The Persistence of Gender Inequality by Evans Mary;

Author:Evans, Mary; [Evans, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2016-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Conditions for Feminism

Feminism has only been able to exist – and this remains the case – where the public discussion of gendered inequality is possible. Speaking and demanding are essential parts of any political movement, but both words hold all kinds of complications. ‘Speaking’ involves a public space in which to speak, a space in which those who speak can ask for change and are not immediately either punished for or prohibited from making those demands. This ‘free’ public space, however, which should be a part of all societies, is far from universal and women have been, and are, subjected to all kinds of constraint for asking for changes in gender relations. That last sentence also introduces the power relations of many societies: women have to ‘ask’ for changes in gender relations; there is very little evidence to suggest that in this context straight men have ever had to make specific demands for changes in gender relations. But men have, of course, been vocal in their demands for social change and have been joined in radical and revolutionary campaigns by women.

So the first essential factor which has to exist for women to be heard is the acceptance of the idea that all citizens have a right to voice their opinions, whether through speech or through the various forms of the written and representational worlds that now exist, although far from universal in their availability. Nor does the fact of the availability of the technology of various forms of communication mean that the use of it is not subject to censorship and various forms of surveillance. It is all too easy for governments to ban public meetings and to exercise various forms of surveillance over the behaviour and the expression of opinions of their citizens. But there is no necessary relationship between the degree of surveillance in a society and the control of dissenting opinions: the UK is estimated to have a greater degree of public surveillance than anywhere else in the world, but at the same time there still exists considerable public space in which citizens can voice their opinions.1 On the other hand, a society which has very little technology of surveillance may make it very difficult for women to voice their opinions and their demands, simply because there is no public space (public meetings, the media, institutional politics) to which women have access.

Thus for feminism – in whatever shape or form – to exist there has to be a form of civic society in which citizens can freely express their views about the people and the ideas which govern them. That form of society is also dependent on other factors: an urban space, with at least a significant number of people who are literate. The ‘mob’ which was once thought to be at the heart of revolutionary movements in the eighteenth century has now been shown to have included many urban, often literate people who had effective ways of communicating with one another.2 The surveillance of dissenting others

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.