Living with Patriarchy: Discursive Constructions of Gendered Subjects across Cultures

314 Pages·2011·1.68 MB·English

by  Danijela Majstorović (ed.)

Living with Patriarchy
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society
and Culture (DAPSAC)
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Teun A. van Dijk
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, John Richardson Sue Wright
Barcelona University of Newcastle University of Portsmouth
Volume 45
Living with Patriarchy. Discursive constructions of gendered subjects
across cultures
Edited by Danijela Majstorović and Inger Lassen
Living with Patriarchy
Discursive constructions of gendered subjects
across cultures
Edited by
Danijela Majstorović
University of Banja Luka
Inger Lassen
Aalborg University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Living with patriarchy : discursive constructions of gendered subjects across cultures /
edited by Danijela Majstorovic, Inger Lassen.
p. cm. (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, issn 1569-9463 ; v. 45)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language and language--Gender. 2. Language and languages--Sex differences. 3. Code
switching (Linguistics) 4. Language and culture. I. Majstorovic, Danijela. II.
Lassen, Inger, 1951-
P120.S48L59 2011
408.1--dc23 2011029815
isbn 978 90 272 0636 7 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8394 8 (Eb)
© 2011 – John Benjamins B.V.
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Table of contents
Gender imbalances revisited: Introduction 1
Danijela Majstorović and Inger Lassen
Part I. Patriarchy and emancipation in private spaces
“He beat her so hard she fell head over heels”: Normalising wife
abuse in Colombia 17
Laura Tolton
The discursive construction of gender among Dholuo speakers in Kenya 49
Michael Abudi, Felicia Yieke and Catherine Kitetu
Snippa – a new word for girls’ genitals in Swedish: Gender-neutral
or patriarchal? 69
Karin Milles
What it means to be a Bosnian woman: Analyzing women’s talk
between patriarchy and emancipation 81
Danijela Majstorović and Maja Mandić
Part II. Mediating gender in public spaces
Greek men’s and women’s magazines as codes of gender conduct:
The appropriation and hybridisation of deontic discourses 113
Ourania Hatzidaki
Representation of desire and femininity: The advertisement
in late-modern consumer culture of Japan 145
Toyoko Sato
Gendered discourses: Liberia’s ‘Iron Lady’ vs. George Weah 169
Grace Diabah
vi Living with Patriarchy
Gender ideologies in the Vietnamese printed media 195
Nguyen Thi Thu Ha
Part III. Trajectories of patriarchy and emancipation across professions
Constructing masculine work identity through narrative:
Two case studies from emergency medicine in Quebec 219
Stella M. Advani
Stereotyping gender: Discursive constructions of social identities
in a Danish bank 249
Inger Lassen
Living in therapeutic culture: Feminine discourse as an agent of change 273
Joanna Pawelczyk and Eva-Maria Graf
Index 303
Gender imbalances revisited
Introduction
Danijela Majstorović and Inger Lassen
Gender research is by no means a new activity, and over the past century many
aspects of women’s roles in society have been addressed from a variety of perspec-
tives and theoretical and methodological approaches. In spite of the many efforts
made at explaining why women seem to occupy inferior positions to men in soci-
ety, and in spite of research having shifted focus from gender being determined by
biological sex to gender being constructed in interaction through discourse, little
has been achieved in terms of actually bringing about changes in social practices.
Women in the 21st century still earn lower wages than men for the same type
of work, they are overrepresented in unemployment figures, underrepresented
in high positions and have lower possibilities of being promoted (Alvesson and
Billing 2009: 2), all of which bears witness to the claim propounded by some that
we live in a patriarchal society. In the 21st century we are still facing the extremes
of battered wives at one end of a scale of gender inequality and the desire to be
feminine and attractive as more subtle manifestations of gender inequality at the
other end of a scale. These examples symbolize an unequal relationship between
the powerful (often men) and the disempowered (often women). Along this cline
of symbolic expression of gender hierarchy, there are also more subtle elements
of institutional discrimination, which are difficult to challenge because they often
go unnoticed as part of our taken-for-granted value systems and cultures, and we
might say that all of these examples help substantiate our claim that patriarchy has
survived several waves of feminism and gender research.
But what does it mean to live in a patriarchal society, and does it mean the
same to all women across the world? Patriarchy has been with us for thousands
of years. Lerner (1986: 217) defines the concept as ‘the relationship of a dominant
group, considered superior, to a subordinate group, considered inferior, in which
the dominance is mitigated by mutual obligations and reciprocal rights’. The sys-
tem can only be upheld if women cooperate, and various means for coopera-
tion have been devised over time. These include for instance gender socialization,
2 Danijela Majstorović and Inger Lassen
denial of education and knowledge of women’s history, division of women through
disciplinary means such as punishment and rewards, or by discrimination in
terms of limited access to political power and economic resources, to name but a
few (ibid.). Over time the socialization of gender has taken on a number of what
Lerner (ibid.: 214) refers to as gender-defined social roles. Central to the establish-
ment of social roles for both women and men is the commodification of women,
who were the property of men until quite late in our history. Daughters could
fetch a bride-price, or be sold as slaves. Later, with the emergence of class systems,
lower-class women were often sexually exploited by upper-class men, and if the
upper-class men were at the same time white colonial masters, a race dimension
appears on top of the gender and class issue (ibid.: 215). Like Lerner, Figes (1970)
places male dominance in an historical perspective, and examines some of the
factors that might have determined the role of women in society. She discusses
the influence of Christianity, the emergence of capitalism and Freudian psycho-
analysis and asks to what extent sexuality has contributed to women’s inferior role
in society and to what extent women are responsible for their own destiny.
These issues keep boggling gender researchers’ minds, and many attempts
have been made to explain why women have been and still are subordinated
in society, leading to ardent debates about the concept of patriarchy (Stacey in
Richardson and Robinson 1993: 53). In feminist theory some have found the con-
cept too diffuse to be meaningful, while for others it has offered a useful starting
point for analysing the oppression of women. As a result of the debates, numer-
ous definitions have been suggested according to specific analytical purposes
(ibid.: 55). Stacey (1993: 56), referring to Walby (1986, 1990), describes six dimen-
sions of patriarchal society, which include employment, household production,
the state, sexuality, violence and culture. These dimensions seem to have changed
over time from being situated primarily in the private sphere in the nineteenth
century to taking on more public forms in the twentieth and twenty-first centu-
ries (ibid.: 57). It is a change that reflects social structures in capitalism, without
making assumptions about any relationship between capitalism and changing so-
cial structures, and without revealing whatever bias there might be in the division
of labour between the two gender categories. Even in the 21st century, because of
– or perhaps despite – capitalism, we see that in Folbre’s (2009: 206) words ‘wom-
en devote considerably more time than men to nonmarket work, including the
care of dependents’, which entails that the private sphere is still women’s primary
domain despite equal opportunities initiatives taken around the world. In this
book we define patriarchy along the lines of Walby’s six dimensions of patriarchal
society, acknowledging that all of these dimensions necessarily have an impact on
gendering, although the impact may be more forceful in some societies and less
in others. (See Stacey 1993 for definitions of patriarchy; see also an exchange on
Introduction 3
patriarchy between Sheila Rowbotham and Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor
in Morgan 2006.)
Why another book on gender?
Empirical evidence that supports claims about society being patriarchal, leading
to gender-defined social roles, is not hard to come by, and the interest in gender
issues – both as an academic field of investigation and as a topic of debate in the
public media – seems stronger than ever. So against this background one might
ask what impelling reasons there might be for yet another book on gender? Part
of the answer to this question has already been given, for as long as the problem
of inequality persists, it is of crucial importance to share knowledge about re-
search undertaken in the field. It is therefore the primary purpose of the book to
provide a better understanding of current societal trends as regards gender issues
around the globe, by throwing light on some of the trajectories that are neces-
sary in the movement from patriarchy and emancipation. A second purpose is to
show that although all the chapters of the book are resemiotizations of patriarchal
systems in a number of highly disparate countries, the visible effects as well as the
sometimes subtle and unspoken realities seem to stem from the same breed of
hegemonic discourses, whether in global North or South. (For a similar stance,
see Lazar 2005: 17.) So far most books on gender issues have had a Western focus,
but by including new, rich data and insights from scholars in countries such as
Colombia, Canada, Liberia, Kenya, Vietnam, Japan, Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Sweden, Denmark and Poland, this book tries to counter-balance the so far rather
heavy Anglo/American bias of gender research. It is our hope that by giving a
voice to scholars in global North as well as South, we may critically examine what
it means to ‘step outside of patriarchal thought’ as Lerner (1986) puts it. Accord-
ing to her this means ‘being sceptical toward every known system of thought
and being critical of all assumptions, ordering values and definitions. Lerner’s
approach invites us to do Critical Discourse Analysis in order to deconstruct lives
and professional activities of women and the ways in which they construe their
social identities in different cultural contexts and how these identities are being
discursively constructed by others.1
1. Fairclough (2003: 8) distinguishes between construal and construction in the following
way. We may construe (represent/ imagine) the social world discursively/ textually, but there is
no guarantee that such construal will have any effect on changing the construction. However, it
has not been possible for us to uphold this distinction in the book because the chapters do not