Based on Chpt. 10 of the same name in Piven and Cloward’s The Breaking of the American Social Contract
Feminists and the State
Piven and Cloward assert
that feminists have largely felt antipathy toward the state
Not true; it depends on what
kind of feminist one is.
Phillips writes:
[F]eminism is simultaneously anti- and pro-state. It is critical of the sate as an exclusive forum for political action; tends to see state institutions as hidebound, unresponsive, promoting a conservative political agenda; tends, for these reasons, to see the more amorphous, decentralized, pluralistic activities of civil society as better suited to the development of feminist politics. But feminism is also supportive of the state as an agent of redistribution, regards the market a peculiarly unsuited to meeting the welfare needs that dominate so many women’s lives, and considers the patchy network of voluntary associations a poor substitute for universal provision via the state (Phillips, 1999: 59)Thus, socialist feminists may be critical of “public patriarachy” in their critiques of public policies pertaining to women, but they most likely have similarly statist solutions to “public patriarchy.”Source: Anne Phillips (1999) Who Needs Civil Society? A Feminist Perspective Dissent 46, no.1 (Winter 1999), pp. 56-61.
Liberal feminists – what is their stance toward the state?
What are the alternatives to statism??
Where do Piven and Cloward
come down in the debate?
They come down on the side
of “statism”
e.g., p.214 – while admitting that using state policy is a means of “social control” , it is a false paradox to pit state power against individual autonomy
They feel that women’s “dependence”
on the state actually provides them with opportunities to be more powerful
social actors
Think about this statement.
The sematics of it.
That it is peculiarly American
to view financial relationships between citizen and state as fostering
“dependence.”
Inherent in this, different
notions of freedom.
Negative freedom vs. positive
freedom
Gender Gap
What is it?
What is the source of the
gender gap? Do men and women have different “interests” or “ideologies”??
If so, why is the gender
gap a relatively recent phenomenon??
Moral economies: peoples ideas reflect their lived experiences; the actions of actors and an assessment of what is the moral thing to do in any given situation is context/community dependent; must be interpreted according to the “moral economy” of their community
Example of “peasant moral
economies,” factory workers’ moral economies
Women’s moral economies –
a moral economy of domesticity, reflecting both their universal life tasks
of motherhood, and their more particular experience within a Western patriarchal
family that made them dependent upon male wages (2180
Moral economies and protest
Mass protest occurs when
gross transgressions of rules of reciprocity, mutual obligation, solidarity
are violated
Moral economies and public
policy
Historic moment when elements
of the moral economy of domesticity become asserted as PUBLIC values
Moments of innovation and
change
**now – the insular and
patriarchal family is eroding, jeopardizing the old rights that had guaranteed
women and their children a life and a livelihood within the family (221)
Thus, changes in objective circumstances of women, leads to changes in their moral economies, and their political power
Consider the changes in family
structure and economy (shift to service sector), and public policy and
how these affect the political POTENTIAL of women
1) industrial, male-breadwinner
model
unionization, AFDC
2) post-industrial, “flexible
accumulation” regimes
workfare