Tag Archives: feminism

Beyond Citizenship? International Women’s Day: the gender agenda

This post was contributed by Sasha Roseneil, Professor of Sociology and Social Theory and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research.

International Women’s Day is the moment each year to reflect on the ongoing struggle against the inequalities and oppressions that mean that women continue to be less than fully equal citizens. It is an occasion to stand back and think about how far we’ve come, what remains to be achieved, and how we formulate our demands for the future.

Since the late 18^th century, the prospect of full and equal citizenship has animated generations of feminists. Yet citizenship is a troubling proposition for feminism because whilst it promises inclusion it always also enacts exclusion. Citizenship simultaneously creates insiders and outsiders – citizens and aliens, as well as good citizens and bad citizens. And whilst feminists have fought for a say in the running of states – as voters, workers, politicians and activists – feminism has also always been a process of exposing the limitations, restrictions and violence enacted by states through their constructions of citizenship. This paradox has intensified in recent years, as the notion of citizenship has become a buzzword in politics and academia, particularly in a Europe increasingly concerned with questions of borders and membership.

On the one hand, feminists have expanded the concept of citizenship beyond the classical concern with political citizenship, to articulate demands for wider social, cultural and economic change. The notion of intimate citizenship, for instance, has been developed to refer to the goal of ensuring that every person should be free to develop her own identity and sense of self, and the close personal relationships that matter to her, with the respect, recognition and support of the state and society. And the idea of economic citizenship refers to the right to work in the occupation of one’s choice, in a non-discriminatory job market, to earn wages adequate to support self and family and to access adequate social benefits when work is not possible. Both these concepts enable us to think more clearly about the extent to which feminist claims for full and equal citizenship have been realised. They help us to see the many successes of 20^th century feminism in remaking citizenship for women. So, as well as opening up access to formal politics, women’s movements have meant that social benefits and welfare provision for women were established, economic participation and financial independence became possible, and self-determination and freedom of choice in intimate and sexual life were radically extended.

But, on the other hand, feminists continue to draw attention to the lived realities of those who are still not caught in the warm embrace of a full and equal citizenship – those suffering gendered violence and sexual abuse, the disabled and the dependent, members of minoritised, racialised and sexually excluded groups, illegal aliens and the “sans papiers”, the poor and precariously positioned, gender non-conformists and many others. From this perspective, feminism needs to ask whether the incompleteness of the victories of second wave feminism actually marks the limits of what is possible under the auspices of “citizenship”?

Perhaps there are fundamental flaws in citizenship as a feminist objective, tied as it is to the liberal individual and to the nation-state? Can the inherent vulnerability of the human body, and our fundamental human interdependence, ever be truly recognised and supported when citizenship adheres to the individual? Can the differences between peoples, and the singularity of each individual, really thrive under the universalistic intentions of citizenship?

This paradoxical situation produces a “can’t live with it, can’t live without it” relationship with the ideal of citizenship for feminism. And as with any attachment that seems to offer so much, that tantalises and teases, but that continues to fail to give us what we really want, we should ask ourselves whether we should hang on in there, trying to make the relationship work, or whether we should let go and move on? Is citizenship still an idea worth fighting for, or should we find a different language to express our yearnings for equality and our desire to belong?

Sasha Roseneil is editor of ‘Beyond Citizenship? Feminism and the Transformation of Belonging’, a new book exploring the current state and history of feminist politics (to be published by Palgrave Macmillan, March 2013), and co-editor of “Remaking Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: women’s movements, gender and diversity” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

The tricky task of achieving life/work balance

The two-body problem

Academics often have academic partners, although the problems are just as difficult when one partner’s career is outside academia. One lesson I have learnt is that one must discuss everything beforehand. Don’t wait until the problems arise and resentment creeps in. Be objective, realising in advance that one of you may get a superb offer in a place where the other cannot find something suitable. What will happen if that arises? Whose career will have precedence (certainly not automatically the man’s!)? How will you find compromises that meet both your needs to some extent, even if not to perfection? Whose career is more transportable? All these issues must be faced in advance, without which debates end up in resentment for one party and guilt for the other…. often resulting in a doomed relationship. You have to ask yourself, which is more important: career or relationship, even if both are important. The solution isn’t to pretend the issue won’t arise!

Integrating family and career

Many young academics desire a child. It is often assumed that a busy career means a single child. In a newspaper article many years ago, Katherine Whitehorn raised the question “one child or many?” and concluded that, if you are a busy professional, it may be better – albeit counterintuitive – to have several children! She reasoned that a singleton waits desperately for mum (or dad) to come home, whereas several children just muck in together and barely notice their parent is away. What about maternity leave? Fortunately, since I was a mother, maternity (and paternity) leave has vastly improved, so you could devote yourself entirely to the new arrival. This is clearly your right, but is it such a good idea? My advice is that, if you intend to pursue your career, then don’t cut off completely during the maternity leave. Save a special time each day to check email, read the latest article, jot down notes for your next article or research project. You are going to have to juggle both once you return to work, so start practising gently now. Remember that the smaller the baby the more s/he sleeps, so take your baby to special lectures or a conference. Feed the baby just before it starts and hopefully s/he’ll sleep right through. Do sit on an aisle seat, though, in case s/he starts screaming!! And, once you’re back fulltime at work, agree with your partner in advance on how you will both decide who will come home anytime the baby is sick – not automatically the mother!

Focus your research

When you had no home responsibilities, it may have been fine to dabble in numerous research projects, but once there are family responsibilities, it is essential to focus your research. Try to arrange to teach on courses that are related to your research so that your reading serves both.

Avoiding guilt

Remind yourself frequently that you cannot be superwoman! Keep an eye on your health and remember that sleep isn’t only a time of rest, but that parts of the brain are more active during sleep than wakefulness and that sleep is critical for the consolidation of memory. Avoid guilt, and learn to say “No” to requests to take on extra tasks. Protect yourself at this time of your career; you can be an avid volunteer in the future. Tell yourself that it’s OK to use day-care and, when you drop off your child, leave with a confident stride. Babies pick up on their parents’ doubts. Do ask for help when you need it. You don’t have to prove you can do it all alone.

You never stop being a mum…

A personal ending: I thought that when my daughters left the nest, had their own careers and families, I could simply get on with my career without a second thought… Alas no! Now the potential guilt raises its head again: how do I juggle expected grandmother duties (I have seven) with the pressures of my academic career? Rest assured, I have no regrets… having children, grandchildren and a busy career have fulfilled my life.

Valentine’s Day

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This post was contributed by Professor Lynne Segal, Anniversary Professor of Psychology & Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies.

Not again? Are you home alone on Valentine’s day, feeling yourself like a miserable old ghost, excluded from the feast of love? If so, you could join up with the ‘one-billion-rising’, the global feminist campaign which, in the footsteps of Eve Ensler seventeen years ago, turned Valentine’s Day into V-Day. Women and men everywhere are being urged to take a stand against violence against women, so often perpetrated through sexual assault. Here the V stands for Victory over men’s Violence against Women. It is a victory that is to be achieved through, among other things, everybody learning to love, instead of hating and abusing, the Vagina. It’s a crucial movement, with rape culture still endemic around the world.

But let me return to my opening question, the thought of being home alone on Valentine’s Day. Are we unlovable if tonight we find ourselves undatable, living alone, outside any couple? Of course not! We all know that there are so many different kinds of love, some might even reflect, like Jeanette Winterson this time last year, that all our relationships are based on love of different kinds: ‘If we could try to experience love as a quality – like compassion or courage – and focus less on love as an event, something that happens, then love would belong to us, rather than being dependent on us belonging to someone’.

In his conversation, In Praise of Love, the philosopher Alain Badiou echoes some of Winterson’s thoughts, though reinstating the couple as the site of ‘love’. Disdaining what he sees, rather oddly, as the ‘risk-free’ commercialization of love in internet dating, Badiou affirms the truth of ‘love’ in the movement from the chance encounter to the challenging commitment of an enduring recognition and acceptance of ‘difference’ between two people, as each negotiates a shared encounter with the world, no longer ‘from the perspective of the One, but from the perspective of the Two’.

Love may indeed be best seen as a quality of commitment, acceptance and enduring negotiation. However there is surely a little more to add when Winterson or Badiou object, as many do, to the commodification of the trade in ‘love’ nowadays, exemplified by those roses and chocolates on Valentine’s Day. This is because, even when free from the taint of commercialism, love is always shadowed by various forms of envy, dread of abandonment, and more, on the one hand; constraint and fears of suffocation, on the other.

This underbelly of love persists, whether we see ‘love’ as a type of event (the expression of desire, the occurrence of sexual activity, the declaration of strong affection); or alternatively, as a quality of lasting attachment and care (trying to be always dependable, supportive, comforting, responsive, in sharing one’s life with another). In a brief meditation on the risks of love the philosopher Judith Butler agrees, when she writes, ‘love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.’ The archetypal bond of love, that of a child for its mother, conveys it all; soon enough the child will be caught between need and flight, even as the mother was perhaps once caught between fear and flight at the initial total dependence of the infant on her ceaseless ministrations.

We could all love each other more, even that passing stranger, and the world be a better, indeed unrecognizable, place. But who dares ask for love without fear of rejection? It is the horror of the pitying smugness of the securely (or insecurely) coupled that single people experience, especially on Valentine’s Day. Now where exactly can I find those billion people rising, tonight?

Listen to a podcast from the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosopy’s lecture series ‘The Importance of Being Human’ (2011). Professor Lynne Segal and Professor Stephen Frosh discuss : Is love possible?

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