Feminist Political Theory Research Paper

1. Gender Studies And Feminist Scholarship

Challenging the approaches and preoccupations of mainstream scholarship has proved to be a continuing focus of feminist politics. Originally mainly concerned with ‘women’s studies,’ the attention of feminist scholarship gradually shifted to the study of gender and especially to gender relations and the nature of masculinity and femininity. Feminist writings include critiques of most areas of contemporary scholarship calling into question their sensitivity to issues of gender. The shift had important implications for the social sciences including the study of politics. In the social sciences an important feminist concern is to establish the category of gender as a fundamental social division. The feminist critiques of political science are part of this tendency, addressing the standard themes of research on politics, questioning narrow definitions of the ‘political,’ and also drawing upon research and thinking about gender in other disciplines.

Feminist political science is therefore interdisciplinary and radical, offering a broad definition of the field. Feminist political studies take three main forms: (a) feminist political theory which is predicated on a critique of liberalism and challenges the conventions of political theory, (b) feminist political science which is a critique of political institutions and the ways they have been understood, and (c) feminist accounts of gender and politics which combine explorations of gender as a category, as a hierarchy, and as performance in studies of how gender relations are implicated in power. Each area is work in progress, complicated and contested. Similar patterns of development have characterized each of the three kinds of discussion.

2. Feminist Political Theory

The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s gave a new impetus to feminist politics. This was at first new social movement politics, suspicious of formal hierarchical organizations which were regarded not only as undemocratic but also as sexist. However, feminism was, and is, profoundly political. The early slogan ‘the personal is political,’ questioned the nature of power and challenged the conventional restriction of politics to the ‘public sphere.’ Initially, feminist political theory was a matter of unmasking sexist assumptions and the neglect of women by Western Political Theory. Carol Pateman argued that the subjugation of women was a central underpinning of modern political thought and that gender difference made a public sphere possible at the expense of women. She contended that the distinction between state and civil society is only visible if the family is ignored. If civil society is labeled private then family is forgotten in political discussion (Pateman 1988). Hence the addition of women to the concerns of political theory brought the central assumptions of liberalism into question, notably the separation between public and private life.

Recognizing that writing gender differences into political theory required a major reconsideration of political ideas, feminist theorists addressed issues of equality, justice and representation, initiating debates that grew increasingly sophisticated. Originally theoretical arguments were built around binary oppositions or dualisms such as equality/difference, nature/nurture, justice/care, inclusion/exclusion, all thought to parallel male female dichotomies. Arguments in the equality/difference debates considered whether men and women should be treated the same or whether differences should be taken into account in order to treat both fairly. The justice/care debates addressed a perceived difference between an ethic of justice (in the liberal distributive sense) and an ethic of care (in a maternalist sense), argued to be male and female, respectively.

Representation arguments considered whether women need women to represent them, reasoning that the identity of the speaker matters to the interpretation of what is said (Phillips 1995, Young 1990). Discussions of justice, equality, and representation tended to converge into arguments about citizenship in which feminists seek to redefine politics in terms that integrate public and private concerns, breaking through the public/private divide (Dietz 1985, Mouffe 1995, Lister 1997). Since the 1980s a tendency to contest the oppositions has become more prevalent as theorists seek to transcend or displace the hierarchies, often by redefining issues and concepts (Squires 1999, pp. 226–33).

3. Feminist Political Science

Although there were very few links with feminist political theory, feminist political science has followed a similar trajectory, developing from the inclusion of information about women to the subject matter of politics to an intellectual concern to establish a gendered discipline. Feminist political science first sought to eliminate the ‘bad science’ of exaggerating and misconstruing differences between women and men, assuming a male political universe and using data without their original accompanying qualifications. They were troubled by the distortions present in the mainstream of behavioral political science arising, they believed, from an epistemology that separated facts and value and privileged so-called value-free factual accounts. The effect of concern only with putative facts was to allow behavioral political science to factor women out of consideration as political subjects. An overemphasis on measurable political behavior prevented recognition of ‘… not only the … exclusion of women from what is traditionally political, but also the inclusion of politics in what women have traditionally done’ (Nelson 1989, quoted in Carroll and Zerilli 1993). Families, communities, and voluntary groups all went largely unresearched as constitutive of political life. Inevitably, feminist political scientists sought to expand definitions of politics, lending strength to other challenges to overconcern with electoral behavior and elite participation, at the same time as examining differences in men’s and women’s political behavior. Discussion of the significance of the public private split and the confinement of women to the private realm were an important challenge to narrow constructions of political power. So too were studies of the crucial part played by the state in regulating sexuality (see Carroll and Zerilli 1993, Lovenduski 1998).

Once it was necessary (and possible) to study the effects of women on previously male-dominated political institutions and/organizations, the need for an adequately theorized notion of gender was accepted. As increasing numbers of women appeared in legislatures, councils, and other representative bodies as well as in executive organizations and public administrations of various kinds, a considerable debate developed about the causes, stability, and results of gender differences in political activity. An especially powerful line of argument for both feminist activists and their opponents was the contention that women should not seek equal presence to men in powerful positions because they would be ‘incorporated’ and changed by it, they would become unable to represent women because they had been turned by male created institutions into political men. The counterclaim was that once a significant number and diversity of women occupy decision making positions in previously ‘masculine’ institutions they would be transformed, their gendering altered.

This argument, so important in feminist debate, has echoes in the conventions of the study of political processes (Randall 1991). Once arrangements, practices, and rules are institutionalized, actors learn them, invest in them, and make decisions accordingly. Particular institutions become associated with particular behavior and outputs that may be classified as masculine or feminine (Duerst-Lahti and Kelly 1995). The practices that insulate the positions of typical members and are notoriously difficult to change are gendered.

4. Feminism And Gender Studies

Feminist intellectual concern about women and power generated research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In the fields of history, sociology, social psychology, literature, and cultural studies, a substantial body of work about different aspects of gender and power was produced. In addition a significant field of ‘new’ men’s studies examined masculinity as a category both of privilege and oppression (Carver 1996). Analysis of masculinities has also received considerable attention from feminist theorists who also claimed that differences among women were at least as important as differences between women and men, that race, class, age, ethnicity, sexuality, and physical ability were, like sex, constitutive of political identity and therefore of political behavior and power.

5. Feminism, Gender Studies, And Political Science

When feminist political scientists contested narrow definitions of politics, it was because they wanted to expand their research to aspects of ‘private’ life and to examine the role of government and the state in constructing and enforcing certain kinds of relationships between women and men. As it became more widely understood that both women and men have gender, debates across disciplinary boundaries became a common feature of feminist research on politics. Once perceived, the effects of gender cannot be left to one side or held constant for the sake of other experiments. As it has come to be defined, gender is embedded in individuals, relationships, institutions, and organizations. The gender debates are part of a continuing process of definition refinement and theory production that enhances understanding of political institutions and processes. A ‘gendered’ political science looks ‘not just at particular theories and assumptions as they have been applied to women, but as they are constructed and apply in any case’ (Sapiro 1991). Institutional research traditions in political science require the close description of contexts, norms, processes, and cultures to which a gendered vocabulary may be applied. It follows that the gendered interests present in political arrangements should be acknowledged and analyzed.

In summary, feminist scholars have shown that it is difficult to think of an aspect of politics that is unaffected by gender. However, gender is not a neat and tidy concept to be slotted into unchanging research strategies. Using the concept of gender involves rejection of the definitions of politics implied by the conventions of the public private split, reexamination of the productions of conventional political science for gender dimensions and, on that foundation, the construction of a political science that is gender informed.

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