Money, sex and power

1. Money, sex and power Gender and international relations Week 9 2011-12

2. Lecture outline 1. The importance of gender and women to the nation state – its creation and maintenance 2. The importance of daily interaction at a micro-level for international relations 3. How women themselves engage in relations with other women across borders and conflicts.

3. Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1989) Argue that women are: • biological reproducers of national or ethnic groups • reproducers of the social boundaries of national or ethnic groups • transmitters and reproducers of the culture • conceptualised as symbols of national and ethnic differences, as in the image of Mother India or Britannia • seen as active participants in national economic, political or military struggles

4. Categories of gendered nationhood • Biological reproduction of the nation • Cultural reproduction of the nation • Citizenship and difference • War

5. Biological reproduction of the nation • women’s reproductive rights are at issue in producing and reproducing the nation • State policies aim to increase/decrease population Three ‘population discourses’ • the ‘people as power’ discourse • the ‘malthusian discourse’ • the ‘eugenicist discourse’

6. Question of population Key issue for • international development aid • social welfare and in the economy. Leads to controls on marriage, sexuality, reproduction Affects policies on • abortion • contraception • reproductive health

7. References to ‘other’ nations • Yuval-Davis focusses on nation • Identity produced with reference to ‘the other’ • Ideas about optimum population size has implicit reference to relationship with other nations

8. Cultural reproduction of the nation • Transmission of cultures and traditions to the next generation • Gender symbols important in constructions of masculinity and femininity • Women seen as the embodiment of the nation and as symbolic border guards • Role as cultural reproducers creates specific masculine/feminine identities

9. Citizenship and difference • Membership of the nation given legal recognition through state citizenship  • Governed by regulations on immigration and naturalisation • Men have recognition awarded or withheld, women often can’t apply for citizenship in their own right • Equal Opportunities legislation has changed this to some extent

10. War • Citizenship involves both rights and responsibilities, the ultimate responsibility is to die for one’s country in times of war  • Linked to construction of masculinity and femininity • Men fight, kill and are killed, women are fought for and fought over • Systematic rape in war

11. Critique of argument • Privilege cultural or ideological aspects of the gendered nation over the economic or material aspects  • What is absent is gender division of labour • Social structures and social hierarchies neglected if cultural aspects given too much weight • Even cohesive social groups contain social inequalities – dominant groups wage war

12. Importance of daily interaction at a micro-level Cynthia Enloe (1989) Bananas, Beaches and Bases • Paid work • Housework • International gendered division of labour • Sexuality • Violence • Culture • The State

13. Cynthia Enloe (1989) • Enloe looks at hierarchical relations between nations - the way they affect, and are affected by, gendered cultural forms. • Important argument because she challenges idea that international relations solely in hands of political elites • Shows how women who are excluded from state power affect international relations

14. Women engaging in relations with other women across borders and conflicts • Cynthia Cockburn(1998) The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict  • Looks at how women have negotiated their differences across seemingly intractable divides • The material for Cockburn includes economic, physical and political factors

15. Cockburn’s perspective • Biological and cultural reproduction of the nation, sexuality, violence, economic and military struggles constitute material basis of gendered international power relations • In addition to paid work, housework, sexual division of labour and international division of labour • So it’s money, sex and power that count • Money – economic and labour aspects of gendered international power relations • Sex – physical aspects including sexuality, reproduction, and sexual, physical and military violence against the body • Power – political and social aspects. 

16. Movements progressive or regressive • How essentialist and exclusionary is its understanding of ‘the people’? • Does it promise ethnic opening or ethnic closure as it approaches power? • Is it a bourgeois project seeking to establish property and land rights for the minority? • Or a movement of peasants and workers promising land reform and collective property rights as well as national liberation? • Is it authoritarian or democratic, religious or secular? • Does it perpetuate a regime of male dominance or promise transformation of gender relations?

17. How can we reduce violence? • anti-essentialist, inclusive,democratic form of feminism Three examples of ‘transversal feminist politics’ in action • Northern Ireland • Bosnia/Hercegovina • Israel/Palestine

18. Six strategies • They affirm difference • They avoid closure on identity • They reduce polarisation by emphasising other differences • They acknowledge injustice done in the name of different identities • They define the agenda of the projects • They practice a democratic group process

19. ‘Agonistic democracy’ • This is what Cockburn calls agonistic democracy – combative democracy • Chantal Mouffe - difference is recognised rather than being glossed over • Other not viewed as enemy but adversary • Enemy would have to be destroyed, an adversary has ideas you might want to fight against but their right to exist not questioned

20. Antagonism v Agonism • Antagonism is struggle between enemies, while agonism is struggle between adversaries • Aim of democratic politics to transform antagonism into agonism • Avoids constructing opponent as enemy • Alternative to agonistic democracy is conflict • Attempting to annihilate your enemy, the other • E.g. women suicide bombers

21. Andrea Dworkin The women suicide bombers’ in Feminista! (www.feminista.com/archives/v5n1/dworkin.html) asks why women become suicide bombers 1.They may be fleeing from sexual violence and dishonour 2. It is an act which raises the status of women 3. Belief that women can be as brave, self-sacrificing and willing to submit to revolutionary imperatives as men

22. No common ground • ‘In this time of terror, there is no tie between Israeli and Palestinian women, no conviction on the part of Palestinian women that the Israeli women they are killing have anything in common with them. Even though policy is made in both communities by aggressive, angry men, there is no sisterhood to speak of, no sense that there but for the grace of God go I.’ • In the absence of agonistic democracy women divided from each other, capable of killing each other

23. Conclusion • Women central to the reproduction of the nation • Sexuality policed by men to maintain group and national boundaries • International relations not only what states and elites do but what we all do • Need agonistic democracy in order to overcome difference and othering, adversaries rather than enemies