Women and Public Policy

The Shifting Boundaries Between the Public and Private Spheres

Susan Baker, Anneke van Doorne-Huiskes, Susan Baker, Anneke van Doorne-Huiskes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429783777
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1999, this volume aims to go beyond this debate is to explore the factors which have contributed to women's exclusion from rights and full citizenship. Beginning by linking the construction of a dichotomous relationship between public and private spheres to the theory and practice of women's exclusion, it attempts to move beyond critique and open up an alternative, more positive project. More than a feminist analysis, this project is fundamental to constructing a new understanding of politics and the political process.

Part I
Introduction

Risking Difference: Reconceptualizing the Boundaries between the Public and Private Spheres

SUSAN BAKER

Theoretical Considerations

Introduction

Western liberal thought has constructed a notion of rights based on an ideal type of citizen. This citizen is abstract, universal, non-gendered, and nonracial; a citizen who is entitled to what we may refer to as 'natural rights' (Benn, 1972). From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onwards, it has been commonly held that it is the task of the state and of the law to safeguard these rights, lists of which were drawn up in such documents as the American Bill of Rights and the Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen). However, political practice was such that the exercise of full citizenship continued to be confined to particular groups, for example, the fully literate, the sane, or the propertied, elite minority. Despite significant advances, both in political philosophy and democratic practice, especially since the development of the modern welfare state, the concept and practice of citizenship continues to be restricted. As second-wave feminism clearly exposed, women have been given only limited access to full citizens' rights, even in the modern welfare state. This led to activism on the part of liberal, or 'rights' feminists, aimed at ensuring that the rights traditionally ascribed to men were also made available to women and that barriers to women's participation as full citizens of the state were dismantled. Rights, it was argued, should be made available to the abstract, universal, non-gendered subject, that is gender should not be a valid basis upon which to exclude access to rights.

The aim of this book is to go beyond this debate and to explore the factors that have contributed to women's exclusion from rights and full citizenship. It begins by linking the construction of a dichotomous relationship between the public and private spheres to the theory and practice of women's exclusion. Its focus is primarily upon women's exclusion from the modern (welfare) state. However, the book attempts to move beyond the stage of critique and open up the way for an alternative and more positive project: the construction of a new understanding of the public-private worlds. This new understanding goes beyond the demands of liberal, rights feminism, because it seeks something more radical than women's inclusion into formal citizenship. It also wants to reconstruct the idea of citizenship, and to do so in a way that accepts the diversity and difference of both the female and the male. Rather than accepting the ideal that rights should accrue to the abstract, universal, and non-gendered citizen, this analysis argues instead for a concept of citizenship that is embodied, particular, and gendered. Only through this concept of citizenship can true equality be achieved, because it is only in this reconceptualization that the richness or full humanness of the other, their needs, aspirations, modes of thinking, and ways of acting can be fully realized. This project is of interest to more than feminist analysis: it is fundamental to the project of constructing a new understanding of politics and the political process. It is compatible with similar projects being undertaken by regional and ethnic minorities, by new social movements, and by social actors, who are all pushing the boundaries of what constitutes politics. These groups are moving society towards a model of governance that challenges the liberal conception of the abstract, universal, male citizen that is assumed to stand for all; there is increasing demand that social groups be allowed to stand for themsleves.

Background

The construction of a boundary between the public and the private can be found as far back as Greek philosophy, where a clear separation was made between the polis (the public sphere) and the oikos (the home or private sphere). The polis was the locus of freedom and equality, and was seen as superior, the sphere of rationality, moral choice, culture, and of intellectual endeavour. In contrast, the oikos was seen as the sphere of nature, nurture, and the non-rational, and was regarded as the subordinated realm of necessity. In Greek thought, the public was where human beings could fully realize their potential and express their rationality, while the private was seen as concerned with issues of mere survival. Women were confined to the world of the private sphere.

The idea of a separation between the public and private spheres has also been of major significance in the development of both Western political thought and political practice. It played a particularly important role in the development of liberal political theory. In Locke's work, for example, there is a strong belief in the separation of the two worlds, each of which ought to be governed by different rules. The family was seen as located within the private world. It was held that the state should not enter the arena of autonomy that existed around the (property-owning) individual and disrupt, for example, his pursuit of economic goals. As in Greek thought, liberal thought also tended to devalue the female: the ideal male citizen, who alone could also operate in the public world, was conceptualized as rational, independent, self-directed, autonomous, and cultural—in dramatic contrast to the dependent, emotional, natural, passive female confined to the private sphere (Naffine, 1995, p. 24). In liberal thought, this dichotomy was linked to a wider set of complementary dichotomies—such as between reason and desire. This latter separation continues to appear in modern political theory in the distinction between the universal, public realm of sovereignty and the state, on the one hand, and the particular, private realm of needs and desires, on the other hand (Young, 1998, p. 429). This, in turn, was linked to a gendered concept of citizenship, which will be discussed below.¹

Rejecting the Analytical Usefulness of the Dichotomy

Since the 1980s, feminist scholars have been highly critical of the construction of a dichotomy between the public and private spheres.² Making such a sharp distinction does not provide us with a useful or insightful way of making sense of, and grouping patterns of, activity in the world. The private sphere is supposed to refer to the family, unsullied by state regulation, where women are confined and men absent. In contrast, the public sphere is supposed to refer to the world of rational discourse and political life, where men are engaged and women excluded. The reality of both men's and women's lives is more complex. Far from seeing the public and private as separated by a clear boundary, we need to recognize that they have always been connected. Furthermore, there is a wide variation in the rigidity of the distinction, and in the relative scope of, the two domains through time and between societies (Randall, 1991, p. 14). Even as far back as in Greek society, the interrelationship between the public and private spheres is revealed by the fact that the oikos provided the necessary support base to allow the master the freedom to participate in the polis. Similarly, in today's liberal democracies, there are both direct and indirect forms of state regulation of the family; men pass between the public and private spheres on a daily basis, and economic modernization and industrialization has brought increased numbers of women into the public through, for example, participation in the labour market. Furthermore, so-called private issues have a very public dimension. Reproduction provides a good example, as this has become a public-policy issue, particularly since the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. The private sphere is a site of sexual politics (as revealed, for example, by issues such as domestic violence and marital rape). Similarly, male violence against women is a public-policy issue, not least because it constrains women's freedom in the public spheres (Van Schendelen and Ottes).³

Rather than claiming a clear boundary between the public and private spheres, feminist analysis points to the complex interdependency between them. This interdependency provides scholars with a direct challenge: it renders inadequate the traditional liberal conception of the relationship between the state and the individual (Sassoon, 1987, p. 174). Feminist scholars are not alone in criticizing the usefulness of conceptualizing the relationship between the public and private realms as dichotomous. Habermas, for example, has argued that a simple dualism cannot adequately account for the individual's relationship with the modern welfare state (Habermas, 1981).

However, while the public-private dichotomy is analytically unhelpful—that is the distinction does not provide a conceptualization that adequately reflects the complexity of men and women's lives—the dichotomy has nonetheless been of major importance. Thus, even though the claim to a clear separation between the public and private spheres is not borne out by empirical study, this does not deny the fact that the claim can also serve other purposes—it can have an ideological function. From the viewpoint of feminist analysis, its significance is that it has formed part of the theoretical and practical support structures of patriarchy. The public-private split can be seen as a 'deeply gendered dichotomy' (Lester, 1997). In the modern welfare state, for example, the dichotomy has structured a political theory and practice of democracy and citizenship that has marginalized women.

Providing Ideological Support for Patriarchy

The argument that the construction of a dichotomy between the public and private spheres provided both theoretical and practical support structures of patriarchy can be illustrated by drawing from key examples: the process of cultural gendering, the conception of citizenship, and women's relationship to the (modern welfare) state.

Cultural gendering In Western thought, the public-private dichotomy supports, and is supported by, a series of conceptual polarities, such as equality and difference, reason and emotion, independence and dependence (Okin, 1991, p, 77; James, 1992, p. 48). These polarities also separate men from nature and women from culture, a separation heavily criticized in ecofeminist analysis (Baker, 1995). This way of conceptualizing the world has had a profound impact on our cultural heritage—it sets in train a process termed 'cultural gendering' (Davies). Cultural gendering leads to masculinity and femininity- being expressed through different developmental trajectories: the one towards separation and autonomy, the other towards connection and attachment. As a consequence, the route to masculinity comes to involve denial or repression of femininity (Davies). It makes masculinity hegemonic, not just in the sense of silencing non-masculine ways of thinking and acting, but also in the sense that actions in the public sphere become governed according to a masculine vision (Davies, 1995). The public world becomes conceptually associated with masculinity, the private world with femininity. The tragedy of 'cultural gendering' is that it acts to 'wrench apart the diversity and richness of human qualities' (Davies), impoverishing our culture as well as political practice.

Gendered concept of citizenship The public-private dichotomy also helped in the development of an exclusionary, gendered concept of citizenship, although the actual expression of this may differ in different states. In classical liberal theory, the cloak of citizenship is supposed to sit on the shoulders of an abstract, 'disembodied' individual. Yet, this individual has visible and valued 'male' characteristics. Historically, for example, the value of citizenship has, at least partly, been derived from militarist norms of honour and camaraderie, which included only men (Young, 1989, p. 250). While these attributes have become less prominent for the modern state, the model of the citizen continues to be based on the rational actor who can transcend body and sentiment, engaging instead with the rational and the discursive. Conceptually, the feminine is excluded from the public realm of citizenship, because, in western cultural codes, the feminine is seen as the realm of desire and the body. In the modern state, the citizen is also the active individual who participates in the labour market and who votes. Until relatively recently, women were restricted in the exercise of citizenship through these channels. In short, both the functions and qualities deemed compatible with the exercise of citizenship are in fact those characteristics that are culturally associated with men (Lester, 1997, p. 69). As James has argued, the cluster of activities, values, ways of thinking, and of doing things, which have long been associated with women, are all conceived as outside the political world of citizenship and largely irrelevant to it construction (James, 1992).

However, because liberal political thought did not recognize that its concept of citizenship was based on male values and activities, this allowed the male subject to claim a universal validity, which transforms him into a paradigm of humankind as such. This undermines the claim that the liberal ideal of the citizen is impartial and universal (Young, 1998, p. 431). In other words, the concept of citizenship makes a false claim to universal validity (Lester, 1997, p. 69). Rather, it is exposed as gendered, as co-determinous with a Western ideal of masculinity. This idea lives on in the modern state, where the masculinist character of citizenship has been retained, despite, for example, feminist-inspired law reform (Cavarero, 1992, p. 38; Thornton, 1995b, p. 215). This is discussed below, when analysis is made of labour-market maternity legislation.

Relationship to the (modern welfare) state As well as focusing attention on the theoretical weaknesses of the liberal concept of citizenship, attention also needs to be turned to the actual exercise of citizenship, in particular in modern liberal democracies. In liberal democracies, women have been granted restricted access to the complement of rights and privileges that is accorded to men. Women have been denied full rights, because their activities are deemed to be located within the private and thus outside the arena where public/citizen rights apply. There is, for example, a denial of the significance of care and services upon which the public sphere and citizenship depends. As such, neither were these activities considered the legitimate arena of legislative activity, nor was engagement within them considered as bestowing rights and privileges on women as citizens.

Despite the problematic nature of citizenship for women, this is not to claim that women have been denied access to citizenship in modern liberal democracies. Rather, women have been given formal admission to citizenship on different terms than men. By way of illustration we can turn to Lester's argument that, on entering the public sphere, women have not been able to shed the features that bound them in the private sphere: women enter public space as embodied individuals. As such, their citizenship can, and is, jeopardized by, for example, sexual violence, harassment, and pornography (Lester, 1997; Van Sc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• PART I: INTRODUCTION
• PART II: GENDERED THOUGHT, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, AND POLICY NETWORKS
• PART III: WORK, WELFARE STATES, AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
• PART IV: HEALTH, REPRODUCTION, AND THE ENVIRONMENT