the appearance of women's equal opportunities in the conservative political discourse of the...
TRANSCRIPT
• The Appearance of
Women's Equal
Opportunities in the
Conservative Political
Discourse of the
Countries of Statist
Feminism
• Dr. habil. Andrea Pető
• „The quota is not good. I find it humiliating that somebody will get to somewhere because she is a woman. Do use equal measures. But from two equally good candidates choose the woman, because positive discrimination is needed. Also it is not sure that so many women want to make politics.” interview 12.
Aims to analyse in countries of statist feminist heritage
• Problems of implementation of women’s
equal opportunity
• Policy mobilisational potential of women’s
equal opportunity policy for conservative
political discourse
• Transitional character of conservative political
discourse on women’s difference
Research method • life story narrative interview
with 24 Hungarian active conservative female politicians combined with a thematic questionnaire
• methodological problems arising from researching a "politically resistant community"
• using the „method of description” to represent the different standpoints
• “symbolic forms” (Geertz) functioning as models for their behaviour as political actors
Political mobilisation by gender
• Recent surveys show that women are disproportional voting
for conservative parties
• Anti-EU sentiments are stronger among women than men
• The recent mass mobilisation of women for street
demonstration and public gatherings make a political
imperative to analyse this phenomenon
• number of women’s NGOs with conservative agenda
increasing
Equal opportunity policies and its opponents 1. Legal issues
• The objectives of equal opportunities can be enacted in three ways: by
modifying the Constitution, through the so-called equal opportunities law, or
trough other laws and provisions. BUT
• Opposing normative concept of law
• belief that the problem of equal opportunities is solved, as it is de facto
regulated by the law, and they do not approve of differentiating “women’s
rights” and human rights
• there are naturally existing inequalities between people, regarding their
abilities and talent, and thus the principle of equal opportunities builds upon
natural inequalities, and does not eliminate them: indeed, it enlarges them.
Equal opportunity policies and its opponents 2. Implementation
• Heritage of the statist feminist period
• Top down implementation
• role of the state
• women’s employment as a site of policy
implementation
• lack of pressure groups (NGOs) and political
practices
Equal opportunity policies and its opponents 3. Policy related
• Equal opportunity politics as a policy
• wide scope
• cross cutting the logic of state admin.
• Non-implementation strategies: due to the absence of the
political legitimisation of equal opportunities politics, as well
as its weak institutionalisation and poorly funded system
Rhetoric Question of Women’s Political Mobilisation and equal opportunities.
A Missing Link
• Left wing discourse • historical product of
women’s employment• construction of
identity of employed-women
• Right wing discourse
• attempt to restore a value system which did not exist for 40 years
• unavoidable consequences of statist feminist period: 1. paternalistic practice of communist women’s politics, 2. Failure of the „single issue” mobilisation so new connection in „family mobilisation frame”
Rhetoric Question of Women’s Political Mobilisation and Equal Opportunity Policies
A Missing Link: Women’s employment
• Left wing discourse• women’s employment
as a necessity and the only value
• EU Lisbon strategy supported
• strategy of integration
• Right wing discourse• women’s employment as
a choice and exercising agency
• EU scepticism• strategy of separation
Equal opportunity policy as a tool for formulating „women” as a group indetity
• Left wing discourse
• “women’s difference” is a source of inferiority in the world of men, compared to men, in men’s words
• defensive, proactive
• it is a “series of deficiencies”.
• Thus, the formulation of “women’s difference” as defensive
• Right wing discourse
• as a source of “pride, self-confidence, hope and superiority”
• active, offensive
• messianistic and socialisational role
• women are defined and marked as different by their participation in reproduction, and by the experiences gained from this. Julia Kristeva: “new truth”
• aim: gaining power from the fact that because of the decades of statist feminism, women’s identity has not been linked with concepts of power before.
„women’s interest based on difference” and equal opportunities
• Leftist discourse• traditionally political
representation of „womanly” characteristics
• Rightist discourse
• in the framework of motherhood „morality of care” (Chodorow)
• Family as the model of the heterosexual, bourgeois, nuclear family, which has never had a historical existence, only as the idea of an imagined tradition
• women’s interests are articulated women’s interests are articulated and represented here!and represented here!
Cult of „Normative Motherhood”• aims not only to
strengthen “the nation” but
• regulates the social order in the relationship between the two sexes.
• Conservative
women’s discourses
• 1. Traditional religious
• 2. Emancipated
Conservative
• 3. Spiritual
Conservative
• Issues
• Understanding of
discrimination
(consciousness)
• Quota as a policy tool
• EMANCIPATED CONSERVATIVE
• „There is a need for quota of 50%”. 9
• „The mentality needs to be changed. There is a need for the quota at the beginning to change mentality. That is needed at the beginning when we adapt the EU Directives. Then abilities will decide who is capable.” 1
• „I do not consider quota good. If women are not well prepared they should not be there just to say that they there” 15
• „Women do not start with equal opps. Neither in workplaces nor in education. They are under represented in politics others decide instead of them.” 12
• TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS
• „We are different by nature. We are family centred by our creation.” 8.
• „I am expecting from men, what men from women. I think women worth more than men. They handle both job and family. Women are better.” 11
• SPIRITUAL CONSERVATIVE
• “It is important to stay in our world a woman. I am doing women’s politics in order to protect men. I do not think they are directing me. I am not a person who can be directed.” 14.
• „The quota is bad. It acknowledges the superiority of men, that they are giving something to us.” 10
• Pető, Andrea, "Hungarian Women in Politics" in: Transitions, Environments, Translations: The Meanings of Feminism in Contemporary Politics eds. Joan Scott, Cora Kaplan, Debra Keats, New York, Routledge, 1997. pp. 153–161.
• Pető Andrea, Napasszonyok és Holdkisasszonyok. A mai magyar konzervatív női politizálás alaktana, (Women of Sun and Girls of Moon. Morphology of Contemporary Hungarian Women Doing Politics) Budapest, Balassi, 2003.
• Pető, Andrea “Angebot ohne Nachfrage. Ungarische Frauen als Bürgerinnen eines EU-Beitrittslandes”, in: Silke Roth/Ingrid Miethe (Hg.), Europas Töchter. Traditionen, Erwartungen und Strategien von Frauenbewegungen in Europa, Opladen 2003, pp. 183-203.
• Pető, Andrea “European Intergration: Politics of Opportunity for Hungarian Women?“ in: European Integration Studies 2003, 2:2, pp. 81-86.
• Liebhart, Karin, Andrea Pető, Annemarie Schiffbänker, Rumaian Stoilova, “Familienpolitische Maßnahmen in Österreich, Bulgarien und Ungarn” in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 2003. 4, pp. 417-427.