Elisabeth Prügl

The global construction of gender : home-based work in the political economy of the 20th century

1. Feminism, Constructivism, and the Global Politics of Home-Based Work 2. Motherly Women--Breadwinning Men: Industrial Homework and the Construction of Western Welfare States 3. Supplemental Earners and National Essence: Home-Based Crafts Producers and Nation-Building in Post-Colonial States 4. Marginal Survivors or Nurturant Entrepreneurs: Home-Based Work in the Informal Sector 5. Fordist Gender Rules at Issue: The Debate over the ILO Convention on Homework 6. Fordist Class Categories at Issue: Are Homeworkers Employees or Self-Employed? 7. Studying Global Politics Appendix: ILO Convention Concerning Home Work Notes Index

Feminism and Constructivism: Worlds Apart or Sharing the Middle Ground?

The discipline of international relations (IR) is witnessing a “constructivist turn.” In this article, we argue that the new preoccupation with constructivism provides a unique opportunity to further understanding between feminism and the IR mainstream. Feminism and constructivism share a commitment to an ontology of becoming that can serve as a common basis for conversation. Yet there are also profound differences between feminists and constructivists. First, most IR feminists approach gender and power as integral elements in processes of construction, whereas most constructivists consider power to be external to such processes. This failure to conceptualize power and gender as social and pervasive leads constructivists to miss an important part of the empirical reality of power politics. Second, constructivists tend to ignore the implications of a postpositivist epistemology, whereas for feminists the question of “Who knows?” is crucial. We argue that the constructivist failure to problematize the research process as a social (and therefore political) process of construction is logically inconsistent with an ontology of becoming. We introduce empirical materials to illustrate the advantages of feminist approaches. We hope to advance a dialogue between feminism and constructivism because the two approaches add to each other and in combination can yield better theoretical and empirical understandings of the world.

Microentrepreneurs and homeworkers: Convergent categories

Abstract Home-based workers are not easily identified as either self-employed or dependent workers because these categories of employment status fail to capture gender subordination which is particularly salient in the case of home-based work. Yet development practitioners tend to treat homebased workers as self-employed microentrepreneurs, providing them credit and training. Unions, on the other hand, consider them exploited workers, push for the enforcement of labour laws and sometimes have begun to organize homeworkers and bargain collectively on their behalf. We present the cases of the Self-Employed Womens Association of India and the West Yorkshire Homeworking Group of Great Britain as examples of successful organizations which support home-based workers by combining microenterprise development and union organizing.

Diversity Management and Gender Mainstreaming as Technologies of Government

Diversity management and gender mainstreaming can be considered technologies of government in the Foucaultian sense; that is, they are technologies that guide people to conduct themselves in a particular manner; their purpose is the “conduct of conduct.” This article illustrates the value of applying a Foucaultian “analytics of government” to generate insights on the effects of inserting feminist knowledge into institutional contexts through the practices of gender mainstreaming and diversity management. I first reinterpret these strategies as technologies of government that meet the characteristics identified in the literature on governmentality. Second, I explore the liberal rationality of the contemporary apparatus of gender by juxtaposing it to the disciplinary rationality underlying efforts to govern women at the turn of the nineteenth century. Third, I tease out similarities and differences in the way in which diversity management and gender mainstreaming operate, emphasizing, in particular, the way in which they make difference productive and outlining how one deploys a neoliberal logic and the other a bureaucratic logic. Ultimately, I argue that governance feminism should be interpreted as the governmentalization of feminist knowledge; that is, feminist knowledge has been adapted so that it becomes available for the government of conduct.

Equality means business? Governing gender through transnational public-private partnerships

ABSTRACT From the World Banks ‘gender equality is smart economics’ to The Economists ‘womenomics’ and Nikes ‘girl effect’, feminism seems to have well and truly penetrated the business world. Government action on behalf of gender equality is well institutionalized but private corporations appear as a new actor in this cause. This article asks: What do businesses and their public partners do in order to advance gender equality? What motivates their engagement now and how does it fit into existing public and private relationships of power? What do they mean for feminist agendas? How legitimate are they? And how effective are they? To address these questions the article examines four exemplary initiatives involving businesses in advancing gender equality and womens empowerment: the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Global Initiative, the World Economic Forums Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program, the European Unions Programme on Gender Balance in Decision-Making Positions, and the UN Global Compact-UNIFEM Womens Empowerment Principles for Business. Our purpose is to conceptually locate these initiatives as new private forms of governance involving partnerships with governments. We assess these initiatives employing criteria of feminist evaluation and find decidedly ambiguous results. We argue that the new attention to gender equality in business and global economic governance is both an expression of and a key process in the transformation of states and corporations in the context of global competition and restructuring.

Does Gender Mainstreaming Work

The wide adoption of gender mainstreaming has rekindled debates about feminist engagements with the State. The purpose of this article is to provide a clearer specification of power politics in such engagements and develop the conceptual tools to assess the utility of feminist strategies. Drawing on feminist state theory and comparing two feminist strategies (gender mainstreaming and the equal rights strategy), this article develops an analysis of six types of power mechanisms. Feminist engagements with the German agricultural sector are used to illustrate these mechanisms. The campaign to gain women farmers independent pension rights illustrates the mechanisms of compromise and silencing of difference. The current effort to mainstream gender into rural development policies illustrates mechanisms of cooptation and normalization. In both forms of engagement, in addition, there is evidence of womens empowerment and state refusal. The article concludes that the success of both gender mainstreaming and the equal rights strategy is limited because they are sidelined, side-tracked and slowed down by mechanisms of power.

Feminism and the Postmodern State: Gender Mainstreaming in European Rural Development

This article explores the role of the multilevel and decentered European state in reproducing masculine domination through its rural development policies. I look at the implementation of gender mainstreaming in the European Union’s LEADER program in two regions in Germany. I argue that the postmodern state’s role in reproducing masculine domination depends on gender compromises that have been institutionalized previously in local contexts. Challenges to these compromises through gender mainstreaming have been unsuccessful in the two cases under consideration in part because of bureaucratic values that emphasize objectivity and proceduralism.

Neoliberalism with a Feminist Face: Crafting a new Hegemony at the World Bank

ABSTRACT Neoliberalism has been discredited as a result of proliferating crises (financial, ecological, care) and mounting inequality. This paper examines the growing research on gender at the World Bank as a site for the construction of a new hegemonic consensus around neoliberalism. Drawing on a computer-assisted inductive analysis of thirty-four Bank publications on gender since 2001, the paper documents Bank efforts to establish a positive relationship between gender equality and growth; shows the expansion of the Bank’s definition of equality as equal opportunity; illustrates how the focus on institutions has enabled engagement with core feminist concerns, such as equality in the family; and traces how incorporating notions of women’s empowerment and agency has made possible a focus on domestic violence. The paper concludes by emphasizing the ambiguous effects of the Bank’s new neoliberalism, which continues to use the market as the arbiter of social values while providing openings for feminist agendas.

The Common Agricultural Policy and Gender Equality

Maria Wimer grew up on a family farm in Germany and dreamt of becoming a farmer. Yet it was clear that her older brother was going to inherit the farm, as has been the practice throughout Europe. This left Maria with two options: she could marry a farmer, to gain access to land and engage in farming; or she could train to become a farmer, lease land and start her own farm. The two options by no means yield the same outcomes. If Maria chose to marry a farmer, marriage would give her both a job and a husband — she would be a Bauerin. As such, her duties and rights would be fundamentally different from that of a Bauer. She most likely would be in charge of all the housework, childcare and much of the paperwork relating to the farm. She would engage in farming by doing jobs typically reserved for women and considered ‘ancillary’. Her dual role as spouse and farmer tasked with jobs considered secondary would leave her with few rights. She would have had no occupational status, no right to the income produced from the farm. If she were to divorce, in most jurisdictions she would have no right to the assets of the farm, despite having participated in securing these through her labour. Before 1995, she would have had no independent right to a pension either.

Gender and War: Causes, Constructions, and Critique

War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. By Joshua S. Goldstein. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 523 pages.