Mobilization without Emancipation? Women's Interests, the State, and Revolution in Nicaragua
About: This article is published in Feminist Studies.The article was published on 1985-01-01. It has received 1306 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Emancipation.
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TL;DR: The authors argued that women strategize within a set of concrete constraints, which they identify as patriarchal bargains, and that different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct rules of the game and call for different strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or passive resistance in the face of oppression.
Abstract: This article argues that systematic comparative analyses of women's strategies and coping mechanisms lead to a more culturally and temporally grounded understanding of patriarchal systems than the unqualified, abstract notion of patriarchy encountered in contemporary feminist theory. Women strategize within a set of concrete constraints, which I identify as patriarchal bargains. Different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct “rules of the game” and call for different strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or passive resistance in the face of oppression. Two systems of male dominance are contrasted: the sub-Saharan African pattern, in which the insecurities of polygyny are matched with areas of relative autonomy for women, and classic patriarchy, which is characteristic of South and East Asia as well as the Muslim Middle East. The article ends with an analysis of the conditions leading to the breakdown and transformation of patriarchal bargain...
2,123 citations
1,815 citations
Book•
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TL;DR: Lorber as discussed by the authors argues that gender is a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences.
Abstract: In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.
1,642 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1994TL;DR: The authors explored variations in the degree to which women borrowers control their loans directly, reporting on recent research which found a significant proportion of women's loans to be controlled by male relatives, and found that a preoccupation with credit performance, measured primarily in terms of high repayment rates, affects the incentives of fieldworkers dispensing and recovering credit, in ways which may outweigh concerns to ensure that women develop meaningful control over their investment activities.
Abstract: Special credit institutions in Bangladesh have dramatically increased the credit available to poor rural women since the mid-1980s. Though this is intended to contribute to women's empowerment, few evaluations of loan use investigate whether women actually control this credit. Most often, women's continued high demand for loans and their manifestly high propensity to repay is taken as a proxy indicator for control and empowerment. This paper challenges this assumption by exploring variations in the degree to which women borrowers control their loans directly; reporting on recent research which finds a significant proportion of women's loans to be controlled by male relatives. The paper finds that a preoccupation with “credit performance” — measured primarily in terms of high repayment rates — affects the incentives of fieldworkers dispensing and recovering credit, in ways which may outweigh concerns to ensure that women develop meaningful control over their investment activities.
1,465 citations
TL;DR: The authors describes the development of gender planning, which in identifying that women and men play different roles in Third World society and therefore often have different needs, provides both the conceptual framework and the methodological tools for incorporating gender into planning.
1,124 citations
Cites background or methods from "Mobilization without Emancipation? ..."
...In fact, Molyneux (1985) does not define “interests” as such, nor does she make the distinction between “interests” and “needs.”...
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...IDENTIFYING PRACTICAL AND and practical gender interests, following the STRATEGIC GENDER NEEDS threefold conceptualization made by Maxine Molyneux (1985)....
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...She would also like to thank Maxine Molyneux, Linda Peake, Michael Safier, Marianne Schmink and Peter Sollis for their comments on various drafts, and to acknowledge the support of the Ford Foundation, New York in the development of training courses and materials on gender planning....
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...As Molyneux has written, “they do not generally entail a strategic goal such as women’s emancipation or gender equality . . . nor do they challenge the prevailing forms of subordination even though they arise directly out of them” (Molyneux, 1985, p. 233)....
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...Recent liberation and socialist struggles in countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe have shown that this is not neccessarily the case (Molyneux, 1981; 1985; Murray, 1979)....
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