged positions of men in
decision-making, both in the United States and in other countries. For instance, the U.S.
government has promoted NATO as the central bastion of Western security, at least
when the United States can be sure of its position as the “first among equals” within
NATO. Although it is true that there are now women soldiers in all NATO governments’
armed forces (the Italians were the most recent to enlist women), NATO remains a
masculinized political organization. The alliance’s policies are hammered out by a
virtually all-male elite in which the roles of masculinity are silently accepted, when they
should be openly questioned. Thus, to the extent that the United States succeeds in
pressing NATO to wield more political influence than the European Parliament (where
women have won an increasing proportion of seats), not only American women but also
European women will be shunted to the wings of the political stage. Consider what
feminist analysis reveals about the consequences of militarizing anti-drug policy. In
2000 the American government’s billion-dollar-plus aid package to the Colombian
military promised, as its critics noted,2 to further intensify the civil war and human
rights abuses. But less discussed was the fact that this policy will serve to marginalize
women of all classes in Colombia’s political life. This—the obsession of America’s elected
officials and senior appointees with not appearing “soft” on drugs—militarizes drug
prevention efforts and, in so doing, disempowers women both in the United States and
in the drug producing countries. Women—both as grassroots urban activists in
American cities and as mobilizers of a broad, cross-class peace movement in Colombia—
have offered alternative analyses and solutions to the problems of drug addiction and
drug trade. However, their valuable ideas are being drowned out by the sounds of
helicopter engines and M16 rifles. This example illustrates a more general phenomenon.
When any policy approach is militarized, one of the first things that happens is that
women’s voices are silenced. We find that when the United States touts any military
institution as the best hope for stability, security, and development, the result is deeply
gendered: the politics of masculinity are made to seem “natural,” the male grasp on
political influence is tightened, and most women’s access to real political influence
shrinks dramatically.
Link – Generic – State
The state is a masculine construct that reproduces social hierarchies
through a “protection” of women – this objectifies women through
social control and violence.
Blanchard, Ph.D. U of S. CA., American Council of Learned Societies
Faculty Fellow, 2003
(Eric M. “Gender, International Relations, and the Development of Feminist Security
Theory” Signs, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 1289-1312. The University of Chicago Press)
Like Tickner, many IR feminists problematize the state and raise questions as to its
status as protector of women. Peterson argues that, in addition to its relegation of sexual
violence and its threat to the private domestic realm, the state is implicated in the ways
that women become “the objects of masculinist social control not only through direct
violence (murder, rape, battering, incest), but also through ideological constructs, such
as ‘women’s work’ and the cult of motherhood, that justify structural violence—
inadequate health care, sexual harassment, and sex-segregated wages, rights and
resources” (1992c, 46). However, while not denying the possibility of limited protection
offered by the state (Harrington 1992), FST contests the notion of protection—“the
exchange of obedience/subordination for (promises of) security”—as a justification for
state power (Peterson 1992c, 50). Peterson likens the state’s provision of security¶ for
women to a protection racket, “implicated in the reproduction of hierarchies and in the
structural violence against which they claim to offer protection” (1992c, 51). In addition,
Stiehm argues that the state typically denies women the opportunity to be societal
“protectors,” assigning¶ to them the role of “protected” despite the predatory threat often
posed by their ostensible guardians (1983a). Governmental attempts to achieve total
security versus an external threat can result in predictable oppression: “The problem is
that the potential victim is both more accessible¶ and compliant than the marauder.
Because the protector is embarrassed and frustrated by his failure to protect, he restricts
his protectee instead” (373). By circumscribing the possibilities of the female
deployment of legitimate force, the masculine state effectively denies the development
of what Stiehm calls a “defender” society, one “composed of citizens equally liable to
experience violence and equally responsible for exercising society’s violence” (367).
Link – Globalization
Globalization is a new form of hegemonic masculinity in which what
was once feminine is being colonized by masculinity – crowding
femininity out of the global economic order entirely.
Hooper, teaches gender and international relations at the University of Bristol, 2001
(Charlotte “Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics”
Columbia University Press)
In terms of the political economy, global economic restructuring – associated with the
introduction of new technologies, global capital mobility, the new international division
of labor, and new forms of regionalism – has set in motion a complex set of economic,
political, and social changes.5 Gender relations form an integral part of this
restructuring, not least through the casualization and feminization of the workforce, as
women’s participation in the cash economy, already increasing on a long-term basis, has
accelerated in recent years. This has been accompanied by the erosion of welfare
provision, the collapse of the family wage system, and a corresponding increase in
female-headed households in metropolitan countries. Overall, it appears that, although
women’s work is playing an increasingly central part in both productive and
reproductive spheres, and while some women have gained more autonomy from men in
their personal lives and a few have even benefited from expanded opportunities for
women at the professional level, this has been accompanied by a dramatic shift toward
the feminization of poverty (McDowell 1991; Runyan 1996). But the feminization of the
workforce has also killed the old compact between male workers, industrial capital, and
the institutions of welfare Keynesianism in developed countries; it has also in many
cases undermined men’s personal authority in the family and has reduced the value of
so-called masculine attributes in the labor market. Linda McDowell goes so far as to
argue that “gender is being used to divide women’s and men’s interests in the labor
market in such a way that both sexes – at least among the majority of the population,
are losing out” (1991, 401). While media attention has been focused on the loss of
manufacturing jobs in developed countries and the challenge to blue-collar
masculinities predicated on the male breadwinning role, there are other links between
global restructuring and changes in hegemonic masculinities. The gradual softening of
hegemonic masculinities in the West (noted above in chapter 2) coincided with the start
of global capitalist restructuring, which began after the collapse of the Bretton Woods
currency system in the early 1970s (McDowell 1991). Other indicators also support the
idea that this softening of hegemonic masculinities is linked to, or is even an integral
part of, the processes of globalization. First, the decline in conscription means that
military service is no longer a universal rite of passage for men, undermining the ties
between hegemonic masculinity and the military. Second, activities and qualities that
were previously defined as feminine or effeminate are being increasingly integrated into
hegemonic masculinity as the global economy is restructured. Men in the developed
world are now positioned as consumers, a traditionally feminine role (Mort 1988;
Barthel 1992).’ Anglo-American mainstream culture is becoming increasingly, if subtly,
homo-erotic, as exemplified by the narcissistic display of male bodies in advertising
imagery (Mort 1988; Simpson 1994; Bordo 1999); a new “soft boiled,” killing-but-caring
type of white hero has appeared in popular cinema (Pfeil 199;); and business and
managerial strategies are changing to emphasize the formerly feminine qualities of
flexibility, interpersonal skills, and team working (Connell 1993). While the feminization
of the workforce at first meant casualization at the lower end of the job market as a
strategy to reduce labor costs, as global restructuring has gathered pace, such
phenomena as delayering, outsourcing, and the casualization of employment practices
has started to hit professional and managerial staff. It is argued that this phase of the
feminization of working practices and managerial strategies, which might on the face of
it offer improved career prospects for professional women, is being accompanied by
redefinitions of hegemonic masculinity, so that professional men can stay ahead of the
employment game, albeit under less-secure conditions. For example, flexibility in job
descriptions and career paths is being reinterpreted as “masculine” risk taking and
entrepreneurialism; and computers have lost their feminine associations with keyboard
skills, now being marketed as macho power machines (Connell 1995, 146). The
techniques of alternative therapy forged in the 1960s counterculture, which were
originally used by antisexist men and feminist sympathizers to discover their so-called
feminine side, are now widely used in management-training seminars designed to
cultivate interpersonal skills and group work and in mythopoetic men's-movement
workshops that claim to develop the emotional “wild man" within (Connell 1995, 20611; Pfeil 1995). According to Donaldson, men's-movement activists criticize hegemonic
masculinity in an attempt to colonize women's jobs in an increasingly competitive male
job market (Donaldson 1993). Since there are different kinds of men's movements, some
of which are more sympathetic to feminists than others, Donaldson is probably correct
with respect to some of the more dubious groups.“ Such activities are not only
socializing white, middle-class men into feminized working practices but are crucially
redefining these practices as masculine. As Connell argues, “the larger consequence of
the popular forms of masculinity therapy is an adaptation of patriarchal structures
through the modernization of masculinity” (Connell 1995, 211). In the struggle to
transform hegemonic masculinity, there is a rivalry between New Men and a backlash
masculinity supported by disaffected blue-collar males who have lost both their job
security and their patriarchal positions in the family. In the United States these are the
“angry white males” who disciplined Bill Clinton, the “new style” president, forcing him
to reinvent himself as an “all American man's man” who would keep Hillary, “the wicked
witch of the West,” out of the public eye, at least until the latter part of his presidency
(Independent on Sunday February 12, 1995). There is also a¶ complex relationship of
rivalry, accommodation, and even synthesis between Western models of hegemonic
masculinity and those presented by the rising powers of Asia. Whereas in the past
countries such as Japan and China were coerced into adopting Western standards
through the treaty-port system, and incorporated them in part in order to qualify for
entry into the European-dominated international society of states (Suganimi 1984;
Gong 1984), now the prize is a stronger position within a more thoroughly globalized
capitalist production system, and perhaps also in international politics.9 In all these
various struggles between different styles or types of hegemonic and would-be
hegemonic masculinities, each variety is being modified by the interest group(s) it
represents, in response to the perceived success of the others. At stake in these struggles
is the pace and direction of global restructuring itself, and the composition of the
masculine elite within that process.
Link – Latin America
Latin American Feminism focused on political and socio-economic change
Carr, Ph.D Faculty Researcher, Center of Excellence/Center for Women, Economic Justice and Public
Policy, Grant for Collaborative Research, 90
(Irene Campos, Women's Voices Grow Stronger:
Politics and Feminism in Latin America, NWSA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer, 1990), pp. 450-463,
Accessed from JSTOR)CTL
Women's oppression in Latin America has its own distinctive characteristics which differ from
those in societies where economic development ¶ determines other forms of subordination. Although at
an incipient stage, ¶ the feminist movement South of the Rio Grande does not lack importance. Women in Latin America are
starting to become conscious of ¶ the reality of our oppression, and we are struggling to change it. These words reflect
the collective ideas and feelings of a number of ¶ Latin American women who gathered in 1980 in the Dominican Republic ¶ to discuss
community education (education popular).' Representing over ¶ a dozen feminist and women's grass-roots organizations from as many ¶ countries,
they met to share their experiences and to define common ¶ work strategies. They noted the
diversity of the perspectives
regarding ¶ the work they carried out with women in Latin America and summarized ¶ two general
feminist objectives: the liberation from the capitalist system ¶ that impedes the full realization of the
human potential and the destruction of the patriarchal system that dominates the relationship be- ¶
tween men and women in society and persists even after a change in ¶ the means of production.2 ¶
Feminism varies in its focus as it addresses the various needs of women ¶ around the world. In the United States and Europe, feminists direct ¶
their efforts primarily toward gender issues while in Latin
America ¶ feminism often reflects the harsh political and
socioeconomic reality ¶ pervasive in a class society. This, however, does not imply the existence ¶ of a single feminist
perspective in Latin America.
Economic growth in Latin America has been characterized by colonization and domination
that marks womens bodies to this day – capitalism is a system that exploits women’s labor
on a daily basis.
Castano, Senior Human Rights at the Universidad, diploma in Public Service at the University
of Antioquia, 2010 (Adriana “Latin America: the possibilities of radical, feminist and
antimilitarist politics against patriarchy and capitalism” translation by Nayua Abdelkefi.
Published in The Broken Rifle, No. 87 http://www.wri-irg.org/es/node/11797)
The journey of women in the depths of left-wing political movements and mixed social
organisations has had to endure a long struggle. The story of the presence of women with ideas
for the transformation of the patriarchal culture, has for a long time been subjected to the
achievement of “more wide and important ideals”, and arguments that these “particular” claims
should wait, otherwise it would imply the division of the struggle that was forging towards
“social and political revolution” which required the unity of the popular movement. Those
proposals and revolutions have been and are “Revolutions of men that believe that everything
can be revolutionised except the life of women. They are the revolutions in which the
revolutionaries annul and create constitutions, but they continue subduing half of humanity,
women, just as feminist, anarchist, Chilean women workers said at the beginning of the 20th
century”.1 During the first decade of the 21st century, this argument hasn’t disappeared from
social organisations’ political practice nor from the antimilitarist organisations and associations,
with libertarian proposals of a mixed nature. It seems that being feminist and antimilitarist
involves an automatic division. What sustains this argument? In general is equality quite a
debatable liberal principle. Are men and women the same? Are antimilitarist women and men
exempt from the patriarchal culture? Does the fact of belonging to an association or organisation
that claims to be antimilitarist make men and women equal? Latin America has in the past had
proposals for antimilitarist coordination. Taking these questions as a starting point, it is
necessary that any proposal for a network, a meeting, or a collective project set up in Latin
America recognises that no emancipation project is possible if it doesn’t include the total
liberation of half of humanity: women. This single step would allow a starting point at an
important place, within a struggle which doesn’t just include this matter, but treats it as one of
the basic consensuses for political action. In that antimilitarist struggle, not only must we
question the cost of the military, and the whole of the war industry and war itself, but also the
values that support it. However, opposition to patriarchal values hasn’t been strong. Men see
themselves obliged or seduced by war as a way of life and/or an affirmation of masculinity, and
it is this affirmation of masculinity which creates the extension and justification of the
discrimination, subordination and violence suffered by women, both during peacetime and
during war. Broadening our struggle as feminists and antimilitarists involves disclosing the
social and cultural phenomena which may seem normal aspects of our societies, “hidden” but
fully validated and which affect women in particular (girls, young women and adults):
discrimination, exclusion, sexual violence, forced motherhood, sexual exploitation, pornography,
human trafficking, domestication, emotional relationships and feminine sexuality, at the service
of and under the control of men who hold power based on the use of force, violence and
intimidation. At the same time it is necessary to point out that the capitalist system and the
categorisation of social classes is relevant for our history of Latin America and this awareness is
necessary for the struggle for emancipation. Yet the radical struggle against capitalism is
repeatedly branded as anachronistic whilst social movements and institutions prioritise public
policies as a field in which to carry out claims and not transformations and to include historically
marginalised groups. The anti-capitalist struggle must show that capitalism deeply embodies the
values of patriarchy, that it works and feeds upon women’s unpaid housework, that it wreaks
havoc in women’s lives when it exploits their bodies in the advertising and pornography
industries, and in human trade. It must recognise that the history of Latin America is marked by
the colonisation which isn’t yet over and where the values of domination and exclusion that mark
the bodies and lives of women still exist. We must therefore ask ourselves how we can
counteract the dominant discourse, which leads us to ignore our history of struggle, and to feel
that the pragmatic world is the way forward, that ideologies don’t exist, that our struggle only
exists in the economic field and that opposition is the same whether against a left-wing or a
right-wing government and that both types of government are the same thing, because real
socialism was a failure. Building our dreams and radicalising an anti-capitalist struggle implies
challenging the dominant, colonising, racist culture and not postponing transformations,
especially those in which the State isn’t required to mediate. Racism, sexism, male chauvinism,
lesbophobia, homophobia and the dominant “common sense” are part of our everyday
communities and this is what must be revolutionised. People take on the struggle for their
territory, they defend their history and their way of living in harmony with natural resources,
opposing the expropriation and depredation of those resources. However, in order to build the
world which we dream of, free of wars and violence, we must observe the various forms of
oppression and exploitation and how these affect not only the bodies of warriors, but also the
bodies of millions of exploited women in textile factories, in the pornography industry and in
human trade, in obsequious domestication and in the experience of subordination and suffering
as part of emotional-sexual relations. One of the main challenges is to put aside the analysis
where we put to one side the struggle of women, Native Americans and children. Dividing up the
struggle and dividing up the oppressed in order to try to find them a place in states and within
official human rights categories, all this does is recycle the system. Destroying the domination
system implies recognising the historic domination of our people marked by the rootlessness and
dispossession of colonisation, which imposed on our America a racist dominance, the
legalisation of the plundering of natural resources and the annihilation of natives, imposing on us
a single vision of the world. At the same time it implies recognising that this imperial company
led to forced mixing of races in many areas based on sexual violence carried out on black and
Native American women. Colonialism didn’t end with independence, it continues and is recycled
in capitalist globalisation which favours militarism as the method to expropriate territories and
create their energy reservoirs, to guarantee control over natural resources and food, to maintain
private property and to establish with more strength their hegemony discourse in all cultures: the
defence of the family, the control over sexuality, domestication, servility and fear. This
disastrous system is incompatible with our aspirations as antimilitarists and feminists. As Maria
Mies said: Starting by recognising that patriarchy and accumulation at a global scale constitute
the structural and ideological framework within which women’s reality must be understood, the
feminist movement worldwide must challenge this referential framework, together with a sexual
framework and the international division of work, to which they are linked. (Mies, 1986 : 3)
Radicalising our struggle is inevitable as long as this exploitation and domination system’s wish
to take over all common goods is a radical one, annihilating diversity on its way. In our
emancipation struggle we must make our analyses more complex and maintain our criticism of
the lack of a development model or the lack of implementation of public policies. “Endless wars,
massacres, whole populations escaping their land and becoming refugees: these are not only the
consequences of a dramatic impoverishment which intensifies the contrast caused by ethnic,
political or religious differences, but they are also the required complement for the privatisation
process and the more and more deadly attempt to create a world where nothing escapes the logic
of profit, to expropriate populations which, until recently, could still use some land or natural
resources (forests, rivers), which nowadays have been appropriated by multinational
companies”2. The memory of our struggle, of our journey started many years ago, leads us to
radicalise our political project: revolutionary politics should give way to emancipative and
deeply revolutionary politics, where self-censorship is overcome, we integrate our will for
transformation, de-homogenise political action, decolonise our bodies and minds, live freedom,
free our sexuality, recognise the multiple oppressions against us and mock the power that
oppresses us. The struggle for our emancipation is the struggle forthe abolition of capitalism and
patriarchy from our everyday activities, from our values and from our individual and collective
ethical constructs. Our major challenge is to become more like the world we dream of. The
cultural battle that we must undertake is not only against the state, nor just against the powerful,
it is also against ourselves.
Link – Liberalism
Liberal economic systems harm women economically and make
masculinity the norm, thereby making the feminine the other.
Tickner feminist IR theorist 2001
(J. Ann. “Gendering World Politics : Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era” Tickner is a distinguished scholar in
residence at the School of International Services, American University, formerly Professor of International Relations at the
University of Southern California)
While IPE feminists have been centrally engaged with the debate about the pros and cons of
economic globalization, most of them have been quite critical of the assumptions and
prescriptions of liberalism. Feminist scholars more generally tend to be skeptical of celebrations
of beginnings and endings and historical tuming points: they find evidence to suggest that times
of “progress” are often regressive for women. For example, the “triumph” of capitalism in the
former Fastem bloc was accompanied by a sharp decline in both the economic status of women
and their level of political participation. Skeptical of claims about a “new world order," feminist
perspectives on economic globalization are unanimous in pointing to continuities in various
fomis of patriarchy that have had detrimental effects on women's economic security throughout
much of history. Given the increase in global inequality, the feminimtion of poverty, and the
discriminations that women often face when they participate in the global market, some
feminist scholarship is questioning the triumphalist story of a borderless world that is being ¶
told by supporters of economic globalization. It is today's global financiers and corporate
executives, those whom Cox has defined as the transnational managerial class—most of whom
are men—who seem most comfortably to fit definitions of global citizenship. Most feminists also
reject theoretical projects that ofer universal, essentialist, or reductionist explanations of
multifaceted and complex social relations” Many claim that liberalism’s metanarratives about
the triumph of rationality and the end of history have not moved us beyond ideology; rather, ¶
they are a disguise for a form of knowledge that tells only a partial story-a story that often does
not include the experiences of many women (and marginalized people more generally) whose
identification with a marketized version of global citizenship is minimal. Certain feminists also
claim that values espoused by liberalism of privilege – such as individual freedom, the
importance of property rights, and universalism – emphasize values associates with a Western
form of hegemonic masculinity. These values are then reproduced in economic models that tend
to conflate this masculine viewpoint with a general “human” standpoint thereby confining the
feminine to the structural position of the “other”; such thinking renders the masculine as norm
and the feminine as difference. For example, when proponents of economic globalization speak
of economic actors and global citizens, they are using terms that come out of a historical
tradition of Western political and economic thought and practice based on experiences more
typical of men than women. Denied the right to vote, in all societies, until the twentieth century,
women are still seeking full citizenship in many parts of the world. Terms such as these focus
our attention on the public world of the market and the state, historically inhabited by men,
while rendering the private world of women virtually invisible. Fulmyama’s prediction of a
“common marketization" of international relations based on economic calculation comes out of
this worldview that portrays individuals solely as economic actors and hides the complex social¶
relations, including clan and gender relations, within which individuals’ lives are embedded. The
market model, favored by liberals, is based on the instrumentally rational behavior of economic
actors whose self-interested behavior in the marketplace leads to an aggregate increase in
wealth. Households and women’s labor more generally remain invisible in economic analyses
that privilege productive labor over reproductive labor.” This representation of “homo
economicus” is detached from the behavior of real people in the material world; it is gendered
masculine because it extrapolates from roles and behaviors historically associated with Westem
(elite) men. However, it has been used by liberal economists to represent the behavior of
humanity as a whole. It also tends to mask power relationships that structure differential
rewards to different individuals, based on class and race as well as gender. Top-down visions of
universality hide the extent to which the globalization of capital and finance is built on divisions,
often gendered and racialized, both within and between societies. Immanuel Wallerstein has
claimed that racism and sexism are mechanisms of exclusion whereby universalist values in
practice become applicable only to an in-group that receives a disproportionate share of the
system's rewards.“ Also challenging the universality of globalization, Kimberly Chang and L H.
M. Ling see two global processes taking place at once; the first, the liberal intemationalism or
globalization from above, described by liberals; the second, which is less visible, a globalization
that is sexualized, racialized, and class-based.“ This form of globalization from below refers to
the movement of “nonestablished” labor—low-skilled and low-waged menial service provided by
migrant workers, many of whom are female, particularly in the domestic-service and lightindustry sectors Women and girls are migrating as factory, domestic, and sex workers, often
moving from poor states to richer ones. This migration of female workers is often the result of
the need to augment family incomes that have been declining due to the effects of structural
adjustment. Labor migration is increasingly female and racialized; often it is coerced, with
children being bought from impoverished parents; when women, particularly minority women,
move across boundaries, they find themselves beyond the protection of the state. Absent from
conventional accounts of intemational relations, these issues challenge mainstream
understanding of space and territory; the interaction of local and global becomes crucial for
understanding the gendering effects of the global economy. “Feminist discomforts with
liberalism from above parallel those of other critical perspectives that also see deeper structures
of inequality that cannot be solved by liberal faith in generating wealth through investment and
trade and assuming it will “trickle-down” to the less well-off. Complementing critical theory's
analysis, feminists look to deeper structures, such as the gendered division of labor, to
understand women's economic insecurities Since so many women's lives have been affected by
changing labor markets, many feminists have focused their analysis of economic globalization
on labor issues.
Link – Mexico
Patriarchy has endured for centuries in Mexico - the social and political institutions of
Mexico are all in the hands of patriarchs – manifests in violence against women.
Panther, bachelor of arts in psychology, Oklahoma state university, 2007 (Natalie “VIOLENCE
AGAINST WOMEN AND FEMICIDE IN MEXICO: THE CASE OF CIUDAD JUÁREZ”
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/umi-okstate-2333.pdf)
When the Spanish settled Central and South America during the sixteenth century, they brought with
them and recreated all aspects of Spanish society, including how they viewed women. Like most imperial
nations during the time of the Conquest, Spain was a patriarchal society, one in which men systematically
dominated women. In such a society, men viewed women as one or all of the following: functioning as
producers of children; carrying family honor in their sexuality; maintaining tasks expected of housewives;
adhering to the expected characteristics (passive, compliant, sensitive, emotional, soft, and gentle); and
remaining economically dependent.23 Male domination of women has endured for centuries in Latin
America, and Mexico is no exception. One definition of patriarchy is a form of social organization in
which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe.24 Professor of Women’s History at
Temple University, Gerda Lerner, provides a more useful definition. She defines patriarchy as the
“manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the
extension of male dominance over women in society in general.”25 Implicit in this definition is the
concept that men possess power in all important institutions of society and that women are denied access
to that power.26 Patriarchal supremacy exists within political organizations. The male domination of
politics affects the rights of women by limiting their freedom and autonomy. The social and political
institutions are in the hands of the patriarchs. In a patriarchal society, politics and society are masculine—
the government, religious institutions, clubs, and mafias. When women are denied access to political
power, they are denied basic human rights. It is in this sense that political organizations in a patriarchal
society contribute to violence against women. The societal belief that women are inferior promotes
violence against women just because they are women. Some men use this patriarchal right to invade the
bodies of women to commit femicide.27 The practice of exterminating women has the purpose of
controlling women and dominating them to maintain the patriarchal system.28
In Mexico, there is an established tolerance of violence against women. Such behavior begins within the
family. Most Mexican girls from poor families become mothers and housewives. Although they are
exposed to some education, the majority of the family budget for education goes for males. Parents
believe that males need schooling because they will become the members of society who work. Parents
also expect girls to clean up after their brothers. In some families, brothers beat their sisters when they do
not complete their chores correctly. Many girls in this situation marry men similar to their brothers and
fathers. Typically, Mexican men adhere to a macho attitude, believing that women should not get an
education or work outside the home, but rather they should stay home to cook and clean.29 Feminist
scholars Heather Fowler Salamini and Mary Kay Vaughan have examined the reasons to explain
women’s subordination in households and society in Mexico. They have found that the patriarchal values
“persist despite capitalist development.”30 The emergence of capitalism in Mexico has led to the
exploitation of female laborers who are willing to work for low wages. According to Salamini and
Vaughan, these women have become increasingly engaged in income-producing activities to ensure the
survival of their peasant families.31 Machismo is a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness or a strong
or exaggerated sense of power and the right to dominate. Machismo has been the norm for centuries in
Mexico. For some Mexican men, to be macho means to be an honorable man. For others, the word macho
connotes a man who provides for his family. Although there are many “mixed and changing sentiments
regarding the terms macho and machismo,” these terms still invoke a pejorative connotation, typically
associated with sexism and male dominance. Today, it is becoming more common for a young married
man in Mexico to define himself as non-macho, because he helps his wife around the house and does not
beat her. Although wife beating remains a pervasive problem throughout Mexico, “violent attacks on
male children are inflicted with even greater regularity.”33 It is typical for abused male children to
become abusive when they get older, thus perpetuating a cycle of domestic violence. Mexico City’s
Centro de Atención a la Violencia Intrafamiliar (CAVI) is an extension of the municipal police and
designed to investigate and aid in cases of domestic violence. Husbands accused of beating their wives
are encouraged to see a psychologist one night a week for five months. The husband is not forced to
attend the meetings, but does so by his own volition. Mexican writer Matthew Gutmann attended these
meetings as part of his research for his book The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City. He
reveals that the men who attended were ashamed of the
abuse they inflicted on their partners. Many of the men, after attending several sessions, reportedly
espoused alternative means of dealing with their anger toward their wife. Nevertheless, Gutmann believes
that domestic violence in Mexico increased during the 1990s. He attributes this increase to the fact that
many men find it difficult to deal with women’s nascent independence, and some men blame machismo
for their violence and do not take responsibility for their actions.34 Machismo has been the norm for
centuries in Mexico. For example, most police officers are men. When women file complaints that their
husbands have beaten or raped them, male police officers often tell the victims that the matter is between
a husband and wife and refuse to get involved. This was the experience for Rosa María Castillo, a
woman in Mexico City who went to the police after her husband abused her. After the police refused to
assist her, she sought assistance from the Women’s Program for Service, Development, and Peace. This
organization teaches women their legal rights and has helped combat the discriminatory attitude of the
police. The organization offers paralegal training so that women can know and demand their legal rights
in cases of domestic physical abuse.35 Rosa María received paralegal training and not only improved her
own situation, but has also helped and informed other abused Mexican women.36 Although women’s
rights organization such as the Women’s Program for Service, Development, and Peace have made some
progress, Mexico remains a country with ingrained negative attitudes toward women. For example, sexual
harassment in the workplace is common. Women’s rights groups have found that 95 percent of women in
Mexico City have experienced sexual harassment at work. Moreover, according to journalist Patrick
Oster, although women have had the right to vote since 1953, most did not exercise that right during the
1980s because they were unaware that it existed. Furthermore, even though adultery is against the law for
both men and women, complaints by wives against a husband who cheats are not taken seriously by
police. Police, however, take husbands’ complaints very seriously.37 Political institutions in Mexico are
patriarchal and continue to suppress women’s rights. This oppression is evident in legislation pertaining
to violence against women. A woman in Mexico cannot file domestic abuse charges if her injuries take
less than fifteen days to heal. The courts rarely interfere in domestic violence cases.38 Mexican law
punishes rape with sentences of three to twelve years in prison and a fine of fifty to one hundred times the
attacker’s annual salary. If the victim is twelve years of age or older and a proven prostitute there is no
legal sanction against the perpetrator because authorities consider the victim an “active participant.” In
August 2002, a caveat was added to legislation pertaining to rape that decreased the sentence for rape to
one to six years if the victim led the attacker on and then refused to have sex. Mexican authorities do not
consider the act as rape if penetration occurs with anything other than a penis.39 According to Amnesty
International, a national survey on the dynamic of relations in the home found that in 2003, 49 percent of
women over fifteen years of age living with a partner or spouse experienced some type of emotional,
economic, physical, or sexual violence. Another study conducted in 2003, the National Survey of
Violence against Women, showed that one in five women using medical services in Mexico suffered from
domestic violence. These numbers continue to escalate, despite government projects and initiatives to
stop the violence.40 Legislation is not the only indication of the suppression of women’s rights in
Mexico. Impunity, or the exemption from punishment, for “all forms of violence against women remains
widespread in many parts of Mexico.”41 A number of factors contribute to impunity. The Mexican
Constitution states that the state governments are responsible for preventing and punishing violence
against women. However, most of the state governments fail to punish the majority of cases involving
crimes against women. Although the federal government occasionally recognizes this breakdown,
officials claim their powers are limited, even though the Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the federal
government may enforce international human rights codes at the state level. Therefore, the federal
government’s assertion that its powers are limited is untrue.42 Another factor contributing to impunity is
the federal government’s refusal to review state laws and ensure their application. Legislation protecting
women from discrimination, abuse, and sexual violence is limited in many states and the Federal District.
The federal government does not review state legislation pertaining to human rights. In the instances
where legislation does protect women, it does not ensure the law’s application. For example, in 2005, the
Supreme Court overturned a 1994 decision that marital rape was an undue exercise of marital rights, but
not a criminal offense. In 2005, marital rape became a criminal offense, but the federal government does
not ensure that state and local officials enforce this law. The number of cases involving crimes against
women that lead to prosecution and, eventually, conviction is extremely small.43
Link – Realism
Realism is a patriarchal form of politics which excludes feminimity.
Blanchard, Ph.D. U of S. CA., American Council of Learned Societies Faculty
Fellow, 2003 (Eric M. “Gender, International Relations, and the Development of
Feminist Security Theory” Signs, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 1289-1312. The University of
Chicago Press)
Feminists in IR argue that realism, dominated by elite, white, male practitioners, is a
patriarchal discourse that renders women invisible from the high politics of IR even as it
depends on omen’s subjugation as a “‘domesticated’ figure whose ‘feminine’ sensibilities
are both at odds with and inconsequential to the harsh ‘realities’ of the public world of
men and states” (Runyan and Peterson 1991, 68–69). Feminists in IR explain the
exclusion of women from foreign policy decision making by pointing to the “extent to
which international politics is such a thoroughly masculinized sphere of activity that
women’s voices are considered inauthentic” (Tickner 1992, 4). Women’s traditional
exclusion from the military and continuing lack of access to political power at times
presents women with a “catch-22” situation. For example, the importance of a
candidate’s military service as a qualification for government office in U.S. political
campaigns puts women, who cannot appeal to this experience, at a disadvantage in
obtaining the elite status of national office and thus the ability to affect defense and
security policies (Tobias 1990; cf. Elshtain 2000, 445). However, the FST critique is not
limited to strategies for getting more women access to corridors of power; feminists also
direct our attention to the gendered structure of IR theory. As the title of a classic IR text
indicates, the study of international politics has been concerned first and foremost with
Man, the State, and War (Waltz 1959). In this book, neorealist Kenneth Waltz turns to
the canons of political philosophy for an explanation of the causes of war by asking
whether wars are caused by human nature, by the internal structure of states, or by the
international system. An important component of the study of IR is a self-positioning in
the tradition of Western political theory—tracing an intellectual lineage to Machiavelli
and Hobbes—particularly as it concerns the state. Feminist analysis of this pedigree
shows that the feminine has long served as a symbolic threat to militarized Western
conceptualizations of political community, from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth
century; Aeschylus’s Furies and Machiavelli’s Fortuna are but two examples (Harstock
1983). Rebecca Grant (1991) argues that a gender bias in IR, transmitted
unproblematically from Western political thought to the study of IR, results in the
question of gender being taken as irrelevant. For Grant, IR’s interpretation of Hobbes
allows “no room for the question of how gender relations affect the transition out of the
brutish state of nature and into society,” while Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous stag
hunt, often invoked as a parable of the problems of security, ignores the familial
relations that control the hunter’s defection from the hunting circle (10–15). Taking men
as the sole political actors and citizens, the political theory borrowed by IR postulates a
domestic/international divide premised on the private/public distinction that relegates
women to a space outside politics (9). Jean Bethke Elshtain’s rich blend of political
theory, personal narrative, and history, Women and War ([1987] 1995), serves as a
rejoinder to the discipline’s philosophical conceit and issues a key challenge to the
domestic/ international divide that Grant identifies. In a sweeping survey of the
discourse of war from the Greeks onward, Elshtain details women’s complex
relationships to the body politic, and thus to war, as they emerge from the narratives
(war stories) that are constitutive of war. Elshtain focuses on the ways in which war’s
“productive destructiveness” inscribes and reinscribes men’s and women’s identities
and thus the boundaries of community: “War creates the people. War produces power,
individual and collective” (166–67). Reacting to what she sees as the onset of scientism
and hyperrationality in academic IR, Elshtain critiques the retreat into abstraction that
the quest for scientific certainty produced in “professionalized” war discourse and
attempts to revive the bond between politics and morality broken by Machiavelli. By
reifying state behavior, Elshtain argues, the realist narrative ignores human agency and
identity: “No children are ever born, and nobody ever dies, in this constructed world.
There are states, and they are what is” (91).4
Securitization is a masculine construction that posits national
security as the only thing that matters –this ignores the structural
violence that the security paradigm inflicts upon women.
Tickner, feminist IR theorist,1997
(J. Ann. “You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements between Feminists and IR
Theorists” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4. Tickner is a distinguished scholar in
residence at the School of International Services, American University, formerly Professor of
International Relations at the University of Southern California)
Scholars in the realist paradigm, within which much of the analysis of security has taken place,
define security in political/military terms, as the protection of the boundaries and
integrity of the state and its values against the dangers of a hostile international
environment, Martin Wight's "realm of necessity" (Wolfers, 1962). In their search for more
parsimonious explanations, neorealists emphasize the anarchical structure of the
system rather than domestic factors as being the primary determinant of states'
insecurities. States are postulated as unitary actors whose internal characteristics,
beyond an assessment of their relative capabilities, are not seen as necessary for
understanding their vulnerabilities or security-enhancing behavior (Waltz, 1979).
States' efforts to increase their power or engage in balance- of-power activities are explained as
attempts to improve their security. In the United States, security studies, defined largely in
terms of the bipolar nuclear confrontation between the United States and the former Soviet
Union, became an important subfield within the discipline. For security specialists, this
definition of security remains in place in the post-Cold War era. Security specialists believe that
military power remains a central element of international politics and that the traditional
agenda of security studies is, therefore, expanding rather than shrinking (Walt, 1991:222). In the
1980s, a trend toward broadening the definition of security emerged as peace researchers, those
concerned with poverty in the South, environmentalists, and certain European policy makers
began to define security in economic and environmental as well as political/military terms
(Independent Commission, 1982; Ullman, 1983; Mathews, 1989; Buzan, 1991). While this trend
continues to gain strength after the end of the Cold War, the issue remains controversial.30 It is,
however, a definition, more compatible with most contemporary feminist scholarship that also
finds traditional definitions of security too narrow for what they consider to be the security
issues of the post-Cold War world. There are, however, important differences between the new
security literature and feminist perspectives since very little of the new security literature has
paid attention to women or gender. Many IR feminists define security broadly in
multidimensional and multilevel terms-as the diminution of all forms of violence,
including physical, structural, and ecological (Tickner, 1992; Peterson and Runyan,
1993). Since women are marginal to the power structures of most states, and since
feminist perspectives on security take women's security as their central concern,
most of these definitions start with the individual or community rather than the
state or the international system. According to Christine Sylvester (1 994b), security is
elusive and partial and involves struggle and contention; it is a process rather than
an ideal in which women must act as agents in the provision of their own security.
Speaking from the margins, feminists are sensitive to the various ways in which
social hierarchies manifest themselves across societies and history. Striving for
security involves exposing these different social hierarchies, understanding how
they construct and are constructed by the international order, and working to
denaturalize and dismantle them. These feminist definitions of security grow out of
the centrality of social relations, particularly gender relations, for feminist theorizing.
Coming out of different literatures and working with definitions based on different ontologies as
well as different normative goals, feminist writings on security open themselves up to criticism
that their work does not fall within the subject matter of international relations. Feminists
would respond by asserting that structural inequalities, which are central contributors
to the insecurity of individuals, are built into the historical legacy of the modern
state and the international system of which it is a part. Calling into question realist
boundaries between anarchy and danger on the outside and order and security on the inside,
feminists believe that state-centric or structural analyses miss the interrelation of
insecurity across levels of analysis. Since "women's space" inside households has
also been beyond the reach of law in most states, feminists are often quite suspicious of
boundaries that mark states as security providers. They would argue that Martin Wight's
political space, within which theorizing the good life is possible, requires radical
restructuring before it can be regarded as offering a safe space for women.31 I shall
now outline some of the evidence feminists draw on when defining the kinds of personal and
structural insecurities they believe must be overcome in order to create a more secure world.
Questioning the role of states as adequate security providers leads feminists to analyze power
and military capabilities differently from conventional international relations scholars . Rather
than seeing military capability as an assurance against outside threats to the state,
militaries frequently are seen as antithetical to individuals', particularly women's,
security-as winners in the competition for resources for social safety nets on
which women depend disproportionately to men, as definers of an ideal type of
militarized citizenship, usually denied to women (Tobias, 1990), or as legitimators of
a kind of social order that can sometimes even valorize state violence . Consequently,
when analyzing political/military dimensions of security, feminists tend to focus on the
consequences of what happens during wars rather than on their causes (Pettman, 1996:87-106).
They draw on evidence to emphasize the negative impact of contemporary military conflicts on
civilian populations. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report, there has
been a sharp increase in the proportion of civilian casualties of war -from about 10
percent at the beginning of the century to 90 percent today. While the Report does not break
down these casualties by sex, it claims that this makes women among the worst sufferers
even though they constitute only 2 percent of the world's regular army personnel
(United Nations, 1995:45). As mothers, family providers, and care-givers, women are
particularly penalized by economic sanctions associated with military conflict, such
as the UN boycott put in place against Iraq after the Gulf War . Women and children (about
18 million at the end of 1993) constitute about 80 percent of the total refugee
population, a population whose numbers increased from 3 million to 27 million between 1970
and 1994, mainly due to military conflict (United Nations, 1995: 14).32 Feminists also draw
attention to issues of rape in war; as illustrated by the Bosnian case, rape is not just an
accident of war but is, or can be, a systematic military strategy. Cynthia Enloe
(1993:119) has described social structures in place around most army bases where women are
often kidnapped and sold into prostitution. For feminists writing about security, economic
dimensions and issues of structural violence have been as important as issues of military
conflict.33 According to the Human Development Report, in no country are women doing
as well as men. While figures vary from state to state, on an average, women earn three
quarters of men's earnings. Of the 1.3 billion people estimated to be in poverty
today, 70 percent are women: the number of rural women living in absolute poverty rose by
nearly 50 percent over the past two decades (United Nations, 1995:36). Women receive a
disproportionately small share of credit from formal banking institutions. For
example, in Latin America, women constitute only 7-1 1 percent of the beneficiaries
of credit programs; while women in Africa contribute up to 80 percent of total food
production, they receive less than 10 percent of the credit to small farmers and 1 percent of total
credit to agriculture (United Nations, 1995:4, 39). While women actually work more
hours than men in almost all societies, their work is underremunerated and
undervalued because much of it takes place outside the market economy, in
households or subsistence sectors. Whether women are gatherers of fuel and
firewood or mothers of sick children, their lives are severely impacted by resource
shortages and environmental pollution. These are some of the issues with which
feminists writing about security, defined in both political/military and economic terms, are
concerned. They are not, however, issues considered relevant to conventional statecentric security concerns. Challenging both the traditional notion of the state as the
framework within which security should be defined and analyzed, and the conventional
boundaries between security inside and anarchy outside the state, feminists embed their
analyses in a system of relations that cross these boundaries. Challenging the notion of discrete
levels of analysis, they argue that inequalities between women and men, inequalities
that contribute to all forms of insecurity, can only be understood and explained
within the framework of a system shaped by patriarchal structures that extend
from the household to the global economy. I shall now elaborate on some of the ways
feminists explain these persistent inequalities.
Link – Security
Gendered security discourse eliminates the feminine from the
political sphere
Blanchard, Ph.D. U of S. CA., American Council of Learned Societies Faculty
Fellow, 2003 (Eric M. “Gender, International Relations, and the Development of
Feminist Security Theory” Signs, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 1289-1312. The University of
Chicago Press)
Sensitive to the importance of language and narrative in matters of security, Elshtain
critiques what she calls the “strategic voice,” an authoritative discourse that is “cool,
objective, scientific, and overwhelmingly male” ([1987] 1995, 245). According to
Elshtain, this realm of expert language, with its talk of “peacekeeping” missiles and
village “pacification,” separates ordinary citizens from civic life. Drawing on fieldwork
initiated at a summer program for nuclear strategists during the last decade of the cold
war, Carol Cohn’s (1987) analysis of the “technostrategic” discourse of nuclear defense
intellectuals casts a feminist eye on the thinking that shapes the practices of national
security. Using an ethnographic, participant-observer strategy, Cohn shows how the
planners’ use of gendered euphemisms, exemplified by the talk of nuclear virginity and
the association of disarmament with emasculation, contributed to a willful, discursive
denial of the strategists’ accountability to “reality”—the potential cost of strategic
decisions in terms of human life (1987, 1990). While denial of the horrors of nuclear war
may be an occupational hazard of nuclear planning, to achieve success (in terms of
professional standing and collegial status) participants must legitimate their positions
by assuming the masculine—that is, tough, rational, logical— position in the gendered
security discourse. The masculine position is also available to (and must be taken by)
women who want to be taken seriously, while they limit their “feminine” contributions
for the sake of legitimacy (1993, 238). Cohn thus shows how both men and women are
implicated in, constituted through, and positioned by gendered security¶ discourse.
Realizing that merely adding women to the profession will not eliminate the degradation
of “feminine” ideas, Cohn suggests that the task ahead is a revaluation of gender
discourse (1993). Elshtain’s and Cohn’s recognition of the importance of gendered
language is an example of the key FST theme of the everyday politics of security. With
skillfully crafted vignettes, Cynthia Enloe’s Bananas, Beaches, and Bases (1989)
amplifies this theme, providing an important blueprint for FST and its revisioning of
security. By finding gender in national security issues both traditional (military bases
and diplomacy) and innovatively ordinary (sex tourism and women’s peace
movements), Enloe contests the restriction of security to “high politics” alone. As
Marysia Zalewski (1994) has noted, Enloe’s ontological project locates women’s ordinary
lives in the international political continuum, while her epistemological curiosity leads
her to pose questions such as “where are the women?” that challenge the taken-forgranted irrelevance of women in world affairs. By attending to the experiences of
prostitutes, flight attendants, chambermaids, and diplomatic wives, Enloe demonstrates
the ordinary workings of gendered power as it supports the practices that constitute
international relations. For example, Enloe shows that military bases in foreign
countries can lose their “protective cover” in the communities they are installed in if
relations with the native population sour. This means that states pay more attention to
base women, brothels, and the dating habits of their soldiers than is publicly
understood. Likewise, diplomats and the foreign service rely on the hospitality of the
domestic space, and their wives’ entertaining talents, to create the trust and confidence
necessary for the international relations of negotiation. In one study, building on Enloe’s
work, Katharine Moon (1997) details how the United States and South Korea became
“partners in prostitution” through the sponsoring and regulation of a systematic,
regulated sex trade surrounding U.S. military camp towns. Moon shows how sexual
politics and state security alliance politics intertwined in the 1970s when the dependent
Korean government tightened its control of prostitution in an effort to persuade the
United States to maintain its regional presence as a guarantor of Korean security.
Their sexist-naturist-warist language incites violence
Warren and Cady 1994 (Karen J. and Duane L. “Feminism and Peace: Seeing
Connections” Hypatia, Vol. 9, No. 2, Feminism and Peace, pp. 4-20. Wiley.
Much of feminist critique regarding war and violence focuses on language, particularly the
symbolic connections between sexist-naturist-warist language, that is, language which
inferiorizes women and nonhuman nature by naturalizing women and feminizing
nature, and then gets used in discussions of war and nuclear issues. For example,
naturist language describes women as cows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches, beavers, old bats,
pussycats, cats, bird-brains, hare-brains. Sexist language feminizes and sexualizes nature:
Nature is raped, mastered, conquered, controlled, mined. "Her" "secrets" are "penetrated," and
"her" "womb" is put into the service of the "man of science." "Virgin (not stud) timber" is felled,
cut down. "Fertile (not potent) soil" is tilled, and land that lies "fallow" (not cultivated) is
"barren," useless. Language which so feminizes nature and so naturalizes women describes,
reflects, and perpetuates the domination and inferiorizationo f both by failing to see the extent
to which the twin dominations of women and nature (including animals) are, in fact, culturally
(and not merely figuratively) connected (Adams 1988, 61). The adoption of sexist-naturist
language in military and nuclear parlance carries the inequity to new heights
(Warren N.d.). Nuclear missiles are on "farms," "in silos." That part of the submarine where
twenty-four multiple warhead nuclear missiles are lined up, ready for launching, is called "the
Christmas tree farm"; BAMBI is the acronym developed for an early version of an antiballistic
missile system (for Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept). In her article "Sex and Death in the
Rational World of Defense Intellectuals," Carol Cohn describes her one-year immersion in a
university's center on defense technology and arms control. She relates a professor's explanation
of why the MX missile is to be placed in the silos of the new Minuteman missiles, instead of
replacing the older, less accurate ones "because they're in the nicest hole-you're not
going to take the nicest missile you have and put it in a crummy hole." Cohn
describes a linguistic world of vertical erector launchers, thrust-to-weight ratios,
soft lay downs, deep penetration, penetration aids (also known as "penaids", devices
that help bombers of missiles get past the "enemy's" defensive system)," the comparative
advantages of protracted versus spasm attacks"-or what one military advisor to the
National Security Council has called "releasing 70 to 80 percent of our megatonnage in
one orgasmic whump"-where India's explosion of a nuclear bomb is spoken of as
"losing her virginity" and New Zealand's refusal to allow nuclear-arms or nuclear-powered
warships into its ports is described as "nuclear virginity" (Cohn 1989, 133-37). Such language
and imagery creates, reinforces, and justifies nuclear weapons as a kind of male
sexual dominance of females. There are other examples of how sexist-naturist language in
military contexts is both self-deceptive and symbolic of male-gendered dominance. Ronald
Reagan dubbed the MX missile "the Peacekeeper."" Clean bombs" are those which announce
that "radioactivity is the only 'dirty' part of killing people" (Cohn 1989, 132). Human deaths are
only "collateral damage" (since bombs are targeted at buildings, not people). While a member of
the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Senator Gary Hart recalled that during military lobbying
efforts under the Carter administration, the central image was that of a "size race" which
became "a macho issue." The American decision to drop the first atomic bomb into
the centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instead of rural areas, was based on the
military's designation of those cities as "virgin targets," not to be subjected to
conventional bombing (Spretnak 1989, 55). As the Tailhook scandal reminded many,
traditional military training reinforces sexist-naturist language and behaviors,
with the attendant values of considering women a foul and lowly class (Cook and Woollacott;
Ruddick 1993). Recruits and soldiers who fail to perform are addressed as faggot,
girl, sissy, cunt, prissy, lays. The ultimate insult of being woman-like has been used
throughout history against the vanquished (Spretnak 1989, 57). Even references to
stereotypically female-gender-identified traits of childbearing and mothering are not free from
patriarchal co-opting. In December 1942, Ernest Lawrence's telegram to the physicists at
Chicago concerning the new "baby," the atom bomb, read, "Congratulations to the new parents.
Can hardly wait to see the new arrival" (Cohn 1989, 140). As Carol Cohn shows, the idea of male
birth with its accompanying belittling of maternity, gets incorporated into the nuclear mentality.
The "motherhood role" becomes that of" telemetry, tracking, and control" (Cohn 1989, 141).
Once the sexism of the co-opted imagery is revealed, the naming of the bombs that destroyed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki-"Little Boy" and "Fat Man"-seems only logical (even if perverse). As
Carol Cohn claims, "These ultimate destroyers were . . . not just any progeny but male progeny.
In early tests, before they were certain that the bombs would work, the scientists expressed their
concern by saying that they hoped the baby was a boy, not a girl-that is, not a dud" (Cohn 1989,
141). Cohn concludes: "The entire history of the bomb project, in fact, seems
permeated with imagery that confounds man's overwhelming technological power
to destroy nature with the power to create-imagery that inverts men's destruction
and asserts in its place the power to create new life and a new world. It converts
men's destruction into their rebirth" (Cohn 1989, 142).
Link – Venezuela
Underlying Venezuelan economic growth is a gendered discrimination against woman.
Nichols Professor of Spanish, Chair- Department of Languages at Drury University
2006 (Elizabeth Gackstetter “The Power of the Pelvic Bone: Breaching the Barriers of Social
Class in Venezuela” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. Vol. 27, No. 3)
The width of the breach between rich and poor is one of the sharpest dividing lines between
groups in Latin America as a whole. The region has a poverty rate of more than 35 percent, with
one of the worst income distributions in the world: in most countries, the income share of the
richest 20 percent of the population exceeds that of the poorest 20 percent by more than fifteen
times.4 For women in Venezuela, the situation is particularly severe. Women with the same level
of education earn 20 percent less than men, and the number of poor female-headed households is
greater in Venezuela than in other surrounding countries.5 Venezuelan sociologist Rosa Paredes
links this situation to three key factors: first, the underlying discrimination that blocks women's
entry into the labor market; second, women's primary responsibility for "unpaid, invisible,
[reproductive] roles, activities that convert them into those principally responsible for the
economic support of low-income households"; and third, the ignorance of government agencies
that refuse to recognize or support women's efforts to enter and remain in the labor force.6 In the
specific case of Venezuela, the economic situation of women has grown worse since the national
crisis of the 198os and 199os.7 During this period the number of households living in poverty
jumped from 46 percent to 62 percent, and those described as living in a situation of critical
poverty" increased from 14 percent to 30 percent.8 Unemployment numbers leapt upward, and
the number of women working in the informal sector rose significantly. This forced women to
suffer even greater inequities in pay. Paredes notes that the differential in salary for men and
women in the informal sector since 1980 has reached 40 percent.9 In the past twenty-five years,
women have felt the economic crisis most keenly. They have worked longer hours at more jobs,
with less return than their male counterparts: "Most female heads of households struggled simply
to provide the bare necessities and had scant time or energy for community participation."'1
What, indeed, could these women have in common with the university-educated women with the
training and the leisure to write poetry?
***Impact Debate
MPX – War
Patriarchy is the root cause of violence and environmental
destruction.
Warren and Cady, 94
—Professors of Philosophy at Macalester College & Hamline University (Karen and Duane,
Hypatia, Spring, 1994., Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections, JSTOR)
The imagery that domesticates nuclear and conventional weapons, naturalizes women, and
feminizes nature comes at a high psychological cost. Many feminists claim that patriarchal
conceptual frameworks generate what ecofeminist Susan Griffin calls "ideologies of
madness" (Griffin 1989). Feminist scholarship abounds with discussions of "phallic
worship," or what Helen Caldecott calls "missile envy," as a significant motivating
force in the nuclear buildup (Cohn 1989, 133). Many feminists join psychiatrist R.J. Lifton
in critiquing "nuclearism" as an addiction, characterized and maintained by "psychic numbing,"
a defense mechanism that enables us to deny the reality and threat of nuclear annihilation.
Denial is the psychological process which makes possible the continuation of oppression by
otherwise rational beings. Setting aside complicated psychological issues, we can nonetheless
ask, "Of what conceptual significance is the alleged psychological data on woman-nature-peace
connections? What do feminist philosophers glean from such accounts?" We close our
consideration of feminist/peace connections by pro-posing an answer: Such psychological
accounts help us understand patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system which is
grounded in a faulty belief system (or conceptual framework) (Warren 1993). The notion
of patriarchy as a socially dysfunctional system enables feminist philosophers to
show why conceptual connections are so important and how conceptual
connections are linked to the variety of other sorts of woman-nature-peace
connections. In addition, the claim that patriarchy is a dysfunctional social system
locates what ecofeminists see as various "dysfunctionalities" of patriarchy-the
empirical invisibility of what women do, sexist-warist-naturist language, violence
toward women, other cultures, and nature-in a historical, socioeconomic, cultural,
and political context.1 To say that patriarchy is a dysfunctional system is to say that
the fundamental beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions (conceptual framework) of
patriarchy give rise to impaired thinking, behaviors, and institutions which are
unhealthy for humans, especially women, and the planet. The following diagram
represents the features of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system: Patriarchy, as an UpDown system of power-over relationships of domination of women by men, is conceptually
grounded in a faulty patriarchal belief and value system, (a), according to which
(some) men are rational and women are not rational, or at least not rational in the
more highly valued way (some) men are rational; reason and mind are more
important than emotion and body; that humans are justified in using female
nature simply to satisfy human consumptive needs. The discussion above of
patriarchal conceptual frameworks describes the characteristics of this faulty
belief system. Patriarchal conceptual frameworks sanction, maintain, and
perpetuate impaired thinking, (b): For example, that men can control women's inner lives,
that it is men's role to determine women's choices, that human superiority over
nature justifies human exploitation of nature, that women are closer to nature
than men because they are less rational, more emotional, and respond in more
instinctual ways than (dominant) men. The discussions above at (4) and (5), are examples
of the linguistic and psychological forms such impaired thinking can take. Operationalized, the
evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which
it gives rise, (c), and the unmanageability, (d), which results. For example, in the United
States, current estimates are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone
she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic
pornography are examples of behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within
patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining,
factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors
maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs
that it is okay to "rape the earth," that it is "man's God-given right" to have dominion (that
is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental value, that environmental
destruction is the acceptable price we pay for "progress." And the presumption of warism,
that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or
nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of
nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current"
unmanageability" of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is then viewed as a
consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that
reflect historically male-gender-identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions.
Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear
proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence toward women, which many
feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only
through observing these dysfunctional behaviors-the symptoms of dysfunctionality that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them.
When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this "unmanageability" can be
seen for what it is - as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy.'1 The
theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and
logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist
literature (see Russell 1989, 2). Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that
"a militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they
reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging
the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward
reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth" (Spretnak 1989, 54). Stated in terms
of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by
Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual
frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict,
the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on
earth difficult, if not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility
lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections
in regional, national, and global contexts.
Challenging structural violence is a prerequisite to solving for
violence and economic inequality.
Tickner, feminist IR theorist,1997
(J. Ann. “You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements between Feminists and IR
Theorists” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4. Tickner is a distinguished scholar in
residence at the School of International Services, American University, formerly Professor of
International Relations at the University of Southern California)
Feminists claim that inequalities, which decrease individuals', particularly women's,
security, cannot be understood using conventional tools of analysis. Theories that
construct structural explanations that aspire to universality typically fail to recognize
how unequal social structures impact in different ways on the security of different
groups. Feminists believe that only by introducing gender as a category of analysis can
the differential impact of the state system and the global economy on the lives of women
and men be analyzed and understood. Feminists also caution that searching for
universal laws may miss the ways in which gender hierarchies manifest themselves in a
variety of ways across time and culture; therefore, theories must be sensitive to history,
context, and contingency. Questioning the neutrality of facts and concepts, feminists
have challenged international theory's claim that the state can be taken as given in its
theoretical investigations. Feminists assert that only by analyzing the evolution of the
modern state system and its changing political, economic, and social structures can we
begin to understand its limitations as a security provider. The particular insecurities of
women cannot be understood without reference to historical divisions between public
and private spheres. As Spike Peterson and other feminists have pointed out, at the time
of the foundation of the modern Western state, and coincidentally with the beginnings
of capitalism, women were not included as citizens but consigned to the private space of
the household; thus, they were removed both from the public sphere of politics and the
economic sphere of production (Peterson, 1992a:40-4). As a result, women lost much of
their existing autonomy and agency, becoming more dependent on men for their
economic security. Consequently, the term citizen has also been problematic for women.
As Carole Pateman (1988) has pointed out, women were not included in the original
social contract by most contract theorists in the Western tradition; rather, they were
generally subsumed under male heads of households with no legal rights of their own.
In most parts of the world women are still struggling for full equality. Gaining the right
to vote much later than men in most societies,34 women continue to be underrepresented in positions of political and economic power and are usually excluded from
military combat even in societies committed to formal equality. Therefore, terms such as
citizen, head of household, and breadwinner are not neutral but are associated with
men. In spite of the fact that many women do work outside the household, the
association of women with housewife, care-giver, and mother has become naturalized,
thereby decreasing women's economic security and autonomy. While these issues may
appear irrelevant to the conduct of international politics, feminists claim that these
gender-differentiated roles actually support and legitimate the international securityseeking behavior of the state. For example, feminists have argued that unequal gender
relations are important for sustaining the military activities of the state. Thus, what goes
on in wars is not irrelevant to their causes and outcomes. The notion that (young) males
fight wars to protect vulnerable groups such as women and children who cannot be
expected to protect themselves has been an important motivator for the recruitment of
military forces and support for wars. Feminists have challenged this protector/protected relationship with evidence of the high increase in civilian, casualties documented
above.35 As feminists have pointed out, if women are thought to be in need of
protection, it is often their protectors who provide the greatest threat. Judith Stiehm
(1982) claims that this dependent, asymmetric relationship leads to feelings of low selfesteem and little sense of responsibility on the part of women. For men, the presence of
able-bodied, competent adults who are seen as dependent and incapable can contribute
to misogyny. Anne Orford (1996) tells us that accounts of sexual assault by peacekeepers
have emerged in many UN peacekeeping operations. However, such violence against
women is usually dismissed as a "natural" outcome of the right of young soldiers to
enjoy themselves. This type of behavior may also be aggravated by the misogynist
training of soldiers who are taught to fight and kill through appeals to their masculinity;
such behavior further erodes the notion of protection. Whereas feminist analysis of military
security has focused on the gendered structures of state institutions, issues of economic security
and insecurity have emphasized the interrelationship between activities in markets and
households. Feminists claim that women's particular economic insecurities can only be
under- stood in the context of patriarchal structures, mediated through race, class,
and ethnicity, which have the effect of consigning women to households or lowpaying jobs. Public/private boundaries have the effect of naturalizing women's
unremunerated work in the home to the detriment of women's autonomy and
economic security. Women's disproportionate numbers at the bottom of the
socioeconomic scale cannot be explained by market conditions alone; they also require an
understanding that certain types of work such as teaching, nursing, and other forms of
care-giving are often considered "natural" for women to perform (Peterson and Runyan,
1993:37; Pettman, 1996:165-8). Moreover, the clustering of women in low-paying or
non-waged work in subsistence or households cannot be understood by using
rational choice models, because women may have internalized the ideas behind
traditional systems of discrimination, and thus may themselves view their roles as
natural (Nussbaum and Glover, 1995:91). In other words, social expectations having to do
with gender roles can reinforce economic inequalities between women and men
and exacerbate women's insecurities. Such issues can only be explained by using
gender as a category of analysis; since they take them as given, rational actor
models miss the extent to which opportunities and choices are constrained by the
social relations in which they are embedded. Many of these issues seem far removed
from the concerns of international relations. But, employing bottom-up rather than top-down
explanations, feminists claim that the operation of the global economy and states'
attempts to secure benefits from it are built on these unequal social relations
between women and men which work to the detriment of women's (and certain
men's) security. For example, states that successfully compete in attracting multinational
corporations often do so by promising them a pool of docile cheap labor consisting of young
unmarried women who are not seen as "breadwinners" and who are unlikely to organize to
protest working conditions and low wages (Enloe, 1990:151-76). When states are forced to
cut back on government spending in order to comply with structural adjustment
programs, it is often the expectation that women, by virtue of their traditional role as
care-givers, will perform the welfare tasks previously assumed by the state without
remuneration. According to Caroline Moser (1991:105), structural adjustment programs
dedicated to economic "efficiency" are built on the assumption of the elasticity of
women's unpaid labor. In presenting some feminist perspectives on security and some
explanations for insecurity, I have demonstrated how feminists are challenging levels of analysis
and boundaries between inside and outside which they see, not as discrete constructs
delineating boundaries between anarchy and order, but as contested and mutually constitutive
of one another. Through a reexamination of the state, feminists demonstrate how the
unequal social relations on which most states are founded both influence their
external security-seeking behavior and are influenced by it. Investigating states as
gendered constructs is not irrelevant to understanding their security-seeking
behaviors as well as whose interests are most served by these behaviors. Bringing
to light social structures that support war and "naturalize" the gender inequalities
manifested in markets and households is not irrelevant for under- standing their
causes. Feminists claim that the gendered foundations of states and markets must
be exposed and challenged before adequate understandings of, and prescriptions
for, women's (and certain men's) security broadly defined can be formulated.
Feminism Solves Domestic Violence and Democracy
Ishkanian, Ph.D Research Associate at the LSE Centre for the Study of Global Governance,
07 (Armine, En-gendering Civil Society and Democracy-Building: The Anti-Domestic¶ Violence
Campaign in Armenia, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society,
Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2007, pp. 488-525)CTL
Based on extensive fieldwork that included participant observation;¶ formal interviews with
women’s rights and human rights¶ NGO leaders, representatives of donor organizations,
government¶ officials, academics, and journalists; and analysis of NGO,¶ Armenian press, and
donor publications, I explain how domestic¶ violence became an issue addressed by women’s
rights and human¶ rights NGOs in the early 2000s in Armenia. Using the 2002–2004¶ USAID
funded anti-domestic violence campaign as a case study,¶ I examine the impact of foreign aid
and global civil society activism¶ on Armenian organizing around domestic violence and I
consider¶ the causes and implications of the local civil society resistance and¶ critique, which
emerged in relation to this campaign. I argue that¶ because the issue of domestic violence was
not locally recognized in¶ Armenia as a public issue that could be addressed with the
intervention¶ of law enforcement officials, hotlines, and shelters, until it was¶ identified as such
by Western donors and experts, the problem itself¶ as well as the proposed solutions were
perceived as being artificially¶ imported and imposed. This perception led to widespread civil¶
society criticism of and resistance to the efforts of the six NGOs¶ involved in the 2002–2004
USAID funded campaign. Although¶ much of the criticism was directed at specific policy
solutions (e.g.,¶ shelters), the metanarrative of the critique was directed at the influence¶ of
Western donors and the post-Soviet transition policies (i.e.,¶ liberalization and privatization)
more generally. As the campaign unfolded, the greatest challenge for the six¶ NGOs became
countering the persistent civil society resistance to¶ and critique of the campaign, which alleged
that the issue was being¶ imposed by donors and that the six NGOs’ involvement in the
campaign¶ was motivated by greed and grant-seeking. This led the six¶ NGOs to spend a great
deal of time demonstrating that the problem¶ of domestic violence existed in Armenia, arguing
that they were not¶ working on the issue because of the grant money, and explaining¶ that they
considered local cultural practices and beliefs while designing¶ their programs. In addition,
since their projects were funded¶ under the USAID Democracy and Governance Program, the
six¶ NGOs also sought to legitimize their work by framing domestic violence¶ as a human rights
issue and maintaining that addressing the¶ problem was in fact a critical component of
democracy building.¶ The crux of their argument was to define domestic violence as a¶ human
rights violation, instead of an issue of women’s rights, and to¶ contend that because the
protection of human rights is a necessary,¶ if not obligatory, component of democracy building,
the antidomestic¶ violence campaign was contributing to democratization¶ processes in
Armenia.
MPX - Abuse
Latin American Feminism solves the patriarchal abuse of those deemed inferior.
Alvarez, Ph.D. from Yale University, 00 (Sonia E. Translating the Global Effects of Transnational
Organizing on Local Feminist Discourses and¶ Practices in Latin America, Meridians, Vol. 1, No. 1
(Autumn, 2000), pp. 29-67)
The diverse women who today form part of the increasingly expansive, polycentric, heterogeneous
Latin American feminist field (Alvarez ¶ 1998, 295) continue to view the encuentros and other
alternative transnational arenas, such as the regional networks, as crucial sites in which to ¶ review
and refine their feminist discourses and practices, in dialogue with ¶ those of others in the region.
The encuentros have brough together thousands of women active in a broad range of public
spaces- from lesbian- ¶ feminist collectives, to rural and urban trade unions, black and indigenous
¶ movements, landless movements, research ngos and university women's ¶ studies programs,
guerrilla organizations, and mainstream political paries. Whether or not participants selfidentified as feminists, the encuentros provided a unique space for activists to debate collectively
the always- ¶ contested meanings and goals of feminism and its relationship to other ¶ struggles
for rights and social justice in the region. They therefore have ¶ played a critical role in fashioning
common discourses, fostering a shared ¶ (though polysemic) Latin American feminist political
grammar, and pro viding activists in individual countries with key theoretical and strategic ¶
insights and symbolic resources which they subsequently "translated" and ¶ redeployed locally. ¶
The kinds of internationalist identity-solidarity exchanges of which the ¶ encuentros are
emblematic, as Peruvian feminist Virginia Vargas suggests, ¶ were "fundamentally oriented toward
recreating collective practices, deploying new categories of analysis, new visibilities, and even
new languages which feminisms at the nationalevel were outlining, to name that ¶ which
heretofore had no name: sexuality, domestic violence, sexual harassment, marital rape, the
feminization of poverty [and so on]. These were ¶ some of the new signifiers that feminism placed at
the center of democratic debates" (1998, 3). A Latin American feminist cultural politics- ¶
understood as a process "enacted when sets of actors shaped by, and embodying, different cultural
meanings and practices come into conflict with ¶ one another" (Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar
1998, 7) -thus was fostered ¶ in such transnational spaces, in interaction with local movement
arenas. ¶ These transborder exchanges furnished local feminist activists with new ¶ discursive
repertoires, reinforcing the "symbolic, ludic- cultural dimension" of feminism, which accompanied
the practices of the movement, ¶ "creating dates, recovering leaders, histories, symbols " (Vargas
1998, 3)
***Alt Debate
ALT – 1NC
The alternative is to challenge the global disparities in work and
resources through a feminist analysis
Wright, Professor of Human Rights, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1995
(Shelley "Women and the Global Economic Order: A Feminist Perspective." American
University International Law Review 10, no. 2. 861-887)
The world is now increasingly operating as a global economic system where not even
nations, let alone local communities, are able to control the progress of events. National
boundaries are becoming more porous while both national and international
bureaucratic structures are being geared towards servicing corporate/commercial
agendas. The production of real goods, such as agricultural products, is becoming more
and more governed by the requirements of the information and services industries, such
as, for example, the commodities futures market. Global communications means that it
is now almost impossible to escape from the new global economic order. Change must
come at all levels of this process, not just the local, individual or communal levels. By
focusing on women as providers of basic essentials at the level of the family, village or
neighborhood we ignore the influence of women, or the power of feminist approaches,
on a larger scale. First, women as producers and. consumers have a vast, largely
untapped, reservoir of collective power that could be politically organized and used to
achieve the recognition of economic rights and social justice for women as well as for
men. This power has at times been exercised, as for example in environmental
campaigns or anti-war movements. Women's traditional roles as food-gathers and
providers means that they can, if they want, influence the harvesting and sale of food
product which are environmentally or socially harmful. The ban against drift-net
fishing, for example, was largely achieved through consumer boycotts conducted by
women refusing to buy fish products resulting from this type of production. At this level,
women's "difference" can become the source of public power. Second, a principal goal of
liberal feminism is to increase the participation of women at all levels of existing
political and economic structures. It is hoped that this increase of feminine participation
may change the priorities of global planning. There are those who would argue that this
greater participation would probably not make much difference. In the first place, it
does not propose making radical changes to the structures themselves. Also, women
who have achieved positions of power have not always demonstrated any different
agenda from the men they emulate. But, not all women who achieve power are Margaret
Thatchers. We simply do not know what the impact of more women at all levels of
decision-making would be. As a matter of simple democratic equity, women should be
included. As the gender balance of power structures changes, it may be that the
structures themselves may also change. But neither martialling women's difference and
traditional roles as a source of political power, nor pursuing the liberal agenda of
increasing the opportunities for already privileged women to be included into existing
structures is enough. There should be room in global economic policy for more radical
proposals. First, it must be emphasized that issues of health, housing, social welfare and
education, i.e. economic well-being, are not peripheral matters. The economic agenda
has, for too long, been occupied by irrational conservative forces who disguise their
greed for power and wealth with terms such as "economic rationalism" or "free trade." It
is not rational to relegate your workforce and potential customers to illiteracy, poor
health, social disintegration and poverty. High levels of unemployment, for example,
accompanied by decreasing levels of social assistance means that money does not
circulate through the economy, products are not purchased, housing is not built and
future workers and consumers are not properly socialized and educated. Women, who
now carry double burdens of subsistence producers and consumers as well as nurturers,
cannot be depended on any longer to hold up the increasingly top-heavy international
economic order. The private sphere of unpaid labor is disintegrating both as an
ideologically acceptable construct and as a matter of reality. Second, the failure to
recognize the centrality of economic well-being within the global economic order means
that a continuing large percentage of resources will be spent on law enforcement,
internal security and military expenditure. An impoverished and dispossessed
population is also a disaffected and angry population. Social decay tends to produce
social disruption, which in turn leads to violence and further decay. The political agenda
remains preoccupied with controlling or disarming this population, or, where politically
expedient, inflaming disaffection. This also effects the feminist agenda as issues of
violence against women are given greater attention both nationally and internationally.
Violence is a symptom of economic and political power disparities, but while the
battering and abuse of women continues, prevention of violence must remain a priority.
There needs to be a real reassessment of what adequate economic goals might be and
how "economic rights" are defined. Central to this reappraisal must be crucial issues of
resource reallocation and the redistribution of power. But perhaps more fundamentally,
a feminist analysis might help us redefine what economic power is and how it is
exercised. In order to do this, feminist approaches must themselves be flexible and
inclusive, avoiding rejection of unfashionable theoretical or practical perspectives.
Liberal or Marxist approaches, presently discredited among most Western feminists,
need to be reexamined. Finally, an international perspective must force Western
feminists to listen to the demands of non-Western women in their redefinition of the
economic order and in their identification of our own complicity with the economics of
oppression and inequality. A feminist analysis might question the aim of unlimited
economic growth and replace it with a more balanced and rational approach to the
distribution of wealth and resources. "Economic rights" would cease to be either
marginalized into the ghetto of social and cultural concerns or operate as a corporate
power base hidden from international regulation. The connections between the right to
work and the mobility of labor and capital under free trade might be more clearly (and
less emotively) addressed. There is already evidence that policies of the World Bank are
becoming more sensitive to formerly irrelevant "externalities" such as the role of women
as productive workers both at the subsistence and cash economy level. The fever for
corporate downsizing and labor reductions may already be subsiding as corporate
decision makers recognize that making a large sector of the labor market redundant has
a profound impact on consumer driven economic spending. Finally, the huge and
growing disparity between rich and poor both within national boundaries and
internationally could be seen, not as a natural product of economic development, but as
the result of politically motivated and economically short-sighted policies instituted by
mainly male leaders. A feminist analysis can, at the very least, open up for question what
has hitherto been treated as "natural," inevitable or even desirable in the global disparity
of work, resources and value.
Economics
The alt is to move away from patriarchal economies for a Feminist standpoint
Cabrera, President of Women in Development Europe, a European network of development NGOs,
gender specialists and human rights activists. It monitors and influences international economic and
development policy and practice from a feminist perspective. 12
(Patricia Muñoz, Economic Alternatives for Gender and Social Justice: Voices and Visions from Latin
America, http://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue14-perspectives1?page=show)
Building viable alternatives to global capitalism is a long process and not without dilemmas and contradictions. Taking this complexity into
account, the alternatives emerging in Latin America cover a wide range of issues which cannot be fully addressed in the limited space devoted to
this paper. Generally speaking however, many of the proposals include elements of solidarity economy as alternatives to the neoliberal economic
paradigm. One specific alternative that has gained momentum is the paradigm of food sovereignty, proposed by Via
Campesina, which movements such as Movimento sem Terra (MST) in Brazil and the Network of Women Transforming Economy (REMTE),
among others, have adhered. Another approach has been that of Matthei (2002), the Brazilian Women’s organisation (AMB) and the Mercosur
feminist network (AFM), which has recently begun to rethink the current economic and development models from
a feminist
standpoint that is anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-heterosexist (http://www.articulacaodemulheres.org.br).¶ At a
governmental level, no economic models have emerged which can be fully considered alternatives to the current neoliberal capitalist model.
However, one should acknowledge the work done by some
governments to pass new policies and legislation that see
the rights of workers, indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples as central to social and economic
policymaking. Such is the case of Venezuela, where the very idea of the nation-state has been redefined.
As a result, at the national level, the state has been repositioned as an overarching regulator of
economic and financial activity. However, efforts by the Venezuelan government to reshape the national economy occur within a
global arena of increased speculation and short-term investment in which the state also participates through its companies (De la Fuente et al,
2008). ¶ Two other countries where paradigmatic changes have taken place are Bolivia and Ecuador. Even though these two governments have
not escaped the logic of the extractivist model, the inclusion of nature as a subject entitled to rights – within the paradigm of Buen Vivir/Vivir
Bien – in the new constitutions represents a significant step towards shifting the social and cultural mindset of the region. ¶ In fact, the Buen Vivir
paradigm represents a transformation without precedent in more than five centuries of history of the continent. Buen Vivir is rooted in indigenous
epistemology and bears a strong relation with the emancipatory struggles fought by indigenous peoples since the Spanish conquest. At its core is
the struggle against racist, cultural and economic hegemony and the disenfranchisement caused by capitalism-driven colonial power. Concretely,
Buen Vivir redefines the nation-state as pluri-cultural and pluri-lingual with the
primary task of promoting and regulating a
social, cultural and economic model driven by equity, human dignity, and social and environmental
justice. In this paradigm, the issue of entitlements is a crucial one. This means that not only people but also nature are subjects entitled to
rights. From this perspective, nature becomes a global, finite common, which means that we are all responsible for its protection and
preservation.¶ Another important aspect of Buen Vivir is that it is dialogic; that is to say, it
rejects the false oppositions inherent
in capitalism (the economic versus the social; the productive versus the reproductive; the micro versus the macro). Buen Vivir is driven by
the idea of redistributive justice: equity in the distribution of wealth and resources and equality of conditions, not only of opportunities. Within
this paradigm, redistributive
justice is fundamental to make labour and production contribute to the
economic, social and cultural well-being of human subjects, the full enjoyment of their human
rights and the well-being of nature. Just like any other complex paradigm, Buen Vivir presents some important challenges: one of
them relates to the emphasis on women as reproducers of life. This idea creates controversy if we consider women’s historical struggle to have
the right to full enjoyment of their sexual and reproductive rights regardless of their roles as procreators. ¶ At the geopolitical level, Buen Vivir is
in line with holistic approaches to the interlocking crises affecting our planet. In this sense it echoes the paradigm of degrowth which has gained
momentum in Europe. Both paradigms converge into an idea of economics for a finite planet, to put it in Jackson’s terms (2010). These economic
paradigms regard the environmental, financial and food crises as inextricably linked, and suggest that we are undergoing a systemic crisis which
is a symptom of the collapse of a hegemonic worldview that continues to push for a predatory model of economic development as if the current
crises had not happened.¶ Significantly, these two paradigms share a concern
with the depletion of global ecosystems due
to irresponsible overconsumption of resources and the ensuing generation of waste. They are also
contributing to the weaving of transnational knowledges from the distinctive perspective of social movements and women’s rights. This
confirms the fact that although alternatives to hegemonic models take a long time before yielding
concrete results at the macro level, the thinking and acting to transform unequal patterns of
production and consumption has already begun.
Epistemology
Our approach to breaking down gendered systems of subordination is three pronged. First,
a recognition of the political nature of identity. Second, an analysis of history in terms of
identity and gender relations is critical to breaking down hetero-patriarchal
epistemologies. Third, we must engage traditional gender norms within cultures and
analyze how they influence and are influenced by systems of subordination.
Harnandez-Truyol, University of Florida Law Professor, 99. (Berta Esperanza “The LatIndia and Mestizajes: Of
Cultures, Conquests, and LatCritical Feminism” Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice. Vol. 3. Hein Online.)
Menchu’s story unearths the problematic dysfunctionality of
monolingua1ism—a condition that runs through our social, intellectual. and
legal systems. It also confirms that the quirky, surrealistic majoritarian mandate
to reduce us to a falsely essentialized single thread of our complex fabric. and
making some of our myriad essences more equal than others. is unworkable.
So what do we do? What can we do to know our mothers? To borrow from
Robert Williams, I can get off my LatCritical race feminist derriére and engage
in critical race feminist practice." LatCritical Race Feminism can play a
tremendously energizing, exciting, and transformative role by practicing
mestizaje in three specific ways.
First, we must recognize that the personal is political. Knowing our
personal position and traditions locates us in our various communities. We must
understand and embrace our hybridity, all of our interconnected selves, in order
to be successful participants in an all-encompassing, anti-subordination project.
If we internalize only some of our traditions and histories, and become the
conquistadores/as, then we will practice subordination, exclusion and
colonization (even of other parts of ourselves) and distort our heritage. Those
of us who roam at the rnargins will continue to marginalize others. If we are
Latina/o only because of and in the image of Colon, we will continue the nasty
pan of his work. We will not question or challenge our relationship as Native
peoples with Native peoples. We can be Latinas/os and Latlndias/os and move
the world forward with solidarity in our hearts.
Second we need to ensure that what has been secreted as the private
becomes part of our public goals. We must come out as mestizas/or and
practice mestizaje.'” We must own our hybridity and recognize we are both the
colonizers and the colonized. To understand our location we must explore the
meanings and consequences of these contradictions. In order to do so. we must
understand all our histories. We cannot allow atomization of our selves simply
because unconsciously or subconsciously we think it privileges us. Today we
are complex and diverse, just like before Colon we were complex and diverse.
It is only by fully utilizing the knowledges derived from such a composite that
we will be able to locate ourselves “in the scheme of things.“ As Luz Guerra
has eloquently observed: “Before Colon we were many. We were not
Americans. We were not hyphenated. ‘Hispanic’ came with Colon. ‘Latino[/a]
came with Colon. Since Colon, one common experience has been trying to ‘decolon’. decolonize, take Colon out.”““ Perhaps, however, in owning our
hybridity. taking Colon out is not appropriate. Rather, we should engage in the
understanding that we are partly, but only partly, Colon. We are also Native and
myriad other pans.
Guerra further charges that we have done an injustice to history"' because
our version, our story, is dependent upon the internalization of the European
epistemology)” Seriously considering her observation will assist in furthering
the liberation project. If we indeed have internalized dominance, then we have
become the ethnographers, the majoritarian outsiders through whose lens
anthropology textbooks define the Trobriand islanders even to the Natives
themselves. We become the foreign observer who purports to define a culture
that s/he may well misunderstand and misinterpret.” This self-identification
with the history of our captors has distorted our lens and we must reclaim it. In
order to rectify this distortion and its resultant incoherence, we must
deconstruct the mythical history we live and become the architects of a new
political narrative that recognizes the historical distortions and reworks the truth
of all of our traditions.
Third, recognizing that the local is global and the global is local, we should
search for interconnectivities as well as differences between and among our
histories and traditions. Such an exploration will help elucidate the
mistranslation of the past and will provide invaluable insights for the
reconstructive project. There have been traps everywhere that have encouraged,
dispersed, and professed the master narrative as neutral history.'“ Peaceful
people become savages, cultured people become uncivilized; deeply spiritual
individuals, cooperation, human dignity, human freedom. and
egalitarian distribution of status, goods, and services.“
LCRF can help the Americas learn, embrace, and re/member these rich
ideas and ideals that so well serve the anti-subordination project. Part of this
project entails specifically a call for LCRF to engage the of
marginal identifies and issues as part of its race and gender critiques. For
example. it might be appropriate for LCRF to reach out to indigenous groups
both within and outside the United States with the purpose of including Native
voices and perspectives in critical analysis as well as the reconstruction
projects. More universally. it is a call for LCRF to consciously engage itself in
the practice of inclusion of polivocality in all stages of exploration of social,
economic. linguistic. legal. historical, and religious norms. Only through such
exploration will we truly learn who our mothers are.
The proposal of a borderless critical movement such as LCRF is itself
stressful. While it exhorts us to globalize the local and localize the global, we
must try not to impose particularized universalisms or universalize
The “global” aspect might invoke and evoke the thoughts of
universalism which have been translations of Northern/Western hegemonic
supremacy, imperialism, colonialism and hierarchy.'” It is necessary to ask at
the outset whether there can be a one global project that transcends our varied
times, geographies and spaces. We must design an endeavor, an enterprise, an
experiment that takes us towards new feminisms—for example, away from a
culture of an essentialist feminism to non-essentialist feminisms of culture. In
other words. we must embrace as part of feminism’s anti-gender subordination
movements some projects where traditions and perhaps even traditional gender
roles remain untouched. so long as the traditions are not mere pretexts for
subordination.
Therefore, we must not forget to question whether physiological and
psycho-social differences and the division of labor upon which traditional
gender roles are based are themselves instruments of women's oppression and
consequently, are merely excuses for perpetuating heteropatriarchy. If it is true
that “[i]t has been shown conclusively that complementary sex roles within an
otherwise competitive society means subordination of women,""'° are gender
roles intrinsically contradictory to women’s self-determination, autonomy, or
self governance? If “[f]eminism makes claims for a re/balancing between women and men of the
social, economic and political power within a given society, on behalf of both sexes in the name
of their common humanity, but with respect for their differences,”171 we can easily reconcile
traditional/cultural practices that attribute gender roles to individuals based on inclination rather
than biological sex. In this regard, gender role differentiation does not have sex-subordinating
meanings or consequences.
***Alt Solvency
LA Fem Key
Latin American Feminism Key to a global transition
Carr, Ph.D Faculty Researcher, Center of Excellence/Center for Women, Economic Justice and Public
Policy, Grant for Collaborative Research, 90
(Irene Campos, Women's Voices Grow Stronger:
Politics and Feminism in Latin America, NWSA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer, 1990), pp. 450-463,
Accessed from JSTOR)CTL
Directions for feminist and women's movements also vary according ¶ to an individual's position in a classist society. Middle- and upper-class ¶
feminists who dedicate themselves to gender studies and research are ¶ frequently at odds with grass-roots and community leaders for whom ¶
essential gender issues are obscured by the pressing need for sociopolitical ¶ change, a change in the structure of society. Large, inter-American ¶
feminist gatherings inspire much debate between women who see patriarchal society as the root of
women's oppression and those who see ¶ feminism or the women's movement as inseparable from
class struggle. ¶ Feminist arguments about "production" (capitalism vs. socialism) and ¶ "'reproduction" (a gender issue) are subjects of
heated discussions. ¶ Whatever feminist strategy or position they espouse, many women ¶ are dedicating their lives to the
collective effort of raising the awareness ¶ of women to their rights as human beings-and the
consequent socio- ¶ political implications. They speak in many voices, voices seldom heard ¶ outside Latin America. This paper
recovers some of these voices and ¶ relates a few of the personal and national experiences of women who ¶ are breaking tradition while
working to reorganize their society and to ¶ create a new global vision.
Solves War
Feminism promotes peaceful change
Carr, Ph.D Faculty Researcher, Center of Excellence/Center for Women, Economic Justice and Public
Policy, Grant for Collaborative Research, 90
(Irene Campos, Women's Voices Grow Stronger:
Politics and Feminism in Latin America, NWSA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer, 1990), pp. 450-463,
Accessed from JSTOR)CTL
Women across the continent, from Mexico to Chile and the Caribbean ¶ Islands, are forming strong
networks and reaching out to each other ¶ in national and international gatherings. "The development of a
broad, ¶ strong, pluralistic women's movement, with a multitude of demands from ¶ diverse social sectors, is indisputably one of the most
important facts in ¶ recent years in Latin America and the Caribbean," concluded the organizers of a gathering of feminists from fourteen Latin
American ¶ countries that took place in Mexico in 1986. Women
have joined together ¶ to work on the global
transformation of "our societies from our own ¶ particular socio-political and cultural background,
therein developing ¶ our identities and creating new forms of relationships that are more ¶
human."24 ¶ In a more recent national encuentro (gathering) of Mexican feminists ¶ held in the summer of 1989, the plenary
assembly declared "that ¶ feminism is a specific form of understanding reality and not a series of ¶
demands regarding the condition of women." Within this perspective, ¶ recognizing the plurality of
viewpoints reflecting the positions of women ¶ in various social classes, they posited the possibility of
creating an ¶ autonomous political project. They recognized their growth and achievements, the new openings in politics and
academia, and their strength ¶ as an "invisible network extending across the country."125
Peaceful Feminism creates political change
Montecinos, Ph.D in Sociology, 01(Verónica, Feminists and Technocrats in the Democratization
of Latin America: A Prolegomenon', International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol.
15, No. 1, Risks and¶ Rights in the 21st Century: Papers from the Women and Gender in Global
Perspectives¶ Program Symposium, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pp. 175-199,
JSTOR)CTL
Gender, in addition to its emergence as an important basis for collective action, also gained
legitimacy as a category of analysis (the initiation ¶ of gender studies in Chile during this period
is detailed in Valdes, 1993). ¶ Social research began to abandon the premise that society consisted
of ¶ undifferentiated individuals and/or conflicting social classes. Women were ¶ marching on the
streets; the feminization of poverty was apparent. Inter ¶ national donors favored research projects
and community actions with a ¶ specific gender component. The academic and political world, so
thoroughly ¶ accustomed to male domination, discovered that the specific interests and ¶ needs of
women could not be ignored. Revolutionary Nicaragua, in con ¶ trast with the earlier Cuban
experience, was more sympathetic to feminism ¶ (Waylen, 1996: 85, 77). Although hostile to
feminism and fierce in its persecution of organized women's groups, even the Peruvian Shining
Path actively ¶ pursued the recruitment of women in the 1980s: about 40 percent of its ¶ members
and half of its leaders were women (Blondet, 1995; Barrig, 1998). ¶ The Latin American left
could no longer discard feminist ideas simply as ¶ a bourgeois, foreign-inspired distortion.
Women could not be treated as a ¶ passive mass of voters ready to respond to messages of family,
patriotism and ¶ abnegation.
***A2 Section
A2 Perm
1. The perm can’t solve – institutional action reproduces social hierarchies through a
“protection” of women – this objectifies women through social control and violence.
Blanchard, Ph.D. U of S. CA., American Council of Learned Societies Faculty Fellow, 2003 (Eric M.
“Gender, International Relations, and the Development of Feminist Security Theory” Signs, Vol.
28, No. 4, pp. 1289-1312. The University of Chicago Press)
Like Tickner, many IR feminists problematize the state and raise questions as to its status as
protector of women. Peterson argues that, in addition to its relegation of sexual violence and its
threat to the private domestic realm, the state is implicated in the ways that women become “the
objects of masculinist social control not only through direct violence (murder, rape, battering,
incest), but also through ideological constructs, such as ‘women’s work’ and the cult of
motherhood, that justify structural violence— inadequate health care, sexual harassment, and
sex-segregated wages, rights and resources” (1992c, 46). However, while not denying the
possibility of limited protection offered by the state (Harrington 1992), FST contests the notion
of protection—“the exchange of obedience/subordination for (promises of) security”—as a
justification for state power (Peterson 1992c, 50). Peterson likens the state’s provision of security
for women to a protection racket, “implicated in the reproduction of hierarchies and in the
structural violence against which they claim to offer protection” (1992c, 51). In addition, Stiehm
argues that the state typically denies women the opportunity to be societal “protectors,” assigning
to them the role of “protected” despite the predatory threat often posed by their ostensible
guardians (1983a). Governmental attempts to achieve total security versus an external threat can
result in predictable oppression: “The problem is that the potential victim is both more accessible
and compliant than the marauder. Because the protector is embarrassed and frustrated by his
failure to protect, he restricts his protectee instead” (373). By circumscribing the possibilities of
the female deployment of legitimate force, the masculine state effectively denies the
development of what Stiehm calls a “defender” society, one “composed of citizens equally liable
to experience violence and equally responsible for exercising society’s violence” (367).
2. All the links to the plan are disadvantages to the permutation and net benefits to
the alternative.
3. Double bind: either the perm can’t overcome the residual links or it has severed
justifications from the plan. Severance is a voter – makes the aff into a moving
target, kills fairness.
4. The perm is just add women and stir – links to the kritik – it’s just another
instance in which women and issues of gender are marginalized in political
institutions – only prioritizing issues of gender will solve.
A2 FW
Counter Interpretation – Debate is a pedagogical activity, therefore the priority must be to
analyze the knowledge we produce and the assumptions we make.
This is good because –
1. Ontology first – directly influences policy decisions – even if they win that policy making
is good, we’ll win that questions of ontology are key to effective policy making
Prior questions are key to deconstruct patriarchy and bring about an alternative world
order.
Tickner, feminist IR theorist,1997 (J. Ann. “You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements between Feminists and IR Theorists”
International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4. Tickner is a distinguished scholar in residence at the School of International Services,
American University, formerly Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California)
Feminist Theory. Since it entered the field of international relations in the late 1980s, feminist
theory has often, but not exclusively, been located within the critical voices of the "third debate,"
a term articulated by Yosef Lapid (1989). Although they are not all postmodern, or even postEnlightenment, in their normative orientation at least, an assumption sometimes implied by
conventional scholars, many contemporary feminist international relations scholars would
identify themselves as post- positivists in terms of Lapid's articulation of the term and in terms of
the definition of positivism outlined above. While there is no necessary connection between
feminist approaches and post-positivism, there is a strong resonance for a variety of reasons
including a commitment to epistemological pluralism as well as to certain ontological
sensitivities. With a preference for hermeneutic, historically based, humanistic and philosophical
traditions of knowledge cumulation, rather than those based on the natural sciences, feminist
theorists are often skeptical of empiricist methodologies that claim neutrality of facts. While
many feminists do see structural regularities, such as gender and patriarchy, they define them as
socially constructed and variable across time, place, and cultures, rather than as universal and
natural. Agreeing with Robert Cox's assertion that theory is always for someone and for some
purpose, the goal of feminist approaches is similar to that of critical theory as defined by Cox.
While not all historians would accept this link, Cox asserts that critical theory "stands apart from
the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came about": it can, therefore, be a
guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order (Cox, 1981:129-30). Cox
contrasts critical theory with conventional theory which he labels "problem- solving,"-a type of
conversation that Tannen associates with men (1990:ch. 2). Problem-solving takes the world as it
finds it and implicitly accepts the prevailing order as its framework (Cox, 1981:130). Since
feminist theorists believe that the world is characterized by gender hierarchies that are
detrimental to women, they would be unlikely to take such an epistemological stance. In the
words of one feminist scholar who defines herself as a post-positivist, "postpositivism compels
our attention to context and historical process, to contingency and uncertainty, to how we
construct, rather than dis-cover, our world(s)" (Peterson, 1992a:57). In constructing their
approaches to international theory, feminists draw on a variety of philosophical traditions and
literatures outside international relations and political science within which most IR scholars are
trained. While IR feminists are seeking genuine knowledge that can help them to better
understand the issues with which they are concerned, the IR training they receive rarely includes
such knowl- edge. Hence, they, like scholars in other critical approaches, have gone outside the
discipline to seek what they believe are more appropriate methodologies for understanding the
social construction and maintenance of gender hierarchies. This deepens the level of
misunderstanding and miscommunication and, unfortunately, often leads to negative
stereotyping on all sides of these epistemological divides.
3. Predictable – our offense is garnered directly from the assumptions of the plan – it was
their strategic choice to base their plan in the assumptions that they did – it is their
responsibility to defend the entirety of the 1AC.
4. No abuse- Their abuse claims come from the idea that the kritik avoids the
comparison of a negative position against an affirmative plan action. The kritik
provides reasons to question the implementation and political advocacy of the affa debate about the political advocacy comes first in order to establish which
impacts are the greatest. Voting down the negative on the framework is
nonsensical.
5. Best for education – without questioning the assumptions of the plan, we allow for flawed
methods of knowledge production to persist – the knowledge we produce is the only
portable thing in debate
Sexists language is not an aberration from rational discourse – conventional forms of
argumentation are inscribed by patriarchal discourse.
Warren and Cady 1994 (Karen J. and Duane L. “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”
Hypatia, Vol. 9, No. 2, Feminism and Peace, pp. 4-20. Wiley.
Lest one suppose this sexist-naturist language that informs military and nuclear parlance is an
aberration of rational discourse, consider how well-entrenched sexist domination metaphors
pervade the way rationality, rational or logical thinking, and rational behavior is described in
Western philosophical contexts (Burtt 1969; Cady 1989; Cohn 1989; Cope-Kasten 1989; Warren
1989). Good reasoners knock down arguments; they tear, rip, chew, cut them up; attack them, try
to beat, destroy, or annihilate them, preferably by nailing them to the wall. Good arguers are
sharp, incisive, cutting, relentless, intimidating, brutal; those not good at giving arguments are
wimpy, touchy, quarrel-some, irritable, nagging. Good arguments have a thrust to them: They are
compelling, binding, air-tight, steel-trap, knock-down, dynamite, smashing and devastating bits
of reasoning which lay things out and pin them down, overcoming any resistance. "Bad"
arguments are described in metaphors of the dominated and powerless: They "fall flat on their
face," are limp, lame, soft, fuzzy, silly, and "full of holes."
Framework is just another way that feminist approaches to international relations are
excluded from the mainstream – engagement is key to challenge normative international
theories that exclude femininity.
Tickner, feminist IR theorist,1997 (J. Ann. “You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements between Feminists and IR Theorists”
International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4. Tickner is a distinguished scholar in residence at the School of International Services,
American University, formerly Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California)
Feminist theorists have rarely achieved the serious engagement with other IR scholars for which
they have frequently called. When they have occurred, conversations have often led to
misunderstandings and other kinds of miscommunication, such as awkward silences and feminist
resistances to suggestions for incorporation into more mainstream approaches. In this article I
have tried to reconstruct some typical conversational encounters and to offer some hypotheses as
to why estrangement seems so often to be the result. Although I realize that these encounters
demonstrate misunderstandings on both sides, I have emphasized some feminist perspectives
because they are less likely to be familiar to IR scholars. While it is all too easy to account for
these troubled engagements between IR scholars and feminists solely in terms of differences in
ontologies and epistemologies, it must be acknowledged that power differences play an
important role also. Inequalities in power between mainstream and feminist IR allow for greater
ignorance of feminist approaches on the part of the mainstream than is possible for feminists
with respect to conventional IR, if they are to be accorded any legitimacy within the profession.
Because of this power differential, feminists are suspicious of cooptation or attempts to label
certain of their approaches as more compatible than others. Understanding that all these
problems are inherent in calling for one more effort at renewed conversation, I have tried to
suggest and analyze reasons for the frequent failures or avoidance of such efforts, comparing
these failures to problems of cross-cultural communications. Lack of understanding and
judgments of irrelevance are two major causes of the silence with which feminist approaches
have generally been received by the discipline of international relations. Contemporary feminist
perspectives on international relations are based on ontologies and epistemologies that are quite
different from those that inform the conventional discipline. Since they grow out of ontologies
that take individuals or groups embedded in and changed by social relations, such relationally
defined feminist approaches do not fit comfortably within conventional levels of analysis
theorizing or the state-centric and structural approaches which grow out of such theorizing. They
are also informed by different normative concerns. Moreover, feminists claim that normative
international theories, such as the Grotian and Kantian traditions, are based on literatures that
have often diminished or excluded women. Feminist epistemologies that inform these new ways
of understanding international relations are also quite different from those of conventional
international theory. But, as I have argued, feminists cannot be anything but skeptical of
universal truth claims and explanations associated with a body of knowledge from which women
have frequently been excluded as knowers and subjects. However, this does not mean that
feminists are abandoning theory or the search for better knowledge. Although they draw on
epistemologies quite different from conventional international relations, they also are seeking
better understanding of the processes that inform international political, economic, and social
relations. Building knowledge that does not start from the position of the detached universal
subject involves being sensitive to difference while striving to be as objective as possible. By
starting thought from women's lives, feminists claim they are actually broadening the base from
which knowledge is constructed. While feminist perspectives do not claim to tell us everything
we need to know about the behavior of states or the workings of the global economy, they are
telling us things that have too often remained invisible. Feminists often draw on the notion of
conversation when pursuing their goal of shareable understandings of the world. Skeptical of the
possibility of arriving at one universal truth, they advocate seeking understanding through
dialogues across boundaries and cultures in which the voices of others, particularly those on the
margins, must be seen as equally valid as one's own.36 This method of truth-seeking, motivated
by the attempt to separate valid knowledge from what feminists see as power-induced
distortions, is far removed from more scientific methodologies and from a discipline whose
original goal was to better understand the behavior of states in order to offer advice to their
policy makers. Therefore, feminists must understand that their preferred methodologies and the
issues they raise are alien to the traditional discipline; and IR scholars must realize that speaking
from the perspective of the disempowered appears increasingly urgent in a world where the
marginalized are the most likely victims of war and the negative effects of economic
globalization. Seeking greater understanding across theoretical divides, and the scientific and
political cultures that sustain them, might be the best model if feminist international theory is to
have a future within the discipline. Feminist theorists may claim that conventional IR has little to
offer as to how to make cross-paradigm communications more effective and mutually successful.
But feminists must understand that methodologies relevant to the investigations of their preferred
issues are not normally part of a graduate curriculum in IR in the United States; therefore, they
appear strange, unfamiliar, and often irrelevant to those so trained. However, feminists, along
with other critical scholars, are pioneering the effort to look beyond conventional training and
investigate the relevance of other disciplines and literatures for these methodologies.
Conversations will not be successful until the legitimacy of these endeavors is more widely
recognized and acknowledged as part of the discipline of international relations. Asking the
question as to how we open lines of communication, Deborah Tannen (1990:120-1) suggests that
men and women must try to take each other on their own terms rather than apply the standards of
one group to the behavior of the other. Additionally, she claims that this is not an easy task
because all of us tend to look for a single "right" way of doing things. Could this be a model for
beginning more productive conversations between feminists and IR theorists?
A2 Intersectionality
Regardless of class differences, Latin American woman are joined together by common
goals and interests – the control of their homes, families, and bodies.
Nichols Professor of Spanish, Chair- Department of Languages at Drury University
2006 (Elizabeth Gackstetter “The Power of the Pelvic Bone: Breaching the Barriers of Social
Class in Venezuela” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. Vol. 27, No. 3)
As Friedman explains, the vast differences between the lives of those black, Indian, and mestizo
women of the hillside barrios who live in poverty, in contrast with those (mostly white) women
who have access to health care, education, and child care, has led to a theory that proposes a
dichotomy of "practical" and "strategic" gender interests.'" In matters of organizing and
mobilization, poor or working-class women might be involved in "practical" projects to provide
basic health care, running water, or affordable food. Those middle-class women whose practical
needs were met might be more likely to become involved in "strategic" movements for birth
control or an end to violence against women. The basic differences in daily existence and
subsistence of different classes of women, it has been thought, inevitably leads to different goals.
This is not necessarily the case, however. While there can be no doubt of the effect that social
class has on daily life, certain common goals and interests can be ascertained. After pointing out
the key differences in the realities of women of divergent social classes, Friedman proposes the
theory that "one clear thread runs through the development of women's gender interests in the
history of Latin American women's organizing: the centrality of motherhood-and, more
generally, women's association with private life."l6 This is indeed one element that may unite
women no matter their social class: their shared interest in their control of their homes, their
families, and their bodies. One specific example of how the challenges of motherhood can wipe
away barriers between women is the case of Inds Maria Marcano. Marcano was the twenty-yearold single mother of two children, with whom she lived in the barrio, or slum of "El Infiernito"
(Little Hell) just outside Caracas. One night in 1987 she left her children alone at home, locked
in, lights and radio on, and went to attend a party. During her absence, two drunken men broke in
through the flimsy roof, kidnapped her two-year-old daughter, raped her, and threw her down a
nearby canyon to her death. The men were caught, tried, and imprisoned. To the dismay of
many, however, Marcano was also charged with child abandonment and lost her surviving child
to state-run foster care. For the women of the middle and upper class of Venezuela, the case of
Ines Maria Marcano represented the gender-based inequalities and double standards deeply
entrenched in the government and the legal system at every level of society. Several women's
organizations responded to the arrest of Marcano with legal assistance and with a public relations
campaign designed to argue the mitigating circumstances of the situation: Marcano's position as
a single, working mother, with no access to child care, living in a dangerous area without the
benefit of state services or police protection. The campaign gained momentum when the
Venezuelan attorney general and the president of the nation's congress offered their support to
the cause. As the attorney general stated publicly: "The classification of 'abandonment' has been
an exaggera- tion.... What would we do if we had to imprison all of the men who abandon their
children for a night a month, or all of their lives? ... We'd have to lock up the country!"'7 The
campaign to free Marcano was eventually successful because of the continued pressure from
women of all social classes, including women from the El Infiernito neighborhood and the
middle-class political group CONG (Coordinating Committee of Women's Nongovernmental
Organizations). In conjunction with the feminist journalist organization Women in Communication, these two groups launched an aggressive campaign for Marcano's release. This
campaign culminated in the television broadcast of an interview with the distraught mother from
her prison cell. Her eventual release was heralded on all sides as evidence of the successful
cooperation of women across class boundaries.
**AFF
Economics Binary
Focus on traditional binaries in economics only replicate the very
social and economic structures that produce those binaries.
Wright, Professor of Human Rights, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1995 (Shelley
"Women and the Global Economic Order: A Feminist Perspective." American University
International Law Review 10, no. 2. 861-887)
First, by focusing on women's traditional roles in providing for basic economic and social
services we run the danger of replicating the very economic and social constructions which
oppress women and trap them in positions of exploitation. We then may focus too exclusively on
women as victims, or on women working individually or in small groups to redress their
victimization. We may leave larger fields of economic and political power out of the discussion.
Secondly, by relying on an already existing discourse of rights we may fail to question the
underlying assumptions of that discourse, including the division between political and civil rights
from economic, social and cultural rights. Rights tend to focus on individuals. Even group rights,
however, are inadequate to capture the complexity of women's economic positions. Finally,
although specific measures such as Article 11 of the ICESCR exist to focus the discussion and to
provide possible solutions, the rights are drafted in ways which ignore women's contributions
and needs. The language refers to an adequate standard of living for "himself and his family",
assuming that the Western nuclear family model is the global norm." The need to ensure
equitable distribution of food supplies assumes that development, technology transfer, the
dissemination of knowledge (specifically scientific knowledge) and agrarian reform are
necessary. The basic assumption of Article 11 is that of a Western concept of growth and
development, technical and scientific assistance and "reform" of agrarian techniques, none of
which may be appropriate to the guarantee of economic well-being to a particular group of
people, or within a particular region. The rights to education, housing, social security and other
economic and social rights are based on similar assumptions.
Cap Good
Cap good- Feminism
Ishkanian, Ph.D Research Associate at the LSE Centre for the Study of Global Governance,
07 (Armine, En-gendering Civil Society and Democracy-Building: The Anti-Domestic¶ Violence
Campaign in Armenia, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society,
Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2007, pp. 488-525)CTL
¶ Following the collapse of the socialist regimes in Eastern¶ Europe and the Soviet Union, scholars began
examining the impact¶ of the “transitions”1 on gender roles and relations. While a number¶ of these studies have
considered women’s declining participation informal political life (Popkova 2004; Tohidi 2004) and in the
labor¶ market (Bridger, Kay, and Pinnick 1996; Pine 2002; Werner 2004),¶ others have examined the
emergence of conservative attitudes and¶ policies concerning women’s reproductive roles and rights (Gal and¶
Kligman 2000; Wolchik 2000; Zielinska 2000). Among these studies¶ on gender and post-socialism, a
significant number have focused¶ on women’s growing participation in civil society and nongovernmental¶
organizations (NGOs) (Einhorn 1993; Einhorn and¶ Sever 2005; Ghodsee 2004; Grunberg 2000; Helms 2003;
Hemment¶ 2004; Henderson 2003; Ishkanian 2004; Kay 2004; McMahon¶ 2002; Richter 2002; Sperling 1999).
Gender in the post-socialist¶ countries became a central battlefield of the transition because it¶ was one of the
areas of direct ideological confrontation between¶ capitalism and socialism (Brandtsta¨dter 2007, 140), and the
family,¶ as in Soviet times, was once again seen as an important site for¶ remaking and challenging accepted
norms, attitudes, and behaviors¶ in the post-socialist period (Gal and Kligman 2000).