The Politics of Women's Interests: New Comparative Perspectives by Louise A. Chappell & Lisa Hill

Author:Louise A. Chappell & Lisa Hill [Chappell, Louise A. & Hill, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Civil Rights, Social Science, Political Science, Women's Studies, General
ISBN: 9780415368346
Google: qDpRswEACAAJ
Goodreads: 4954425
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-01-15T12:39:19+00:00

Backlash politics

The so-called backlash against the women’s movement has also been identified in many countries, both East and West. It is associated with the men’s rights movement that seeks to roll back changes in gender relations that followed from second-wave feminism. Men’s rights groups proliferated in the 1990s with names such as ‘Dads Against Discrimination’ (Australia, Canada and the USA), the Men’s Rights Agency (Australia) or Men’s Equalization Inc. (Canada). They believe that feminists have captured state power and are responsible for policies and legislation that victimise men (Kaye and Tolmie 1998). Particular sources of resentment include child support formulae applied to non-custodial parents, equal opportunity legislation and domestic violence programmes that focus on men as perpetrators. Starting in the USA, men’s rights groups seized on unreliable statistics to ‘prove’ that women were just as violent as men and refused to accept the legitimacy of any domestic violence programmes that did not start from this premise. In Australia, the Men’s Rights Agency claimed a victory when an expensive government anti-domestic violence advertising campaign aimed at teenagers and young adults, ‘No respect, no relationship’, was cancelled just before Christmas 2003, when screening was to begin.

In general men’s rights groups view policies that have made it easier for women to leave unhappy or violent relationships and/or to compete on a more equal basis in the paid workforce as undermining the authority of men inside and outside the family. Small steps towards greater gender equity in public policy are vastly exaggerated in the eyes of those who believe they are the new victims of feminist elites and gender bias in the state. In some western countries the rise in political influence of fundamentalist Christian churches has reinforced the anti-feminist backlash.

While the men’s rights movement depicts equal opportunity policies as a form of discrimination against men, there are also anti-feminist women’s groups that depict equal opportunity as discrimination against women who choose to be economically dependent on men. The discourse of antifeminist women’s groups ties in nicely with the market populist discourse discussed in the next section because it frames equal opportunity measures and paid community services as wasteful as well as discriminatory. Paid maternity leave, subsidized childcare or re-entry allowances and training programmes are all framed as wasteful as well as a form of discrimination against women who have chosen to be homemakers. Tax systems based on the individual are also depicted as discriminating against two-parent single-income families: instead, family unit taxation is favoured that would impose high rates of tax on second earners. Anti-discrimination legislation is opposed on the ground that private employers, with the incentive of the profit motive, will make wiser choices than ‘equal opportunity bureaucrats whose salaries are paid by taxpayers’ (Francis 1994).

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