• Introduction
• Necessary terminology
• A constant denial of inequalities
• Good reasons (still) to be a feminist
• A Substantial Difference?
• Thinking the (non) gender
• What is a sexist image?
• X-raying the sexual revolution
• Ecofeminism : neither essentialist nor universalist

Introduction

Dear friends,

In July 2005 CDN – Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe has organised the “Sexual (R)evolution” seminar that was the starting point in dealing with gender related issues. This brochure is a follow up of this seminar and it aims to help those entering this topic, giving necessary terminology, definitions and several essays.

We would like to thank Council of European, European Youth Foundation and Green Forum Sweden for their support in realisation of the seminar and the publication. As well we would like to thank everyone who contributed to the development and realisation of this publication.

Ivana Vujadinovic
Project coordinator

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Necessary terminology

Affirmative action: or positive discrimination is a policy or a program providing access to systems for people of a minority groups who have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society. This consists of access to education, employment, health care, or social welfare.

Androgyny: Person with ambiguous gender.

Biological sex: It’s the sex you are born with in your body, though you may feel uncomfortable or wrong with it.

Domestic violence: Physical, emotional, sexual or financial abuse on a person living in the same home.

Drag queen, drag king: Persons who perform for fun or for art, as a show, a stereotyped image of the opposite gender

Ecofeminism: Feminist movement that considers that women have, naturally or culturally (big debate) a better way to deal with Nature than men.

Essentialism: Feminist point of view according to which women must have a decent place in society because they bring different and more positive values than men.

Feminism, pro-feminism: Struggles to achieve equality between the two genders. Men who share this struggle usually prefer to call themselves pro-feminist.

Gender: It’s preferable to speak about the gender of a person than of his/her sex. Sex is a biological fact, gender insists on the social construction made from this biological sex. In a variety of different contexts, gender refers to the masculinity or femininity of words, persons, organisms, or characteristics. The classification into masculine and feminine is analogous to the biological sex of the referent, often by physical or syntactical analogy, linguistic decay, misunderstandings, societal norms, or personal choice. The nature of this categorization varies depending on the context. For example, gender can be used to refer to the differences in biological sex between two members of a species, or different characteristics of electrical connectors. On the other side, in feminist theory, gender is used to refer solely to socially constructed differences between male and female behavior, and the gender of a noun in many languages may have nothing to do with the concept described by it

Gender discrimination: action that specifically denies opportunities, privileges, or rewards to a person or a group because of their sex.

Gender equality: is the concept that the genders should be legally and socially equal.

Gender identity: describes the gender with which a person identifies (i.e., whether one perceives oneself to be a man, a woman, or describes oneself in some less conventional way), but can also be used to refer to the gender that other people attribute to the individual on the basis of what they know from gender role indications (clothing, hair style, etc.). Gender identity may be affected by a variety of social structures, including the person’s ethnic position, employment status, religion or irreligion, and family.

Gender roles: It’s a set of behavioural norms associated with males and with females in a given social group or system.

Gender stereotypes: are considered to be a concept held by one group about another. They are often used in a negative or prejudicial sense and are frequently used to justify certain discriminatory behaviors. This allows powerful social groups to legitimize and protect their dominant position

Gender studies: Theoretical work in social sciences or humanities that focuses on issues of sex and gender in language and society.

Gynocentric: Ideologically focused on females, and issues affecting them, possibly to the detriment of males.

Homophobia: Systematic hate or aversion towards gays and lesbians.

Intersex: Persons born with ambiguous genitalia. It happens a lot that intersex babies are mutilated to be assigned one biological sex, female.

LGBT: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender.

Masculinism: Concern for male identity that can put in danger the achievements of anti-sexist and feminist struggles.

Misogyny: Systematic hate or aversion towards women.

Patriarchy: Sociological condition where male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power.

Pornography: is the representation of the human body or human sexual behavior with the goal of sexual arousal, similar to, but (according to some) distinct from, erotica. Pornography may use any of a variety of media — written and spoken text, photos, sculpture, drawings, moving images (including animation), and sounds.

Prostitution: is the sale of sexual services, such as oral sex or sexual intercourse, for money. A person selling sexual services is a prostitute, a type of sex worker. In a more general sense of the word, anyone selling their services for a cause thought to be unworthy can be described as prostituting themselves.

Queer: Originally an insult against LGBT people, used now by most of them to define themselves, and to name academic studies on this topic.

Reproductive rights: Women’s rights including the right to reproduce (against forced sterilization) or not to reproduce (for the right of contraception or abortion).

Sex: is one of two specimen categories of species that recombine their genetic material in order to reproduce, a process called genetic recombination, or conjugation. The somewhat similar term gender has more to do with identity than biology. Typically, a species will have two sexes: male and female. The female sex is defined as the one which produces the larger gamete (i.e., reproductive cell) and which bears the offspring. The categories of sex are, therefore, reflective of the reproductive functions that an individual is capable of performing at some point during its life cycle, and not of the mating types, which genetically can be more than two.

Sexual harassment: Intimidating unwelcome sexual advance.

Sexual identity: Gender or sex with which a person identifies or is identified.

Sexism: is commonly considered to be discrimination against people based on their sex rather than their individual merits, but can also refer to any and all differentiations based on sex. Sexism can be the belief that one sex is superior to the other, that men and women are very different and that this should be strongly reflected in society, language, the right to have sex, and the law, and it can be a simple hatred of women (misogyny) or hatred of men (misandry).

Sexual orientation: It refers to the gender of a person’s amorous or erotic desires. It can be the same gender (homosexuality), the opposite gender (heterosexuality), both (bisexuality), or none (asexuality).

Sex Trafficking: includes recruiting, harboring, obtaining, and transporting persons by use of force, fraud for the purpose of subjecting them to involuntary acts, such as commercial sexual exploitation (including prostitution) or involuntary labor, i.e., enslaving them. Human trafficking is the trade of human beings and their use by criminals to make money. This often means forcing or tricking people into prostitution.

Transgender: A transgender person can have a transformation from male to female (M to F) or from female to male (F to M). This transformation can be physical and permanent in the case of transsexuals. Other journeys through gender can be for fun, art, mental comfort, intellectual curiosity, social conformism, all of them are respectful.

Universalism: Feminist point of view according to which women must be given equality with men for the reason that they are both human beings.

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Being feminist today is “doing archaeology” (sic): “this is meaningless, there is equality, now you want to question our male identity”. That is what many men tell us, some even talk about superiority of women, who are able to give birth. Let’s look at this “equality”.

In France 80% of the poor are women, whereas they represent 49% of the population. Though the law claims “for equal work, equal wage”, women still earn 20% less money than men, for the same working hours. Furthermore 80% of part-time workers are women, usually not by choice.

Furthermore, when one considers unemployment according to different categories (age, educational level, and class) one rarely mentions the higher level of female unemployment. Again a gender inequality is masked: the power relationship which is the cause of women’s exclusion from the labour market is thereby denied. Also, domestically women work more than men, whilst the male fraction of this work rises at only 10% every ten years.

Sexual violence is another important factor of inequality: rape is always committed by men, and most always women are the victims. What’s more, an average of six women dies every year as a result of their partner’s beatings. According to a study by the ENVEF, one in ten women stated that they had been victim of violence (at whatever scale they may be) over the 12 months preceding the study.

And much more could be said! Thus there appears to be a lot ahead before we reach equality… I do not believe that feminism is outdated; to the contrary, it has never been more important than now. By the way, the more I learn the more I am persuaded that our battle is legitimate and just.

To be feminist means to keep an eye on inequalities of all sorts, not only those between men and women, also those between the rich and the poor, between European nationals and people with no rights in Europe, etc. I am not a feminist because I demand preferential treatment with respect to men, but because I believe it is the best position from which to fight an inegalitarian society.

Sylvia and Aude

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If you don’t know what to answer to the young and less young women that tell you without being ashamed: “No, I am not a feminist, I’m not against men.” Or “Feminism is useless anymore, we have equality now!” If sometimes you feel discouraged and you don’t know anymore why you’re a gender activist, Fées du logis (“good housewives” in French) give you some good reasons (more or less) serious to become or to stay a feminist. Thanks whom? Thanks Fées du logis!

• Because when a child has to go to nursery, it’s “because Mom works”. And not because Mom AND Dad work.

• So that History teachers cease to say in class that in 1789 were created in France truth democracy and universal suffrage. Because even then the conditions for men were very strict (age, social status, etc.) and as far as we know women in Europe obtained the right to vote only during the 20th century.

• So that the same teachers may not answer to little feminists who object that “it’s a detail, the important thing is this wonderful principle of (masculine) universality”.

• Because the first mortality cause of women between 18 and 45 year old, before car accidents and cancer, is domestic violence.

• Because whatever people may say, women don’t have more than men the “ironing gene”.

• Because a man who cooks is a “chef” whereas a women who cooks is a woman.

• So men may stop to ask you knowingly if you are a “miss” or a “mrs”.

• Because I’m fed up with hearing that “(dirty) bitch” is a compliment stating that you’re good in bed. And is "dirty whore" also a compliment?

• So that people may stop to ask systematically to women involved in politics how they manage to combine political life and family life whereas men are never asked how they can combine three political mandates, a job and their family life.

• Because if you cannot find right away what is the trouble with the DVD player, the male next door cannot help saying that you must show him, HE will find what’s wrong.

• Because if you prefer to handle things by yourself, it’s not because you have a bad temper, it’s just that you’re not two year old anymore.

• So that people may stop asking to a girl who is upset: “Are you having your period?” because she hasn’t, but I do, so what?

• So that hair removal, shaving, etc. may not be a way to oppress women.

• Because two women who have a discussion don’t necessarily gossip.

• So that, when you’re filling up a form, the letter “M” shall not always come first. After all, “F” is first in the alphabet.

• So that when four girlfriends are walking in the street, there may not be a smart ass to ask us: “Hello, girls, you’re walking alone?” Because no, we’re not alone, we’re four.

More reasons (in French) on the website of the “Fées du logis” : www.feesdulogis.net.

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Completely absorbed in my rather queer ideas, I almost forgot that in everyday conversations and in magazines, people still have limited ideas on the question of the difference between men and women. The state of the debate was recently summed up by a friend Chiche!: “there is a difference between men and women, do you want me to show you?”. Reactions on the internet site on this topic were numerous, and quite simplistic, in particular those from men. Simplistic ideas on differences between sexes are basically very old ideas. Anthropology teaches us that all societies have over-biologified differences between men and women.

To mention but one other society, the Ancient Greeks thought that male bodies were warm and dry, whereas female bodies were cold and wet. In the 19th century biologists revamped this idea by stating that sperm had the power of “heating” the female body and solidify its fibres. The idea that society may have formatted women and men differently according to the gender that it assigned us is actually fairly new and little thought-out. To this date I feel quite unsophisticated faced with essentialist arguments flooding society with their programme claiming e.g. that men come from Mars. But I can now express my ideas in proper scientific outfit and will here try to reject essentialist arguments I find sickening since, in the end, they only serve to deny real equality between men and women.

Men are better at maths
Men on average obtain better marks than women in maths tests. This difference in performance, which manifests itself only for ages above teenagers, is real but must be questioned: as one learns more about the set-up one begins to doubt. The difference in performance is not stable over time and is diminishing over time, as girls gain access to similar education to boys. On the other hand stress levels of girls are higher during the tests, which may be a part of the explanation.

Furthermore, in some countries such as Japan, women get better results than men. Finally it must be reminded that some women always get very good results, a fact that is hidden by the focus on the average score.

Men read maps better and have a better sense of orientation
People often make us of historic, if not prehistoric reasoning to make sense of this idea: being the hunters, men had to find their way around; an ability that evolution has solidified by the process of selective adaptation. The starting point of this explanation is the idea that in all societies the members are specialised in some activities, which is false.

In prehistoric societies hunting and exploration were very probably not a privilege of men. And in some African societies it is the women who leave the house to look for food and hence who need a sense of orientation. Prehistory is an easy alibi. One day men will start pulling their partners by the hair since this would fit the traditional images of male-female relations in some fantastic past.

What is true is that brain specialists spend their time looking for generalities on differences. But most of the time they fail because the differences between individuals are too great. Hypotheses of correlations between general features are most of the time plainly absurd. So-called specialists seek to establish correlations between hormone rates and culturally constructed male characteristics. One day we are told that boys like playing football more because their knees lie further apart than those of girls. Biologifying differences demonstrates a narrow-minded attitude that subjects the human being to a false determinism.

Aude Vidal

Dorothee Benoit-Browaeys and Catherine Vidal, Brain, sex and power, Belin, 2005;
“is brain sexed ?” Science culture, France culture, 8 fevrier 2005

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How about inventing a new vision of male-female relationships? How about not only denouncing inequalities but rethinking our definitions and borders of what we call gender? Here I present some theoretical elements to help us overcome certain conceptions of men and women that may prove to be too narrow.

Gender: overcoming a biological explanation of the hierarchy of the sexes
Let us recall what gender is. The idea appeared in the seventies in anglo-american literature to allow for a distinction between biological sex and social construction of the feminine and masculine (1). When I speak of the sex of a person I refer myself to their anatomy, whereas gender means anything else that has been internalised as model of masculinity and femininity. The sex thus indicates the biological differences that are recognised; gender the social classification of male and female. It includes all the differences between men and women on an individual level as well as with respect to social roles and cultural representations.

Sociology has largely shown that the differences are hardly natural but rather a product of a social construction that begins at birth, continues throughout childhood and continues in all our adult life. Women are constantly reminded of a certain femininity that is expected of them, both insidiously and subtly (Bourdieu (2) speaks of symbolic violence to express the adherence of the dominated to the dominant), as well as very real psychological and physical violence (need it be recalled that every month, in France, six women die as a result of intra-family violence?). Men also suffer from a socialisation that forces them to show off their virility. I shall not develop further these questions of differential socialisation since this is not the main point.

Overcoming the notion of gender
The notion of gender needs to be criticised and rethought. The thought of Christine Delphy is very helpful from this point of view (3).

She explains first of all that the adoption of the concept of gender brings to light three elements: the social and essentially arbitrary nature of what is understood to be a difference between the sexes; a singular (the gender) as a basis for the principle of distinction (and not only different parts, masculine and feminine); the notion of a hierarchy of sexes. In the end, however, this sociologist disapproves of our tendency to think gender simply in terms of sex; as a social dichotomy constructed on the pre-determined dichotomy of biology. Gender is seen as the content and sex the receptacle.

The possibility of an independence between sex and gender is not raised. She believes that most authors ask themselves what kind of classification sex gives rise to, but do not go on to ask why sex should give rise to any kind of classification. They thereby posit the foundational status of sex with respect to gender, sex here causes gender. Christine Delphy herself believes that gender precedes sex, and that the latter is simply a marker of a social division, employed in order to recognise and identify the dominant and dominated. Hence to establish a correspondence between sex and gender is, in her eyes, not one between a natural element and a social construct, but an opposition of one social construct with another. We are faced with the representation that society has of “biology”. (In an interesting article, Nicole-Claude Mathieu (4), referring to Paola Tabet (5) gives an interesting materialist explanation for the “biologification” of the female body to encourage reproduction.)

Christine Delphy explains in the following that several feminists try to abolish the existing hierarchy between men and women without trying to dissolve the distinction, equivalent to emptying the content whilst keeping the receptacle. This denies that the categories of male and female are themselves a result of the hierarchy, of the system of domination. As a result, if the hierarchy is dissolved, the ideas themselves of male and female will disappear - a utopian plan, of course, but one that allows us to think about gender and our objectives.

These concepts cannot exist without an undervaluation of the one in relation to the other. The distinction between the sexes only serves as a mental construction for male domination. We must escape our current prejudice of a complementary relationship between the sexes. One cannot imagine the values of an egalitarian society as the sum or combination of the male and the female today. Created within and by the hierarchy these cannot survive without it. We must therefore imagine a world where differences between sexes would lose their sense, which is very difficult indeed.

To be continued
Utopias allow us to define together the objectives of a society towards which we would like to move. The idea of a society where the differences between the sexes do not mean more than the difference between blue and green eyes seems appealing to me. That in no way implies that we lose diversity, to the contrary, to recognise all our differences, but without any representing a mark of same or of honour. To be a woman today is to be divergent from the masculine norm (as being black also diverges from a white norm). In the world we have before our eyes here to be a woman wouldn’t be any more than one difference amongst many, as it would be to be a man, white, heterosexual etc. As it has been well put by Pascale Molibier (6), our individuality could then express itself in all its beauty instead of being enclosed in its own characteristics.

Let’s get on with our utopia, let’s overcome gender!!

(1) Ann Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society, Temple Smith, London, 1972
(2) Pierre Bourdieu, La Domination masculine, Paris, Seuil, 1998
(3) Christine Delphy, « Penser le genre : quels problèmes ? », Sociologie, IRESCO, CNRS, 1991.
(4) Nicole-Claude Mathieu, « Identité sexuelle/sexuée/de sexe. Trois modes de conceptualisation du rapport entre sexe et genre », in Daune-Richard, Anne-Marie, Marie-Claude Hurtig et Marie-France Pichevin, Catégorisation de sexe et constructions scientifiques, Aix-en Provence, Université d’Aix-en Provence, 1989.
(5) Paola Tabet, « Fertilité naturelle et reproduction forcée », in L’Arraisonnement des femmes. Essais en anthropologie des sexes, Paris, EHESS, 1985.
(6) Pascale Molinier, L’Enigme de la femme active. Egoïsme, sexe et compassion, Paris, Payot, 2003. Wonderful, not to be missed !
(7) for this topic see also : Françoise Collin, « Pluralité Différence Identité », Présences, n°38, octobre 1991.

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There’s no definitive rule or criterion, because the sexist essence of an image is a question of context: images, but also slogans (sometimes both) can carry a sexist stereotype. A sexist image uses sexist stereotypes (feminine as well as masculine) to sell a product. It perpetuates this way the clichés that found patriarchal society : a man is strong, a woman is pretty and delicate, he likes car, she does the washing up.

Isolated parts of the body, the absence of a head, etc. contribute to reify the human body and make it a product, it dehumanises the women presented. The question of the link between nudity and the product is often raised. When a naked woman is shown to sell a car, the answer is clear, the ad is sexist. But what about an ad for underwear ? Then the position, the slogan, etc. matter. But it also seems that selling underwear is used by ad makers as an excuse : most clothes brands (like C&A, H&M) make advertising on underwear (being then “obliged” to show naked women) when they actually don’t make their sale a priority.

A sexist image makes common situations of violence against women: images of beaten up women, who play with this idea, are not rare. A sexist image imposes physical norms and ways to behave: men and women are worth only when they are young and handsome (thin for the women, muscular for the men).

From Emmanuelle de Champs and Thomas Lancelot, Mix-Cité (anti-sexist French movement)

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Born under the sign of pleasure and joy, the western world’s 60’s and 70’s sexual revolution, brought us some new liberties : freedom of abortion, visibility of gays, freedom of speech on sexuality. Children of this inheritance, in order to understand what is at stake today in our sexual relations and their representations, we must go beyond these commun ideas, and look more carefully. Soon an other profile appears.

So-called non-judgemental but strict norms
From the most practical point of view, the sexual revolution is the appearance on a large scale of more or less diverse practices, (according to the commitment in the avant-garde) : sex at three, group sexuality, sado-masochism, pedophilia, oral sex, anal sex, necrophilia, etc. The times’s best-sellers , The Joy of Sex by Dr Alex Comfort (1972) or Everything you always wanted to know about sex but never dared to ask by the psychiatrist David Reuben (1969) want to sum up a variety of human sexualitys in a non-judgemental and exhaustive way. These guides to sexuality, which had a good reception, want to be reassuring and non-normative. But they miss their aim on two main points.

First in the speech about homosexuality. As varied as may be the practices described by Dr Comfort, he hierarchises sexuality placing on top of everything “the good old matrimonial face to face”. And despite his will for exhaustivity, the homosexuality doesn’t appear in his book, one can find there’s only half a page on bisexuality, about its possible apearence in scenes of collective sex. As for Reuben, he writes in Everything you always wanted to know about sex but never dared to ask : “as well as a penis and a penis equal zero, a vagina and a vagina equal zero”.

Besides homophobia, the thinkers of the sexual revolution accept an other point of inequalities. It is the non-reciprocity of certain heterosexual practices. It doesn’t come as a surprise that the S and M practices described in the papers of the times, the “bottom”, victim and submissive position are reserved to women, the premise being that the female gender makes women seek this very position. In the same style, swinging is called “wife swapping” wich depicts an husband’s point of view.

I would like to quote this last example of inequality as present before and after 1968 : the use of sex toys never implies that anal sex would be performed by others than men, the husband always penetrates his wife, fucks her in all the possible meanings of the term.

Men/women inequalities still active
The new sexual norm is built by men for men, around their desire, without the female desire being taken into account, whether it is known or not. The Japanese sexologist Sha Kokken in 1960 admits that women have more pleasure when their vagina is stimulated by finger penetration than by a coit. Nevertheless he forbids that practice on the reason that “vagina is normally reserved to the penis”. At the end, what really matters is the male’s desire. In a beautiful slip of the tongue, a disciple of Wilhelm Reich tries to convince us of his feminism but says "I’m attentive to a woman’s desire and the demands of his sexual pleasure".

The point is that biologically, women can always adapt, while men’s desire is an untaimable flow ... That’s nature, that’s life, ladies you have to adapt to this violence. In this setting, many women feel uncomfortable when asked to sexually perform. Sexologists call these reactions “inhibitions”. The wording “inhibition” imposes an other level of symbolic violence towards women, when their fears are legitimate ! Women have coped with it. In a letter exchange published in a magazine, women admit that they cannot stand to swallow the sperm of their partners. They then give each other good housewives tips on how to make this sexual work easier.

The “liberation” that we are told about, is in fact the submission of women to a new domestic work and to a new pressure on their sexual behaviours. The question to ask is : did the sexual revolution really aim to liberate women ? It condemned very firmly lesbianism, like pedophiles condemned the expression of child sexuality when the desire led a child to another. Men’s refusal to see women and children’s “liberation” which they could not take advantage of, must be interpretated like a conquest by men of new sexual objects of desire.

Sexual revolution will be political
Comfort and Reuben, to whom can be added the famous Masters and Johnson, are far from making of sexuality a political tool. Their only point is to live better and take advantage of life. It is not that surprising that they have no theory on issues of power and domination in sexuality. But though the sexual revolution was lived and written about by very political personalities such as Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, the French publisher Maurice Girodias and their successors, they never worried about the inequalities that could be reproduced or made stronger in sexual relations.

Sex is only the expression of man’s freedom, and this freedom is not to be repressed anymore by capitalism and its right arm, the family institution. If sexuality was political, women should not have expected to see a new sexuality be the factor of their emancipation. The most radical feminists proposed the idea according to which, if the sexual relations of unmarried young women were at last accepted, it was because of the fear of their social emancipation and a way to keep them under the masculine control of their lovers, sexuality being then a way to lessen female freedom.

A confiscated revolution?
From the freedom of the 70’s, we moved on to the liberalism of the 80’s. The lack of reflexion on the process of domination in a sexual relation between a man and a woman, or between a man and a child is linked to the capitalist liberalism that wants to make us believe in equal chances for all of us, to justify the lack or the destruction of processes of redistribution of social wealth.

Equal chances and each one of us fights for himself. Another interesting point is that the injunction to have pleasure was linked to moral relativism. There was no victims of acts of sexual violence, just women who were not open minded enough and children who invented things. This injunction to consume the other without taking into account his or her desire looks very much like the capitalist injunction to consume objects. Sexual consumerism and a fierce individualism seem to constitute the most visible inheritage of these years of missed revolution...

Aude

NB : Quotations and facts were found in Sheila Jeffreys, Anticlimax (The Women Press, London, 1990). This feminist historian made an essential work of analysis of the mainstream sexoligic speeches all along the 20th century. This text is strongly influenced by the chapter “The sexual revolution”, pp.91-144. However the quotations are not precise, being translated from English to French and backwards !

Linguistic adviser : Suzanne Husky

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At an eco-gathering recently in France we realised that we were not very satisfied with the feminist theories. We would here like to provide a starting point for a discussion on what an ecological feminism could look like. Feminism thought today is characterised by two currents of opinion: on the one hand the essentialists (or differentialists), on the other hand the Universalists. We shall briefly review these schools of thought to criticise and move beyond them.

Essentialists defend the right to be different. These feminists claim that there are specifically feminine features that complement masculine features. For example women may be by nature more faithful than men. Essentialists seek to establish a harmonious utilisation of female skills in a complementary fashion for the greatest good of society. This is “feminism” in so far as it emphasises allegedly female values. These arguments were often put forward during a debate over equal political representation in France: every party must now have 50% female candidates in parliamentary elections. According to some essentialists this so-called parity would render public policy more human since women are by nature softer and closer to everyday reality than men who are by nature more prone to abstraction and ideology.

Universalists defend the right to equality. They defend strict equality in the name of human rights. For Universalists biological differences can not explain behavioural differences and domination. All differences are explained culturally. For example young girls specialise in subjects of lower esteem although they have the better marks. For Universalists this is a result of a subtle impregnation during childhood and adolescence of what are male and female careers. Universalists tend to stress on legal action, they want to change the law to affect equality for all.

But feminism according to these schools of thought has perverse effects for women. By positing biological differences between men and women essentialists justify differential treatment, often excluding women from all that is “inappropriate for gentle spirits” (business, abstract reasoning etc.). The Universalists fight for access to these so called male domains. But should women follow the bad examples of men?

As a feminist I can not agree with essentialists who say what I have to do to be a woman. As an ecologist I do not want to become a business woman to prove my independence. Do we really want a society in which women are prepared to oppress men in order to liberate themselves? According to general opinion they may be successful but my idols are not Condolezza Rice or Margaret Thatcher …

In a capitalist society women will remain oppressed even if they assemble all the resources men currently possess. The competitive forces of capitalism will at most liberate a small portion of rich, well-educated women prepared to give up their private lives (as men who hand over domestic work to their spouses). Few people are capable of living a fulfilled life (with friends, culture, family and affection) whilst working long hours under stress. The resulting specialisation is even welcomed by some in the name of economic growth and prosperity.

Nowadays, women often have a double working day of business and domestic work. On top of this they are expected to keep up appearances. How can this be emancipation? Reducing the working week could represent a progress for women. They have several additional hours of leisure, and above all their partners as well. This would allow men to get involved in household work as well.

Ecofeminism requires a new definition of work. The value attached to different types of work must be changed, domestic work revalued in the process. On the other hand paid work were seen as the activity of producing essential items of consumption only, we would work a lot less. The never ending quest for economic efficiency has resulted in unhealthy specialisation. The gender-based social divisions of labour are the cause of social and sexual domination.

Women’s liberation requires the abolition of work!

Iseline (iseline@chicheweb.org)

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