Women, Families, and Feminist Politics

A Global Exploration

J Dianne Garner, Suzanne Cherrin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780789004826
• eBook ISBN: 9781317790242
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Women and their roles within families must be understood within the context of ethnic traditions, religion, and culture. Women, Families, and Feminist Politics: A Global Exploration combines all of these aspects to evaluate the similarities and differences of women around the world. Readers will learn about diverse theories relating to women and their familial roles, the different categories of feminism, and how cultures and ethnic traditions shape and sometimes restrict a woman's identity. Using feminist and sociocultural theories to critically examine the role of adult women within their families, Women, Families, and Feminist Politics offers ideas and suggestions on what has to be done in order for all of women's experiences and concerns to be valued and looked upon as important. In addition to providing you with an understanding of how customs and cultures contribute to societal standards set for women, Women, Families, and Feminist Politics discusses several factors that contribute to the formation of women's roles and identity, including:

• the economic situation of the family and the country in which the woman lives (a developed or developing country)
• cultural diversity in monogamous heterosexual marriage relations and specific marriage traditions, such as dowries
• family structures, such as nonnuclear, extended, polygamous, mixed religion relationships, mixed race relationships, or same-sex relationships
• reproduction and sexual standards in relation to religion, government policies, and world population
• gender equity in the workplace and programs for women in global development
• the health care needs of women and how they vary depending on culture, political philosophies, and resources
• women and violence in societal and family contexts, from war rapes, female circumcision, and footbinding to battery and sexual harassmentWomen, Families, and Feminist Politics looks at the daily challenges and concerns of adult women within the context of family to help you understand the different needs of women in relation to their culture and ethnic background. Focusing on the importance of views concerning the meaning of women's social status, power, and success, Women, Families, and Feminist Politics contains case studies and statistical data that identify critical issues pertaining to you personally and to all women throughout the world. By understanding how women's families help shape their identities, you will be able to learn about the vast experiences of women and the inequalities we have yet to overcome.

Chapter 1

Marriage and Family Formation

Global marriage and family issues involve many concerns that guide a discussion in this area. Concerns often center on the definition and formation of families. Feminist scholars representing liberal, radical, and socialist views have critiqued the traditional Western view of family and the imposition of this view throughout the world.¹ In Rethinking the Family (Thome and Yalom, 1992), scholars challenge the reader to see families in broader terms. Families are not monolithic. Although individual families are socialized to see a specific cultural norm to be the appropriate defining nature of a family, it is imperative for researchers and policymakers to view the broad array of families. Feminist scholars challenge research concerning families to address the importance of gender in understanding family issues. Understanding women's place within families illuminates an examination of women's lives and broadens our understanding of the experiences of diverse women.

Most women throughout the world are a part of monogamous, heterosexual family systems. This chapter explores these women and how critical issues of family formation, maintenance, and dissolution impact the lives of women worldwide.

Women across the globe are socialized to adhere to a role significantly defined by their gender. Socialization is the process of acquiring the behavioral and social skills needed to become a social being and a functioning member of your existing society. This process is limited by the ascribed roles of women and men within the existing society. The molding of girls to fit a cultural norm is a central function of families. Within the context of family life, young persons are first introduced to definitions of femaleness and maleness. In all societies the family serves as an agent in the process of socialization.

Psychological theory has sought to explain the socialization of individuals. Diverse theories explain successful processes that ensure socialization. Instrumental conditioning can assist our understanding of how women learn as girls to perform in ways defined as feminine. Within this framework, girls learn to make certain responses by the consequences of those responses. Behaviors that result in rewards occur more frequently, establishing responses that become socialized, and those behaviors that result in punishment diminish in frequency and finally are extinguished.² The family is central in delivering consequences for specific behavior. In this way, girls throughout the world are commonly reinforced for assuming nurturing roles and exhibiting conforming behavior, and are often punished for assertive and individual aspirations.

In sharp contrast to an instrumental conditioning frame of reference are psychoanalytic perspectives. Within these perspectives, the importance of biological drives and unconscious processes are stressed. The life experiences that occur within the early stages of human development are intricately linked with one's biological sex, thus shaping individual patterns throughout life. Therefore, girls are destined biologically to behave in what is defined as feminine and less capable ways. Feminist psychoanalytic researchers, however, have challenged the emphasis on biological determinism and the view of women's socialization as a deficit model. Revisions of psychoanalytic theory argue that explanations that focus on “penis envy” or biological inferiority of women neglect the obvious and pervasive discrimination that girls and women face.³ Thus, feminist psychoanalytically oriented writers seek to understand the process of socialization by exploring both unconscious processes and the social conditions that subjugate and surround women.

Psychological exploration informs discussion on how women see their place within families and how families shape that place. Women conditioned to view themselves as self-sacrificing and less deserving enter relationships ready to accept that cultural norm. The roles women are socialized to accept guide their roles within marriage.

DO “MASCULINE” AND “FEMININE” ROLES CREATE INEQUALITY WITHIN MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIPS?

Traditional views of masculinity and femininity place men and women into separate but interacting spheres. These views cast women's development as inferior to men's and assign them an unalterable position of subordination, according to Williams (1993, pp. 27–62). Notions of maleness and femaleness develop within an androcentric arena nourished by a global patriarchal context. Definitions of masculinity and femininity emerge from these perspectives.

Definitions of masculinity and femininity dichotomize the central essence of men and women. These definitions classically imply distinct traits to males and females. Masculinity consists of traits viewed as positive within many parts of the world; to be masculine means to be highly rational, autonomous, and capable of self-determination. Femininity, however, implies very different traits, such as highly emotional and irrational, nurturing of others, and deferential to males. Notions of such gendered traits as masculinity and femininity sustain the view of women's subordination to men as a “natural” phenomenon, based on the psychobiological differences between men and women. Many feminist researchers, including Eichenbaum and Orbach (1983), Lerner (1988), and Williams (1993), have critiqued such notions of natural gender subordination. The central basis of these critiques maintains that the acceptance of biologically determined masculine and feminine traits and behaviors denies the importance of patriarchy and societal views in shaping gender roles.

Feminist scholars challenge analyses that view masculinity-femininity as a dichotomous trait. Current research supports the multiple ways that socialization patterns, cultures, and family patterns reinforce traditions of masculinity and femininity. Cross-cultural feminist researchers have also criticized the dichotimization of female and male traits. Researchers such as Baca Zinn (1994) and Comas-Diaz (1994) challenge the universal assumption of established masculine and feminine roles that result in the subordination of women. These diverse viewpoints necessitate a closer look at cultural orientation and gender roles as they affect the lives of women.

The cultural beliefs of the individuals involved predicates the reality of their marital lives. Cultural expectations define notions of masculinity and femininity, acceptable forms of marriage, and much of the life experience of the marital partners. Societies that hold highly restrictive and inflexible notions concerning female and male roles constrain women's lives to a segment defined by gender.

Shifting tides within each community also shape the culturally defined roles that women and men play within the family. The machismo ideal that men of Mexican descent have traditionally adhered to is an example. Here, the machismo male is entitled by his male status to a superior position. This macho ideal is equated with authority, strength, and sexual virility. The man is seen as the patriarch who rules in all manner over females. According to Williams (1990) this traditional belief is not as ingrained as in previous decades, although it remains as an influential determinant in the relationships of wives and husbands.

These gender scripts are not only seen within Mexico, but also delineate the relationships of women and men throughout many parts of the world. The manifestations of superiority of the masculine role reach across the globe, affecting the treatment of women and the roles assigned to them.

Analyzing women in Nepal, Bennett (1983) describes how culture and custom influence the lives of Hindu women as brides and wives:

Clearly, female children grow up with a strong awareness that their stay in the maita (family home) is transient and that their existence is peripheral to that of their natal patriline. While sons of the family remain members of the consanguineous group, daughters become identified with the affinal group and its patriline. For it is there, in her husband's house, that a woman will fulfill her most important structural roles in the dominant patrifocal model—as wife and mother, (p. 169)

Nepalese wives experience less significance within their families of orientation and procreation. These women serve as links between generations within their husband's family, not as important and significant individuals in their own right. In Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters (Bennett, 1983), women speak of feelings of both isolation and harassment caused by their family of procreation. Particularly, these women often feel that they are sent away from the maita (family home) to work in the “house of demanding strangers” where they are “critically watched and controlled.” Typically, until they have had one or more children, fulfilling their “true” feminine role and bonding them to their families of procreation, Nepalese brides are targets of distrust.

Marital relationships vary in the equality of the marriage partners, how partners are chosen, under what conditions the marriage takes place, the ritual customs surrounding the marriage, the cultural experiences that shape the reality of the marriage, and of course, the long-term outcome of the marriage. Marital roles that prescribe women a feminine role equated with a subordinate position while equating masculinity with authority create the conditions for female oppression within the family.

THE IMPACT OF AGE ON MARITAL PATTERNS

Most women marry at some point during their life span, with most marriages occurring in the young adult years. The age of first marriage and the reality of marriage for women varies across cultures. This variability in age of first marriage exists, but does age at first marriage make a significant difference in the reality of marital life? In many African countries, nearly 50 percent of the women marry by age eighteen, and 40 percent of Asian women marry by eighteen as well (United Nations, 1991b). In contrast, in the United States, only 5.2 percent of women marry between ages fifteen and nineteen years; in the Netherlands, 1.2 percent; and in Hungary, 10.8 percent. These figures underscore the age differences seen in first marriages across the world, but do not fully represent regional and cultural differences seen in early marriages. An extreme and rare form of early marriage today is child marriage. Beatty describes this phenomenon in Mas in Southeast Asia:

Child marriage is now rare. The groom in such cases is called solaya ono (“one who entertains/feasts the child/bride”). A girl of about ten is taken home by the groom (who may be an adult) or his father, following the payment of a substantial portion of bride wealth. In the local idiom, she is “carried home on his back” like a daughter. She is already called a wife (though, formerly, to satisfy Dutch government and missionary objections, she might be called a helper). She lives as a member of the groom's household until she becomes sexually mature. Then the remainder of the bride wealth is paid, the wedding feast can go ahead and the marriage is consummated. (1992, p. 175)

In all countries, men enter marriage at an older age than women. When this phenomenon is coupled with statistics across nations of women who enter marriage at an early age, a significant age-related difference is found throughout the lives of married men and women. Early marriage reveals a profound impact on women's lives.

This marital age gap can have serious consequences on the power wielded by married women. Since women are generally younger, and sometimes significantly so, they come into a marital relationship with less life experience than the male spouse. This can contribute to dependence on the male partner, particularly when the young woman has married early due to economic necessity. The high rate of early-age marriages for women strongly correlates with the poverty facing developing countries. In a system that accords women less importance than the men within the family, marriage is often the only recourse for daughters of a family living in poverty. By custom, young girls become engaged or marry early, thus transferring the young girl to another family through marriage. The option of choice is to marry the daughter to a man who will provide for her. For example, a young woman in Bangladesh typically marries a male who is seven years older than she; 73 percent of young Bangladesh women marry by age fifteen (United Nations, 1991b). Despite the contribution that she makes to the household or to the economic resources of the family, the age differential combined with customary patriarchal beliefs and views concerning masculinity and femininity place her in an assumed position of less knowledge, less experience, and less power within the family system.

The age of marriage also correlates to the inability to finish secondary education. These young married women typically interrupt education for marriage or face early removal from school to prepare for the marriage pool. For those who attempt to complete their education, early childbearing and household responsibilities make it difficult or sometimes impossible to complete school. An eighteen-year-old mother in southern rural Mexico stated, “School is not important for me; I have to work, take care of my daughter, work in the fields, prepare food for all, … help my family every day.”⁴ This situation is a common reality throughout the world for young married women, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia, and other developing areas. However, in the same areas of the world, only 5 percent of young men marry under nineteen years of age (United Nati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Marriage and Family Formation
• Chapter 2. Diversity Within Family Formation
• Chapter 3. Population, Reproduction, Sexuality and Women's Status
• Chapter 4. Women and Work Worldwide
• Chapter 5. Women and Health Care
• Chapter 6. Women and Violence
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index