The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy by Genevieve Vaughan

Author:Genevieve Vaughan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2018-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

14.

The Gender Impact of Neo-Liberal Policies

The Case of Finland

KAARINA KAILO

The ultimate result of unchecked, terminal patriarchy will be ecological catastrophe or nuclear holocaust.—Petra Kelly

By restoring gift giving to the many areas of life in which it has been unrecognised or concealed, we can begin to bring the gift paradigm to consciousness. Gift giving underlies the synonymity of “meaning in language” and the “meaning of life.”—Genevieve Vaughan

FROM THE NORDIC WELFARE STATES to the overexploited countries of the South, women’s movements worldwide have taken issue with the reinforced neo-liberal and techno-capitalistic agenda that is threatening women’s hard-won rights. The new socio-economic order of the globalized world is perceived by many activists as the apex of the patriarchal and capitalistic exchange economy (Vaughan, The Gift)—or whatever name is given to the new regimes controlling women’s lives in the public and private sphere.

The Finnish welfare state is being eroded, and the far right has gained momentum. As the country is celebrating its hundred years of independence, what has happened to this much-idealized former welfare state? The goal of this article is to discuss the appropriation of the “gifts” of the welfare society by neo-liberal forces, with Finland as a case in point. I will use the notion of “gift economy” as an analytical tool for examining the tension between the gift-circulating welfare state and the gift-appropriating, gift-misnaming predatory exchange economy—neo-liberal capitalism. I will at the same time outline some of the key elements and beliefs behind the neo-liberal market economy from the point of view of women’s changing status in the new global economic order.

While there are numerous studies of the gender impact of new public management (NPM) and neo-liberal restructuring in Finland and elsewhere, the theories based on the gift and exchange economies are not well known, particularly in Scandinavia. Thus my contribution is to analyze the current change of ethos that underlies the neoliberal attack on the woman-friendly welfare state. I complement Genevieve Vaughan’s theories of the gift and recognize the influence of many other members of the International Network of Feminists for a Gift Economy, who participated in the Rome symposium in May 2015 and other gift theory conferences. In my view they offer important insights regarding our civilizational crises. I conclude the paper with suggestions on how we might reinstate the values of the gift as an umbrella term for an eco-socially more sustainable way of life, despite the odds.

The global agenda of neo-liberal restructuring and the ongoing outsourcing of public services has now seriously eroded the Nordic welfare states. When the leader of the Social Democratic Party in Finland, Paavo Lipponen, sought the approval of the Finnish people to join the European Union in the 1990s, he was met with resistance, especially by many women’s groups. They feared that joining the EU would result in the loss of the hard-won gains and benefits of the welfare state, which in Scandinavia has been considered “a woman’s best friend.” Minister Lipponen argued that the opposite would happen—the European Union member states

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