Section Ten: Global Politics And The State

Learning Objectives

  • To realize that governments, international relations, and the globalization of economies and cultures wield enormous influence over women’s lives and how gender is constructed.
  • Tounderstand how the state has been used to maintain or in some cases change gender norms and hierarchies.
  • To be aware of the demands women have made of governments.
  • To understand how globalization shapes women’s lives and their interaction with politics, economics, and their bodies.
  • To be conscious of how state politics concerning gender and women interact with race and class.

Section Summary

The state has been a key instrument in maintaining sexist gender norms and hierarchies and also changing gender relations and other aspects of women’s lives. Today, women’s lives are also shaped by global forces in economics, politics, and culture.

  • Governments play a central role in maintaining a social structure that perpetuates inequalities by gender, race/ethnicity, and class.
  • The lives of women around the world vary, in part, because of their countries’ policies and ideologies regarding women and their countries’ position in the global hierarchy of nations.
  • State and global forces affect gender as it is linked to race and class.
  • Feminists focus on the ways that government policies and actions perpetuate gender difference that oppresses women.
  • Women often organize to change the inequalities that the state maintains, and those that are brought about by globalization and postcolonialism.
  • Not all women have the same interests, and women’s desires may vary according to the nationality, ethnicity, immigrant status, economic status, etc.

Reading 46: Cynthia Enloe, “The Globe Trotting Sneaker”

Women perform most of the underpaid labor that goes into making global products like shoes, and this generates enormous profits for transnational corporations. Enloe uses the example of a Korean protest to demonstrate how women’s protests against state policies and human rights abuses in factories can have complicated outcomes.

  • Companies prefer to make their products where there are gender norms that encourage women to be docile workers. They want to hire women who are unlikely to complain about work conditions.
  • Companies publicize their efforts on behalf of human rights and emphasize the fact that they provide the women who make their products with a better income than would otherwise be available to them. However, these companies rarely take responsibility for the human rights abuses that exist in their factories.
  • When women organize to challenge gender norms, states and corporations fear that change will make women less willing to accept the conditions in the global factories.
  • Many factories try to control what women say about their work conditions.
  • Women workers who have mobilized against inhumane conditions have faced further abuse.
  • The success of women workers’ activism often leads to the loss of their jobs, since the factories can simply move to another country to exploit another group of women.
  • These practices pit women workers of one country against women of other countries. Women across the globe must work together to effect change in the global corporate world.

Reading 47: Jo Doezema,“Forced to Choose: Beyond the Voluntary v. Forced Prostitution Dichotomy”

Doezema describes the history of activism against prostitution and trafficking in women, as well the current debates over how to handle the human rights of today’s prostitutes. While historically international bodies and feminist activists took an “abolitionist” stand that conceived of prostitution as involuntary and in need of eradication, today most agencies distinguish between forced and voluntary prostitution. However, Doezema critiques this distinction because under it women who choose prostitution continue to be denied basic human rights.

  • Feminist activist attempts to repeal the British “Contagious Disease Acts” influenced nineteenth century attempts to deal with prostitution internationally. These activists viewed these laws as attempts to monitor women’s sexuality and saw prostitutes as victims of “male vice” and part of the “white slave trade.”
  • In the early 20th century international bodies such as the League of Nations and the United Nations adopted resolutions to suppress human trafficking and prostitution.
  • Since the 1980’s there has been renewed feminist campaigning against trafficking in women, child prostitution, and sex tourism. The major disagreement between feminist groups on this issue is whether a person can choose prostitution as a profession.
  • The prostitutes’ rights movement began in response to abolitionist discourse on prostitution and groups like the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women who define prostitution as a form of sexual exploitation like rape. This movement seeks to decriminalize prostitution that is chosen by the prostitutes.
  • Since the mid-1980’s international discourse on prostitution shifted from an abolitionist stance to making a distinction between voluntary and forced prostitution. Since the 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, most international agreements recognize this distinction. However, not all U.N. documents and bodies make this distinction.
  • The focus on eradicating forced prostitution has meant that most international organizations and agreements ignore the abuse of sex workers who chose prostitution as a profession. There is no international agreement on even the existence of voluntary prostitution or whether to regulate or legalize prostitution. Practically all sex work involving young men and women and women from developing countries is still constructed as abusive.
  • The focus on forced prostitution has meant that organizations have focused on the innocence of the victims. Innocence is established by examining women who did not intend to be prostitutes, equating poverty with force, and by assuming that all youths are victims.
  • Although a recent UN report suggests that slavery-like conditions are primarily problems for those already working in the sex trade, the focus on prostitution remains on the image of “innocent” forced sex workers rather than on the violation of sex workers’ human rights. In fact, in many countries women who chose to be prostitutes are not protected from violence simply because of their “voluntary” prostitute status.

Boxed Insert: Pheona Donohoe, “Femicide in Juárez”

Over 350 women have been murdered in the free trade zone in the Juárez, Mexico area, and these murders continue today. Many of the women were kidnapped, raped and tortured, and little is known about what has happened to these maquiladora’s workers.

  • America’s dominance is partly to blame for the chaos in Juárez that has contributed to these women’s deaths. Following NAFTA, Juárez became the largest industrial zone in Mexico. These factories produce goods mostly for consumption in the U.S., and the majority of the workers are women. Most of the women who have disappeared worked in these factories.
  • The investigation has made little progress, and local authorities have engaged in numerous disturbing practices and may be involved in the murders themselves. A federal investigation by Mexican authorities harshly criticized the local authorities, but it only looked at 50 of the murders.
  • Many media outlets have also exploited the murdered women and their families often sensationalizing and glorifying the murders. Few of these portrayals look at the real problems of these murders. However one respectful documentary Senorita Extraviada (Missing Young Woman) is raising international awareness about the murders.

Reading 48: Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others”

Abu-Lughod critiques the idea that Muslim women need to be saved which was employed by the U.S. government to rally support for the war against Afghanistan in 2001.While Abu-Lughod critiques cultural relativism for its inability to truly address injustice, she also critiques the current focus on the burqa and other Muslim veils for its ethnocentrism. Rather, cultural differences should be understood without reifying those differences.

  • The focus Muslim culture, particularly on Muslim women and veiling, hid the complicated history behind the war in Afghanistan, and the role of history, economics, and politics in creating the various Afghan wars. Women’s treatment under the Taliban was lumped together with the many issues facing Afghan women.
  • Throughout history various states have used ideas about women to justify colonial or post-colonial endeavors rather than to actually advance gender equality.Christian missionaries were also interested in ways to “save” their Muslim sisters.
  • Westerners focused on the veil as the ultimate sign of the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban. However, after their “liberation” by the United States and allied forces Afghan women continue to wear their burqas.
  • The burqa and other veils have specific meanings for the women who wear them. For many women it demonstrates belonging to a particular community and is a chosen display of modesty or morality. Other cultures have different ideas of culturally appropriate clothing, and some wear other head coverings for similar reasons. In some communities the burqa was associated with a revered status for women.
  • The burqa does not mean that women do not have freedom or agency. In fact many women voluntarily choose to wear various forms of head coverings.
  • Theobsessive focus on veiling represents an ethnocentric view of the world that reduces diverse situations and attitudes of Muslims to a single item of clothing. The oppression of Muslim women by Muslim men made many Westerners feel superior, and its motivations are not truly about correcting the variety of injustices Muslim women face.
  • We must be careful not to suggest that feminism is Western, and thus ignore the foci of Third-World and Muslim feminisms for whom religion may play an important role.
  • Abu-Lughod critiques the passivity of cultural relativism that implies that one cannot judge or interfere. Rather we should work hard to recognize and respect differences- as products of historical circumstances- including differing ideas about justice and women’s desires. In doing so those in privileged positions should examine our own responsibilities for the situation of others around the world. Additionally, Western women should focus on cooperating with Muslim women who seek to alter a variety of conditions in the world.

Boxed Insert: Riverbend,“Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq”

The author is a young woman living in Iraq during the current war there, and the boxed insert is an entry from her blog about the U.S. led war in Iraq and subsequent occupation. The blog was also turned into a book. This excerpt explores how fundamentalism increased in Iraq during the occupation.

  • Riverbend describes how women’s freedoms diminished with the rise in fundamentalism. Many women were kept from their jobs and school, and fundamentalist groups monitored women’s clothing to make sure they conformed with various interpretations of Islamic Law.
  • She describes how people in Iraq have increasingly turned to religions for the following reasons: 1) out of fear, 2) in response to encroaching Western values and beliefs, 3) unemployment and poverty which Islamic groups offer to alleviate in return for support.
  • The author uses the pseudonym Riverbend because that is the only way she feels free to write. She also explains why her English and Western pop culture knowledge is good. She was raised abroad for several years and continued to study English on return to Iraq as a teenager. She also explains that many youths in Iraq follow Western pop culture.

Reading 49: Gwendolyn Mink, “The Lady and The Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single Mothers, and the Challenge of Welfare Justice”

Few women, including few feminists, were rallied to save welfare benefits for poor women during the welfare debates around the Personal Responsibility Act. This act stripped poor single mothers of their entitlement to welfare benefits and has treated them as a separate caste who is the only ones subject to several requirements by law. Welfare support for caregivers (mothers or fathers) should be an affirmative constitutional right, not an entitlement.

  • There was no widespread opposition to the personal Responsibility Act of 1996. Few Democrats were pressured to act against the bill and the legislative record has no counternarrative that might temper enforcement of the law.
  • Middle-class feminists should practice true sisterhood by upholding poor mother’s rights as well as their own.
  • The Personal Responsibility Act not only drove more children into poverty, but it also punished poor single mothers. The law treats them as a separate caste because they are the only Americans punished for having children, forced to work outside the home, required to divulge information on their intimate relationships, and forced to involve biological fathers in their families.
  • Racist images of welfare mothers has devalued the carework of poor single mothers, and the feminist emphasis on women’s right to work outside the home has been conflated with an obligation for single-mothers to work outside the home. While women of color have never earned equality from paid work, the white middle-class feminist focus on paid employment has contributed to the devaluation of “mothering” and the stripping of poor mother’s rights to carework.
  • Welfare, then, should provide a right to caregiver’s income and such a right can be derived from other constitutional provisions.This right is a necessary condition for gender equality. Mothers who work inside the home are the only ones who are not paid for their labor and welfare benefits would provide a wage for this work. This money would provide these mothers with independence from male partners and improve the cultural value of care work.

Reading 50: Melanie Heath, “The Marriage Promotion Movement”

Health analyzes the marriage promotion movement in Oklahoma, which has been at the forefront of institutionalizing these policies ostensibly to eradicate poverty. She finds that the marriage promotion movement stems from anxieties over shifting gender norms and the rising numbers non-traditional family forms. Conservative groups, scholars, and politicians suggest that promoting and supporting heterosexual marriage will benefit children, lower divorce rates, and help poor families. Although the marriage promotion programs utilize money set aside to aid poor families, most of the programs reach a white middle-class audience. These programs promote heterosexual marriage as the ideal, morally superior family type and the program’s ideal typically reinforces conservative gender norms in families.

  • The marriage promotion movement has focused on the negative emotional and economic consequences that divorce and nonmarital child bearing has on both adults and children. These individuals justify marriage promotion as fighting poverty and working to better children’s’ well-being.
  • The reorganization/dismantling of welfare under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 designated that states could spend their Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Block grants on marriage promotion (along with job preparation and work) as a way to end families’ dependence on government assistance.
  • Two frames guide the cultural politics of marriage: one of poverty and one of morality. While the poverty frame focuses on the social well-being of individuals, the moral frame actually reinforces the marriage gap between the poor and other classes.
  • Heath studied the Oklahoma marriage movement using ethnography including participant observation and interviews.
  • Most of the free classes offered by the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative were attended by white middle-class couples. Also, manly of the leaders who developed the materials and led the classes were Protestant church leaders that led groups of white middle-class congregants.
  • Many of the marriage programs taught that the differences between men and women (with men being more rational and women more emotional) are central to married life. While the program offered a religious track that based these differences on biblical interpretations of the differences between the genders, the secular program used a biological explanation of gender differences in marriage.
  • Marriage programs demonstrate how the new welfare laws shift money away from the poor to provide services for the general population. This contributes to poverty rather than helps to eradicate it.

Discussion Questions

Reading 46: Cynthia Enloe, “The Globe Trotting Sneaker”

  1. How are women treated by global corporations? Describe hiring practices, the gender division of labor, gendered human rights abuses, and policies.
  2. How can women achieve more just working conditions?
  3. Ask students to look at the labels on the clothing they are wearing. Where did their clothes come from? How does our standard of living in America depend on the work of workers like the women discussed by Enloe?

Reading 47: Jo Doezema, “Forced to Choose: Beyond the Voluntary vs. Forced Prostitution Dichotomy”