Gender and Governance (The Gender Lens Series)

164 Pages·2003·9.31 MB·English

by  Lisa D. Brush

Gender and Governance
THE GENDER LENS SERIES
Series Editors
Judith A. Howard
University of Washington
Barbara Risman
North Carolina State University
Joey Sprague
University of Kansas
The Gender Lens series has been conceptualized as a way of encouraging the
development of a sociological understanding of gender. A "gender lens" means
working to make gender visible in social phenomena; asking if, how, and why
social processes, standards, and opportunities differ systematically for women
and men. It also means recognizing that gender inequality is inextricably braided
with other systems of inequality. The Gender Lens series is committed to social
change directed toward eradicating these inequalities. Originally published by
Sage Publications and Pine Forge Press, all Gender Lens books are now available
from AltaMira Press.
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love
Judith A. Howard and Jocelyn A. Hollander, Gendered Situations, Gendered Selves:
A Gender Lens on Social Psychology
Michael A. Messner, Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements
Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore, Gender and the Social Construction of Illness,
Second Edition
Scott Coltrane, Gender and Families
Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber, and Beth B. Hess, editors, Revisioning Gender
Pepper Schwartz and Virginia Rutter, The Gender of Sexuality: Exploring Sexual
Possibilities
Francesca M. Cancian and Stacey J. Oliker, Caring and Gender
M. Bahati Kuumba, Gender and Social Movements
Toni M. Calasanti and Kathleen F. Slevin, Gender, Social Inequalities, and Aging
Gender and Governance
Lisa Brush
D.
fiLTMIPA
PRESS
A Division
of
ROWMAN& LIITLEFIELDP UBLISHERINSC, .
Wlnut Creek Lanharn New York Toronto Oxford
ALTAMIRAP RESS
A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
1630 North Main Street, #367
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
www.altamirapress.com
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, MD 20706
PO Box 317
Oxford
OX2 9RU, UK
Copyright 0 2003 by AltaMira Press
AII rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brush, Lisa Diane.
Gender and governance / Lisa D. Brush.
p. cm.-(The gender lens series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7591-0141-8 (cloth : alk. paper)-ISBN 0-7591-0142-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Power (Social sciences). 2. State, The. 3. Feminism. 4. Civil society-United
States. 5. Civil society-Europe, Western. 6. United States-Social policy.
7. Europe, Western-Social policy. I. Title. 11. Series.
JC330.B75 2003
303.34~21 2003008501
Printed in the United States of America
@
TMThpea per used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992.
C O N T E N T S
Foreword vii
Acknowledgments xi
P A R T O N E
Gender, States, and Social Policies
CHAPTER 1
Where the Power Is 3
CHAPTER 2
Governance and Gender
23
P A R T T W O
Governance through a Gender lens
CHAPTER 3
The Governance of Gender 51
CHAPTER 4
The Gender of Governance
73
P A R T T H R E E
Toward Feminist Governance
CHAPTER 5
Changing the Subject 97
CHAPTER 6
Slouching toward Where the Power Is 119
Suggestions for Further Reading
131
References
133
Index
143
About the Author
149
F O R E W O R D
It is now more than twenty years since feminist sociologists identified
gender as an important analytic dimension in sociology. In the interven-
ing decades, theory and research on gender have grown exponentially.
With this series, we intend to further this scholarship, as well as ensure
that theory and research on gender become fully integrated into the disci-
pline as a whole.
In a classic edited collection, Beth Hess and Myra Marx Ferree (1987)
identify three stages in the study of women and men since 1970. Initially,
the emphasis was on sex differences and the extent to which such differ-
ences might be based in biological properties of individuals. In the second
stage, the focus shifted to the individual sex roles and socialization,
exposing gender as the product of specific social arrangements, although
still conceptualizing it as an individual trait. The hallmark of the third
stage is the recognition of the centrality of gender as an organizing princi-
ple in all social systems, including work, politics, everyday interaction,
families, economic development, law, education, and a host of other so-
cial domains. As our understanding of gender has become more social,
so has our awareness that gender is experienced and organized in race-
and class-specific ways.
In the summer of 1992, the American Sociological Association (ASA)
funded a small conference, organized by Barbara Risman and Joey
Sprague, to discuss the evolution of gender in these distinctly sociological
frameworks. The conference brought together a sampling of gender
scholars working in a wide range of substantive areas with a diversity of
methods to focus on gender as a principle of social organization. The
discussions of the state of feminist scholarship made it clear that gender
is pervasive in society and operates at multiple levels. Gender shapes
identities and perception, interactional practices, and the very forms of
vi i
viii Foreword
social institutions, and it does so in race- and class-specific ways. If we
did not see gender in social phenomena, we were not seeing them clearly.
The participants in the ASA-sponsored seminar recognized that al-
though these developing ideas about gender were widely accepted by
feminist sociologists and many others who study social inequalities, they
were relatively unfamiliar to many who work within other sociological
paradigms. This book series was conceived at that conference as a means
of introducing these ideas to sociological colleagues and students, and of
helping to develop gender scholarship further.
As series editors, we feel it is time for gender scholars to speak to
our colleagues and to the general education of students. There are many
sociologists and scholars in other social sciences who want to incorporate
scholarship on gender and its intersections with race, class, and sexuality
in their teaching and research, but lack the tools to do so. For those who
have not worked in this area, the prospect of the bibliographic research
necessary to develop supplementary units, or to transform their own
teaching and scholarship, is daunting. Moreover, the publications neces-
sary to penetrate a curriculum resistant to change and encumbered by
inertia have simply not been available. We conceptualize this book series
as a way of meeting the needs of these scholars, and thereby also encour-
aging the development of the sociological understanding of gender by
offering a ”gender lens.”
What do we mean by a gender lens? We mean working to make gender
visible in social phenomena, asking if, how, and why social processes,
standards, and opportunities differ systematically in women and men. We
also mean recognizing that gender inequality is inextricably intertwined
with other systems of inequity. Looking at the world through a gendered
lens thus implies two seemingly contradictory tasks. First, it means un-
packing the assumptions about gender that pervade sociological research
and social life more generally. At the same time, looking through a gen-
der lens means showing just how central assumptions about gender con-
tinue to be to the organization of the social world, regardless of their
empirical reality. We show how our often unquestioned ideas about gen-
der affect the worlds we see, the questions we ask, the answers we envi-
sion. The Gender Lens series is committed to social change directed
toward eradicating these inequalities. Our goals are consistent with initia-
tives at colleges and universities across the United States that are encour-
aging the development of more diverse scholarship and teaching.
The books in the Gender Lens series are aimed at different audiences
Foreword ix
and have been written for a variety of uses, from assigned readings in
introductory undergraduate courses to graduate seminars, and as profes-
sional resources for our colleagues. The series includes several different
styles of books that address these goals in distinct ways. We are excited
about the series and anticipate that it will have an enduring impact on
the direction of both pedagogy and scholarship in sociology and other
related social sciences. We invite you, the reader, to join us in thinking
through these difficult but exciting issues by offering feedback or devel-
oping your own project and proposing it to us for the series.
About This Volume
In writing the current volume, Lisa Brush took seriously our brief to
imagine what political sociology, state theory, and welfare state studies
would look like if they fully integrated insights from feminist scholarship.
Her central innovation is powerful in its simplicity. She urges readers to
understand feminist political sociology and state theory by viewing states
and social policies through two facets of a gender lens. She inspects what
she calls the governance of gender, that is, how states and social policies
produce and police the boundaries between masculinity and femininity
and thus enforce or undermine male privilege in everyday life. She also
investigates what she calls the gender of governance, that is, the ways as-
sumptions and practices of gender difference and dominance organize
the institutions, capacities, and ideologies of governance.
Brush’s synthesis of the complex literatures on gender, states, and
social policies makes sophisticated research and theory accessible to non-
specialists. Her argument also advances debates among feminist scholars
on several frontiers. In particular, Brush weaves through the book an im-
portant argument about including violence against women among the
notions of “gender” and ”welfare” that are the conceptual bedrock of
feminist welfare-state studies.
The book starts off with an introductory section that provides the
conceptual foundation for looking at gender, states, and social policies
through a gender lens. Brush then guides readers through a review of
empirical evidence (focused primarily on the welfare states of the North
Atlantic capitalist democracies, especially the United States) of how states
govern gender and how gender organizes governance. In the final section,
Brush examines the implications of her approach for feminist theory and
politics, and builds on the conceptual and empirical foundations of the