Part II Gender as psychological essence
5.3. Discussion and conclusion
An analysis of the discourse of the WPSW shows that it conceptualises and positions women as vulnerable subjects and providers of care in society whereas men are mainly conceptualised as absent breadwinners and financial providers for women and children’s needs. Children are identified as structurally vulnerable and in need of care mainly through the family; which is a normative familial model. The needs of men, women and children are framed and interpreted mainly through a discourse which is underpinned by gendered assumptions.
The interpretation of this discourse is in the practice of welfare through the Social Assistance Act and CSG programme. In the CSG programme social assistance is provided for the care of children through the degendered notion of ‘primary care giver’ who lives in an economically vulnerable household. Whereas the WPSW recognises and essentialises the primary role played by women in childcare and identifies their vulnerability both economically and also in terms of their caring responsibilities, the provision of support for childcare through social assistance negates this recognition. The numerous qualifying criteria stipulated for ‘primary care givers’ to receive benefits position the providers of care as petitioners of the
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State and beneficiaries whose needs are administratively and institutionally defined by the State.
The findings from CSG studies however, show that women are the main individual claimants/clients/beneficiaries of the CSG who qualify as ‘primary care givers’. They are also in most instances the biological mothers of the children and they are also mostly resident in the households of the children. These primary care givers are mostly unmarried and unemployed. These findings also reveal that fathers are mostly absent from households and that males comprise a very small percentage of primary care givers. The implications of the degendered notion of ‘primary care givers’ in the Act and CSG programme is a failure by the State to recognise that it is women who are mainly the primary care givers and to provide support to women for this function through relief or compensation. It also implies a failure to acknowledge that welfare is also provided by largely women’s unpaid domestic care-work (Walby 2009:144).
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Sainsbury (1996) argues that the State through its welfare systems may treat women as wives or mothers or workers, in the case of the WPSW the women are primarily located within a discourse of care as mothers and care is located within the discourse of familial ideology. In so doing the State policy fails to account for and provide for the social structural problems experienced by women as a consequence of their care giving roles as well as to provide the conditions for women to assert their agency to meet their own productive needs. Walby (2009:113) argues that the provision of State facilities for childcare is very important in facilitating the employment of mothers who in the absence of such provision may choose to look after their children in a domestic setting. Further, she (ibid) argues that the greater the extent of State childcare, the higher and more rapidly the rate of female employment rises. She (ibid) does however, also acknowledge that high levels of female employment do also occur without State support but mainly in households that can afford to privately purchase these services from the market. Daly and Rake (2003:69) argue that the
provision for care by the State is heavily implicated in gender inequality and patterns of individual and family well being and associated with variations in the situation between men and women.
Fraser (1989:149) argues that welfare policies position women and interpret women’s needs as subjects in a particular way rather than dealing with women as women:
“Of course, the welfare system does not deal with women on women’s terms. On the contrary, it has its own characteristic ways of interpreting women’s needs and positioning them as subjects”
She further argues:
“Clearly, this system creates a double bind for women raising children without a male breadwinner. By failing to offer these women day care for their children, job training, a job that pays a “family wage,” or some combination of these, it constructs them exclusively as mothers. As a consequence, it interprets their needs as maternal needs and their sphere of activity as that of “the family.”
Now, according to the ideology of separate spheres, this should be an honoured social identity. Yet the system does not honour these women. On the contrary, instead of providing them a guaranteed income equivalent to a family wage as a matter of right, it stigmatizes, humiliates, and harasses them. In effect, it decrees simultaneously that these women must be and yet cannot be normative mothers”
(ibid:153).
Hassim (1999:16) cites Lister (1994) as arguing that state social security grant recipients are positioned as dependent clients on the state rather than as full citizens.
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With regard to Chodorow’s claim that it is mainly women who mother in society and want to mother, the findings from the CSG studies confirm that it is women who are mainly caring for children in families. These findings have resonance with
Chodorow’s argument that women continue to play the role of primary caretakers of infants in society. Chodorow argues that the basis for women’s predominantly mothering role is linked to their pre-Oedipal experiences of being mothered by women, where they develop mothering capacities which become part of their unconscious psyche, however she also argues that women mother because they derive meaning from this identity.
Walker (1995:437) argues that women invest in motherhood and family not simply as a product of socialisation or patriarchal ideology but because of their own experience of this role. She (ibid) argues that woman want to mother and that the contribution of Chodorow’s theory is her recognition of women’s agency, an agency that stems from unconscious drives. The finding that it is women who predominantly claim the CSG, can be interpreted as women consciously constructing and claiming their mothering role and identity in society. Women’s recognition of themselves as
‘primary care givers’ by mostly applying for the grant, can be viewed as a reflection of women asserting their agency as mothers in a consciously reflective way.
Peattie and Rein (1983) have developed a claims-related perspective in order to introduce an agency perspective on the relationship between the welfare state and gender and for purposes of describing political economy at the level of the individual and the household and to connect the individual with the household. However, women’s agency as expressed in claiming the CSG can also be seen as a response to the recognition of the stark reality that they are economically vulnerable, unable to provide for their own children’s needs and that men are absent as fathers and breadwinners in households. Peattie and Rein (1983: 20) argue that claims originate in particular sets of norms and values and are interpreted through prevailing social conventions and legal and customary entitlements.
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However the findings of the predominance of mothers who are ‘primary care givers’
can also be seen as a reflection of the discourse of caring embedded within policy
and practices of social institutions. Here the choices, desires, motivations and
behaviour (including mothering) of women in the family and society are constructed through discourses of mothering and gender in policy by political institutions. This institutional and policy discourse can be seen as perpetuating their role as ‘primary care giver’ and fulfilling a ‘reproductive function’ in society which relegates them to the private sphere. Hakim (1996:5) argues that the position of women in society is determined ‘both by their access to, role and status in paid employment, and the status accorded to their reproductive and domestic role.’ From a social interactionist perspective the women mothering (interaction with children) can also been seen as a reaction to the features of their particular social context (family) where they are expected to be and are categorised by others and themselves as nurturers. Schram (1993:251) argues that:
“…value gets created when discursive structures are stabilised sufficiently to serve as the basis for enabling people to value some identities and interests over others. Identities emerge out of textually constructed differences.”
With regard to the theory of object relations to which Chodorow subscribes, the social practice of mothering by individual women produces gender personalities in children. Children’s identification with same sex parents provides them with the experiences to learn the meanings of maleness and femaleness and is significant to their emotional development. She also argues that women and children relate to men as providers and breadwinners engaged in the public sphere. In the CSG households, women and children do not relate to men as providers of the family as they are absent but rather depend on the State to provide financial support for children.
Children do not develop an inner psyche of triangular object relations of
son/mother/daughter or daughter/mother/father. Mothers’ continued presence in CSG households does allow for both girls and boys to form primary attachments to their mothers or grandmothers and for girls to identify with femaleness.
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However, if you apply Chodorow’s model of identity formation to boys in CSG households – boys would also experience difficulties in male gender identity
formation not because fathers are absent breadwinners but rather because fathers are mostly absent in any form at all. Chant (1997 cited in Visvanathan, Duggan, Nisnoff and Wiegersma (1997:158) suggests that boys become confused about their identity in households where fathers are absent. She argues that their experiences of
insecurity could lead to them to demonstrating exaggerated masculinity later in life.
However, she also (ibid:161) argues that in female-headed units children experience the absence of violence and this gives children greater psychological security and this could also act to reduce machismo and hostility between men and women.
In contrast to Chodorow’s model which implies that women are devalued in society because of their primary mothering role and location in the private sphere, the fact that women are the main primary care givers who receive the CSG to provide for children’s material needs, could positively impact on women’s status within the family; as it could increase their value and status with children as they become the primary providers for their well being in the absence of fathers.
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Chodorow’s theory on gender difference holds the view that the social organisation of the family with women mothering is the cause of gender difference within an individual’s psyche, she therefore proposes shared parenting as a solution to change the psychology of children in order to transform gendered psyches – rather than the transformation of social institutions and practices which reproduces gender
differences and inequalities within the family. Her solution is however, consistent with her explanation that because the cause of gender difference and inequality resides in an individual’s psyche which arises from a particular social organisation of parenting, transformation of gender difference requires a change in the social
organisation and practice of parenting within families. Woollett (1991) also argues that ‘psychological constructions of motherhood are underpinned by wider social constructions of motherhood.’ Chodorow’s views on shared parenting has resonance
with the WPSW proposal for partnership between men and women in domestic activities to overcome their vulnerability and the CSG also implies gender neutral care through the “primary care giver”. But the overall discourse and provisions of the State with regard to care belie these intentions. The implications of the discourse and practice of support by the State for women is that they are mainly provided for in their role as carers and their needs which arise from their social structural
vulnerability are not accounted for or provided for.
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