Magazine / Society / Women / Background | 31/03/2008

No Progress Without Movement – There's Never Been So Much Gender

Gender mainstreaming, feminism, the women's movement – all terms we have heard before. But what exactly do they mean? Where do the individual approaches differ? This is what Claudia Neusüß and Julia Chojecka investigate in their article.

Gender – a word that is nowadays used in the most different contexts. Corporate strategies and marketing concepts are gendered, as well as language and laws (in content and form). It is official: "There's never been so much gender" (Meuser /Neusüß 2004). Gender is pushing its way into the mainstream.

The German government included gender mainstreaming as a central theme in its government programme already back in 1999. The EU is proving a driving force and an important reference system for national implementation procedures; in the Amsterdam agreement from 1997 it officially declared gender mainstreaming a goal of EU policy as a compulsory guideline for all its member states.

However, there is still a wide gap between political gender mainstreaming norms, their public rhetoric and their respective social practices. Many women are still affected by violence. The executive floors of businesses are mostly women-free, wage discrimination and the problems connected to compatibility are a reality for women. At the same time, the number of men taking on educational and caring jobs increases only very slowly.
Gender mainstreaming is a political equal-opportunities strategy that has sparked off hopes, criticism and questions from various corners. Some feminist activists and theoreticians wonder whether it still has anything to do with feminism. They miss the specific impetus of basic, comprehensive social change. Others suspect gender mainstreaming to be a concept thought up by "those bureaucrats in Brussels", and that – at best – it would only be suitable for "equality light". Yet many also hope that equality will thus finally become a wider issue. That hope has already been the driving force behind international women's movements that put this issue on the political agenda, from where it found its way onto the Platform for Action of the Forth World Conference on Women 1995 in Beijing. So, the history of gender mainstreaming is also a history of social movements.

Women's Movement

The first women's movement grew out of the context of European revolutions during the 18th and 19th century. Whereas it mainly focussed on fighting for access to education and political participation (women's right to vote), the new women's movement in the second half of the 20th century drew its strength especially from the struggle for sexual and reproductive rights of freedom and equal opportunities in all areas of society. While this second phase of the organised women's movement in the US has to be seen in a context with the black civil rights movement, e.g., in (West) Germany it stemmed from the student movement.

Feminism

The term "feminism" is increasingly found since the early 20th century, when it was used as a synonym for the women's issue and female emancipation endeavours. Today, feminism can be understood as a political movement as well as a critical trend in the philosophy of science that deals with power, power relations and domination. Currently, we find different national and cultural developments on the conceptional level and concerning its self-image. So instead of talking about feminism, it seems more apt to talk about "feminisms". Its different orientations (including liberal, Marxist, autonomous, deconstructive, differential and equality feminism) originate from heterogeneous theoretical paradigms, but their smallest common denominator is "the complete realisation of the emancipation of women" (Kluge). It was mainly in the course of the second women's movement and its "march through the institutions" that feminism got universally established, became increasingly academic and further developed through critical women's and later gender studies.

Gender

"Gender" has to be seen in a socio-cultural context. It is the direct opposite to the category of sex – seen in front of the backdrop of poststructuralist and deconstructive theory. In contrast to gender, sex relates to the (supposedly) natural, physical allocation of one genus. The differentiation between those two terms is intended to clarify that gender and common perceptions with regards to gender-specific abilities and responsibilities are not natural and can thus be changed, as they were created by society. Simone de Beauvoir already formulated a similar thought in 1949: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one". The hierarchy that comes along with the two-gender system shows up as discrimination or privileging, e.g. through the ascription of certain proficiencies to one sex or the other. Gender uncovers the artificiality of this structuring strategy. It portrays in how far gender acts as an usher into certain social roles and how it organises societies in a bipolar yet hetero-normative structure. Moreover, the concept of "doing gender" points towards the fact how broadly sexuality or the affiliation with one specific sex is (re-)produced by all members of society with recourse to certain staging practices. Gender is dramatised by attributing a sex not only to behavioural patterns, but also to things and activities (clothes, toys, even colours etc. etc.). What we see as male or female, however, is attached to a certain time and culture. Thus, gender is a dynamic category that is subordinate to historical change, instead of a universally applicable, set category. Since the 1990s, the differentiation between these two terms has been reinterpreted. It is stated that also the category sex cannot be seen as an a-historical, natural factor, as what we call nature is always defined on the basis of culture. Particularly history of science research proves the incredible flexibility of allegedly biological facts, including the biological sex determination.

Gender Studies

Gender serves as an evaluation parameter in gender studies. The boundaries towards women's studies, from which this school of thought originated in the 1980s, are blurred. In contrast to gender studies, in women's studies sex is viewed as the fundamental category. Central focus points are the circumstances of women (as in men's studies, the circumstances of men). The guiding idea was and still is the criticism of an allegedly gender-neutral school of thought, which at the core, however, still proves to be andro-centric. Its research was about women, but not done by women. In contrast to that, gender studies operate less with the term "woman" than with "gender", for example the issue of how bodies are ceded, interpreted and neutralised and how society has long been positioned around these norms. This also includes the pattern of gender-specific division of labour, performance evaluation and wages attached to specific notions about masculinity and femininity. What all paradigms (women's, men's and gender studies) have in common, though, is the question of how their findings can be translated to political and social processes. This is where gender mainstreaming comes in.

Gender Mainstreaming

As a political strategy, gender mainstreaming aims towards an equality of women and men in all political decision-making processes. It is intended to consider the actual circumstances of women and men already during the planning of actions, the development and evaluation of decision-making processes as well as the (re-)organisation of existing systems. Gender mainstreaming is targeted at political activists, politicians and (public) institutions, in which these political strategies for equality are to be implemented. The exact content and targets have to be negotiated internally within the respective organisations. An orientation might be the question of whether an action rather manifests gender hierarchies or whether it helps people overcome them.

The application of gender mainstreaming uses a variety of tools. Gender budgeting, for instance, focuses on creating budget plans that are fair to both genders, gender impact assessment analyses e.g. gender-specific effects of legal actions, and gender trainings sensitise people with regards to gender-specific ascription practices and also build up gender responsibility. Nor does gender mainstreaming dispense with successful tools of the classic promotion of women, like the practice of "positive discrimination", mentoring and networking. As a kind of double strategy, the conventional promotion of women and gender mainstreaming both work towards equality and greater gender democracy. The gender democracy approach supports the vision of democratic relations between all sexes (including equal access to resources and a balanced representation in the media, politics and executive positions). It promotes the disintegration of "hegemonial masculinity" (Conell) as the dominant structural pattern (e.g. the standardisation of masculine career patterns).

Gender mainstreaming functions as a cross-sectional or communal task that infiltrates all issues and areas of an organisation and that is not only promoted by special women's or equal opportunity departments alone.

Managing Diversity

Additionally, managing diversity has received more and more attention in recent years, not least because of the EU anti-discrimination policy and the General Equal Treatment Act, which became effective in Germany in 2006. Up to now it has mainly been companies from the private sector working on an international level (Deutsche Bank, Telekom, etc.) that have implemented this approach in their management and personnel strategies. Their aim is the appreciation and economic utilisation of "multiple diversity". It looks at various differentiation categories (such as gender, age, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religion, physical abilities, class/social stratum etc.) and their interplay; it wants to reduce discriminations and realise potentials. Companies oriented towards diversity are closer to their customers and tap into new target groups ("gender or ethno marketing"), which makes them more successful. Motivation and productivity are higher, as are creativity and innovation skills; they can attract and maintain more talented staff, and they can draw from a bigger pool of possible service providers. Diversity management is also increasingly employed by associations and NGOs, e.g. the ones working in the field of (inter-)cultural activities.

Recently, feminist women's and gender studies have increasingly picked up on this aspect with the keyword "intersectionality". Here, the category of gender is investigated as to its interaction with other differentiating categories.

So, in order to wisely and successfully integrate gender into the mainstream, to overcome gender hierarchies and simultaneously do justice to the complexity of individual and socially structured circumstances, it needs movement on all levels. This is as much the task of the EU as an important player for progressive women's and gender policies, as of the individual member states and their national implementation processes. Last but not least, movement is also required in the thoughts and actions of every member of society.

Further articles on the subject » EU Policy, » Social Policy / Employment, » Social movements, » Europe
More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Social Policy / Employment, » Social movements, » Europe