Women's practical vs. strategic interests

Molyneux, Maxine. Women's movements in international perspective : Latin America and beyond New York : Palgrave, 2001. pp. 140-202

Focuses on the impact of feminism in development literature and definitions of women's and gender interests. Women's movements show a great diversity in the definition of what constitutes rights and citizenship. Moreover, “there is no necessary relationship between forms of organisation and interest articulation” and “women's gender interests are not always transparent, or even primary for women, any more than their gender identity is their sole identity.” (151) Women's interests then have to be understood not in an essential way but as historically and culturally constituted, as well as politically and discursively constructed.

Practical vs. Strategic interests: needs that derive from women's position versus claims that involve a further transformation of such gender relations. There is a problem with understanding practical interests as 'objectives' though, as there is an “impossibility of deriving women's interests from a generalised account of women's subordination” (153). Molyneux claims that the formulation of interests is always dependent on discursive elements specific to the historical, cultural and political context. Moreover, Molyneux asks about the politics and uses of women's and gender interests, pointing that “women's gender interests can be instrumentalised by political forces which claim to be promoting women's interest in general —as if they were self-evident, unproblematic and uncontested.” (157) For instance, how “governments and development agencies haved mobilised women into voluntary welfare work on the basis of their practical interests; such appeals have also been deployed to solicit women's support for neo-conservative campaigns around 'responsibilising the family'.” (157) This is notably the case in Chile where the effects of neoliberal policies has been accompanied of an exaltation of the role of the family.

In Latin America, feminist struggles for citizenship have been shaped by the colonial experience, which privileges Catholic definitions of gender: “Spanish rule left its imprint in its legal codes and in a cultural configuration which gave Catholicism a particular influence over women's lives.” (167) Women many times have drawn —directly and indirectly— on these Catholic definitions of gender and sexuality to negotiate their political and social participation in processes of nation-building.But women sometimes also stretched the meaning of these terms, for instance, making “home” and the domestic space to include the neighbourhood and community issues. Early in the century, feminisms both in the USA and in Latin America “allied itself with civic maternalism in the pursuit of social reform and protection for women.”

There has been a tension within the feminist movements regarding whether to emphasize equality vs difference (and particularly motherhood). Molyneux seem to suggest that this strategy of gaining power invoking domesticity and children has been ambivalent to women's individual rights, and that one of the effects of this strategy.

Two other significant features of Latin American women's movements have been the stress on social, collective rights over individual citizenship (as a way to take distance from the individualistic stress of North American feminism), and participatory politics. Thus, while in the 80s the feminist reflection in the Western liberal democracies was centered on the state, in LA the political and theoretical debate revolved around social movements (both about the participation of women in them and the development of a gendered analysis of them). Along with other theorists from the left, LA feminists made a critique of a liberal utilitarian version of citizenship and called for a more participatory and socially responsible version of it (en la linea de Lechner y O'Donnell).

Participation and activism however, did not necessarily result in personal empowerment as evidence showed. Likewise, women's activism or 'active citizenship' do not necessarily lead to progressive or more democratic politics. History shows that frequently women have been mobilized under conservative, patriarchal, nationalist discourses/projects. Since in LA women's mobilizations were often role-based (as mothers and community providers), frequently it was read under an essentialist discourse of 'feminine virtues'. But the discourse of difference was used many times in LA history as a call for women's superior virtuosity to re-moralise the nation and preserve authoritarian institutions like the traditional family. Under a curious convergence of new communitarianism and neo-liberalist discourse, women were called to become active citizens so to alleviate the effects of the reduced role of the state: thus, through voluntary work and activism, women's unpaid labor was seen as an extension of their natural role. Furthermore, communitarian visions are filled with problematic assumptions about the family.