I characterize these theorists as essentialist and analyzed their contributions to explore their notions of gender difference. This study provides examples of how secondary empirical studies and political discourse can be used to explore the utility of essentialist notions of gender difference. It offers a way in which the power of essentialist accounts of gender difference can be conceptually and empirically tested.
It also provides evidence that can be used to expand research on essentialist views of gender differences.
- Gender and gender differences
- Gender essentialism
- Types of gender essentialism
- Sociological underpinnings for gender essentialism
- The choice of the four theorists
- Structure of the thesis
Ritzer argues that the central theme of the literature on gender differences is that the inner psychic life of women is different from that of men in terms of their values and interests, their way of making value judgments, and/or in the configuration of general relations of women and social reality. However, The Second Sex remains an important text in investigations of women's oppression and liberation today (Mussett 2003). In the book she argued that women's subordination was fundamental to other forms of oppression (Benewick and Green 1998).
It is argued that she was also possibly the first feminist in the 20th century to explore the significance of women's distinctive roles in procreation (Benewick and Green 1998).
Gender as biological essence
- Simone de Beauvoir
- Shulamith Firestone
- Biological essentialism: understanding the limits of the theory
De Beauvoir also saw the specifics of the female body (menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth, lactation, etc.) as limitations of women's access to the rights and privileges granted to men in patriarchal society. Marshall argues that de Beauvoir's analysis of women is characterized by a philosophical essentialism rooted in women's bodily existence. Thus, de Beauvoir places in women's bodies an essential gendered subjectivity that must be overcome.
In de Beauvoir's explanation, women 'become' women and experience themselves as women in relation to society's and men's definition of them as 'Other'.
- Introduction
- The sociology of fertility and women’s contraceptive use
- Fertility levels and trends
- Contraceptive use
- The sociology of women’s biology: reflecting on the evidence in regard
- Fertility decline, contraceptive use and the family
In this section I will specifically examine Firestone's arguments on the promise of reproductive technology to free women from the constraints of their reproductive biology against the realities of women's fertility rates and contraceptive behavior in contemporary South Africa as reported in SADHS 1998. Fertility rates are an observable aspect of women's reproductive behavior and a visible indicator of the relationship they have with their reproductive propensity and the controls they can exercise over their bodies. As the SADHS shows, women's actual fertility is influenced by their place of residence, age, race and education levels, as well as social and economic opportunities.
O'Gara and Robey argue that women's level of education marks not only their status in society, but also their social and economic position at home. Even data on teenage pregnancy reflect social rather than biological influences on the reproductive behaviors of young women. As Firestone (1970:11) contends, erasing the biological basis of women's oppression is in itself insufficient to free women and children from their oppression.
At the same time, the data on education confirm Firestone's (1970) insight into the limiting effects of women's reproductive biology on their life chances. SADHS's (1998) findings on women's subjective preferences reflect both their sense of agency and their structural and institutional capabilities. Empirically, the evidence shows that Firestone's belief in the promise of technology to end the oppression of women is misplaced, because both technology and oppression are socially rather than biologically determined.
Firestone argues that women's control over their biology would lead to the transformation of the institution of the family, which was also necessary to liberate women (to make them less dependent on men). Following this logic, it is possible to predict that women's ability to control their fertility significantly affects the essential characteristics of the biological family.
Gender as psychological essence
- Nancy Chodorow
- The limits of gender difference as psyche/personality
For Chodorow, the activity of women's mothering was socially and psychologically constituted rather than biologically. She argues that with the development of capitalism and industrialization, the structure of the family and women's lives have changed (1978:4). For her, family structure is key to the “sex-gender system” where women's motherhood takes place.
In doing so, Chodorow introduces the concept of individual agency (albeit an unconscious process) into her discussion of the behavior of men and women. One of the consequences of women's motherhood is the reproduction of their location and responsibilities in the domestic sphere. The reproduction of women's motherhood is the basis for the reproduction of women's location and responsibilities in the domestic sphere.
This motherhood and its generalization to women's structural location in the domestic sphere connects the contemporary social organization of gender and the social organization of production and contributes to the reproduction of both. The female mother is a fundamental organizational feature of the sex-sex system: it is the basis for the gender division of labor and creates a psychology of female capabilities and nature. It reduces the essential gender difference between men and women to their personalities or psyches, which arise from the activity of women's mothering.
Chodorow's characterization of female personalities is based on generalizations supported by assumptions about body in relation to character. Young also argues that her psychological design, by locating the source of male dominance and the different emotional development of men and women in patriarchy alone, ignores the actual material sources.
- Introduction
- The construction of women, children and men
- The texts
- The Discourse on women
- The discourse on children and family
- The discourse on men
- The material practice of caregiving in the CSG Programme
- Discussion and conclusion
In Part II, the WPSW limits itself to the restructuring of the delivery system. This context reflects concerns about the impact of the disease on women's health and their responsibilities towards their unborn children (p.64). The needs of caregivers – especially those of women – are made secondary and subordinate to those of the children in their care.
This narrowing of the discourse on the meaning of child welfare has significant implications for both children and women in society. In the WPSW (Department of Welfare 1997), children are identified as one of the vulnerable groups in South Africa and therefore a target of social welfare. Rather, it is the understanding of the family as a site of physical and social reproduction that guides the State's.
As the WPSW puts it, the need for state intervention in the family arises because of the family's inability to fulfill its parenting and social support functions. The numerous qualification criteria established for “primary care providers” to receive benefits position healthcare providers as claimants. However, findings from CSG studies indicate that women are the leading individual CSG applicants/clients/beneficiaries who qualify as “primary care providers.”
The consequences of the degenerate concept of 'primary health care providers' in the law and the CSG program are that the state does not recognize that women are mainly primary health care providers and does not support them for this function with benefits or compensation. . In CSG households, women and children are not linked to men as the breadwinners of the family, as they are absent, but instead depend on the state to provide financial support to the children.
Gender as maternal practice and maternal thinking
- Sara Ruddick
- Children’s demands and maternal work
- Maternal thinking
- Maternal practice and maternal thinking
In this section I turn to maternal practice and maternal thought, in the form of maternal work as it is affected by children's demands. She argues that mothers reflect on how to promote growth, thereby acknowledging children's complexity and the difficulties of responding confidently to it. Accepting that children's nature is hospitable to goodness and maternal work is potentially a work of conscience for Ruddick, 'training' is the extraction of this goodness through conscience and educational maternal control of children (p.103).
In part, their power is limited by the children's will as well as their own emotions. She (ibid) claims that this type of argument also assumes that children's needs are fixed and objectively knowable. ibid:127) directs this criticism specifically at Ruddick's view of maternal thinking. Her theory presupposes a series of appropriate responses by mothers to children's demands, which involve mothers' reflection on their practice through maternal thinking and acting with conserving love, care and training (pp.65-123).
The second maternal practice "nurturance" is described by Ruddick as a response to children's demand that their growth be promoted and spirit developed. Their response is seen as recognition of children's need for nurturing and understanding of children's nature. Finally, Ruddick identifies 'training' as a maternal practice that responds to children's demand for social acceptability.
Her theory excludes an explanation of the impact of social influences on the construction of mother's practice and children's demands and therefore creates essentialist notions about mother's practices and children's demands. The utility of Ruddick's theory of gender difference as found in maternal practice, maternal thinking, and children's demands has been explored in various ways.
- Introduction
- Maternal practice: the evidence
- Protection
- Fostering growth
- Training
- Discussion and conclusion
I therefore propose to use some of this available secondary evidence to consider Ruddick's ideas of maternal practice and children's claims. These changing social conditions also indicate differences in the nature and extent of children's vulnerability and dependency. It has been proven that South African women pay attention to children's needs and respond more than men to children's demands for care.
In South Africa the conditions exist for children's demands for protection to be met with preserving love by adults. Working mothers in black communities are held especially responsible for their children's welfare, successes and failures (Magwaza 2003). The same is true for white women, who also see their children's needs as primary.
In this sense they echo Ruddick's idea of the naturalness of protective love and of maternal practice as driven by children's demands and needs. Cast in the frame of the primary caregiver, they express themselves as selfless mothers who are driven by their children's demands and must be good enough for them (ibid), living in the long shadow of what Ruddick says is the. As articulated in social development policies and programs in South Africa, state discourse and practice generally make underlying assumptions about mothers' and children's needs, vulnerability and dependency.
The Child Support Grant (CSG) program prioritizes children in the mother-child dyad, positioning caregivers (mainly women) as conduits for children's needs. They also suggest another view of Ruddick's that women, through their maternal activities, consciously reflect and strategize to meet the demands of their children.
- Biological essentialism: Simone de Beauvoir and Shulamith Firestone
- Psychic essentialism and social essentialism: Nancy Chodorow and Sara
- In conclusion
