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1Gender and social inequality in Latin America
14/02 - Lecture 1: Feminism, gender and social inequality in Latin America
Suffragettes in Britain 1st feminist wave – Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst around
(1915).
- Women who wanted the right to vote.
- Movement for political inclusion. Women did not have body rights at that time. Only men
who owned land or a house were allowed to vote. Women weren’t allowed to hold
property.
Simone de Beauvoir argues that man is considered the default, while woman is considered
the ‘Other’. She says:
“... there is an absolute human-type, the masculine ... Thus, humanity is male, and man
defines woman not as herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous
being ... she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to
her; she is incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the subject he is the
Absolute – she is the other.” (1953 [transl. H.M. Parshley], p. 316)
One is not born but rather becomes a woman.
Ethnocentrism: considering the norms and values of one’s own society as good and as a
moral point of departure in the study/analysis of other societies and cultural groups
Androcentrism: arguing or analyzing from a male perspective and social position
Women studies became dominant there were no gender studies.
Ethno- and androcentric ideas about gender relations in social theory
The nuclear family household based on a heterosexual couple as a natural fact not as a
social construct (other types of households are seen as unnatural, exotic, backward,
amoral, deviant, etc.);
The idea that in all societies, women are subordinate to men (naturalization of patriarchy);
Family households are headed by a male breadwinner, the female partner’s main
responsibilities are childcare and household chores; when this was not the case it would be
strange / exotic
Men are active, women are passive and subordinate;
Men’s knowledge and capabilities are important for society (and worth studying),
women’s knowledge and capabilities are not important for society (and not interesting);
Men are the standard, women are the deviation from the norm.
Sex/gender system – Gayle Rubin
Main distinction between sex and gender.
Sex: biological differences between women and men
Gender: cultural meanings attached to those biological differences, i.e. cultural
construction of femininity and masculinity
Gayle Rubin (1975) criticized by Judith Butler (1990 Gender Trouble)
Black feminist critique
Major critique voiced in early feminism
Feminism is a Western, White, middle-class movement
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Gender, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and class all play important roles within systems of
oppression and processes of social exclusion
The labor struggle for equal inclusion has always been a white middle class struggle.
Work for white middle class woman = a privileged. Work for a black woman = a given.
The struggle for political inclusion also very different. White women could vote.
Angela Davis prominent figure in this debate.
Intersectionality
Crenshaw, Nash proposes the idea that the awareness that different axes of social
inequality exist and may re-enforce each other.
Looking at it like plus and minus when looking at a certain hierarchy.
This course focuses on gender, poverty, and race/ethnicity
Intersectional perspective. it’s about the whole human being. Personally different inequalities
overlap.
NB: not additive, but constitutive!
Judith Butler (‘90s)
Argued that we can perform gender. Like hair, long hair being feminine. Its not really binary,
there isn’t one polar opposite.
- Breaking through binary thinking. Letting go of this thinking
Gloria Anzaldúa – Borderlands
Theorizing about the space in between, between black and white, between male and female.
There is a 3rd space, the space of imagination.
- Borderlands aren’t just a fixed geographical space, they exist in our brains about our space
in the world.
Development in feminist theory until the 2000’s
Women’s studies (60’s, 70’s)
Gender studies (80’s onward)
Also looks on how men are gendered beings. Not only women as gender subjects.
Black feminist theory and intersectionality (80’s onward)
Doing/performing gender (90’s onward)
Queer theory (90’s onward)
Postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory (90’s onward)
Meanwhile... important developments:
1st World conference of the International Women’s Year: Mexico City (19 June – 2 July
1975)
1976-1985 was designated UN Decade for Women
Agenda: gender violence, pay equity, land rights, human rights
1st part is based on US and Europe but there is a whole other thing going on in Latin America
Feminist economic studies have shown that:
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Worldwide women are poorer than men, even among the higher classes
Women work in the informal economy (lower wages, more insecure labor conditions)
more often than men
Women working in the formal economy employed in more exploitative work (e.g.
maquiladoras), even in the same position as men, they were paid less.
Especially women have carried the burden of neoliberal structural adjustment programs
Neoliberal structural adjustment programs to help LA countries in becoming
economically more dynamic. (Washington consensus, IMF etc.).
Adjustments also made socially, idea that women were less likely to be in labor unions.
Gender studies in Latin America
Prevalence of (neo)Marxist analysis, especially of social inequalities
Also in relation to gender. not specific but more the idea that the problems of class
inequalities produced inequalities within households as well.
Class struggle most often put above women’s struggle
The idea that if we fix class struggle, women’s struggle will follow. Proven to be untrue.
Feminisms from different epistemological vantage points
Diverse anticolonial feminist projects
Diverse framework, feminist practice and theory very diverse. (access to education plays
big role)
Decolonial & Anticolonial feminisms
Anticolonialism as theoretical and political project, building on critiques of colonialism,
modernity, Eurocentrism, capitalism, nationalism, racism
Decolonial versus postcolonial – Tension between these thoughts.
Different origin of decolonial and postcolonial thought (Asia and LAC)
Decolonialism against “subalternization”
Also adds a feminist critique of postcolonialism (and an anticolonial feminist critique of
“whitestream” feminism)
But: critique from Latin American feminist scholars on some of the central tenets of
decolonial (feminist) theory
Postcolonial order, new world.
As has been stated in the lecture (week 2 Julienne Weegels), rather than studying feminism in
isolation, we must see it as a co-constitutive of capitalist practices, ideals, and labour divides.
Instead of analysing feminism in isolation, we need to understand it as co-constitutive of
capitalist practices, values and divisions of labour.
- Source unknown????
Central tenets and critique of decolonial thought
Coloniality of power (Quijano, Mignolo) Racialization inherent to colonization
Coloniality of gender (Lugones) gendering inherent to colonization, imposition of
gender binaries
Coloniality of knowledge Epistemic violence
Capitalism concommitant to colonialism
Epistemology = the theory of knowledge. What is knowledge, how can we gather it etc.
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