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perhaps not yet,
perhaps no longer
Questions on gender democracy
Christina Thürmer-Rohr
A woman and a man wrestling good-naturedly, testing each other's strength, indistinguishably equal: the same size and strength, both young, and both with the same energy. This is the image on the Böll Foundation's poster advertising the Seminar on Gender Democracy. Man and woman in symmetrical balance, the perfect solution and elimination of the differences between the sexes, without reference to any other element. Is this a visualisation of the gender democracy that is being sought? Does it represent an ideal, a goal or reality? Or is it a provocative assertion of equality -the self-evident fact that simply by assuming an equal relationship, could also be the means of achieving it?
What is gender democracy?
There is no doubt about
the pragmatic value and the political impact of the concept of gender democracy,
especially when addressed to men. What is most convincing is the argument
that the conventional policy of women's empowerment and equality failed to
overcome male ignorance: as long as it was called the "woman question" most
men neither felt seriously implicated in gender issues, nor considered themselves
in any way responsible.
Gender democracy can be understood as an attack on male monopoly of action
and attempts to retain exclusivity of representation, and is therefore also
an attack on bad politics. As such, it is an attack that men find less easy
to dismiss than the accusation of misogyny. So far, so good. My questions
concerning gender democracy and gender mainstreaming relate to the definitions
of gender and democracy which underlie these concepts.
Male equals female?
A study of German youth shows that young people are no longer talking about equal rights -they are practising them. According to the study, young people no longer distinguish between typically "female" and typically "male" life models. Differences within each sex group are far more significant than differences between the sexes.
According a pilot study carried out by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in 1998, the majority of international human rights experts ignore "sex" as a variable. The study examined the debates, speeches, resolutions and documents from one period of sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission, in order to see whether and to what extent women's specific situation was taken into consideration. Generally speaking, women's perspective was not considered at all.
One could therefore argue that the WILPF study, the study of young people and the Böll poster all reflect the same basic fact: gender difference is an outdated issue, not worthy of attention, or which cannot or should not be mentioned. Perhaps not yet, perhaps no longer.
Gender mainstreaming, an achievement of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, places a different emphasis on the matter. This concept, which has since also been adopted by the EU, refers to the instruments and methods required for institutionalising gender justice. Mainstreaming is based explicitly on the premise that throughout the world there are differences between the real life situations of men and women, no matter whether these are seen to have a natural origin, or are linked to questions of power. Mainstreaming implies the systematic consideration of these differences in all areas of politics.
The norm as standard?
The word mainstreaming can lead to important misunderstandings. Up until the 1990s, "mainstream" was still dirty word for feminists, who had a saying that "only dead fish swim with the tide". Feminism did not want to be a mainstream movement, but a radical and critical current, and fought against the norm to reject any attempt to impose definitions of the right path to follow. However, mainstreaming is increasingly used to refer to the challenge that women should get into the mainstream, or be integrated into it. This "from the margin to the centre" strategy represents a specific approach, but also contains the criticism that the outsider attitude or separatist approach are counterproductive and unacceptable. The norm becomes the measure of what is desirable and achievable, there are no apparent contradictions between the end and the means, and only practical questions remain to be resolved: what implementation, control, evaluation, training and sanctioning mechanisms need to be put in place? In these terms, the concept of mainstreaming pre-empts any critical interventions.
According to the mainstream norm, outsider and minority positions are regarded as suspicious or at best provisional and deficient. Enthusiasm for the mainstream converts any deviation from it into an anomaly, it is guided by pre-set target values, determines the acceptable upper and lower limits of deviation and dismisses all deviations as "still insufficient" or hopeless cases. The mainstream offers certainty to those who are part of it, and bad luck to the rest.
The danger of the concepts
One probably has to come to terms with the fact that gender democracy and mainstreaming are contradictory ideas in themselves and are of little interest to many women. This is because there is, in fact, nothing more obvious than the call for women to be given the same consideration as all other people, and it has been decades since feminism said everything there is to say in this respect. More important is the question of the potential dangers hidden in these concepts.
In September 2000 a referendum was held in Switzerland to limit the percentage of foreign immigrants in the country to 18%. The principal proponents of this measure were the female members of the right-wing Swiss Popular Party (SVP). On the basis of opinion poll results, they calculated that the initiative would receive more support among women than men because, they argued, it was women who were suffering harassment on the streets, in supermarkets and discos. This example illustrates a possible link between a specific women's politics and right-wing anti-foreigner politics, in other words attempts to push through xenophobic policies in the name of women and their allies. Likewise, the Secretary General of the rightist Social-Christian Union (CSU) in Germany based the justification for his opposition to a liberal immigration policy on concern for women's interests. He painted himself as the champion of German women, by warning that their emancipation was suffering a considerable setback as a result of the presence of unemancipated foreign women, who wear headscarves and walk five metres behind their husbands.
Could "gender democracy" counteract this kind of alliance? The term implies a critique of the failure of democracy. However, it could itself very well become an expression of a lack of democracy, when it isolates a single social relationship -that based on gender- from its context. In other words, when gender relations are isolated from the political context and become the central focus for democratisation, with other unjust relations being sidelined. Gender democracy does not take into account the fact that justice must encompass everyone and, fundamentally, the inter-relations among everyone.
Experiences of discrimination are often used to legitimise isolation from the discrimination suffered by others. For instance, many women gender democrats appear less concerned about racist activity, and the consequences for its (mainly male) victims, than others who simply identify themselves as "democrats". Apparently, opposition to "intolerable" acts is limited to solidarity with women.
Dangerous concepts
Like it or not, the concept of gender democracy is based on the assertion of specific gender identities: I am a "woman", you are a "man", and it is as woman and man that we sit face to face, as equals. In this way we remain defined as a sex. We are not unified by our interest in another issue, but by our supposed specific gender identity. The fact that I am a "woman" becomes the motivation for my actions and opinions. I appear as a definable type of person, which is the same as that of half of humanity. Difference is referred to as "sex/gender", "race" or ethnicity. If one thinks like this, the nature of differences produced by relations of power is imperceptibly converted -they become fixed differences, which allow for no other option but tolerance.
The concept of democracy is based on the notion of male and female citizens as holders of opinions and beliefs, as representatives of interests, not as bearers of identities. The category of sex is, however, not a category of interests. Sex is not an interest. This is what makes matters so difficult. Women are not an association unified by identical shared interests -and men are even less. This is all perfectly clear: there are extreme right-wing women, rich and poor women, successful and resigned women, insiders and outsiders. There are women victims and perpetrators, women who are the objects of injustice can themselves commit unjust acts; women are not only the product but also the producer of an unjust society.
Democracy is not an institution designed to create formal equality, it does not entail the obligation to maintain an equilibrium between political opinions, and definitely not between identity groups. Rather, it implies the obligation to accept a complicated, often cumbersome negotiation process between various participants of differing weight. No political dialogue seeks equilibrium -it does not propose it as a prerequisite, nor can it guarantee or produce it. This is because dialogues are unpredictable processes. The inclusion of the perspectives of previously invisible actors pave the way for new reasonings and new decisions, and thus also create new inequalities. The gender democracy approach makes this kind of positional changes -which are at the centre of politics- at best a subordinate factor, if it takes them into account at all. Because this approach pursues the moral and political obligation to establish formal equality by sex. One could agree in principle with the aim of changing the conventional conception of democracy, which has proved utterly ineffective in terms of achieving the aim of justice. Feminism would then engage in a radical revision of the traditional idea of democracy. There would, however, be other consequences, because then we would similarly have to claim racial democracy, cultural democracy, ethnic democracy, class democracy, etc. Or at least, we would have to accept that a vision of politics based exclusively on gender may pave the way for the entry of countless other identities. Everyone would have to represent themselves, no one could represent another person. And the respective horizons of each could be limited to this myself, with a clear conscience. That would mean the end of politics.
If we insist on the difference between all people, if we retain plurality as the basis of the political and if we also claim plurality for the female sex, which appears so concerned with unity, then the limitations and shortcomings of gender democracy are clearly exposed. On the other hand, we need the specific languages of power in order to recognise and overcome economically, culturally and politically produced inequality and injustice. Gender democracy could be one such language of power, but only a provisional one born out of necessity. It can be no more than a pragmatic way forward, a temporary strategy, a provocation and conscious challenge; but it could never be a political principle or a long-term guiding framework for political thought. This is the reason why the idea has not yet managed to convince many women, why it remains an uncomfortable issue and why we must be on guard.
Christina Thürmer-Rohr is a professor in Berlin (Germany).
The text is an abridged version of her lecture at the Heinrich Böll Foundation's Seminar on Gender Democracy in November 2000.
Translated from German to English by Caroline Baumgarten.