Feminist theorizing and feminism in political sociology

FEMINIST
THEORIZING
AND
FEMINISM IN
POLITICAL
SOCIOLOGY
By: Barbara Hobson

OVERVIEW
• Feminist Theory
• Feminism Theorizing on State
• Feminism Theorizing on Gender
• Feminism Theorizing on Citizenship
• Conclusion

What is Feminist Theory
• Feminist theory is a major branch of theory within
sociology that is distinctive for how its creators
shift their analytic lens, assumptions, and topical
focus away from the male viewpoint and
experience.

Feminism Theorizing on State
• Feminist theoretical positions on the state fell into
three broad categories:
– Marxist, Liberal and Radical.

• Within Marxian theory, the state is an agent of elite
capitalist power; gender exploitation is viewed as a
subset of class exploitation reproducing class
relations. Feminist theories sought to modify and
extend Marxist theories of production and
reproduction (Eisenstein, 1979; Sacks, 1974)

• Mary McIntosh (1978), in “The State and the Oppression
of Women,” linked the labor process to the institution of
the family. The state’s support for the male breadwinner
reproduced the division of labor in the household and
women’s dependency.

• Liberal feminist theory views the state as a potentially
neutral arbiter lacking any ideology of its own.
Recognizing that men dominate the state; liberal
feminism maintains that the state and its institutions
exist apart from men’s domination. State processes
are legitimate, but men have captured them (Connell,
1987).

• Radical feminist theory takes as its starting point
that the state is a system of structures and
institutions created by men in order to sustain
and recreate male power and female
subordination.

• Catherine MacKinnon (1983), a radical feminist,
theorizing on the state revolves around the sexual
subordination of women and how this subordination
is embedded in the state apparatus, procedures, and
structures.
• Radical feminist theorizing assumes the state is a
purposive actor reproducing patriarchy, that states
are masculinist, designed by men to serve their
interest.

Feminism Theorizing on Gender
• The postmodern turn has imploded the equality
and difference debate by destabilizing the very
category of woman and the political
underpinnings of feminism, which assumed
gendered identities and interest based on shared
experiences of subordination and exclusion.

• The idea of gendered collective struggles for
justice is rejected on two fronts:
– First, as a denial of unified experience upon which
women can frame claims for rights;
– Second, as a rejection of universalism as a legitimate
base for such claims

• Critical race and gender theories seek synthetic
analyses across race, class, and gender. Evolving
from the wellspring of research on gender and
the welfare states, Fiona Williams (1995) posits a
model of welfare states that views structured
social relations across race, class, and gender, all
of which are mutually constitutive and shape
women’s claims for inclusion.

• Mink (1994), for black feminist, a central argument in
feminist theories of women’s subordination, that the
family is viewed as a site of resistance against the
intrusion of the state. And in the same vein as the
black feminist from the former Soviet Regime
countries argue that for women under socialism, the
private sphere of protection and refuge against the
control of totalitarian regimes.

• Myra Marx Ferree’s (2000), analyzing the sources of
oppression from different lenses, East German
feminists addressed the structural features of state
power (public patriarchy);
• Meanwhile Western feminists viewed women’s
exploitation in terms of the power of individual men
over women in families and their acts of violence
toward women (private patriarchy).

• Research on gender and global restructuring has
underscored the exploitation between women,
making visible the class/gender positioning across
regions (Marchand and Runyan, 2000).
• Referring to the global care chain, feminist research
(Hochschild, 2000; Anderson, 2000; Gavanas and
Williams, in 2004) traces the migration of women
from the South who travel across continents to do the
“dirty work,” of middle class white women in the
North, leaving behind their own children to be cared
for by others.

Feminism Theorizing on Citizenship

• Definition of Citizenship
– Jones defines this dimension of citizenship “as an
action practiced by a people of certain identity in a
specifiable locale”.
– Turner (1993) uses active citizenship, and the
challenges from below to the spheres of family, and
religion. Although he seeks to overcome the
public/private split, Turner does not address at all the
gender implications of his analysis.

• Civic Republicanism: Participation, Rights, and
Obligations
– Civic Republicanism dates back to ancient Greece
and the ideal of civic duty and the political
obligations in the polity.
– Bussemaker and Voet (1998), Eighteenth-century feminists
used the discourse of civic republicanism to argue for
women’s inclusion into the ranks of citizens, and to press for
equal citizenship with men.

• Participatory Democracy
– Habermas (1990), in his generalized notion of the
public sphere constructs a framework for participatory
democracy, which is an intermediary space between
the political system and private sectors of lifeworld.
However according to Nancy Fraser (1989), what is
missing in Habermas’s analysis is a gendered subtext
on the public and private.

• Iris Young (2000), claims that subordinated groups,
minorities, poor people, and women, historically
created “subaltern counter publics,” often lack the
associational life that provides forums for its
members to raise issues among themselves.

• T.H. Marshall: Social Citizenship and Membership
– For many feminist theorists, T. H. Marshall provided a
framework for confronting histories of exclusion,
though class inequality, not gender, underlay
Marshall’s framework of social citizenship.
– Marshall (1950) Social citizenship, “as a status
bestowed on those who are full members of a
community. All who possess the status are equal with
respect to the rights and duties with which the status is
endowed”.

• (Hobson, 1994; Orloff, 1993) Feminist theorizing
introduced a gender-sensitive dimension of social
citizenship – the right to form independent
households without the risk of poverty.
• This dimension of gendered social rights
challenged mainstream theories that focused on
the state/market nexus on two levels.

• First, states a role in the stratification within societies
• Second, they argued that decommodifying policies are
gendered, often those aimed at women workers such as
maternity leave and the parent’s right to work part-
time, and often had the perverse effect of intensifying
gender segregated labor markets, leading to greater
gender stratification in the labor market.

• Thomas Janoski’s (1998) concept of participation
rights is also relevant to this discussion. Extending
Marshall’s model of citizenship, he introduces
participation rights that embrace workers’
councils and organizations that set the course for
policy.

Conclusion
• Global citizen is metaphor that suggests new legal and political
opportunities, which may have significance for marginalized groups.
• Transnational actors even when they are mobilizing in global forums
– the centralizing role played by the UN conferences comes to mind –
the transnational networks that they spawned seek to influence and
recast rights and claims for full citizenship in respective national
settings.
• The challenge for feminist theorizing is to imagine the practice of
citizenship in a multidimensional and dynamic context of gendered
actors across local, national, and supranational arenas. This is to take
into account how global restructuring and new supranational
institutions is important to combat stratification.

Feminist theorizing and feminism in political sociology

Feminist theorizing and feminism in political sociology

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