Feminist Organizations and Social Transformation in Latin America

Nelly P. Stromquist

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317259558
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Social Sciences
• Categoria: Sociology

Away from the public eye, but from within the structures of stable and efficient organizations, women's groups have established nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to pursue feminist agendas. Feminist Organizations and Social Transformation in Latin America constitutes one of the first detailed analyses of the political and educational work of these organizations. Focusing on NGOs in the Dominican Republic and Peru, the book presents three case studies of feminist work, showing the careful balance they must navigate among satisfying basic needs, promoting legislation to address profound gender asymmetries, and creating countercultures essential to the development of a gender-attenuated society. In documenting the work of feminist NGOs, Stromquist identifies the ways they provide nonformal education (outside the school system) and informal learning (through experiences and internal discussions) to produce a new consciousness and assertive identities among women.

1

WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF GREAT SOCIAL INEQUALITY

The history of social movements combines “history from below” with the sociology of dominated groups and attempts to correct the inherent bias in conventional interpretations about social phenomena (Molyneux, 1986). This entails the use of theories that recognize the marginalization of certain social groups and methodologies that consider the narratives produced by the participants themselves.

Knowledge acquired inside and outside schooling constitutes a valuable tool for the transmission of previously marginalized and suppressed knowledge and for the generation of a new consensus of reality. Herein lie the reality and the promise of education. Fortunately, as Keck and Sikkink (1998) observe, “culture is not a totalizing influence but a constantly transforming field. Certain discourses, such as that of human rights, offer a language of negotiation” (p. 211). Organic intellectuals, from a Gramscian perspective, are a key element of the groups that seek liberation from antiquated or unjust norms. They create knowledge that defends new visions and influences others.

Social movements have demonstrated efficient performance in five phases of social change. Listed progressively, these phases are: (1) calling attention to a topic, and creating information about it; (2) changing the discourse around that problem; (3) accomplishing changes in procedures, either by mobilizing to ratify treaties or by acting in cooperation with international organisms; (4) creating changes in public policy; and (5) influencing the behaviors of both the state and outside actors (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). What Keck and Sikkink do not identify in this list—but which is extremely important in a feminist perspective, and might precede the first phase of these movements—is calling attention to new subjects and actors. This implies the recognition of women as entitled to human rights and as indispensable social actors.

The main strategy of the environmentalist movement, which seeks the protection of nature and its resources, has been to heighten the level of the legal and scientific knowledge of its members in order to participate in the debate (Weinberg, 1997). As environmentalists fought to protect natural resources, they had to make efforts to institutionalize certain key concepts regarding natural resources, education, and environmental sensibility. Their success in promoting their cause, despite open opposition from other parties in the conflict, has been possible because of their ability to control agendas at meetings, to participate in audiences on regulatory policies and in public forums, and to influence the vision of the world and the conceptual frameworks that people develop within a given conflict (Weinberg, 1997). As with environmentalists, women in the feminist movement have also recognized that it is necessary to develop and maintain expertise in the subject.

In addition to the procurement of knowledge, the creation of an identity is an essential ingredient in the formation of a new social vision. Castells (1997) recognizes the emergence of three types of identity. The first he calls a “resistance identity,” which leads to mobilizing actions as much for creating counterhegemonic meanings as for ensuring the existence of the movement. “Project identity” is the term he uses to refer to the reconstruction of new meanings and to the redefinition of social positions. “Legitimacy identity” is what dominant ideologies achieve as they become the norm and are justified in whole by dominant institutions. These three forms of identity point toward a collective identity and seem entirely relevant to an understanding of feminist action.

Resistance to the status quo—which marks the beginning of social transformation—develops on the foundation of a capacity for intersubjectivity, reflection, and creativity. Keck and Sikkink (1998), two authors who have made significant contributions to the understanding of social movements, and in particular of women’s organized action, propose five ways to engage in politics and to thus exert pressure: (1) through information; (2) with the use of symbols; (3) with the use of political leverage (centered on such actors as the government, international financial institutions, and private actors including transnational corporations); (4) through accountability; (5) and by monitoring to shorten the distance between discourse and practice. Obviously, the execution of these means of doing politics requires informed and available social agents. Availability, in many cases, requires that the agent have some degree of economic autonomy, which would occur only if one has money or full-time employment. Among marginalized sectors, while it is necessary to work in all five ways named above, what for lack of resources is most often accomplished is limiting politics to the first two ways (1 and 2). However, a very accessible resource for women is mobilization, through which a situation is made visible and backed by a high number of supporters.

At the collective level, political actions of marginalized sectors are expressed by the engagement of members in social networks. Among the benefits of social networks are information exchange, social and emotional support, consciousness-raising, formation of a new identity, elaboration of a repertoire of strategies, and mobilization (Taylor, 1995). Networks accumulate professional experiences to construct the skills needed to present demands that reflect collective needs and to initiate processes to satisfy these needs. Networks also develop and accumulate what Tarrow (1998) calls “containment repertoires,” or the set of practices and strategies to press for change as well as to generate alternative ways of action. Increasingly, the international community acquires fundamental importance in the strength and success of social movements because networks “have considerable importance in the introduction of transformative and mobilizing ideas in the international system” (Keck and Sikkink, 1998, p. 217).

Transformative Actions in Favor of Social Change

The question of what constitutes a transformative action has received considerable attention in the literature of sociology and political science. Some consider that transformation occurs primarily when the state or the nature of the state has changed. Others tend to see a more gradual transformation, through the proclamation of progressive public policies and the emergence of new social practices. When referring to marginalized groups, Keck and Sikkink (1998) see transformative results not in terms of how demands are processed within institutional representation politics but instead in their destabilizing effects in the “dominant discourses and exclusionist practices” (p. 11) that operate in many societies. Keck and Sikkink’s viewpoint is that results imply the “production of new information and refocusing of old polemics” in terms of what a particular problem really means, the spaces to defy it, and the participants’ configuration.

Returning to the matter of what could be considered transformative knowledge and how it might be a product of education, what criteria can be applied to determine the content and the potential for educational programs seeking to be emancipatory? Mayo (1998) proposes the following: the presence of critical language, which considers the very roots of the system; a vision of education that differs from the conventional system; an interrogation about whose knowledge is considered valid and why; activities that require social agents; and an investigation into the confluence of class, race, ethnicity, and gender.

Since the early 1960s many forms of collective action have taken place in terrains previously untouched by social conflict in industrialized countries as well as in developing countries. These actions have at times been of a diffuse nature, while at other times they have been undertaken by NGOs and similar civil organizations. With the passing of time, these groups have become actors that governments have found difficult to ignore, especially in the 1990s. In many cases, there has been more cooperation than conflict between NGOs and the state. Rudolph (1997) affirms that these days, more than a “diminishment of the state,” we face an increasingly complex set of interrelationships in which rival identities and structures defy the state. She considers that new objectives and alliances come into being when local civil society unites with international civil society with the aim of pressuring governments.

The current attention to the role of social movements in the transformation of culture was initiated with the theory of resource mobilization (TRM). This theory, developed by McCarthy and Zald in 1977, attributes the success or failure of such movements to the ability to mobilize resources such as labor, materials, money, and communication technology by means of commitments made by tightly bound networks, such as churches, colleges and universities, and volunteer associations.

While resources are of great importance, other observers of social movements have noted that TRM assumes that the process of identity building is in the hands of some agent, but refrains from considering this level of analysis (Melucci, 1988). These observers warn that the nature of demands for reparations is not an object of study in TRM and that, besides, the adoption of specific issues by the social movements is not always explainable by TRM postulates. These critics propose instead the study of what has been termed “new social movements.” Melucci, one of the main representatives of this school of thought, considers that two elements are essential for the functioning of social movements: the development of a collective identity and the struggle for the creation of a new culture. Recognizing that the process of change is based on historical and cultural particularities, Melucci (1988) argues that the existence of demands does not in itself justify the appearance of social movements because various potential preferences for change may appear simultaneously. Melucci maintains that to describe the actions of social movements as a form of “protest” is equivalent to political reductionism, which is limited to seeing actions at the political level only and usually as a direct confrontation to authority. On the other hand, Melucci maintains also that the content of the demands must not be ignored because it is associated with the social structure and the psychosocial process that support the identification of individuals as well as the development of the culture that creates and nurtures the new movement (cited in Mueller, 1994). The theory of new social movements has drawn attention to the need for a new social psychology based on the social interaction of actors in the movement. It also calls attention to the need to identify the trajectory and evolution of the demands made and the composition of the collective actors of each of the particular social movements in their variable historical and structural contexts.

New social movements are characterized by the new set of issues they bring to the political terrain. In the industrialized world, these issues include peace movements, antinuclear movements, ecological concerns, gender issues, and efforts opposing current forms of globalization. In developing countries, feminist movements, the struggles of indigenous populations, protection of the environment, and protests against neoliberal policies are salient. New forms of association have established new communication channels and have promoted a new consciousness about people’s rights vis-à-vis more powerful political structures. The new social movements often replace violent confrontation with dialogue and peaceful negotiation by means of discussion and collective alliances, and by persisting in efforts to shape a new cultural and political scenario. In this process, these groups create new rituals that promote equality and construct new roles for themselves.

Observers of social movements emphasize the importance of “hidden networks” (Melucci, 1989) or “social networks” (Tarrow, 1994) in the process of creating collective identities, in the interpretation of grievances and demands for vindication, and in the evaluation of the possibilities for efficacious collective action. According to Melucci, collective work requires an “incubation period during which new collective identities form in hidden networks beyond the public view,” with many such groups disseminated throughout the whole social landscape. In these networks, which Melucci calls “cultural laboratories” (1989, p. 60), new collective identities are formed, rooted in individuals’ interactions as they experiment with new cultural codes, new forms of relationships, and alternative perceptions of the world (see also Mueller, 1994). Hidden networks rebel against adverse dominant codes through symbolic defiance, thus bestowing on their members new ways of perceiving and analyzing the social environment and its pertinent forces. In my opinion, when these “hidden networks” emerge from their invisibility, they usually take organized forms and thus constitute themselves as NGOs.

Two key concerns within social movements have been: (1) how to create significant modifications in the dominant process of decisionmaking and in the process of problem resolution, and (2) how to defy prevailing patterns of individual participation at both the collective and individual levels (Hegedus, 1990). This tension, which relates to the dilemma between short-term gains and long-term transformation, is inevitable and one of the major sources of internal conflict within the new social movements.

Gender, State, and Modernity

Relationships between men and women throughout the world vary in detail, but in general are characterized by power asymmetries to the detriment of women. This unequal relationship shapes social identities, behaviors, the organization of social life, and the symbolic world of the feminine and the masculine (van Dam et al., 1992).

The modern state has subscribed to the principle of human rights, but has done so from a masculine perspective. States are increasingly willing to allow women’s access to secondary schooling, college and university, and remunerated labor. On the other hand, states have not intervened in the reordering of domestic work, have conceded only minimal reproductive rights, continue to allow the occurrence of early marriage, and do not make provision for child care, resulting in employment interruption at childbirth (Bourdieu, 1998). Men continue to dominate public spaces and exercise power in general, while women continue to be constrained to private spaces, especially through discourses that render maternity as the supreme condition for all women and fatherhood as more an act of creation than of participation in the daily tasks of child-raising. In the 21st century, despite the growing presence of women in economic sectors, women’s labor remains largely an extension of domestic life, such as teaching, service, and care. Certain social, economic, and political rights that society had held as immutable at the global level are now incomplete since they do not recognize the new mentalities of contemporary society. Having been drawn up in 1948, or nearly 60 years ago, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not consider gender inequality, nor does it consider the inequities between the South and the North and the consequent dependence of the former on the latter (Williams, 2002).

The state is present in the numerous gender relationships that occur in society, ranging from policies on domestic work to parenting and sexuality (Siim, 1985) and to body politics, such as the de facto sanctioning in parts of India of rape, death for insufficient dowry, widow burning, and domestic violence (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). In the area of relationships between men and women, states are paternalistic. They are willing to allow women into ever higher levels of education, but they keep a distance concerning modification of domestic work and the granting of reproductive rights to women. The evidence for this paternalism is observed in the facts that women’s age at marriage has not changed despite their increased levels of education and that interruption of women’s professional life continues to occur when a child is born (Bourdieu, 1998; Connell, 1987; Stromquist, 1995). Salary itself is linked to public policies that reflect gender relations: it reflects family ideology, with men as the main wage earners and women as secondary sources (Lister, 1997).

The state has rarely been neutral toward women in the labor force. At best, it has facilitated the integration of women in the work sphere by creating a network of social services oriented toward human reproduction, as in the case of Scandinavian countries, and at worst it has made their integration a difficult process by not providing either quantitatively or qualitatively adequate social services (Siim, 1985). Government institutions have been created that did not exist before and women occupy more public spaces, yet patriarchal structures and customs continue practically intact. Parity in political power is part of the struggle, but it cannot remain there because that objective tends to favor women who come from the same social space as dominant classes (Bourdieu, 1998). That is why redistribution and recognition through corresponding policies become such crucial goals.

To become involved or not with the state has been long debated within the women’s movement. While the state fulfills regulating functions and these, to some degree, must be impartially implemented in order to gain legitimacy from its citizens, it is also the case that the state functions as an agent for economic accumulation. The majority of feminist theoreticians acknowledge the strong state participation in the creation and maintenance of patriarchal systems, and a good number of these scholars hold that the possibilities of working with the state are very limited since the various contemporary interventions and norms in favor of equality seem to contribute modestly to challenge cultural reproduction. As Morley comments in the context of public policies on gender in the United Kingdom, “the introduction of measures based on reformist principles that have not changed structures means that new and more inventing modes of distinction will be created” (1999, p. 65).

However, the attempt to convert demands on public policy requires necessarily the state’s intervention. Collaborating with the state is important for at least two basic reasons: the capacity for large-scale action the state possesses and the use of legislation to achieve desirable actions. So the question is: how can one become allied with the state and under what circumstances in order for desired legislation to be enacted and, even more critically, effectively implemented? Popular educators have worked on occasional terms with the state (for example, with postrevolutionary regimes) or in strategic alliances with selected governmental agencies and with the private sector (particularly in pluralist democracies) (Schugurensky, 2000). Likewise, feminists have oscillated in their relations with the state, depending on particular conditions.

Many feminists seek to introduce or change policies of the state in hopes that social adoption will follow. According to the typology proposed by Lowi (1964), there are three types of policies: (1) Distributive policies, which benefit certain groups through contracts and subsidies. Extending this classification to gender, women as a visible group could also benefit. (2) Regulatory policies, which have a broader target and operate by dictating norms that limit or amplify the options of individuals and groups. As to gender issues, such norms include abortion, rape, and labor rights. (3) Redistributive policies, which seek to minimize material differences between rich and poor, or between advantaged and disadvantaged groups along other criteria. Many feminist agendas are redistributive and, because resources are limited, strong resistance emerges, especially regarding labor equality. For women, a fourth category needs to be added to Lowi’s typology: some feminist scholars note that it is important to have recognition policies, i.e., policies that acknowledge the particularity of women and the right to difference not only between women and men, but also within the w...