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Argentina: From Certainty to Uncertainty
Haydée Birgin
Reflecting on feminism and its meaning, means thinking about our own history and the manner in which changes pierced our subjectivity and redefined our political duties. As a political movement, feminism was born out of the clamour of political battle and progressed whilst creating its thinking out of practical examples. It is not a static movement, but one, which has continuously re-defined and adapted its methods of action to the social and political reality in which it plays a role.
French feminism in 68 ("The better the love-making, the better the revolution") marked a generation that lived with the illusion of certainties: we believed in linear progress and that history would guarantee us of a society free of oppression. However our certainties began to fall apart: the seventies constituted critical questioning of ourselves and of our traditions. Out of the fragments of these years was born a new feminism that developed and expanded in the eighties. The "Death of the Subject" (S with a capital letter) threw us into a multitude of identities as a result of the collapse of spaces from which the modern, universal and autonomous subject emerged. The fall of the Berlin wall, the fall of the Eastern block, the civil war in ex Yugoslavia, the end of Apartheid in South Africa, transformed the scenario and produced conflicts and the breaking-off of relations.
Multifold Identity
Perhaps the actual impossibility of organising concrete expressions of multiple subjectivity around a transcendental centre opened us to the possibility of including the question of subjectivity and the redefining of our notions of democracy, freedom, equality, as well as the de-construction of the term "woman". No one is simply a woman: she may be white, socialist, middle class, mother or not. We exist in a diversity of social contexts and it is not always a case of a woman at the same level because social identities of persons are not constructed in one go and forever, but, on the contrary, they are forever changing.
To accept ambiguity and the risk of any identity, to accept that the category of "woman" does not correspond in any way to any unified and unifying core, means we have to ask ourselves how the category "woman" was constituted as such in the different periods of time, how the sexual difference converted into an important difference within social relations and how relations of subordination were created through such distinction. The false dilemma of "equality in the face of difference" collapses from the time in which we no longer have a homogeneous entity "woman" before another homogeneous entity "man", but a multiplicity of social relations in which the sexual difference is always constructed by very different methods and takes on specific forms. We learned that the differences are not really negative and that it is necessary to recognise the diversity of elements that make up identities, together with their risks and interdependence. It was a hard lesson. In this sense, feminist thinking underwent development at the same time as other camps of thought on the background of modernity / post-modernity and the de-construction of the subject. We departed from certainty and went onto uncertainty and, with this point of departure, we begin to recover the richness, diversity and creativity of a movement throughout the century, which led Norberto Bobbio to say, " the only revolution of our time - revolution meaning results - is the feminist revolution".
For the feminist thinking, accepting that there is no original subject, but that every identity is formed accordingly, and confirming a difference, had serious consequences on the definition of its strategy. Thus as we broke down our identity as women, we also broke down the supposed unity of feminist discourse: feminism abandoned the pretension of being a closed discussion without cracks, a systematic and encompassed whole. We therefore began to ask ourselves what is feminism and moreover, what are feminisms. We began to speak more about feminism in the plural as opposed to feminism in the singular because the feminist movement is constructed on and covers the meaning of several interwoven discourses. (...)
The recognition of the differences brought with it the break with old essentialisms which yearned for an illusive past and which assumed that stripping feminism of its certainties and guarantees meant making it loose its meaning. In reality, feminism has always been fragmented. The unity that existed was based on the blindness of class or ethnic groups. The only certainties were our indignation and our defiance in the face of oppression, and faith - although not always explicit - in the progress, revolution and suppression of the classes.
Fetishism of the Law
Like the rest of the left, for many years, we tried to avoid the real political problem, searching for an entity that would take up the position of "saviour". It was the "illusion of the legal department" that occupied this position. Some sectors of movement stuck by the law - in other words, to the legislation - getting it to agree to play a fundamental role in the resolution of social conflicts and relations between genders. Basically, although the opposite is stated, the illusion that the contradiction between sexes can be resolved through laws is still there. Experience shows, on the contrary, that the judicial procedure must be taken into account, as well as the role of the law operators and, more importantly, the rules of formation of legal discourse that is interwoven with other discourse, such as that of the Church.
The injustice and inequality that most women are experiencing today are part of a system of oppression in which the State and the law are involved. Does this mean that the legal battle should be abandoned? In no way, but it must be put into context. Whilst Parliament approves laws for equal salaries and no discrimination, it is also passing laws for labour flexibility, which with one stroke of the pen erases social victories that date back to the beginning of the century and render equal pay insignificant.
The difficult and contradictory
relations between feminism and the law puts us into a dilemma: on the one
hand, tradition requires that
we constantly compromise with legal reform and, on the other hand, that we
know about the role that helps the law to reproduce the oppression of women.
How can this knowledge be operatively translated? How does one give political
form to this double meaning of the law that is to be a medium of "liberation"
and, at the same time, a medium of reproduction of the oppressive social
order?
(...)
There is increasing awareness amongst woman on "how poor the victory and the meagre successes are of the women who rose up in their determination to reform laws" (C. Smart). The successes of law reforms and the consecration of the equality - obtained with the consensus of political democratic parties - give way today to profound disappointment when it is noticed how these laws are eroded by the absence of social politicians to support them.
For our democracies it has become natural to give equality before the law, constitutional status or to subscribe to international treaties. The situation changes when it is a question of equal right to freedom and the right to an equal freedom. The debate on abortion is an example in which equality encounters limits in the exercising of freedom. Sexual and reproductive rights, and in particular, the legalization of abortion continue to be subjects that are taboo. In these questions the political class is frightened by the crusade of the Church or the Vatican politicians. In the meantime, hundreds of women die for maternal reasons.
The idea of regulating private life is an old hindrance that holds back movement. When women are hurt, the only response that we are proposing is to demand a law that prevents it. (...) While we favour parliaments as the most sensitive areas to make demands for women - what is certain, besides - political priorities are of course defined in other areas. We forget at times that our objective is to change patriarchy, not to reform laws.
There is an assignment pending in Latin America to carry out studies, which evaluate the impact of legislative reform on the lives of women. In our countries, it is not a question of creating new laws but to be able to use them. More than the reform of substantive laws, there is a need for the amendment of procedures and the creation of demands so that the rights may be exercised.
Supporting Autonomy
We have come a long way. It is clear that in these last decades of the XX century, there have been significant changes in women, especially, as quoted by Eric Hobsbawn, "in that which women expect of themselves and in that which the world expects of them in terms of their place in society". This has been the most important transformation.
(...)
Although the re-birth of the feminist movement in the sixties - in developed countries and certain elites of Latin American countries - may be explained by the massive entry of mothers of children into the labour market and by the expansion of tuition, the initiative of women in the seventies and eighties, the expansion of the social movement of women and the increase in awareness of their public role in the nineties cannot be due only to economic reasons. There is no doubt that women - through the extension of their working period - constituted a key variable in the processes of structural adjustment and that it gave them a different position in family and society. Their participation during the military dictatorships was no less significant, whether it was in the search for their sons and loved ones, whilst developing strategies of survival - like soup kitchens - that placed them in public areas like bearers of new demands.
In the first years of the decade of the eighties and before the democratic opening of the region, an important sector of the movement re-defined its action. In the II Feminist Meeting in Lima (1), they began to discuss the processes of transition, the place of women and bold politics with the State. The State ceased to be a target of pure opposition in order for feminism to be able to create an area of manoeuvre with society. It was therefore necessary to formulate demands in order to translate them into public policies.
(...)
In this new context, feminism gave way to the construction of a social movement of women, which - at least in Latin America - incorporated women from political parties and grass root organisations. Old feminist demands were added to by new demands, which met with the requirements of women in the face of a serious economic crisis which has been experienced by our countries: demand for crèches, health services, canteens, etc.
The democratic opening enabled feminist ideas to begin to permeate the social network and, from distinct areas of culture - meetings of writers, philosophers, historians -, women began to have their voices heard. The whole of society adopted a vocabulary that was reserved for feminist literary groups - domestic violence, sexual harassment, and sexual crimes. The demand for equality was taken on by political parties, and the rights of women appeared to be consecrated constitutionally. The legislation considered rights between men and women to be equal, and ensured the participation of women in elective duties via the Law of quota. In the city of Buenos Aires, the sexual and reproductive rights as well as the right to be different were admitted to the Constitution. It completed a stage: the democratic demands of feminism are backed by political parties and form part of the public agenda.
In this difficult relationship with the State it was not always possible to maintain initiative and autonomy. A lot of the times the State was confused with the government without taking into account that not every government may be involved in gender politics and that the context is what counts. The social inequalities have increased and have become more significant, there are clear signs of economic deterioration, so that it is no longer enough to recognise equality. The question remains: what equality?
It would be naïve to think, faced with rising unemployment and the concentration of wealth and the distancing of the State from its social responsibility, that the equality between men and women could be viable. Besides you have to ask yourself: between which men and which women? Without casting aside the equality declared in law - symbol of brave steps of our culture and of victories obtained through effort and sacrifice of many -, the effective equality is today of such a subversive nature, just as it was for Olympia de Gouges two decades ago, in so far as we can link her with social politicians and the redistribution of profits.
The processes of
internationalisation of the economy, technological
progress and communication media helped to socially legitimise feminist demands
and to make them themes in national and international agencies. These
circumstances created a new demand for the movement: a better level of
professionalism for discussions at international forums and conventions,
for making concrete proposals and influencing outlines of action at national
level. The down side of this process have been the "NGOnisation" of the movement,
which, at times, met more with the needs of finance agencies and governments
than with its own, and at times it lost its contentious character. Feminism
needs to redefine its proposal. The necessary changes that affect relationships
between men and women, that sustain this relationship, are material and cultural
acts that have roots where no laws will ever reach.
The defence of the autonomy of the movement does not imply proposing isolation, on the contrary. It must be attempted to voice our differences with others in a democratic project and, in this process, recover the meaning of the movement. A meaning which cannot be fixed in advance, but which on the contrary, consists of the organisation of meaninglessness, of learning to act in uncertainty.
(1) Second Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting, Lima, Peru, 1983
Haydée Birgin. Argentinean lawyer, Advisor of the Senate of the Nation, ex-head of the Sub-secretariat for the Planning Unit for Women (Alfonsin Government); Director of the project "The law in gender and gender in law" (CEADEL/FORD)
Article extracted from "Feminisms at the end of the Century. An Inheritance without a will". Special of Fempress, December 1999.
In order to obtain a complete version of this article, or to access other articles of the special publication, please go to website: http://www.fempress.cl.
Translation from Spanish by Heather Batchelor