Feminist Review: Journal, Issue 43

CONTENTS Issues for Feminism

Family, Motherhood and Zulu Nationalism: The Politics of the Inkatha Women’s Brigade Shireen Hassim

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Post-colonial Feminism and the Veil: Thinking the Difference Lama Abu Odeh

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Feminism, the Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy Jane Lewis

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Feminism and Disability Jenny Morris

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‘What is Pornography?’: An Analysis of the Policy Statement of the Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship Anna Marie Smith

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Reviews Swasti Mitter on Indian Women in a Changing Industrial Scenario and Common Interests: Women Organising in Global Electronics

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Sally Wyatt on Technoculture and Feminism Confronts Technology

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Maryam Mafi on A Persian Requiem

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Leonore Davidoff on Women’s Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective

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Erica Burman on Motherhood: Meanings, Practices and Ideologies

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Gillian Elinor on Naked Authority: The Body in Western Art 1830–1908

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Katrina Rolley on Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety

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Amina Mama on The Colour of Love: Mixed Race Relationships; Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory and ‘Race’, Culture and Difference

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Jane McDermid on Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 1850–1914, and Our Mothers’ Land. Chapters in Welsh Women’s History 1830–1939

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Letter

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Noticeboard

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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Feminist Review is published three times a year by a collective based in London, with help from women and groups all over the UK. The Collective: Alison Light, Avtar Brah, Ann Phoenix, Annie Whitehead, Catherine Hall, Clara Connolly, Dot Griffiths, Erica Carter, Gail Lewis, Helen Crowley, Lola Young, Loretta Loach, Lorraine Gamman, Lynne Segal, Mary McIntosh, Naila Kabeer, Razia Aziz. Corresponding editors: Kum-Kum Bhavnani (currently resident in the US), Sue O’Sullivan (currently resident in Australia), AnnMarie Wolpe (currently resident in South Africa). Correspondence and advertising For contributions, books for review and all other correspondence please write to: Feminist Review, 11 Carleton Gardens, Brecknock Road, London N19 5AQ. For advertising please write to: David Polley, Routledge, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Subscriptions Please write to: Subscriptions Department, Routledge Journals, Cheriton House, North Way, Andover, Hants SP10 5BE. Contributions Feminist Review is happy to discuss proposed work with intending authors at an early stage. We need copy to come to us in our house style with references complete and in the right form. We can supply you with a style sheet. Please send in 4 copies plus the original (5 copies in all). In cases of hardship 2 copies will do. Bookshop distribution in the USA Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY10001, USA. Copyright © 1993 in respect of the collection is held by Feminist Review . Copyright © 1993 in respect of individual articles is held by the authors. PHOTOCOPYING AND REPRINT PERMISSIONS Single and multiple photocopies of extracts from this journal may be made without charge in all public and educational institutions or as part of any non-profit educational activity provided that full acknowledgement is made of the source. Requests to reprint in any publication for public sale should be addressed to the Feminist Review at the address above. ISSN 0141–7789 ISBN 0-203-98988-0 ISBN 0-415-09606-5 Master e-book ISBN

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FAMILY, MOTHERHOOD AND ZULU NATIONALISM: THE POLITICS OF THE INKATHA WOMEN’S BRIGADE Shireen Hassim

We feed our children with breast milk as well as attitudes and values towards the world and its people (A Mchunu, chairperson of the Inkatha Women’s Brigade, 1986). The Inkatha Women’s Brigade: Zulu handmaidens? In 1975, Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement), under the charismatic leadership of Mangosutho Buthelezi, was launched in Natal. Although it put itself forward as a national movement, its location within a bantustan (KwaZulu), its links with the administration and politics of that bantustan through its control of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly, and its very heavy reliance on Zulu symbolism and political imagery limited the degree of its appeal outside Natal. The character of Inkatha has changed since July 1990, when the organization decided to transform itself into a political party and abandon the tag of a cultural movement.1 The Inkatha Freedom Party presents itself now as a moderate (I would argue conservative) nonracial force in South African politics. The degree to which it will be able to take on this role successfully is a matter for another paper. Here I am concerned with the period from 1975, when a women’s wing was inaugurated within Inkatha, to 1990, when Inkatha became a political party. The paper is based on archival research and interviews conducted with members of the Inkatha Women’s Brigade. The four years between 1975 and 1979 represented a period of some flexibility and flux, when Inkatha was defining its character and place within black politics. Inkatha’s political fortunes waxed and waned, as Buthelezi’s credibility was increasingly questioned by the ANC. Until the immediate post-Soweto period, the ANC regarded Buthelezi as an ally, his participation in the homelands being tolerated as a way of subverting the bantustan strategy from within (Maré and Hamilton, 1987; Mzala, 1988). Buthelezi’s support for workers during the massive strikes in 1973 in Durban also gave him credibility in the progressive trade unions. In the wake of the Soweto uprising, however, Buthelezi’s

Feminist Review No 43, Spring 1993

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opposition to the new phenomenon of youth politics and his use of KwaZulu as an independent political base alienated him from the national liberation movement. Increasingly, a Zulu nationalism, shot through with ethnic chauvinism and authoritarianism, began to be posited in opposition to the nonracial nationalism of the ANC. By 1979, it had become evident that Buthelezi had lost any credibility as an ally of the ANC. Buthelezi made a distinction, instead, between the ‘ANC-inexile’ and the ‘true inheritors’ (read Inkatha) of the ‘old’ ANC, i.e., before the turn to the armed struggle in 1961. Inkatha’s focus shifted directly to aggressively consolidating a base in Natal, on the basis of an appeal to ‘Zulu tradition’, authority, and a defence of capitalism. Control of the KwaZulu administrative machinery gave Inkatha a relative advantage over the ANC in securing political support, through patronage or by linking access to housing, for example, to Inkatha membership. Similarly, the movement attempted to assert ideological control by introducing an ‘Inkatha syllabus’ into KwaZulu schools. Such manipulation of the homeland machinery was always contested, however, and led Inkatha into a new set of conflicts with civic groupings, teachers and students’ organizations. In 1980, Inkatha’s Central Committee made two crucial decisions. The first was to ‘introduce paramilitary approaches to the activities of Inkatha’. The second was to ‘activate formally…as one of the President’s own arms of activity’ the Inkatha Women’s Brigade (Sunday Express 27.7.1980). As a result of the first decision, the Emandleni-Matleng camp was set up to train a paramilitary youth corps. The second decision represented a significant shift in the role of the Women’s Brigade in the politics of Inkatha and of the region. The Inkatha Women’s Brigade had already been launched, at the Inanda Seminary (an exclusive school for African girls), in May 1977. Initially, the Brigade was envisaged as a means of promoting the role of women in development. In this respect, Inkatha was at the forefront of development strategies in South Africa, introducing notions such as participatory development, women’s empowerment and community development to rural people. Inkatha intersected with rural women’s groups which were attempting to address practical gender needs. By associating themselves with chiefs, a powerful political force in rural areas, and by offering women resources such as water supply, Inkatha garnered significant support in rural Natal (Hassim, 1990). The more progressive discourse of empowerment and development was, however, shot through with conservative appeals to women’s maternal responsibilities, their obedience to their husbands and their commitment to the church. While the theme of the inaugural congress was ‘The Role of Women in Development’, for example, the theme of the second congress (in 1978) was ‘Work and Pray’. The Women’s Brigade’s efforts at promoting development were small scale, organizing community gardens and sewing groups (which made clothes for their own families as well as uniforms for school children and church women). While a broadscale development strategy was never implemented, through its activities the Bridgade tapped into an area of African women’s activities that had been neglected by other political organizations. Women’s sewing and co-operative groups have a history in Natal as far back as the 1880s, when African women on

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mission stations were brought together to be taught the virtues of Christianity and domesticity by missionaries. These groups have continued throughout the twentieth century as forums of support and solidarity, particularly in urban areas. The Women’s Brigade branches imitated the form of these groups, with similar hierarchies of deference (particularly the dominance of petty-bourgeois leadership over illiterate members) and cultural symbolism (Women’s Brigade uniforms are very much like church uniforms, for example). As a result of a mixture of genuine political appeal, familiar organizational style and coercion (through threats of withholding access to trading licences, water, housing, etc.), the Women’s Brigade has managed to forge a widespread (if not powerful) organization. While bearing in mind that it is difficult to verify membership figures supplied by the organization, and the evidence of coerced membership, the Women’s Brigade’s numbers are nevertheless significant:

Perhaps a more realistic estimate of membership is closer to the numbers of women who attend the annual conferences: they may be regarded as the most active members, genuinely committed to Inkatha. These number between 8,000 and 10,000.2 Defining women’s place: the uses of tradition From 1979, Inkatha began to reach out to women as a political constituency in a direct and concerted fashion. The process by which women in Natal were drawn into the broader politics of Inkatha was, however, both uneven and contradictory. Strategic concerns about reaching out to the broad mass of women (and youth) created a very specific discourse within which Inkatha operated. This discourse may broadly be defined as: conservative, patriarchal, hierarchical, essentialist. However, these terms conceal a complex set of social and political relations within which the Inkatha discourse, like any other, attempts to define and legitimate itself. Inkatha’s ability to successfully interpose and impose its own ideological constructions in Natal ultimately depends on the extent to which these constructions resonate with areas of women’s actual experience. This paper will highlight significant areas of women’s experience that Inkatha has appropriated and woven into its discourse. The key areas identified are: the family/household and motherhood. Of course, Inkatha does not have exclusive purchase on these areas of African women’s experience. The Federation of South African Women and the ANC have tapped similar areas in the 1950s, the United Democratic Front attempted to win over women through appeals to the defence of the family and of children in the 1980s, and since the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990 a similar discourse has been evident (Hassim, 1991). This paper is an attempt to understand the specificity of Inkatha’s appeal to women in Natal in the 1980s. Despite Inkatha’s reconstitution of the ideology of the family

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along supposedly ‘traditional’ lines, this reconstitution has been strongly influenced by the ideology of a nuclear family which derives from capitalist, Christian society. Any attempt to understand Inkatha’s construction of gender has to be located within an understanding of Inkatha’s reconstitution of ‘Zulu tradition’ and its manipulation of popular conceptions of tradition for political purposes. This process has already been well documented (Maré and Hamilton 1987; Mdluli 1987; Sitas 1986). However, it is not a process unique to Inkatha or indeed South Africa, as Hobsbawm and Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition testifies. In his introduction, Hobsbawm argues that traditions are ‘invented’, a process which he describes as one of ‘formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past’ (1983:2). This most frequently occurs when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed, producing new ones to which they were not applicable, or when such old traditions and their institutional carriers and promulgators no longer prove sufficiently adaptable and flexible, or are otherwise eliminated (4–5). In this situation of fluidity and change, ‘the object and characteristic of “traditions”, including invented ones, is invariance, the past, real or invented, to which they refer imposes fixed (normally formalized) practices, such as repetition’ (2). Inkatha’s harking back to a Zulu past fits neatly with this characterization. The dislocation of social relations as a result of the penetration of capitalist relations, migrancy and apartheid has been extensively covered. Against this, Inkatha has attempted to forge a cohesive identity, by drawing on a popular memory of the past. Maré and Hamilton argue that A fairly strong ethnic homogeneity, a ‘Zulu identity’, has been created in the region…this ‘identity’ has built on the history of political consolidation under Shaka north of the Tugela, and of decades of successful resistance to political domination (1987:23). Key elements recreated in this ethnic framework are notions of ‘Zulu’ social and political relations which are put forward as unproblematic and incontestable. This occurs in a context, in the 1980s, in which political battles have torn apart communities and in which many people have expressed a feeling of political powerlessness. The creation of a romanticized past, in which the emphasis is on harmonious interrelationships and in which Zulu warriors were seen as heroic and in political control, therefore has considerable appeal. It is Inkatha’s perceived ability to straddle the ‘traditional’ world as well as the ‘modern’ world that makes it attractive to its membership. This is no less important to younger members than to older women. P., a woman in her twenties, explains the complexity and political importance of Inkatha’s use of tradition:

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Before I was a member I thought that Inkatha was for older people and for the uneducated, because it is so concerned with culture and tradition. People are westernized and they tend to look down on our traditions. But then I saw that even Dr Dhlomo and the Chief wear traditional clothes— they are educated and they haven’t lost their culture. Old women had no problem with the traditions—they joined in great numbers because they like keeping the traditions. Even the ANC says we must go back to our roots. But the UDF don’t keep the customs—they don’t even have one traditional day. It’s because they organise everyone—Indians, whites—so they don’t know where they stand. Younger women, however, also appear to focus more on Buthelezi’s comments about the equality of men and women and they tend to get impatient with the Women’s Brigade’s focus on family and tradition. One young woman (twentyfour years old) claimed that the Women’s Brigade was ‘conservative. Old women don’t accept change, they are just concerned about their social life. But politics is also important, especially to young women’. She made a distinction between the ‘social’ Women’s Brigade and the ‘political’ Youth Brigade: There is more chance for women to do things in the Youth Brigade than in the Women’s Brigade. In the Youth Brigade, women have a voice. The Women’s Brigade is sometimes conservative—we are getting left behind. In the Youth Brigade we debate as comrades, not as females. However, for both young and old women, the idea of a historical continuity between the ANC and Inkatha is appealing. Buthelezi, in his speeches, constantly claims continuity between the Zulu warriors of the past such as Shaka and Cetshwayo, and himself, as well as between the Zulu kingdom and KwaZulu. This heroic and romantic construction of the past is not without parallels elsewhere in Africa, nor is it uncontested within South Africa. Mzala, an ANC official whose book challenges Buthelezi’s claim to being a popular or hereditary leader, also claims a heroic Zulu past for the ANC (Mzala, 1988). However, this claim is put forward in a more complex fashion, and within a nonethnic, all embracing ‘African’ context. Mzala’s work acknowledges the fluidity of political relations in the Zulu kingdom and attempts to trace the points at which a ‘tradition’ emerged. By contrast, Inkatha has ‘invented’ the past in the sense of Hobsbawm’s description, i.e., it has formalized and ritualized relationships and symbols, which it is able to do because of its control of homeland machinery, especially schools. Inkatha describes ideology as one of ubuntu-botho, which is a philosophy of humanism which stems from a pre-colonial, pre-capitalist past. As Mdluli points out, the concept of ubuntu-botho is very broad and general and underlies all African societies. It has the potential to be progressive in espousing a set of universal humanist principles. However, Inkatha has ‘reclaimed and reinterpreted this concept to justify its own peculiar type of political and social practices’ (Mdluli, 1987:3).

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While the ANC may contest the way in which this has occurred at the level of political relations, less critical attention has been paid to the implications of the formalization of social and especially familial relations. Praisley Mdluli’s examination of the ubuntu-botho syllabus has begun to uncover the way in which the ‘fixing’ of these relations has occurred, through the inculcation of rigid notions of family into pupils from an early age. The ubuntu-botho syllabus is the most significant attempt at redefining and recreating a ‘Zulu tradition’. Not only is it a compulsory subject in all KwaZulu schools, but it is also the clearest attempt to formulate on paper the elements of Inkatha’s discourse. The obvious contradiction is that in itself this represents a shift from the very ‘tradition’ which Inkatha is seeking to establish: the role of passing on to future generations the ideas and history of a community has been formerly appropriated to a large extent by the KwaZulu government. This does not necessarily mean, of course, that families do not remain important sites of socialization. It does, however, imply an overt attempt by Inkatha to shape and control that socialization. It is also an attempt to socialize the youth into the political ideology and relations of Inkatha and to establish Inkatha’s legitimacy. The political significance of family in Inkatha’s discourse Some detailed examination of Inkatha’s construction of the family is important. This needs to be measured against anthropological and historical descriptions of Zulu families in the nineteenth century, as it is primarily in the post-Shaka period that Inkatha locates the historical roots of its notions of the ‘traditional Zulu family’. The ubuntu-botho syllabus provides the following picture of ‘traditional’ family relations. In Book One of the syllabus, pupils are advised that In order that everything go accordingly at home, we the children must do everything that is required of us. Therefore, remember it is the father and the mother and all the other elders at home who have the authority to control family affairs (Mdluli, 1987:7). This idea is extended in Book Two: In the family the man is the head. The woman knows that she is not equal to her husband. She addresses the husband as ‘father’, and by so doing the children get a good example of how to behave. Women refrain from exchanging words with men and if she does this reflects bad upbringing on her part (Mdluli, 1987:7). This description is clearly not merely patriarchal, but allows no space, even within a patriarchal framework, for women to assert any control within the household. Indeed, it imposes informal but powerful sanctions against women doing this. In asserting this description as the norm of family life, Inkatha denies the reality that in many households, men are absent on a daily basis and may

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therefore not be able to discipline children in such a clearly defined and consistent way. At the same time, no allowance is made, even within this framework, for the vast number of households which are female headed and in which there can be no such clear gender division of roles. It also contradicts the public stand taken by Buthelezi and the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly on the formal equality of men and women, and on the importance of women entrepreneurs (Hassim, 1990). Inkatha claims that its notion of the family is based on a traditional Zulu model. Anthropological literature confirms the picture of Zulu homestead life as being patriarchal, in which major decisions were made by men with women and children subordinate (Bryant, 1967; Krige, 1936). However, a closer and more critical examination of the texture of everyday life uncovers the hidden forms in which women were able to determine their lives. Krige’s work, for example, suggests that everyday life was infinitely more complex than the rigidified roles which Inkatha assigns to people would suggest. More recent work done by anthropologists of Southern African societies suggests that a much more dynamic household structure actually existed. In particular, attention has been focused on the influence that the wife was able to exert on decision-making in periods of conflict and dislocation when the young men, at least, were away (Murray, 1981; Sharp and Spiegel, 1987). Even in terms of status and respect, Zulu social relations were never as rigid or clear-cut as the quotation from Book Two of the Inkatha syllabus claims. For example, although the strict patrilineal structures mean that the father, or ultimately the father’s father, has final authority, the pattern of behaviour towards the father also colours the pattern of behaviour towards all the relatives of the father. Thus, ‘even women who are related on the father’s side are considered as fathers and behaved to as such, whilst a man on the mother’s side is taken to be of the same status as the mother’ (Krige, 1936:25). In practice this may only mean effectively that younger men have less status than older women. It is nevertheless significant that not all women were subordinated to all men. Inkatha has similarly rigidified the concept of ukuhlonipha (meaning to respect, or observe avoidances, although Krige points out that the word ‘literally means to have shame or shun through bashfulness’) (Krige, 1936:30). Hlonipha applies to both men and women, but in practice affects women to a greater degree than men. In the case of men it applies between a man and his mother-inlaw, a man and his daughter-in-law and a man and the king or chief. A woman, however, is required to submit to the authority of her father-in-law and all his brothers, her elder brothers-in-law, her mother-in-law and all other wives of her father-in-law. Hlonipha defines not only her behaviour (in the presence of these relatives she must cover her body, keep her eyes lowered, refrain from eating, etc.) but also her speech. A woman may not use the name of the…relatives-in-law nor any word containing the radical of such a name. Another word must be used instead, and so the speech of the woman differs considerably from that of the men (Krige, 1936:30).

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A woman may be released from ukuhlonipha when she is an old woman, acquires the status of a man and therefore no longer has to ‘hlonipha’ men. The way in which the concept of hlonipha has been translated into political terms is clear. The social hierarchy that is engendered by these forms of respect is replicated within Inkatha specifically, but also in KwaZulu generally, into political relationships. At the same time, the range of people to which respect is to be shown appears to have been narrowed, so that it resembles more closely relationships within a patriarchal nuclear family. Buthelezi’s position as President of Inkatha is equated with the position of father within the home. This is an important and necessary equation: Buthelezi is able to legitimate his leadership on the basis that he has been given this role by history and tradition; he is able to maintain his support by assuming the status of pater familias. In a similar manner, the subordination of the structures of the two brigades to the central committee, and of the Women’s Brigade to the President, is legitimated in the Inkatha discourse by familial structures in which wives and children are subordinate to husbands/fathers. This notion of family has a strong resonance for women who are concerned with the breakdown of social control generally and with the loss of parental control over their children in particular. The documents of the Women’s Brigade frequently reveal the way in which their fears for their own safety and for the safety of their daughters coalesces around their perception that ‘the family’ has lost its importance in society. Often, this perception is expressed not just in regard to children but also in regard to men. Criticism of men may be tempered by blaming the apartheid system for emasculating the black population, but is nevertheless given expression at annual conferences. At the fifth annual conference in 1981, for example, an important concern was the growing number of teenage pregnancies. This concern was linked to the issue of the high birth rate generally. Frequent pregnancies were regarded as harmful to women because it sapped their strength, but also because parents are not able to take care of their families adequately if their resources are spread over a number of children. At the same time, blame for teenage pregnancies was laid at the door of men in general and mothers, rather than at young women. The following two resolutions illustrate this point. 11. This conference despises these men who entice girls with money only to abuse them. Such men lower the dignity of men in our society by increasing the number of children who do not learn the value of the position of men as father in a home. 12. This conference charges members of the Women’s Brigade to be exemplary in having well disciplined homes where parents show respect for each other and concern for their neighbours and other members of the community (Resolutions of Inkatha Women’s Brigade, 1981). Inkatha’s solution to these real crises in family relations has been to reassert parental authority and the authoritarian family. It is in this campaign that it has been able to extend its support among women. The reality is that mothers are concerned about their children’s futures, and often particularly that of their

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daughters in a world in which women are judged by far harsher moral and behavioural standards than men. Their concern to assert discipline within the family is therefore related to real experiences of survival in a harsh world. Commenting on the British Tory Party’s similar use of parental concern as a means of drawing in women’s support, Bea Campbell argues: What works for women in the Conservatives’ family ideology is the sense that women are important to society because they are important to the family: they take care of it, after all, and the family is important to society (Campbell, 1987:155). However, Inkatha’s solutions to the problems that women experience as mothers reinforce notions that it is the modern industrial world and the breakdown of tradition that is really to blame. Women are not presented with the means of challenging the material bases of social problems. Instead, teenage pregnancies, for example, are dealt with in the Women’s Brigade by reviving traditions such as the reed ceremonies. Reed ceremonies are held before the king, and centre around reed dances performed by young girls, who have to be virgins. The idea is that in preparing for the reed ceremonies, young girls will be forced to stay away from boys and their virginity will thereby be protected. This inadequate strategy is regarded by many women in Inkatha as the only hope for ‘saving’ their daughters from early pregnancies. The rigid notion of family also governs the way in which areas of power and mobilization are divided up within Inkatha. The Women’s Brigade is overtly concerned with the defence of the home, while men engage in the world of public politics. Buthelezi is at once the benevolent yet firm ‘father’. His tone in speeches to the Women’s Brigade is often patronizing and sexist. For example: God has given you the gift of intuition. That special something that has caused so many quarrels between me and my wife in the 30 years we have been married (Buthelezi, 8 October 1983). and I am appalled by squabbles in some of our areas and all squabbles in a movement are bad, but women’s squabbles for some reason tend to be more acrimonious than those of men (Buthelezi, 20 October 1984). Like a father disciplining wayward children, the President of Inkatha sometimes has to resort to firm words to deal with recalcitrant members. Addressing the Women’s Brigade in 1982, Buthelezi warned: I want to make it clear that once I have defined policy as your leader, I expect the leadership to identify ways and means of implementing it (Buthelezi, 9 October 1984).

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Women have little opportunity to define their own identities in the Inkatha discourse. They are defined primarily by the leadership in terms of their relationship to others. It is as mothers (whether potential, of children or of the nation) and as wives and daughters that they are addressed. The following lengthy quotation encapsulates Inkatha’s definition of the place of women in the organization. My sisters, you are mothers in suffering humanity. Some of you are wives in an oppressed society and some of you are daughters in our oppressed society, and the full brunt of apartheid is borne by you more than by any other Blacks…when others were quaking with fear, when others were intimidated, it was you who came to respond to the clarion call of Inkatha. It was you, mothers, daughters, sisters and wives, who stood up to be counted. It is you who gave such a vast revival to that deep spirit of commitment which had so distinguishedly characterised the old ANC… you as the mothers of the nation, you the women of Inkatha, have a sacred duty to discharge. Be strong for the sake of your children, your fathers, your mothers and your husbands. Be strong for the sake of the nation. Be strong for South Africa (Buthelezi, 19 October 1984). The limitations of Inkatha’s perceptions of the role of women are amply revealed in Buthelezi’s words. The most striking feature of this quotation is Inkatha’s construction of women’s political interests as lying in their support of their menfolk both in terms of maintaining the home in the face of economic onslaught, but also as a secure base from which men could fight political battles. In Inkatha’s manufacture of gender, men are the warriors and women the homemakers. Buthelezi’s speeches are replete with appeals to men to continue the ‘tradition’ of Shaka and other warriors to fight the emasculation of blacks and Zulus in particular by the apartheid government. The imagery of Inkatha is similarly militaristic: in 1980 Buthelezi called for the formation of an army to keep order in Natal. Inkatha subsequently established training camps for a paramilitary corps (Daily News, 9 June 1980). Youth at the Emandleni-Matleng Camp are organized into ‘amabutho’. Vigilante groups attached to Inkatha dress like Zulu warriors, call themselves ‘amabutho’, carry shields and wield spears. The male membership is thereby presented as assertive, aggressive and in control. Women’s political identity The construction of women’s political identity, however, is rather different. As the quotation above demonstrates, the key characteristics of women are perceived as: ‘revolutionary patience’, strength, suffering, endurance, loyalty. None of the qualities are active qualities. They are, instead, inward looking and directed towards preserving social relations rather than changing them. At the inaugural congress of the Women’s Brigade, profiles of ‘Unsung Heroines of the Zulu Nation’ were presented. These profiles illustrate the points

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being made in this paper. The women chosen were Princess Constance Magogo (mother of Chief Buthelezi), Mrs Margaret Nduna, a teacher at Inanda Seminary, Mrs Angeline Dube, wife of John Dube and one-time president of the Daughters of Africa, and Mrs Nokhukhanya Luthuli, wife of Albert Luthuli (Brochure of Inaugural Congress, 1977). The congress brochure explains the criteria for these choices: They merit recognition if only for their fortitude, forbearance and theunfailing support they gave to their beloved ones. Indeed, it can be said ofthem all that they were, in their respective ways, the power behind thethrone (Brochure, 1977:22). When women move beyond these roles, to claim the throne in their own right, they come under fire from male members of Inkatha. The following letter to Zulu language newspaper llanga gives some insight into the reaction of ordinary members: The writer of the letter warns Mrs Dolly Mbuyisa of Lamontville not to interfere in politics because this is a matter needing the attention of men… Attempts to prevent Lamontville from being transferred to KwaZulu are futile—they [Inkatha] are coming, the woman’s role is in the house and not in politics—only men can talk at our political issues (llanga 5–7 July 1984). Thus, despite the fact that the Inkatha leadership stresses equality between men and women in its public speeches, women continue to be discriminated against when they attempt to take on political roles. As Bie Nio Ong points out, African women are held back as much by traditional values concerning their role as they are by the sexual division of labour (Ong, 1986:88). Women’s role in Inkatha is therefore perceived as essentially passive, although in reality women may be required to intervene in political processes directly. It would be wrong, however, to assume that women see these roles as oppressive, for it is not only the male leadership who perceive women’s roles in this way, but also the female leadership. Mrs Abbie Mchunu, former chairperson of the Women’s Brigade, describes women’s position in the following way: Women have added burdens of home-management and child-care, irrespective of whether they are full-time housewives or part-time or fulltime employees. These two roles cannot be shirked by women no matter how much they cry for equality with men. There are special virtues God gave us as women in order to be effective home-managers and mothers, i.e. patience, tenderness of heart and insight (Mchunu, 1985). In other words, the conservative discourse that emerges within Inkatha has not merely been imposed by men from above, it is a discourse produced out of a

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resonance of ideas of motherhood and family that are held by women themselves and which fit into their daily reality. A rare glimpse that women may not accept this view of their political roles as being passive was offered in 1986. In a spurt of anger at the assassination of prominent Women’s Brigade member Mrs Evelyn Sabelo, the Women’s Brigade conference resolved: To declare to the world that we are not deterred from pursuing our noble objectives and that the warrior blood beating in our men beats in our veins as well, and to tell the world that we as the women of warrior stock know the meaning of war (Resolutions, 1986). The images of women are themselves contradictory. Women are strong yet subordinate; they are the backbone of the movement, but men make the decisions. The reality is equally contradictory. Although the emphasis in Women’s Brigade speeches and resolutions is on peace and non-violence, Women’s Brigade members have been convicted of violent activities. In 1985 Nora Dlamini, a 54-year-old member of the Women’s Brigade’s Central Committee, was found guilty of burning down the homes of UDF supporters in Hambanathi (City Press, 13 October 1985). In 1986, the chairperson of the Ntuzuma branch of the Women’s Brigade, Virginia Shandu, had to be restrained by the court from assaulting or damaging the property of an Education Crisis Committee worker (Daily News, 25 May 1986). She was subsequently charged with attempted murder, malicious damage to property and arson (Natal Witness, 27 May 1986). Bea Campbell’s study of ‘The Iron Ladies’, the women in the Tory Party in England, provides useful insights into the appeal of conservative values of home and family for women. As was the case in Inkatha in the early 1980s, women were the key to transforming the British Conservative Party ‘from a cliquey élite to a mass party’ (Campbell, 1987:2). The key to the successful mobilization of women, Campbell argues, lay in the fact that the Tories ‘profiled personal responsibility in a chaotic world. Women sought safety in their own survival skills, in religion, in their separate sphere, and among women’. Campbell’s book moves away from explanations of women’s political conservatism which assume a direct relationship between motherhood (read nurturing and preserving) and political and social conservatism (Randall, 1982; Goot and Reid, 1984). These explanations are best summed up in the following statement by a British activist in the 1920s: Women are not natural revolutionaries. They are loyal and law-abiding, and want above all the preservation of their religion and their homes (Campbell, 1987:49). Campbell offers instead a feminist explanation for the appeal of conservative values for women, highlighting the importance of personal politics, within which the social construction of motherhood is merely one aspect of some women’s lives.

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The similarities between the ‘Iron Ladies’ and the women in Inkatha are compelling, even at the level of symbolism (Buthelezi claims Inkatha women have ‘steel in their souls’) (Hassim, 1989). Women in the self-help groups are certainly seeking ‘safety in their own survival skills’, religion and church groups play a central role in African women’s lives. However, in South Africa the ‘separate sphere’ is not as neatly defined, nor is it unambiguously a safe refuge. It is precisely because the home has not been a safe refuge in South Africa for blacks that it has been historically possible to organize women around its defence. In the 1950s, the ANC drew women into its organization by embarking on a campaign against the extension of the pass laws to women. Cherryl Walker argues that ‘one of the strongest arguments used by the Federation of South African Women and the ANC Women’s League in opposing the pass laws for women [was]: what would happen to their children if women were subjected to arbitrary arrest for infringing or being suspect of infringing the pass laws?’ (Walker, 1982:219). In prioritizing national political questions as the ANC did in the 1950s, however, the danger is that the discourse of the struggle may obscure the way in which gender oppressive relationships are reproduced (albeit inadvertently). It was women’s roles as mothers, for example, that was mobilized in defence of maintaining the sphere of the family as ‘private’, i.e., not to be subject to legislation. The anti-pass campaigns of the ANC ultimately opposed the state’s attempts to limit women’s freedom of mobility from within a shared patriarchal discourse. The ANC argued that, as wives and mothers, women occupied a unique position in society. They stressed women’s physical and sexual vulnerability: arrest of women by strange male policemen, they argued, undermined the virtue of women and left them vulnerable to sexual abuse. If women were jailed families would suffer, and children would be abandoned. These arguments did not focus on the increased control of women as workers and the limitation of their access to wage labour, which the pass laws in effect represented. They focused instead on the control of women defined by their relation to men and on the further ‘emasculation’ of the African population by controlling not only African men but also their wives and daughters. Politicizing motherhood The notion of ‘innocent women and children’ is, after all, more than an emotive political device. It also promotes essentially patriarchal definitions of women’s role in society. As a political device, it is underpinned by a notion of society in which women are seen as requiring special protection, in the same sense as children. Women are not seen as fully active participants in the political process, but as victims of that process, of the male world of politics. Despite these reservations, however, the defence of the home in the 1950s cannot simply be dismissed as unfeminist, conservative, or insignificant for women. For, in the context of enforced migrancy, influx control and poverty, the defence of the home may be constructed as a progressive, even subversive, strategy. Essentially, this strategy was not simply a defence of a privatized nuclear home. The anti-pass campaigns were concerned with the defence of the family within the context of a community which was under attack. The pass laws

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came to symbolize the attack on the African population as a whole by the apartheid state, and the anti-pass campaigns represented the concerted and united resistance of Africans to that attack. As Hazel Carby has pointed out in another context, families have not only functioned as sites of gender oppression but have often been the major source of resistance to various forms of political and economic oppression. She argues: We need to recognize that during slavery, periods of colonialism and under the present authoritarian state, the black family has been a site of political and cultural resistance to racism (Carby, 1982:24). However, ultimately this resistance can only be progressive if it confronts the economic and social context within which families are located, and seeks to transform this context as well as women’s position within it. Some idea of the way in which this may occur emerged in the state of emergency in Natal in the mid-1980s. The assassination of UDF lawyer and activist, Victoria Mxenge, in 1985 led to a period of immense upheaval and violence in Natal townships. Vigilantism grew as a political phenomenon. Troops virtually occupied the townships, UDF members were under attack from both the state and vigilantes, some of whom were backed by Inkatha. In this context, many women were drawn into active participation in township struggles, particularly those against the presence of troops in the townships. Women were increasingly active within both the dominant factions in Natal townships, the UDF and Inkatha. However, the form of their involvement was vastly different. The source of women’s concerns was the same: the defence of their families, particularly their children, and of their homes. This necessitated not a ‘retreat into a safe space’ (Campbell’s description of conservative women in Britain), but an outward engagement with politics outside the home. Despite this similarity, however, UDF women’s engagement in township politics was very different from that of Inkatha women. Interviews I conducted together with other colleagues in 1985/86 revealed that while women who were tied in to the UDF (either in their own right, or through the involvement of their children) confronted their relationships with their children in a more empathetic fashion and frequently found themselves taking a more active role in township politics, women in Inkatha tended to react in authoritarian style, focusing on parental discipline (Beall et al. 1987). The political independence of the youth was regarded as a threat to the entire fabric of society; parental control had to be asserted at all costs. This is naturally a generalization and it should be recognized that many women stayed out of politics altogether, and that other women within the Inkatha Women’s Brigade may have sympathized with their children’s demands. However, in the case of the latter, women usually ended up following the Inkatha line of imposing discipline on their children, as I discovered in interviews. An example of the different way in which women respond to the same appeal to motherhood may be seen in their reaction to the 1985 schools boycotts in Natal. While women in Inkatha were concentrating on disciplining their children, and keeping them in schools, often with the help of the police, women in the UDF

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supported their children in challenging the state and the police. As we commented in a previous paper, ‘mothers in areas like Chesterville and Lamontville are not transmitters of dominant ideology: rather, they “were carrying stones in their pinafores to give to the youth”’ (Beall et al., 1987:101). For many women, support of their children against the police led directly to their broader politicization. Political violence in the townships has affected families and women’s activities as managers of households directly. Families have had to flee from their homes, children involved in political organizations (both Inkatha and UDF) have had to go into hiding and have in some cases not contacted their families for months. One Women’s Brigade member said: My son is in the Youth Brigade. Sometimes he is away for many nights. Sometimes he comes home with his friends and I have to cook for them all. These troubles are too hard for mothers. We must keep the youth at home. On the other hand, women involved in a Chesterville women’s group linked to the UDF responded: Those in the community with houses near the A-Team have become refugees in the township and they are occupying the homes of others. That makes women rise up as when people have left their homes there are sometimes 30 people who are sleeping in one 3-bedroomed house. Many are out of employment and have nothing to eat…that is why the mothers have decided to form the women’s group in Chesterville, to fight these things (Hassim et al., 1987). These distinctions in women’s engagement in township politics must be placed within the context of the broader political tradition within which women were acting, which gave rise to very different constructions of the meaning of motherhood.3 It is apparent that motherhood is not merely a biological relationship but a socially constructed one as well. Clearly, the notion of motherhood has different connotations for African and white women, for working-class and middle-class women. However, as this paper highlights, it also has very different political meanings for women within different political organizations. The next section will explore the construction of the political notion of women as ‘mothers of the nation’, in particular Inkatha’s conceptualization of this role. Mothering the nation That women are regarded as ‘mothers of the nation’ is not new, or specific to South Africa. It is a feature of nationalist organizations from the right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging to the ANC, and has been a feature of the Inkatha discourse since the organization’s formation. In a key speech to the Women’s Brigade in 1983, Chief Buthelezi explained:

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Throughout the world there has been no mass movement which has not mobilized the womenfolk. There has been no epic struggle by men alone and in the Third World and in situations such as ours, that strength which can only come from women has been there to sustain the forces of change. It is through your voice that the child first hears of the world around him or her. It is through your eyes that the child first sees the world around them, and it is the values in your hearts which are first conveyed to the child, and in our situation, it is your suffering more than anything else which shapes the anger and strengthens the determination we all have to bring about changes towards a race-free and just society… You have been witness to what has happened in the nation. The memory of the years, the decades and the generations of the struggle for liberation in South Africa lives collectively in you today (Buthelezi, 8 October 1983). The Women’s Brigade itself endorsed this view in a resolution passed at the 1983 conference. In thanking a group of women from Gazankulu for expressions of solidarity, the Women’s Brigade noted: Your lofty ideals of developing the nation, educating our people in every way, inculcating the love to serve our country, striving for national consciousness and solidarity, are ours too (Resolutions, 1983). In this conceptualization of women’s position in African society, motherhood is not a privatized relationship between a mother and her children. It is also a social role (women are the symbolic mothers of all children in the nation) and a political duty. It is through women, as bearers of history and culture, that children become part of Inkatha. As teachers of their children, women are the key to inculcating the values and ideology of Inkatha’s future generations. You are the women of Inkatha, begotten on the soil of South Africa, the daughters of Africa, you who begot the present generation and you through whom the nation will survive into the future are one of the great strengths of Inkatha. Ever since King Shaka laboured in this part of the world to create a nation, it is the womenfolk who have been custodians of so much for so many (Buthelezi, 8 October 1983). Women are the historical link, therefore, between Inkatha past and Inkatha future. Women are also the bearers of culture and transmitters of heritage. It is upon them that the responsibility of maintaining a Zulu ethnic identity rests. Reacting to black consciousness, Buthelezi argued in 1979: We…do not believe in the drivel that we hear so often these days that ‘I am not a Motsoana, I am black’—What arrogant rubbish. One’s richness is being reduced here. The great thing here is that I am Tswana, Black and

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also a South African. There is no need to apologize for being all these things. You women are the custodians of our cultural heritage, you must warn young people against such nonsensical gibberish. You are the custodians of this heritage and that is why our languages are called our Mothers’ tongues (Buthelezi, 15 December 1979). Historically, however, women have not been the exclusive custodians of Zulu culture. Considerable emphasis was placed on the imbongi, for example, who was usually male, to fulfil this task.4 In the current period in KwaZulu, the ubuntu-botho syllabus has also taken on this function. However, women have clearly internalized the idea that they are the special medium through which ‘correct’ attitudes, political or otherwise, will be transmitted to the youth. Former chairperson of the Women’s Brigade, Abbie Mchunu, expressed this view succinctly: ‘We feed our children with breast milk as well as attitudes and values towards the world and its people.’ Similarly, Mrs Albertina Mnguni (prominent business woman, welfare worker and Inkatha member) regarded the role of women in Inkatha as being ‘to teach our children our own culture’. There is very little space within Inkatha for women to determine the form, let alone the content of the organization’s activities, or the issues to be prioritized. Agendas for the annual conferences, for example, are generally set before the conference by the Central Committee. John Kane-Berman offers this description of the 1981 conference: Some 2000 uniformed delegates…broke up after the presidential address into a dozen groups to discuss suggestions Buthelezi had put forward on the role of women in the struggle for liberation and in Inkatha (KaneBerman, 1982). Women’s role in Inkatha is not to make, or even shape, policy in any direct way, but rather to ‘sustain the forces of change’. Inkatha women are perceived as bystanders in history, even though their actual activities may be more central to creating history. Women are ‘witnesses’ to history. Their political role is a secondary one. Buthelezi made this clear in 1979: ‘You in the Women’s Brigade must accept the need to be servants of the masses’ (Buthelezi, 15 December 1979). As mothers, their role is not to transform familial relations but to preserve essential values of a conventional family, in particular to educate their children to be good citizens. The Women’s Brigade should ‘sustain the youth of our country and support them in achieving that experience which will be vital to their future manhood’ (Buthelezi, 15 December 1979). Ultimately, when they do act, it is not for themselves but for their family and their political leader and organization: I have simply indicated the areas in which I value womanhood. It is for you to deliberate on these things and it is your responsibility to come back to me and say: ‘This is what we will do for you, for Inkatha and for South Africa’ (Buthelezi, 15 December 1979).

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Thus, although Inkatha appears to construct the notion of ‘mother of the nation’ within a revolutionary nationalist discourse, its content is conservative. It is a notion which reinforces women’s subordination within the family by focusing on propping up existing relationships, and within political organizations by marginalizing them from decision-making as they are defined out of the mainstream of politics. The most significant South African parallel must be the notion of volksmoeder, an essential component of Afrikaner nationalist ideology. Elsabe Brink writes: In terms of the volksmoeder concept, the Afrikaner woman is depicted not only as a cornerstone of the household, but also as a central unifying force within Afrikanerdom and, as such, is expected to fulfil a political role as well. The function which women are expected to fulfil as mothers within a society is idealized into an image of Afrikaner womanhood containing a spectrum of reproductive and nurturing characteristics (Brink, 1990:273). Similarly, Gaitskell and Unterhalter, in their comparative study of Afrikaner and African nationalist constructions of ‘mothers of the nation’, write: ‘Afrikaner motherhood is exalted as saintly in suffering, admired for stoicism in victimization, its strength an inspiration to the rest of the defeated nation’ (1989:60). The crux of Gaitskell and Unterhalter’s argument is that the notion of motherhood is a shifting one, corresponding to different periods of history and different phases of nationalism. Thus, Afrikaner nationalists in the post AngloBoer War period saw women as silent victims, and women’s enduring strength as sustaining the life of the nation in defeat. In the period between the two world wars, however, when Afrikaner nationalism was becoming more powerful, ‘motherhood within the volk [was] perceived as far more active and mobilising…. The home was focused on as women’s appropriate arena for fostering Afrikaner national identity through their child-rearing and domestic responsibilities’ (Gaitskell and Unterhalter, 1989:62). In the third phase, with Afrikaner nationalism in place ideologically, and in political power, ‘the power of motherhood has been invoked to assist in the survival of white domination’ (Gaitskell and Unterhalter, 1989:67). They argue that African nationalist conceptions of motherhood, too, could be periodized in terms of different phases of mass popular mobilization in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s. In the 1950s, motherhood was stressed by the ANC ‘partly because this is seen as a common experience of women, in towns and rural areas, in wage employment or working in the informal sector’ (Gaitskell and Unterhalter, 1989:69). The dependence of many mothers on the wages of male workers led to a perception of mothers as needing protection. In the 1970s, attempts by the state to segregate Africans along ethnic lines affected women directly. ‘Even more stringent controls were placed on where black women might live with their children, as African women with children were perceived by the regime as a threat to the strategy of returning all Africans to the bantustans’ (Gaitskell and Unterhalter, 1989:73). They argue that in part it was the hardships faced by African women that angered the children in 1976, leading

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to uprisings, and shaping the idea of a nation. In the third phase, mass mobilization has increased and the organization and militancy of women has grown. Motherhood has been transformed ‘from a protective status to a dynamic force for change’ (Gaitskell and Unterhalter, 1989:75). They argue, in sum, that the concept of motherhood is very ‘fluid and manipulable…especially in the context of a divided society where class and race divisions overlap…. The different circumstances of black and white mothers have shaped the relation between ideas of nation, state and motherhood’ (Gaitskell and Unterhalter, 1989:75–6). While seductive in many respects, this argument leaves many questions unanswered. Gaitskell and Unterhalter fail to show convincingly enough how the content of motherhood differs significantly for Afrikaner and African women, nor do they highlight the political limitations of this category for women in the long term. Ultimately, both conservative and progressive forms of nationalism draw on women’s support in terms of their relationships to others rather than in their own terms. Women are equated with mothers, and families with women. Fatherhood is not constructed consistently in political terms, except in order to reinforce more authority. Even in the 1980s, when pass laws no longer unite all African women in the same way, class-based or even racial specificity in the experience of motherhood is not disaggregated. In addition, ultimately, as Ramphele argues, ‘the family…is still a major sphere in which the domination of men is secured at the expense of women’ (Ramphele, 1989:395). Taken out of this context and reified as a political concept, motherhood cannot in itself be a strategy for confronting women’s position within the family and transforming it. There is an underlying tension between the power that motherhood is accorded in nationalist symbolism, and the powerlessness that women experience in society. This tension is similar to that women experience within the family. The family is at once the source of women’s affirmation as well as their subordination. In nationalist organizations, too, women are heralded as the martyrs of the struggle and the source of its regeneration, and yet they are denied active leadership positions. Gaitskell and Unterhalter do not address these complexities and leave open the trap that in focusing largely on the symbolic power of motherhood, they may perpetuate what Bea Campbell calls the ‘cult of motherhood’. At the same time, they fail to address the lessons which have been hard-learnt in the course of other revolutions, namely, that after power has been won by the nationalist movement, women activists simply take on the roles of housewife, mother and full-time wage worker in addition to their roles as political activists (Arnfred, 1986; Nazzari, 1983; Molyneux, 1985). Gaitskell and Unterhalter’s argument could be further strengthened by addressing the impact of material conditions of women’s lives more closely. They argue that the major difference in Afrikaner motherhood as opposed to African motherhood lies in the very different conditions of women’s lives. This does not explain, however, how the same conditions (i.e., of African women in the townships) can give rise on the one hand to a ‘revolutionary’ concept of motherhood (in the ANC discourse) and on the other to a conservative concept (in the Inkatha discourse). A large part of the answer must lie in the different political context in which these notions of motherhood are located. The ANC, underground and in exile, can afford to construct a notion of motherhood in the

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broadest and most heroic terms. The ‘mothers’ in its constituency are most often those whose sons have gone into exile, joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, or been detained and/or tortured. Confronting these realities means a direct confrontation with the system which creates such conditions and a questioning of the values and legitimacy of such a system. Such questioning is encouraged and reinforced by both the ANC and UDF and mothers of detainees, for example, are often drawn into organizations. Within Inkatha, however, the constituency, while being superficially more defined, is paradoxically more diffuse. A scan of Buthelezi’s speeches to the Women’s Brigade reveals the following categories within which mothers are appealed to: (a) mothers’ concern for their children in the context of poverty, ignorance and disease. The way to combat these is not to challenge the system but to work within it, through self-reliance and self-sacrifice, to improve these conditions. Although Inkatha stresses that self-help groups are ‘revolutionary’, their strategy may be more accurately described as incrementalist. (b) mothers’ concern that ‘the system’ (apartheid) has held back their children’s educational development. Again the emphasis is not on how women may question that system but on how to improve their children’s position within it. Schools boycotts have to be crushed and children kept in schools at all costs. There is little engagement with the causes of boycotts. (c) mothers’ concern that the ANC, ‘those fly-by-night impostors’ (Buthelezi, 19 October 1985) may attract their children into their ranks. In this case, the ANC is presented clearly as the enemy, as murderers and in more extreme speeches as butchers. While the concerns that Inkatha has focused on are very real for women, given their responsibility within the household for the care and future success of their children, the way in which Inkatha channels these concerns is problematic and allows little room for a transformation of the conditions which produce such crises. In this sense Inkatha’s discourse remains conservative, and may become reactionary. In-katha’s construction of the major problems facing women which is outlined above in effect shifts Inkatha’s discourse more closely into that of the state. Like Inkatha and with heavy irony, the state blames the breakdown of ‘the family’ for the current crisis in the country. The state has intervened directly in attempting to construct some form of nuclear family in the townships which would assume responsibility for disciplining the youth (Hassim and Metelerkamp, 1988). Like Inkatha’s notion of a ‘traditional’ family reestablishing social control, the state’s Proposed National Family Programme aims at shifting control from the police on to families. Signe Arnfred, analysing Frelimo’s approach to the family, argues that a failure to understand the family as a socio-economic structure and a failure to confront internal relations within the family as they are structured by this wider location of the family, has serious political consequences (Arnfred, 1986). There

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is no attempt in either the state’s or Inkatha’s programmes to break the confinement of the family, which would be a necessary step in order to change the social position of women. In addition, there is no space created for gender struggles to be fought, and as a result, despite other transformations in society, gender relations remain unchanged. These criticisms are equally applicable to Inkatha’s use of the family, as well as having considerable relevance for the ANC. If Gaitskell and Unterhalter’s description of the ANC’s use of motherhood as a political category is accurate, the women’s structures of that organization need to challenge and transform this conceptualization. Inkatha’s formulations of the importance of the family do not confront the real processes by which society is shaped, or the sources of the perceived crisis in the family or society. Neither are solutions to these crises creatively constructed. For Inkatha, a major aspect of its solution to the perceived crisis is to retreat into ‘tradition’, into reconstructing the family ‘as it was’. There is no acknowledgement that this tradition may be oppressive for women, or indeed that in actually reconstructing ‘tradition’ Inkatha may be constructing further conditions for the subordination of women. For many women the construction of their mothering roles as heroic validates an important area of their experience that is denied by apartheid policies of influx control and split families. Consider the following statement by writer Boitumelo Mofokeng: As poverty, homelessness and insecurity surrounded them, women too had to pack and go out to join the work force in factories, shops, kitchens and farms…. All these practices meant the woman was totally cut off from her family. And her role as first teacher in the home, the mentor and custodian of our culture, was not just forgotten but completely destroyed (Lockett, 1990). Inkatha offers women the centrality and importance that Mofokeng refers to, within the modern context. The role they have always played in keeping their families together and alive now has a central place in a broader political discourse. However the danger of this is that such a strategy may be used to maintain women’s subordination rather than remove it. As Saskia Wieringa warns, In the recent past, women have been organised in a massive way to fight for their own defined interests which do not appeal as such to the present male holders of power in society. So women’s interests have to be redefined, and women have to be resubordinated. And what could be a better structure for women’s resubordination than women’s own organisations? (Wieringa: 1985:34).

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Notes Shireen Hassim lectures in the Department of Political Science at the University of Durban-Westville. She is co-ordinator of the Women and Gender Studies Network, which links academics on four campuses. She has written extensively on women’s politics in South Africa, with a particular interest in the phenomenon of women’s conservatism. Her other major focus of research is the politics of the African National Congress Women’s League, of which she is a member. She is in the process of co-editing a volume of papers selected from the Conference on Women and Gender in Southern Africa, which took place in January 1991. 1 The tag ‘cultural movement’ was always challenged by analysts as a misnomer, as Inkatha clearly behaved in the fashion of a political movement. 2 These are average figures given by an Inkatha Institute source, and confirmed in interviews. 3 I argue elsewhere that gender identity is always constructed in the context of other perceived interests. These different interests (such as class, or ethnic affiliation) give gender identity its particular shape (Hassim, 1991). 4 An imbongi is a Zulu praise singer.

References ARNFRED, Signe (1986) ‘Women in Mozambique: gender struggle and gender politics’ Review of African Political Economy No. 41 . BEALL, Jo, FRIEDMAN, Michelle, HASSIM, Shireen, POSEL, Ros, STIEBEL, Lindy and TODES, Alison (1987) ‘African women in the Durban struggle, 1985–6: towards a transformation of roles?’ in MOSS and OBERY (1987). BRINK, Elsabe (1990) ‘Man-made women: gender, class and the ideology of the volksmoeder’ in WALKER (1990). BROCHURE OF THE INAUGURAL CONGRESS OF THE WOMEN’S BRIGADE (1977). BRYANT, A. (1967) The Zulu People as They Were Before the White Man Came Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter. BUTHELEZI, Mangosutho speeches, various dates. CAMPBELL, Beatrix (1987) The Iron Ladies: Why Women Vote Tory London: Virago. CARBY, Hazel (1982) ‘White women listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood’ in CSS. CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES (CCS) (1982) The Empire Strikes Back London: Hutchinson. GAITSKELL, Debby and UNTERHALTER, Elaine (1989) ‘Mothers of the nation: a comparative analysis of the nation, race and motherhood in Afrikaner nationalism and the African National Congress’ in YUVAL-DAVIS and ANTHIAS (1989). GITTENS, Diana (1985) The Family in Question: Changing Households and Familiar Ideologies London: Macmillan. GOOT, M. and REID, E (1984) ‘Women: if not apolitical then conservative’ in SILTANEN and STANWORTH (1984).

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HASSIM, Shireen (1989) ‘“Steel in their souls”’. The Inkatha Women’s Brigade and the politics of gender in Natal’, paper presented to Biennial Conference of the Political Science Association of South Africa. ——(1990) ‘Equality versus authority: Inkatha and the politics of gender in Natal’ Politikon Vol. 17, No. 2 . ——(1991) ‘Gender, social location and feminist politics in South Africa’ Transformation No. 15 . HASSIM, Shireen and METELERKAMP, Jo (1988) ‘Restructuring the family?: the relevance of the proposed National Family Programme to the politics of family in the Natal region’, paper presented to the Workshop on Regionalism and Restructuring in Natal. HASSIM, Shireen, METELERKAMP, Jo and TODES, Alison (1987) ‘“A bit on the side”? Gender struggles in the politics of transformation in South Africa’ Transformation , No. 5 . HOBSBAWM, Eric and RANGER, Terence (1983) The Invention of Tradition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. INKATHA WOMEN’S BRIGADE Resolutions of the Annual Conference, various. KANE-BERMAN, John (1982) ‘Inkatha: the paradox of South African politics’ Optima Vol. 30, No. 2 . KRIGE, Eileen J. (1936) The Social System of the Zulus Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter. LASCH, Christopher (1977) Haven in a Heartless World, The Family Besieged New York: Basic Books. LOCKETT, Cecily (1990) ‘Feminism(s) and writing in English in South Africa’ Current Writing Vol. 2, No. 1 . MARÉ, Gerhard and HAMILTON, Georgina (1987) An Appetite for Power Johannesburg: Raven Press. MCHUNU, Abbie (1985) Address to the Women for Peace, 11 May. ——(1986) Address to Dames Aktueel, 29 March. MDLULI, Praisley (1987) ‘Ubuntu-botho: Inkatha’s Peoples’ Education’ Transformation , No. 5 . MOLYNEUX, Maxine (1985) ‘Mobilisation without emancipation? Women’s interests, the state and revolution in Nicaragua’ Feminist Studies Vol. 11, No. 2 . MOSS, Glen and OBERY, Ingrid (1987) editors, South African Review 4 Johannesburg: Raven. MUNSLOW, Barry (1986) editor, Africa: Problems in the Transition to Socialism London: Zed Press. MURRAY, Colin (1981) Families Divided: The Impact of Migrant Labour in Lesotho Johannesburg: Raven Press. MZALA (1988) Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda London: Zed. NATAL/KWAZULU INDABA (1986) Bill of Rights. NAZZARI, Muriel (1983) ‘The women question in Cuba: an analysis of material constraints on its solution’ Signs Vol. 9, No. 2 . ONG, Bie Nio (1986) ‘Women and the transition to socialism in sub-Saharan Africa’ in MUNSLOW (1986). RAMPHELE, Mamphele (1989) ‘The dynamics of gender politics in the hostels of Cape Town’ Journal of Southern African Studies Vol. 15, No. 3 . RANDALL, Vicky (1982) Women and Politics London: Macmillan.

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REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA (1985) Proposed National Family Programme. SHARP, John and SPIEGEL, Andrew (1987) ‘Women and wages: gender and the control of income in farm and Bantustan households’, seminar paper presented to the African Studies Institute, University of the Wit-watersrand. SILTANEN, J. and STANWORTH, M. (1984) editors, Women and the Public Sphere London: Hutchinson. SITAS, Ari (1986) ‘Inanda, August 1985: where wealth and power and blood reign worshipped gods’ South African Labour Bulletin Vol. 11, No. 4 . SURPLUS PEOPLE PROJECT (1984) Forced Removals in South Africa Vol. 4 , Cape Town: David Phillip. WALKER, Cherryl (1982) Women and Resistance in South Africa London: Onyx. ——(1990) editor, Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 Cape Town: David Phillip. WIERINGA, Saskia (1985) ‘The perfumed nightmare: some notes on the Indo-nesian women’s movement’, The Hague: Institute of Social Studies. YUVAL-DAVIS, Nira and ANTHIAS, Floya (1989) editors, Women-Nation-State London: Macmillan.

POST-COLONIAL FEMINISM AND THE VEIL: Thinking the Difference Lama Abu Odeh

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the issue of the veil has been the topic of heated debate in Arab countries, particularly those that witnessed strong fundamentalist movements. The fact that Iranian Islamicists who took power in Iran sanctioned the veil and penalized those women who chose not to wear it was either a seductive or, alternatively, a terrifying reminder to women in other Muslim countries of what it might be like for women under Islamicist rule. In countries like Jordan, Algeria and Egypt, where fundamentalist movements have mobilized many followers including large numbers of women whose adoption of the veil signified their initiation into the movement, the question of the legal sanction of the veil has aroused intense reactions from supporters and opponents alike. In this paper I try to explore the question of the veil from the complicated perspective of an Arab feminist, who both rejects the veil as a personal choice but also recognizes its empowering and seductive effect on Arab women. My discussion will be limited to the veil as it plays itself out in an Arab context, since this is what I am most familiar with. The analysis might, or might not, be true in other non-Arab Muslim countries. Also, my ‘analysis’ will be more of a personal journey of exploration and reflection, than a traditional academic analysis or a strictly scientific one. For the purposes of this paper I shall use the term ‘veil’ to mean the current dress adopted by Muslim women in the Arab world, as followers of the contemporary fundamentalist movements. In its most common expression, the veil entails covering the woman’s hair with a scarf that is ordinarily white, leaving the face to be exposed. All of the body is usually covered with a loose dress in dark colours, with buttons from top to bottom. Women typically wear Western clothes beneath this dress, which they take-off, along with the scarf, when they are in the sole company of women. These women do not usually cover their hands with gloves, nor do they wear make-up.

Feminist Review No 43, Spring 1993

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From non-veil to veil In order to make sense of the veil as a social phenomenon one needs to inspect other types of women’s dress that are distinguishable from the veil. This I will do, by noting the transitional step that these women have made in their dress, historically, from non-veil to veil. I would like first, however, to locate the women who adopt the veil in terms of class. This will be rather difficult due to the complexity of class structure in postcolonial societies. In general, these women tend to belong to the urban lower and middle classes. Professionally, they work as civil servants, schoolteachers, secretaries in private enterprise, bank employees, nurses and university students. They are usually young, in their twenties and early thirties. In the seventies, these women walked the streets of Arab cities wearing Western attire: skirts and dresses below the knee, high heels, sleeves that covered the upper arm in the summer; their hair was usually exposed, and they wore make-up. They differed from their mothers who pretty much dressed in the same way, in that they were more fashion conscious, more liberal in the colouring of their clothing and more generous in their make-up. Their mothers usually covered their hair with a scarf when they were in public, but only in a liberal rather than a rigid way (a good proportion of their hair showed underneath the scarf in contrast to the scarf of the fundamentalist dress which showed nothing). If one were to freeze that ‘moment’ in the seventies, in an attempt to understand these women’s relationship to their bodies, one would find it multilayered and highly complex. In a way their bodies seemed to be a battlefield where the cultural struggles of postcolonial societies were waged. On the one hand, the Western attire which covered their bodies carried with it the ‘capitalist’ construction of the female body: one that is sexualized, objectified, thingified etc…. But because capitalism never really won the day in postcolonial societies, where it managed to cohabit successfully with pre-capitalist social formations (traditionalism), these women’s bodies were also simultaneously constructed ‘traditionally’: ‘chattelized’, ‘propertized’, terrorized as trustees of family (sexual) honour. The cohabitation in the female body of this double construction (the capitalist and the traditional) was experienced by these women as highly conflictual. The former seemed to push them to be seductive, sexy and sexual, the latter to be prudish, conservative and asexual. Whereas the former was supported by the attraction of the market (consumption of Western commodities), the latter was supported by the threat of violence (the woman is severely sanctioned, frequently by death, if she risks the family sexual honour). Not infrequently, Arabic newspapers carry a story structured along the following lines: ‘S.M.stabbed his sister K. in a coffee shop across from the university campus. The police are investigating the crime.’ A possible scenario for the crime: the woman, a university student belonging to the middle or lower classes, is having coffee with a colleague. Somebody ‘tips’ her brother that she is involved in sexual relations with this man. Provoked by his sister’s friendly public behaviour with another man, and shamed by other people’s thinking that this public behaviour has in fact led to illicit sexual contact between them, the brother kills his sister in defence of family sexual honour. The time between the ‘tip’ and the actual murder is usually very brief. More concerned with the public

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perception than with the actual fact of the sister’s conduct, the brother rushes to protect the family honour, promptly and unequivocally. After trial, the brother is imprisoned for one year only. His extenuating circumstance is committing a ‘crime of honour’, sanctioned in most Arab penal codes. It is not unusual to find the length of a girl’s dress the object of family debate: Father/brother: This dress is too short. No respectable girl would wear it. Ask your daughter (addressing the mother) to take it off. Mother: Come on, let her be. Girls these days wear things like that. Brother: Let her take it off. My friends follow girls on the streets who wear dresses that short. I won’t have my sister going around dressed like that! Girl: But it’s so pretty. All my friends wear dresses that short. Father/Brother: May be they do, but I won’t have my daughter/sister walk in the streets with a dress like that. The girl takes it off.

The above two stories are pointers on a continuum. The way the girl dresses and how she behaves have heavy sexual significations. She is continuously subject to the test of ‘honour’ and reputation, that she never really passes once and for all. Her sense of disempowerment stems from the terror exercised over her body, death being its not infrequent extreme. The ambivalence that these women felt about their bodies in the seventies was resolved by adopting the Islamic fundamentalist dress in the eighties. The length of her dress was no more the object of family debate, nor would she be caught having coffee with a colleague in public, thereby risking her own death. Rather than being engaged in keeping the impossible balance of the ‘attractive prude’ or the ‘seductive asexual’, these women chose to ‘complete’ the covering of their bodies, and ‘consummate’ their separation from men. I deliberately use the words ‘complete’ and ‘consummate’ because the veil was only the concealment of an already ambivalently covered body, rather than the radical transition from ‘revealment’ to ‘concealment’. Likewise, the segregation of the veil was only the completion of an already ambivalent separation between the sexes. The veil as empowerment I had earlier identified the women who adopt the veil as mostly working women or students, and young. An important part of their daily life is walking the streets and using public transport to go to work or to school and university. Public exposure of this kind has never been comfortable for women in Arab cities. Unfailingly subject to attention on the streets and on buses by virtue of being women, they are stared at, whistled at, rubbed against, pinched…. Comments by men such as, ‘what nice breasts you have’, ‘how beautiful f……you must be’, or something more subtle in tone such as, ‘what a blessed day this is that I have seen you’, are not infrequent. Ordinarily, women avoid any kind of direct verbal

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exchange with men when they are so approached. They either give the man a look of disapproval, or simply look ahead dismayed, and continue their way. Whatever their reaction, they are always conscious of being looked at. Exceptionally, a woman might engage in a verbal exchange with the man, such as when he is insistent in his approaches (he continues to rub his thigh against hers on the bus despite her attempts at keeping a distance away from him). She might retort angrily, ‘Keep away from me you pig; don’t you have sisters of your own?’. A dramatic public scene usually ensues, whereby the man jumps to his self-defence by denying the allegation, and the men on the bus condemning such kind of behaviour as, ‘unworthy of a man who has sisters, and a sign of the corruption of youth these days’. The passengers might also chide the woman for not dressing more properly, implying that if she did, such kind of harassment might not have occurred. The bus driver might even gallantly ask the man to leave the bus. A woman’s willingness to raise objections to such male intrusions is notably different when she is veiled. Her sense of the ‘untouchability’ of her body is usually very strong in contrast to the woman who is not veiled. Whereas the latter would swallow the intrusions as inevitable and part of her daily life, trying to bypass them in all the subtle ways she can muster (by looking at the man angrily and moving away from him), the veiled woman on the other hand is more likely to confront the man with self-righteousness, ‘have you no fear of Allah treating his believers in such a shameless fashion?’ Public reaction is usually more sympathetic to her, the men on the bus making comments such as, ‘Muslim women should not be treated like that. Young men should pray more and read the Quran.’ It is also true to say that veiled women’s exposure to male intrusions in the first place is considerably less than the others. The importance of these daily experiences and their ‘existential’ effect on women, both veiled and non-veiled, is best understood when put in the context of Arab women’s relationship to their bodies as I have tried to explore it above. Public sexual harassment seems to reinforce the non-veiled woman’s ambivalence about her body making her powerless in the face of unwelcome intrusions. The problem doesn’t seem to exist for veiled women, since adopting the veil was meant among other things to shield them from such sexual approaches, so that when they are actually made, they are looked upon as being simply outrageous, both by the veiled women and the public. The veil as disempowerment As I wrote down the title of this section, I thought to myself that there are surely a hundred million ways in which the veil is disempowering to women. But as I searched in my mind for such examples, I discovered that those instances of disempowerment that I was thinking of reflected my own normative assumptions of how the world should be. In other words, they reflected my position as a feminist. Paradoxically enough, and feminist as I am, instances of the disempowerment of the veil did not present themselves to me as self-evident. Whereas it was obvious to me that the veil remedied the situation of sexual harassment on the street, by discouraging men from invading veiled women’s

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space and by empowering them to raise objections when such invasions took place, it wasn’t equally obvious to me that the veil actually weakened women and disabled them from confronting an uncomfortable daily experience. Even when I activated my own normative assumptions about how the world should be, instances of disempowerment did not become any more self-evident. For instance, my normative assumptions, as an Arab feminist, are based on the premise that Arab women should be able to express themselves sexually, so that they can love, play, tease, flirt and excite. In a social context, such as the one in the Arab world, where women can incur violent sanctions if they express themselves sexually, such acts carry important normative weight to me as a feminist. In them, I see acts of subversion and liberation. In a conversation with a veiled fundamentalist woman in her late twenties, who is single, I ask, ‘But don’t you have sexual needs?’ She: Sure I do. I: What do you do with them? She: Sure I have sexual needs, but nothing that is absolutely overwhelming and impossible to deal with. I occupy myself all the time. I read books. I love to read books on Islam. To be ‘pure’ as a single woman is my absolute priority. I do not let these things preoccupy my thinking. It is simply not an issue for me. But loving, teasing, flirting and seducing was not the way these women normatively saw their sexuality. If in all these acts I saw pleasure and joy, they saw only evil. For them, a society in which the sexes interacted thus was undoubtedly corrupt. They therefore experienced the veil as normatively necessary: precisely because women should not go around seducing men (except the ones they are married to), then they should be veiled (from other men). The disempowerment of the veil that I reflected on seemed to express merely my panicked feminist self, one that saw the veil as threatening to its normative world and sexuality. Father: What is this you’re writing? Women going around seducing and teasing??!! I: ……… Father: Wipe it off. Do you want to shame me?? That’s all I need!! My own daughter declaring to the world that she wants women to go around seducing and teasing! How can I show my face to the world?? I: ……… Father: So this is what you want?? This is what your feminism is all about?? Women going around whoring?? I, desperately searching for words that might fit into his conceptual scheme and finding none, remain silent.

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Unless I engaged in intellectual élitism by accusing these women of false consciousness and not knowing their own good, there was no way that I could point to instances of the disempowerment of the veil. What it all sounds like so far is a hopeless clash of normative visions. In my late twenties and single myself, that was nothing my confused postcolonial feminist self could identify with. As I wrote the above paragraph about my own normative vision of sexuality, I was fearfully conscious of my father’s reaction. Preaching to the unconverted What about those who are unconverted, neither feminist nor veiled? Those whose bodies and sexuality have not been constructed by the veil discourse, nor by the feminist one? What about those whose ‘moment’ in the seventies has lingered, whose ambivalence about their bodies has not been ‘resolved’ by the adoption of the veil? What does a feminist such as myself have to offer them and how do I fare in comparison with those who preach the veil? How could what I have to offer them be empowering? I find that my position, and that of other feminists, is not devoid of ambivalence. We obviously fare worse when it comes to empowering women on the streets. If what we have as remedy is a long agenda of changing the laws, claiming our rights to walk the streets without harassment, and raising consciousness about the ‘equality’ of men and women, then what we have is terribly unattractive. It is long term (when the veil as remedy is immediate), sounds hopelessly utopian and demanding of women to engage in what sounds like difficult and impossible personal/political struggle. But what is even more serious than all this, in contrast to the look of social respectability that the veil bestows on those who wear it (sort of like the respectability of a woman dressed like a nun), we seem to offer women a discourse that will make them socially conspicuous, questionable and suspect. For the ambivalent woman of the seventies, already dogged in her pursuit for good reputation, what we offer her looks not only unattractive, but almost socially suicidal. The situation is aggravated further by the fact that most such feminists are upper—or middle-class women, with material resources that enable them to avoid, to a great extent, uncomfortable experiences on the streets (most of them drive their own cars). They also invite instinctive hostility in lower-class women by virtue of their class position. Even more, feminist discourse sounds quite foreign. It uses concepts such as ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’, which are on the one hand indeterminate and could be easily appropriated (‘equality between men and women means that men should be women’s superiors because they are more qualified’), but they are also concepts that need yet to become discourse in the postcolonial context (‘why should women be free when men are not free either?’). Liberalism, which postcolonial feminism seems to be based on, has yet to win the day in these societies. Regrettably for the feminist, the importlike quality of her discourse weakens her case even further. Seen as a Western product, feminism doesn’t have an obvious list of victories the postcolonial feminist can lean on. Rape, pornography

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and family disintegration in the West are flaunted in the face of such a feminist as she proceeds to preach her politics. Rather than seeing feminism as a political response to these social phenomena, feminism is seen as its cause. It is because Western women have become ‘emancipated’ that they are on the streets to be raped, morally corrupt to be playmates, and selfish about their own lives to cause the disintegration of the family. In a crude, superficial, partial, empirical way, that might be true. But before the postcolonial feminist steps in to explain the complexity of the situation in the West, she finds herself silenced by the immediate, simple, straightforward almost magical rhetoric of the veil. But even if she is allowed to speak, she suddenly finds herself in the uncomfortable position of ‘defending the West’, an anomaly in itself in the postcolonial Muslim societies of the day. Solidarity with the veiled So far I have constructed the veiled position and the feminist one as being sharply contrasted. I had indicated earlier that they seemed to me to represent a hopeless clash of normative visions. But let me step down a little bit and reshuffle the positions I have constructed. Who wants to talk about normative visions anyway? They often seem to lead nowhere. Perhaps the feminist path and the veiled one criss-cross. Perhaps they do so to an extent that they are no longer singularly identifiable as such. To show how they might possibly do that we need to break them down and attack their coherence. The coherence of the veiled position breaks down like this: the contemporary veil seeks to address sexual harassment on the street. It seeks to protect women on their way to work and to school. Its female subjects are socially conspicuous a priori: they are not women who are staying locked indoors. It has come to remedy the uncomfortable daily lives of single, young women, who are leaving the house seeking work and education. But the veil as rhetoric assumes that women should ideally be inconspicuous. They should be locked indoors out of men’s way so as not to seduce them. They should not go out to work, their rightful place is in the house as wives and mothers, not as wage workers. The veiled position thus seems to be self-deconstructing. If it seriously pursues its normative vision by inviting women to stay at home, then it loses its attractiveness and therefore its effectiveness as a tool. For it was women’s conspicuousness that prompted them to adopt the veil in the first place. Even more paradoxically, fundamentalist ideology, as the inspiration for the rhetoric of the veil, assumes that women should work only out of necessity, preferably work in professions that are considered feminine such as teaching and nursing, and once at the workplace they should minimize their contact with men to the greatest extent possible. Whether during their working hours, or during break-time, individual women and individual men should not be left alone. Men are presumed to be the leaders in any context, whether at work or at home. Women, who have adopted the veil for its empowering effect on the street as they go to work, can find themselves seriously disempowered if the veil carries its ‘logic’ to the workplace. Spatial and functional segregation between the

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sexes, as the fundamentalist ideology of the veil envisages for the workplace, could seriously affect the career prospects of veiled women. Since they live and work in a world where men are already the decision-makers, and the higher situated in the hierarchy of the workplace, minimizing contact between women and men could only possibly result in isolating women further from the positions of power and decision-making. The ambivalence of their position as veiled women seeking work could be effectively utilized by feminists. Seeing this as a golden opportunity for joining hands with veiled women, feminists can offer their politics as remedy for the disempowerment veiled women can experience at the workplace. Liberal feminist demands such as equality in the distribution of responsibilities between men and women based on the qualifications of the individual, equality of promotion opportunities between the sexes, daycare facilities for women to nurture their children, can be offered to these women as empowering political rhetoric for them as wage workers. Such demands will undoubtedly resonate deeply in veiled women’s experience at the workplace. Feminism could thus become the empowering politics of veiled women at work. The ironic side about all this for feminists, is that all of a sudden they could find themselves joining hands with veiled women as ‘comrades’ in political action. The coherence of the feminist position could thus be open to question. Far from finding the beneficiaries of its rhetoric female subjects engaged in a struggle for free and equal interaction with men in a free play of sexuality, postcolonial feminism will have to adjust itself to the fact that its empowered subjects are veiled women. In other words, feminist women and veiled women are now sisters. Veiled and divided: the battle over the body I have so far talked about the veiled body as if it were monolithic. And even though I believe that the rhetoric of the veil seeks to construct a monolithic female sexuality for its followers, I do not however think that, on closer inspection, the community of the veiled reveals any such single construction. Veiled sexuality, it seems to me, reveals a multiplicity that is beyond the feminist’s wildest expectations. True, there are those who can be described as ‘ideology incarnate’. Their relationship with their body replicates ideology so well that a shift in this construction looks almost hopeless. They are the leaders, the preachers, the passionate believers, the puritans. They are the ones whose public veiled self takes over, even when they are in the private quarters of women. Their bodies seem to adopt the daily rituals of the veil, where they come to look, for the more colour-loving aesthetic eye, rather bland, insipid and otherworldly. It is the body of the virtuous. But there are also those in the community of the veiled who are tentative and wavering. Once secure in the company of women, they reveal bodies that are more colourful, lively and sexual. One is surprised at the shift their bodies make when they take the veil off. The bland face becomes colourful with creative make-up. The loose dress of the veil, once taken off, reveals underneath

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fashionable clothing, making a more individual and personal statement than the collective public one of the veil. Their sexuality appears to be more forthcoming, assertive and joyful. Once together, their interaction with each other is not devoid of seductiveness and flirtation. Their private bodies are almost unrelated to their public ones. And there are also those whose private more colourful bodies, shyly but daringly, push to become more public. They wear make-up with the veil. They are more creative, fashion-conscious in public, constantly attempting to subvert the blandness of the veil. They invent a million ways to tie the scarf on their heads, which itself becomes more varied in colours than the more standard white. The loose dress of the veil suddenly becomes slightly tighter, more colourful, more daring in emulating Western fashions, even if it doesn’t explicitly reveal more parts of the female body. One also notices them on the streets conversing with men, strolling with them, subverting the segregation that the veil imposes on the sexes. And there are those who wear the veil, but retain a fiercely ambivalent relationship with it, so that wearing it is a conscious decision that is made almost every day. It is not uncommon to find them wearing it some days and taking it off others. ‘Wearing the veil, I find sometimes encourages me to binge on food since my whole body is covered in public, and I tend to lose touch with it. I feel I need to take it off sometimes. I need the public voyeur’s gaze to control myself’. And, there are those who use their bodies and dress as a statement of opposition. They differentiate themselves in their environment by wearing the veil, and using it as a statement on female subordination in nonfundamentalist (pseudo-secular, pseudo-religious) Arab households in which they find themselves. Wearing the veil allows them to have a singular and individual voice: ‘You are all not wearing the veil, but I AM. I am powerful enough to do it, and this is how I carve myself a space that you cannot reach. I disapprove of what you are, who you are, and what you think!’ Of course, a veiled woman is not necessarily either this or that. She could shift from one position to the other. At times colourful, other times bland, seductive and prudish, public and private. A veiled woman’s subjectivity appears to be much more complicated than the simple word of the veil can possibly convey. For the feminist, such multiplicity of veiled sexuality could be very exciting and promising of rich interaction and dialogue with veiled women. Her position accordingly could become more nuanced and multiple. Instead of dismissing them as the enemy, the threat, the falsely conscious, she could see them as the varied, divided, seemingly united, female community trying to survive in an environment that is hostile to them as much as it is to her. It is a multiplicity that invites conversation between the ‘same’, rather than the apartness of the ‘other’. The feminist resituates herself In the section below, I shall refer to the ‘rhetoric of the veil’. What I mean by it is the fundamentalist construction of the veil, as it is circulated ideologically. A woman who decides to wear the veil is usually subjected to a certain ideological indoctrination (by a fundamentalist preacher), about how every Muslim woman

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needs to cover her body so as not to seduce men, and how in doing this she obeys the word of Allah. Otherwise, she would face his wrath on the day of judgement. I have already tentatively referred to it in the section entitled ‘Solidarity with the veiled’. It is in relation to, and at the same time by means of, this ‘official’ rhetoric that the different women I have just described construct their position of ambivalence or subversion. In my construction so far, I have largely ignored the question of power. What I mean by power in this context is the power attached to a particular discourse as the only possible representation of ‘reality’, to the exclusion of others. This is a particularly important issue for the postcolonial feminist who is interested in understanding and possibly impacting the female community of the veiled. The excitement over the multiplicity and richness of such a community for the postcolonial feminist might be immediately dampened by the ideological power of the veil over that community. This will still be the case, despite the variety and richness of veiled women’s lives that could be read as subverting the rhetoric of the veil. It is interesting to note that since the veiled women of the contemporary fundamentalist movements have adopted the veil as a political act (they were not born into it), the rhetoric of the veil has a strong hold over them, since it provided the rationale for their act. In articulating their lives and their relationship with their bodies, they can only engage in such rhetoric. This seems to have the effect, at the end of the day, of reifying the ‘reality’ of their daily lives, by disabling them from seeing the subversions and variations that exist or could exist to disrupt the ideology of the veil. The feminist: I like the way you wear your scarf. It’s creative and most unusual. Veiled woman: Thank you. I get bored with the way I look if I wear it the same every day. The feminist: I thought the whole point was to wear it the same every day so that you don’t attract attention to your body. Veiled woman: It’s just that I think that people need to look beautiful to others. That doesn’t mean they have to seduce them. Allah is beautiful and He likes beauty. The feminist: I agree with you. I think women can look beautiful without having to appear as if they are out to seduce men. I believe that women can look both proper and beautiful. In my opinion, you can do that either wearing the veil or even Western clothes. I, personally, feel more comfortable wearing the latter. The veil appears to me rather exaggerated. Veiled woman: Except that Allah commanded us to wear the veil. But I’ve always believed that the important thing is how we feel inside. The important thing is that we feel pure inside, no matter what we wear, whether it is Western clothes or the veil. This seriously complicates the position of the feminist. In order to have a hearing with these women, she needs to ‘hook up’ with their conceptual system

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(rhetoric). But she also needs to do it in a way that subverts it and allows conceptual openings in it, through which veiled women can start to see their lives differently. This is a slippery road since she will always risk being overwhelmed by the ‘logic’ of the rhetoric, and thereby end up being rendered ineffective and immobilized by it. She will also find herself in the uncomfortable position of having to say things that she ‘doesn’t really mean’ in order to have a hearing in the first place. Conscious of having to keep the balance of being both inside and outside the system, the feminist risks being pushed one side or the other. Notes Lama Abu Odeh is currently a doctoral candidate in Juridicial Sciences at Harvard Law School. She has also studied at the Universities of Jordan, Bristol and York. She is a feminist activist and a founding member of a Women’s Studies Centre in Jordan.

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FEMINISM, THE MENOPAUSE AND HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY Jane Lewis

During the last two decades the menopause and, as medical textbooks tend to phrase it, ‘its management’, have become the subject of intensive debate. However, there has been relatively little comment from feminists on the issue, especially in Britain. In part this may be argued to reflect feminists’ greater concern (hitherto) with issues of reproduction—with birth control, abortion and childbirth—than with ageing. As greater numbers of active feminists age, we might expect this situation to change. Some, chiefly American, writers (e.g., Rossi 1980 and Stimpson 1982) have charged that the preoccupation of feminism during the 1970s with equality meant that it tended to ignore issues of difference, especially biological difference. This is a more controversial and, to my mind, dubious argument, given femin-ism’s historical concern about reproductive issues. What seems most important is that the chief medical treatment for menopausal symptoms and, increasingly, for many diseases in postmenopausal women— hormone replacement therapy (HRT)—is highly contentious for feminists in a manner not dissimilar to other aspects of modern medical practice. It is difficult for women to weigh up the pros and cons of high-tech medicine (amniocentesis is another example), to decide whether to accept or reject it, and if the former how to exercise some degree of control over it. As this article seeks to show, the HRT debate is particularly complicated in terms of the positions adopted by the actors participating in it: the medical profession has not spoken with a single voice and nor have lay (chiefly women) popularizers, while there is a significant body of epidemiological and socialscience research which takes a very different tack from the clinical literature. My aim is not so much to develop a feminist analysis of the menopause and HRT, but rather to situate feminist concerns within the debate. Feminists and mainstream medical practice On the whole, late twentieth-century feminism has been severely critical of mainstream medical care. The main strand in the criticism has argued that modern medicine has exerted patriarchal control over women’s bodies, both through the imposition of new technology and through the doctor/patient relationship. Thus Graham and Oakley (1981) have suggested that doctors and Feminist Review No 43, Spring 1993

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women approach childbirth entirely differently: while doctors see it primarily as a medical event, to be managed and controlled using processes like amniocentesis and ultra sound, women see it as a natural physiological process. Similarly, while doctors measure success by birthweights and, in the final event, mortality rates, women lay more store by the nature of the experience itself. In the case of abortion, the 1967 legislation in the UK gave doctors discretion as to who ‘qualified’ for an abortion, and Aitken Swann (1977) found that doctors often used nonclinical criteria, such as social class, to determine which women ‘merited’ an abortion and which were deemed ‘undeserving’. Feminist research has shown the predominantly male medical profession to treat women as passive recipients of care, giving them little space either to offer their own understanding of their condition or to ask questions about their treatment. Oakley (1980) found some doctors reluctant even to accept a woman’s reckoning as to the date of conception. Laws’s (1990) examination of popular medical textbooks also revealed an intertwining of traditional expectations regarding reproductive role and health, such that it was impossible to conclude that there could be any such thing as a happy childless woman or an unhappy family. Given this lack of appreciation of both the woman patient’s world view and the reality (as opposed to some prescriptive construction) of her position in relation to her family and the wider society, it is not surprising that doctors have also been shown either to treat women presenting with ‘female problems’ (especially those to do with menstruation (Leeson and Gray, 1978)) dismissively, or to offer inappropriate treatment, for example, tranquillizers (Oakley, 1983). Out of such research grew the women’s self-help movement. This was particularly strong in the United States, where the lack of universal access to health care provided an additional spur to self-help. In this country, feminists have made efforts to set up well-women clinics without medical input, but as Foster (1991) has noted, the fact remains that a majority of women attending clinics want to see a doctor. Furthermore, the historical record shows that the ‘medicalization’ of life-events, such as childbirth, is not a simple matter of medical conspiracy, but rather that women themselves have taken action to demand what they have been told is best. This was very apparent in the hospitalization of childbirth, which obstetricians began to insist was safer during the 1930s, but which working-class women’s groups, such as the Women’s Cooperative Guild also began to demand on the grounds that working women should have access to the ‘best’ form of care (Lewis, 1980). Only in the post-war period did the natural childbirth movement gain ground, but it would seem that a majority of women prefer to make medical technology more ‘user-friendly’ than dispense with it altogether (Oakley, 1984). The menopause and HRT raise very similar issues. Until the 1970s there was very little debate about the problems of menopause. Clin-icians have stressed that while during the twentieth century the proportion of the average woman’s life cycle spent in a postmenopausal state has been steadily lengthening, it is only just being recognized in the medical texts that the average woman has over onethird of her life-span to live after the menopause (Greenblatt, 1986). This may be so, but it does not explain the relatively sudden upsurge in debate over the management of the menopause. At the turn of the century physicians were

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inclined to accept the idea of menopause as a physiological crisis that could lead to tranquillity or disease, depending on a woman’s predisposition to malignancy (Smith Rosenberg, 1973). Thus Henry Maudsley (1873:90) wrote that ‘the natural cessation of menstruation at the change of life is accompanied by a revolution in the economy which is often trying to the mental stability of those who have a predisposition to insanity’. There was little that doctors felt could be done about this ‘physiological crisis’, any more than for problems of menstruation generally. Given this, together with the fact that from women’s point of view the subject of menstruation and hence menopause remained taboo long after contraception became a matter for open—if not particularly respectable—debate during the inter-war years, it is not surprising that for the first half of the twentieth century doctors tended to ignore or dismiss the menopausal woman’s complaints. The majority of women believed that hot flushes and sweats were something to be endured, and other symptoms, such as vaginal dryness and urinary incontinence were not necessarily even recognized as being associated with menopause because of the silence surrounding it. The vast majority of women presenting with menopausal problems have come away with tranquillizers, which remained in line with much earlier views of the menopausal woman as having a predisposition to mental instability, and which as a form of treatment has attracted substantial criticism from within as well as without the medical profession. In a 1970 survey of medical students, Marian Crawford (1970) found that practically all of them regarded a woman of fifty presenting herself to her doctor with vague complaints of discomfort as needing no further special attention. Hormone replacement therapy, which seeks to remedy ‘oestrogen deficiency’, has proved effective in treating the discomforts of menopause and, researchers concur, protects women against the onset of osteoporosis (brittle bones), which is the major cause of death in women over eighty. The open debate about menopause during the last two decades has coincided with the greater popularity of HRT and has thus been provider-driven. From women’s point of view, it might seem that medical fatalism in face of female reproductive physiology has given way, at least among specialists, to enthusiasm for the possibilities of medical management of what has become the disease of ‘oestrogen deficiency’. Many women regard HRT with suspicion, especially in the wake of scares as to the side-effects of the birth control pill. But there are others who would see the level of ignorance about HRT among general practitioners and/or their refusal to prescribe it as a further example of their dismissive treatment of women’s health problems. After examining the nature of the HRT debate, this article looks in more detail at women’s writings on HRT. Feminists remain suspicious of the emerging medical consensus as to its efficacy and safety, but there is an equally strong literature written by women who see HRT as women’s salvation and who condemn the medical profession not for prescribing HRT, but for denying women access to it. This divide is carried through to the organizations offering women advice on HRT (which, given the complexity of the debate, is particularly vital), and raises the question as to what constitutes helpful advice for women.

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The HRT debate The first recorded attempt to treat women with ‘ovarian therapy’ was in Berlin in 1896 and the first description of treatment of menopausal symptoms with oestrogen was in the USA in 1929. Oral oestrogen preparations did not become available until the late 1930s and Premarin, developed by Ayerst and one of the most successful HRT drugs, was described in 1943. By 1945 full-page advertisements were appearing for it in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Gruhn and Kazer, 1989:184–8). HRT is not therefore new, but has in fact been used, chiefly by consultants, in both Britain and the USA since the 1940s (albeit to a limited extent until the late 1960s). Susan Bell’s (1986, 1987) interesting work on early oral oestrogen— diethylstilbestrol (DES)—from the first report on it in 1938 to its clinical testing in 1941 (in the USA) refutes the usual linear models of advances in medical research leading to applied research and development, which in turn results in clinical testing and diffusion. In the case of oestrogen, applied research and clinical trials took place simultaneously; diffusing the drug became part of the research process. The US Food and Drug Administration acted not simply as a regulatory agency, but as an active participant in the development process, permitting doctors to use the drug and then to give testimonials in its support. By 1941 a minority of medical specialists were prepared to say that DES was entirely safe and a majority to say that it was safe as long as it was used for a limited number of conditions and by prescription. Four groups of actors were central to this process: scientists, medical doctors, the drug industry and the state. Bell insists that ‘physicians could not have been successful in medicalizing menopause without sex endocrinology, the ethical pharmaceutical industry and the state’ (1986:16). Developments in sex endocrinology were particularly crucial to the conceptual medicalization of menopause1 allowing menopause to be described as a deficiency disease and to be compared to diabetes or thyroid conditions. Like these, menopause could be treated with a replacement therapy. At one level, the possibility of treatment legitimated women’s complaints at menopause. But it also gave additional powers of control to the medical profession and served also to reinforce traditional stereotypes regarding menopausal women as beset with psycho-social complaints, losing cultural significance, showing regretfulness and depression, and generally being a burden on medical care. Medicalization takes place at the institutional and doctor-patient level as well as that of problem definition (Bell, 1987; Riessman, 1983) and is thus a complicated process, representing some gains as well as losses to women. The work which heralded a dramatic increase in the prescribing of HRT in the USA and in research into the therapy in both the USA and Britain provided a clear demonstration of the gains and losses women could expect from the medicalization of the menopause. In 1966 Robert Wilson published a book with the title Feminine Forever. Wilson was a prominent Brooklyn gynaecologist and head of the Wilson Foundation, established in New York in 1963 to promote oestrogens and supported by $1.3 million in grants from the pharmaceutical industry (McCrea, 1983). His book played on the idea that postmenopausal women ceased to be feminine and hence desirable. As their ovaries shrivelled

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and died, women could be said to suffer castration; the test for oestrogen deficiency was therefore also a test of femininity. Women, he argued, had the right to remain women and should not have to live as sexual neuters for half their lives because of the neglect of the medical profession. Wilson advocated HRT from the premenopausal years to the grave. While many physicians did not warm to Wilson’s polemic, Robert Greenblatt, one-time president of the American Geriatrics Society, contributed a Foreword to the book in which he compared it in importance to Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex. The market value of oestrogen increased 3.8 times in the USA between 1963 and 1973 (Kaufert and McKinlay, 1985) and HRT was endorsed in the medical journals during the early 1970s. In 1974, an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that women’s demand for oestrogen as a ‘youth drug’ was foolish (according to the journal, this demand was inspired by the press, which was true, although Wilson’s argument had rested on a similar foundation), but that highdose oestrogen replacement therapy nevertheless could and should be continued because the menopause was a deficiency disease with potentially serious implications for women’s health (Kase, 1974). This mood of medical confidence was changed in 1975 by the publication of two articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, linking the use of oestrogen replacement therapy to endometrial cancer (Smith et al., 1975; Ziel and Finkle, 1975). The methodology of these studies was weak in many respects, but as Kaufert and McKinlay (1985) have commented, their findings that the estimated increase in cancer risk due to oestrogen ranged between 500 and 800 per cent was too high to be explained by even major flaws in the design of the studies. This research, together with another pair of studies published the following year (Mack et al., 1976 and Weiss, Szekely and Austin, 1976) provoked a medical debate as to the safety of oestrogen. At the same time, the American feminist movement made an influential statement against mainstream medicine in the shape of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s Our Bodies, Ourselves, published in 1976. In Britain, the lay press was just beginning to highlight the greater availability of HRT in the USA, when the clinical findings of 1975–6 induced renewed caution, especially in the medical press. At the beginning of the year, national press coverage made much of oestrogen as ‘the happiness pill’ (Daily Mail, 30.1.75) and in February a television programme (Horizon) drew attention to the greater availability of HRT in the United States than in England. In response to this, one medical practitioner wrote in the Observer (23.2.75) that doctors had rushed to use thalidomide with disastrous results and would not be so incautious again. In March a drug company, Schering, was roundly condemned for launching its new preparation for the treatment of menopausal symptoms, Progynova, without first informing the medical profession (New Scientist, 6.3.75). In June a leader in the Lancet commented inter alia that ‘the prospect of universal treatment of a large section of the female population is clearly a glittering commercial prize for the pharmaceutical manufacturer’ and in 1976 a leader in the British Medical Journal urged caution in the use of oestrogen in the light of the 1975–6 American research findings. Nevertheless, in the same month, Wendy Cooper, a tireless lay proponent of the benefits of HRT who won the respect of many medical specialists in the field, published her book No Change,

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which welcomed the ‘revolutionary’ idea of the menopause as a treatable hormone-deficiency condition. In face of all this, confusion among not only the public but also general practitioners was inevitable. While the main actors in the HRT debate in Britain and the USA were very similar, the positions they adopted differed profoundly. In the USA, researchers called attention to the risks associated with HRT, but doctors nevertheless increased the number of prescriptions they wrote; in Britain researchers tended to play down the risks of HRT, focusing much more on the benefits, but doctors did not widely prescribe the drug. McCrea and Markle (1984) have examined these differences in some detail, noting that while in Britain the influence of drug companies is felt most strongly at the policy and research level, in the USA it is exerted on the practising physician, who in the US will be a consultant, to whom patients have direct access, rather than a general practitioner, who in Britain acts as the gatekeeper to consultants. This difference in the two medical systems tends in and of itself to make British medical practice more conservative in most respects. Thus, for example, while in the USA the rate for hysterectomy reached a peak in the mid-1970s with 670 operations per 100,000 female population, in Britain the trend remained relatively stable over two decades at around a rate of 260 per 100,000 (Teo, 1990). In respect of HRT prescriptions, in the USA in 1975 oestrogen was the fifth most frequently prescribed drug. The percentages of women on HRT varied from region to region, but a 1975 study of Seattle-Tacoma revealed that 51 per cent of all postmenopausal women had used oes-trogen for at least three months. Olesen (1982) has also noted that the majority of users in the US have been and are white, middle-class women. This is the group to whom Wilson’s 1966 arguments were designed to have most appeal and who, in the context of the United States health-care system, can best afford treatment. In the matter of race, however, it should also be noted that the threat of osteoporosis, which has emerged as one of the major reasons prompting prescriptions in the late 1980s, appears to be less for Afro-Caribbean and Hispanic women because of their denser bone mass. Anglo-Saxon and Asian women have much higher risk rates, with Jewish women falling somewhere in between. In Britain the percentage of women getting HRT has been very much lower than in the USA, amounting to some 3 per cent in the mid-1970s. In the USA the Food and Drug Administration made a clear response to the confusion surrounding HRT in the mid-1970s. In 1977 it mandated a ‘patient package insert’, warning women of the cancer risk and other possible dangers, to be included with every prescription, albeit that a 1979 survey of 271 drug stores in the US revealed that only 39 per cent of oestrogen prescriptions were accompanied by the warning (McCrea, 1983). In large measure the FDA action came as a result of pressure exerted by consumer and feminist groups, including the National Women’s Health Network and Consumers Union. In Britain, an equivalent actor was lacking. The Committee on the Safety of Medicines does no testing, but relies on the pharmaceutical companies to do their own safety checks; its role is entirely advisory. During the 1980s, British medical research has continued the work of rehabilitating HRT to the point where two of the leading researchers could declare in 1988 that ‘the battle has been fought and won’ and that any remaining

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resistance was more ‘spiritual than medical’ (Studd and Whitehead, 1988: viii). While clinical researchers are now agreed that if oestrogen is taken together with progestogen there is no risk of endome-trial cancer, examples of more pessimistic findings regarding the incidence of other cancers, particularly of the breast, have persisted in the American literature. An influential Swedish study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989 showed a significant increase in breast cancer after six years of oestrogen replacement therapy (Bergkvist et al., 1989). But editorial comment in the British Medical Journal has shifted from the profoundly cautious in the wake of the mid-1970s American studies to the optimistic (Belchetz, 1989). The clinical case for HRT has depended first on identifying a symp-tomology that could be relieved by HRT (flushes, sweats, vaginal dryness, headaches, dizziness, palpitations, sleeplessness, weight increase, depression, etc.), and second, establishing the postmenopausal part of the female life-cycle as a period characterized by oestrogen deficiency which brings with it additional threats of disease, such as osteoporosis, which at present only HRT can prevent. During the 1980s it is the second of these that has dominated the British medical research literature and has served to move specialist opinion towards a firmer consensus in favour of HRT. General practitioners have remained suspicious of the cancer link (Barlow, 1990) and the percentage of women in Britain receiving HRT remains relatively low at 7 per cent. There is, though, another ‘scientific’ literature outside clinical research which provides support for GP scepticism and in particular takes issue with the idea that there is a symptomology identifiable with menopause. This literature is epidemiological, psycho-social and cultural in its approach. The epidemiologists have stressed first, that while hot flushes and sweating are experienced by a majority of menopausal women, because other symptoms do not necessarily arise together there is no evidence of ‘a syndrome’ (McKinlay and Jefferys, 1974). No fewer than forty-five symptoms have been attributed to menopause (Greene, 1984), but it is very difficult to separate most of these from symptoms of ageing more generally and/or from the effects of social and domestic problems. This has led Greene (1984) to propose a ‘vulnerability model’, whereby the climacteric (the process of hormonal alteration, which may take as long as ten years before menopause and some years after it) does not act as a primary factor, but rather acts to accelerate an already existing problem or to cause it to recur. McKinlay and McKinlay (1986) have confirmed that women who enter the climacteric healthy tend to remain that way. While these studies confirm that a majority of women experience discomfort from vasomotor symptoms (flushes and sweats), they also tend to suggest that the percentage experiencing severe symptoms is as low as 10 per cent (Gannon, 1985 summarizes this research). The picture presented by this literature looks very different from that of the clinical research because, as Goodman (1980) points out, what tends to happen in research based on medical case histories is that the menopausal patient becomes translated into the menopausal woman. There is a significant absence of good population-based studies in the field of menopause research. The factors determining the level of a woman’s vulnerability to menopausal symptoms may include personal and social difficulties. For example, in respect of

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the former, death of kin (often a parent) may exacerbate somatic symptoms and also make a woman more vulnerable by depriving her of a source of support. In respect of social difficulties, research during the last two decades has indicated that working-class women tend to have more negative feelings about the menopause than middle-class women. Perlmutter and Bart (1982) have suggested that attitudes may mediate between physiological changes and the psychological responses of women. If menopause implies ageing to a woman and this is unacceptable, then it in turn could cause depression. The physiological change of menopause is thus given meaning through a cognitive labelling process that is influenced by both psychological and socio-cultural elements. A 1980 unpublished qualitative study of eighteen women attending a menopause clinic and sixteen ‘well-women’, all aged fifty, revealed a complex process of selfassessment regarding their health status. The women were found to measure ‘normality’ at menopause in terms of what they might reasonably expect given ideas derived from discussion with family, friends and some reading (Fairhurst and Lightup, 1980, cited in Hepworth 1981). This finding must in turn be put alongside the well-established finding that British women have had historically low expectations of ‘wellness’ (Blaxter and Paterson, 1982). Importantly, neither this literature nor feminist studies have begun the work of linking the changes in the balance of women’s activities over the life-course to the meaning of menopause. During the twentieth century the position of the fiftyyear-old woman has changed dramatically in relation to both the public world of paid employment and the private world of family relationships and unpaid work. Very broadly, during the early part of the century she would typically have been married and out of the formal labour market (the level of women’s casual, parttime work is unknown, but was certainly high especially before World War I). The post-World War I cohort of late middle-aged women was the first to live to see their last grandchildren born and hence to be available as possible childminders. The post-World War II menopausal woman was likely to have returned to the workforce after bringing up children, while her late twentiethcentury counterpart is increasingly likely to have had only short breaks from the labour market and to have increasing responsibilities for elderly dependants. Brody, (1981) has written of the pressures on ‘women in the middle’, juggling paid work and caring for home, husband and possibly children, grandchildren and elderly dependants. Traditionally and stereotypically problems of menopause have been associated with ‘the empty nest’, but the reality of the stress experienced by the average menopausal woman is likely to be considerably more complicated and conflictual than this analysis, grounded as it is in ideas about the existence of a ‘family wage’, would suggest. The invitation to address broader socio-cultural issues that might be associated with the menopause is extremely important, but this predominantly socialscience literature has little to say regarding the second and most powerful prong of the clinical findings on the preventive properties of HRT. The findings seem most conclusive regarding osteoporosis (which is not only the biggest killer of women over 80 but which also represents a cost to the NHS in osteoporotic fractures of £500 million per year (Lochie, 1990)), although estimates of the percentage of women at risk from the disease differ considerably. Some specialists maintain that one in three women will develop it (Doren and Schneider, 1989),

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others use a figure of one in four (WHC, 1990). One American text on the menopause maintains that degeneration of bone affects 60 per cent of untreated white women (Cutler and Garcia, 1984). The classic profile of a woman at very high risk of developing osteoporosis would be that of a slender caucasian with a family history of the disease, who smokes, drinks alcohol and coffee frequently, leads a sedentary indoor life and eats a diet lacking in calcium. In addition, the risk is greater in women who undergo early hysterectomy. Furthermore, medical research indicates that HRT is the only effective way of preventing osteoporosis, increasing the intake of calcium in middle age has no significant effect. Yet, as the editor of Maturitas, an international journal for the study of the climacteric, has noted, there has been very little investigation of the possibilities of nonhormonal medications. Between 1978 and 1986 Maturitas published 227 papers, of which 96 were related to HRT and only seven on nonhormonal therapy (Utian, 1986). More holistic approaches to health and to the problem of osteoporosis in particular are not so gloomy about the benefits of diet and exercise (see for example Greenwood, 1984). Vitamin E may help some women with the symptoms of menopause (e.g., hot flushes and vaginal dryness), and adequate intake of calcium throughout life is generally agreed to have preventive properties; but it is very difficult and may be impossible to make up for calcium deficiency in middle age. Weight-bearing exercise (such as running or walking) is certainly important in the prevention of osteoporosis, as it is in the prevention of so many other diseases. On the other hand, excessive exercise depletes bone mass; athletes are more rather than less prone to develop osteoporosis. As with so much else, the literature on this issue is not clear and opinions are changing all the time. Finally, there remain areas of disagreement even among medical specialists, the vast majority of whom are now favourably disposed towards HRT. In particular, there is no consensus on the percentage of women who might benefit from the treatment, the length of time it should be administered, or the method of treatment (by pill, patch or implant). Some early American advocates of the therapy advocated HRT for all women from menopause to death (e.g., Wilson, 1966). A few British proponents of the therapy would also take this view. Some advise HRT as a temporary treatment (of about five years duration). Some believe that there is no need to treat women who do not complain of menopausal symptoms, but others feel that the risk of osteoporosis justifies more general treatment. Conflicting views on these issues can be found between the covers of a single medical text on the menopause (see for example, Greenblatt et al. 1988 and Jones and Kemmann, 1988). On the method of treatment, while most consultants are agreed that either pills or patches (which can be changed by the woman herself but which must be taken in conjunction with progestogen tablets) may be recommended depending on the preferences and condition of the woman patient, opinion is sorely divided on implants, which are nonreversible. In many respects, the divisions in the specialist literature on HRT are made worse by the fact that they are rarely acknowledged to exist. Most specialists in the field take up a position firmly in favour of or against HRT. Medical textbooks may be more cautious, but as Laws (1990:135) has asked, how ‘is one to interpret a statement like “some doctors regard the menopause as an endocrine

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deficiency disease” when it is followed by no clear contradiction?’, or, it may be added, clear assessment of the state and nature of the debate. Women and HRT Even with a good knowledge of the literature on HRT women are likely to feel uncertain about the balance of advantages and risks. One (American) book taking a more holistic approach to the menopause described women in a menopause group discussing HRT and in so doing captured the genuine dilemmas women face and the difference that exists in views and experience: ‘After I talked to my doctor I felt like I’d shrivel up totally if I didn’t take it’, said Wendy. ‘Then I read Women and Crisis in Sex Hormones [Seaman and Seaman, 1977] and decided to take vitamin E and ginseng…’ Finally Carol spoke up, ‘It’s been really important for me to take estrogen. It’s made me feel much better mentally and physically. And I’m so glad to be rid of hot flushes and to be able to sleep through the night.’ ‘I wish ,here was a lot more research on the question’, said Clara, ‘I’m going to wait until I see better evidence in support of estrogen, and by then I’ll probably be too old to care one way or the other’ (Greenwood, 1984:87). All too often a decision to take HRT seems at best to be ‘the lesser of two evils’, especially when the risks of osteoporosis and cancer are also thrown into the equation (Kahn, 1984). Women seeking advice and/or help are most likely to go to their general practitioners. Recent studies of GPs’ practice regarding HRT show that they are also confused as to the risks and advantages. Bryce and Lilford (1990) reported that of a sample of 310 Yorkshire GPs, 14 per cent did not know that HRT protects women against osteoporosis and only 7 per cent routinely discussed the possibility of HRT with menopausal patients. Nevertheless, the authors concluded that while GPs showed poor knowledge of the available literature, their caution was justified in the absence of good randomized studies. If a woman persists and is referred to a consultant, then he or she is much more likely to prescribe HRT, but in what dose, form and for how long remain open questions. At the same time, women are likely to get an enormous amount of information about HRT from both women’s magazines and the national and provincial press. These have alternated with bewildering speed since the mid-1970s from dire warnings about the risks, to lauding the benefits of HRT. For example, in 1989 the press was divided between covering the Swedish study showing a link between HRT and breast cancer (Bryce and Lilford, 1990:8) and publicizing Theresa Gorman’s new Amarant Trust, founded to raise money for HRT research and treatment and to set up private HRT clinics. Newspapers were full of the revelation that not only Theresa Gorman, but also Kate O’Mara (of Dynasty fame) were on HRT, and of speculation about Margaret Thatcher in this respect (Sunday Express, 16.7.89; Spectator, 29.7.89, Sunday Times, 5.11.89). Kaufert and MacKinlay (1985) have made the interesting observation (based on US data)

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that since menopause and HRT have become open subjects for popular debate, the patient/doctor relationship has also undergone change. Given the constantly shifting balance between the risks and benefits of the treatment presented by medical studies, they suggest that it has increasingly made sense for doctors to give women more information in order that they might take responsibility for what is a difficult choice. Given what we know about GP behaviour in Britain, it seems that they are still more likely to ignore the issue than anything else, but what Kaufert and McKinlay say may be more true at consultant level. What is certain is that women will receive a variety of conflicting information from different sources. The popular literature written largely by women for women has tended to replicate the confusion of the specialist literature, dividing into the ‘menopauseas-deficiency-disease-and-therefore-HRT’ camp or the ‘menopause-as-naturallife-event’ school (e.g., Cooper, 1983 and Anderson, 1983 vs Seaman and Seaman, 1977 and Reitz, 1987). The aim of both schools of thought is explicitly to empower women. The one seeks to make HRT more available and holds up the youthful appearance and energetic behaviour of women such as Marjorie Proops, Mi-riam Stoppard, Sue Lawley, Anita Rodick, Valerie Singleton as advertisements for what can be achieved with the help of HRT. Advocates such as Theresa Gorman and her Amarant Trust (Amarant comes from the Greek amarantos, meaning ‘unfading’) would argue that women have a right to HRT. Feminist critics would point to the way in which such a position feeds the societal pressure on women to remain young and accepts the idea that in order to be successful women must become ‘superwomen’, competing with men on men’s terms while also conforming to traditional definitions of femininity. It may be that women campaigners for HRT have merely internalized these pressures, although it cannot be denied that many women, feminist and nonfeminist share the desire to retain youth and vigour (Duckitt, 1990). Some women are as suspicious of a medical profession that withholds HRT after years of dismissing menopausal problems entirely, as they are of the treatment itself (e.g., Cooper, 1983). The ‘menopause-as-natural-event’ school tends to be a more feminist literature. Germaine Greer’s recently published book, The Change, deplores the contempt in which menopausal women are often held with as much force as Theresa Gorman, taking the view that the postmenopausal woman has the chance to regain the passions, idealism and energy of her youth. But she is against HRT because it interferes with a natural process and, she argues, actually denies women the chance to change back into the people they were before they became ‘tools’ of their sexual and reproductive systems. In this, and in her denial of heterosexual desire in postmenopausal women, Greer’s argument would differ from many feminists. Indeed, there is no one feminist view of menopause any more than there is one feminism. But the feminist literature tends to be universally suspicious of HRT. This is in line with established feminist criticism of mainstream medical practice, which has shown the extent to which the medicalization of natural life-events such as childbirth or menopause involves medical control. Feminists are therefore much more cautious about HRT, a medical solution, as a panacea for the problems of menopause and much more likely to suggest that women explore alternative therapies. For

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feminists, empowerment means control rather than, as for the ‘meno-pause-as-deficiency-disease’ school, the capacity to succeed within parameters that are arguably set by men. The key issue therefore becomes, as Patricia Kaufert (1982) has pointed out, control over the diagnostic process. At the extreme, as in the literature on childbirth, feminists deny any significant role for doctors. Reitz (1987), whose influential (American) book, Menopause: A Positive Approach, was first published in 1977 and re-issued in a new edition in 1985, believes that women can ‘feel’ when they are entering the menopause, even when there is no specific sign. Contributions like that of Reitz emphasize the expertise of women and their ability to deal with menopause without medical intervention. Reitz begins her chapter on hormone replacement therapy by saying: ‘I feel neither deficient nor diseased.’ Kaufert (1982) has argued that such a feminist view of menopause is as much a myth as that built up by the medical profession and she points out how both feminists and doctors invoke the fear of disease to support their claim to make a diagnosis and manage the menopause. Reitz states boldly: ‘Estrogen replacement therapy is dangerous. It will raise your cancer risk’ (1987:179). Medical researchers counter with the threat that ‘loss of ovarian function is the primary aetiological factor in the genesis of postmenopausal bone loss’ (Whitehead and Studd, 1988:117). Most feminists would view the effort to exert control over the process of diagnosis and treatment as important, but not all would agree with a complete rejection of medical treatment for the problems of menopause any more than for labour pains during childbirth. As it is, women seeking information from the lay literature in the local libraries are likely to emerge as uncertain as those consulting a doctor. Studies of women’s attitudes towards menopause confirm this. Leiblum and Schwartzman’s (1986) sample of 244 peri-, pre-, and post-menopausal women who were all well educated revealed very diverse beliefs. The authors concluded that the rapid changes in medical opinion towards the experience and management of the menopause ‘have contributed to a sense of growing confusion among most women’. Draper and Roland (1990) found that among 84 women patients of an urban, mixed social class general practice, more than three-quarters were interested in taking HRT to prevent osteoporosis, but more than half were worried about side effects and wanted more information. A study of 100 Nottingham women of between 50 and 70 years old who had sustained a fracture and had been offered HRT found that while more younger women than older women were prepared to take it, the refusal rate ran at almost 50 per cent with almost a half of those giving no specific reason for refusal (Wallace et al. 1990). Thus while taboo and ignorance may have given way to significantly increased levels of knowledge as the debate about menopause and HRT has become more public, the confusion engendered has seemingly increased women’s demand for information. Given this picture of uncertainty and anxiety, it may be argued that the role of the organizations set up in whole or in part to provide advice to menopausal women is of particular importance. The work of two such organizations, Women’s Health Concern (WHC) and the Women’s Health and Reproductive Rights Information Centre (WHRRIC) will be considered briefly. WHC was set up in 1979 and since 1987 has dealt with about 42,000 enquiries a year on the menopause. WHC holds no feminist brief and faithfully reflects the trends in the

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medical specialist literature on an issue like HRT, but its first commitment is to ameliorating the suffering and anxieties of the women who come to it and it has also played a large role in making those sufferings and anxieties a public issue. The WHRRIC was set up in 1980 as an explicitly feminist organization. It receives around 1,000 enquiries a year about the menopause and is much more likely to respond by recommending a holistic approach to problems and by emphasizing what might done through diet and exercise in particular. Women seek information from organizations such as these for two basic reasons, either they have consulted a doctor about a problem and remain concerned about the nature of the diagnosis and treatment (usually, but not always, HRT) they were offered, or they are seeking information about alternatives to medical provision. WHC’s correspondence for 1990 included women wondering whether calcium supplements would not prove as efficacious as HRT and a small number seeking HRT as a means to ‘eternal youth’. There were also women who wrote that they were given information by their GPs that was unhelpful, for example the advice to use KY jelly for vaginal dryness or to use a lighter duvet to stop hot flushes. A large portion of WHC’s mailbag is prompted by press reports, which are often partial. For example, in response to the Daily Mirror’s (10.4.91) enthusiastic report on the new HRT drug, Livial, the organization received 3,000 letters within a few days and eventually put out a leaflet on the drug. The vast majority of the women approaching both WHC and the WHRRIC have started a course of HRT and are experiencing problems; relatively few seek alternative treatments in the first instance. The possibility of writing a letter, even more than making a telephone call, to a women’s health organization may be of special importance because it offers a certain privacy and anonymity. Women may be reluctant to reveal all their symptoms—for example, vaginal dryness—to (male) doctors, even if they go to them in the first instance (Cooper, 1983). As Laws (1990) has pointed out, the ‘etiquette’ surrounding menstruation has traditionally prohibited its frank discussion. There also continues to be evidence to support the contention that some GPs are dismissive of menopausal women’s problems or that they characterize menopausal patients in stereotypical ways. To some extent, the difference in the advice offered to women by WHC and the WHRRIC mirrors the differing responses of the ‘meno-pause-as-disease’ and the ‘menopause-as-natural-event schools discussed above. WHC is certainly ‘pro’ HRT. In its early days as the Association for Women’s Health Care, it accepted money from drug companies promoting HRT drugs in an effort to gain greater financial stability. This became the subject of controversy in the medical and daily press (e.g., Guardian, 18.8.78) and the Association was promptly disbanded; WHC is now a registered charity. WHC is not uncritical of the medical profession, taking the view that women have been failed by their doctors, who have denied them access to HRT.2 It does not recommend alternative therapies to HRT, but nor does it subscribe to the view that all women would be better off on HRT or advocate it as a means of perpetuating ‘eternal youth’. Women writing in are given detailed medical advice and insofar as this can be used by them in future interactions with their doctors it may be seen as empowering.

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The WHRRIC does not dismiss HRT, but stresses that the range of problems susceptible to treatment by it is limited and that the reactions of individual women to it may be very different. Whereas WHC seeks to mediate the relationship between women and established medicine, the WHRRIC seeks to empower women by placing a question mark over medical authority. It recommends that women try alternatives first and, like the book Menopause Naturally (Greenwood, 1984), which is recommended by the Centre, advises women to use a self-administered checklist to help them make a decision about advantages and disadvantages of HRT. Women are thus encouraged to participate in their own diagnosis. Women’s health organizations are important providers of advice outside the framework of the National Health Service (although often partially funded by government) both for those women who make them their first port of call and for the much greater number who seek a second opinion to set alongside that of their doctors. They reach much larger numbers of women than self-help groups or women’s health clinics, feminist and nonfeminist. Given the state of the debate over HRT, caution is healthy. But HRT can be helpful in treating common problems of menopause, like hot flushes, and women with a particularly high risk of developing osteoporosis may also have reason to consider the advantages as well as the disadvantages of taking it. Furthermore, a majority of women seeking advice and information have already been to doctors and a large number have already tried HRT. The vast majority of women turn to the medical profession first, indeed it was part of the feminist struggle earlier this century to make medical care available to all women through a national health service. There are, as Nancy Worcester and Mariamne Whatley (1992:22) have recently stated in this journal, ‘no simple answers’, and under the circumstances, it would seem that offering women a more sophisticated and up-to-date digest of the medical research, which is complicated, often contradictory and rapidly changing, may be as important a part of empowerment as offering information about alternatives. Notes Jane Lewis is a Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. Her main research interests are in the area of women and social policy, both currently and in the past. Her recent books include: Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England (Edward Elgar, 1991) and Women in Britain Since 1945 (Blackwell, 1992). 1 Pill (1987) has described a similar process of ‘conceptual medicalization’ for cystitis, whereby the biomedical approach led to the creation of ‘a pseudo-disease’. 2 See, for example, the reports of two interviews with Joan Jenkins, the founder of WHC, in the medical press: ‘Sick women who are failed by their GPs’, Doctor 29.4.82; and ‘GPs slated on menopause’, Doctor 21.9.89.

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References AITKEN, SWANN, I. (1977) Fertility Control and the Medical Profession London: Croom Helm. ANDERSON, Mary (1983) The Menopause London: Faber & Faber. BARLOW, D.H. (1990) ‘Hormone replacement therapy’ in R.SMITH, editor, Osteoporosis London: Royal College of Physicians, 135–42 . BELCHETZ, P. (1989) ‘HRT deserves wider use’ BMJ (editorial) 298, 1467 . BELL, Susan E. (1986) ‘A new model of medical technological development: a case study of DES’ Research in the Sociology of Health Care 4, 1–32 . ——(1987) ‘Changing ideas: the medicalization of menopause’ Social Science and Medicine 24, No. 6, 535–42 . BERGKVIST, L, ADAMI, H-O, PERSSON, I, HOOVER, R. and SCBAIRER, C. (1989) ‘The risk of breast cancer after estrogen and estrogen-progestin replacement’ New England Journal of Medicine 321, 293–7 . BLAXTER, M. and PATERSON, Elizabeth (1982) Mothers and Daughters: A Three Generational Study of Health Attitudes and Behaviour London: Heine-mann. BOSTON WOMEN’S HEALTH BOOK COLLECTIVE (1978) Our Bodies Ourselves British edition, A.PHILLIPS and J.RAKUSEN , editors. BRODY, Elaine M (1981) ‘“Women in the middle” and family help to older people’ The Gerontologist 21, 471–80 . BRYCE, F.C. and LILFORD, R.J. (1990) ‘GPs’ use of hormone replacement therapy in Yorkshire’ European Journal of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Reproductive Biology 37, 55–61 . COOPER, W. (1983) No Change. A Biological Revolution for Women London: Arrow Books. First edition 1975. CRAWFORD, M. (1970) ‘What happens at the change?’ New Society 29/10 , 771. CUTLER, Winifred Berg and GARCIA, Celso-Ramon (1984) The Medical Management of Menopause and Perimenopause Philadelphia: J.P.Lippincott Co. DOREN, M. and SCHNEIDER, H.P.G. (1989) ‘Overall rationale for Hormonal Substitution Therapy after the menopause’, in M.L’HERMITE , editor, Update on Hormonal Treatment in the Menopause New York: Basel Karger. DRAPER, J. and ROLAND, M. (1990) ‘Perimenopausal women’s views on taking HRT to prevent osteoporosis’ BMJ 300, 786–8 . DUCKITT, Kirsten (1990) ‘Feminine forever?’ Women in Medicine January, 10–11 . ESKIN, B.A. (1988) editor, The Monopause: Comprehensive Management New York: Macmillan. FAIRHURST, E. and LIGHTUP, R. (1980) ‘Being menopausal: women and medical treatment’, paper given to the Medical Sociology Conference of the BSA. FOSTER, Peggy (1991) ‘Well-Woman Clinics: a serious challenge to mainstream health care?’ in M.MACLEAN and D.GROVES , editors, Women’s Issues in Social Policy London: Routledge, 79–94 . GANNON, Linda R. (1985) Menstrual Disorders and Menopause New York: Praeger. GOODMAN, Madeleine (1980) ‘Towards a biology of menopause’ Signs 5, 4, 739–53 . GRAHAM, H. and OAKLEY, A. (1981) ‘Competing ideologies of reproduction’ in Helen ROBERTS , editor, Women, Health and Reproduction London: Rout-ledge & Kegan Paul, 50–74 .

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GREENBLATT, R.B. (1986) editor, A Modern Approach to the Perimenopausal Years New York: Walter de Gruyter. GREENBLATT, R.B., TERAN, Ana-Zully and KARPAS, Anthony (1988) ‘Hormone Replacement Therapy’ in ESKIN (1988) 273–97 . GREENE, J.G. (1984) The Social and Psychological Origins of the Climacteric Syndrome Aldershot: Gower. GREENWOOD, Sadja (1984) Menopause Naturally San Fransico: Volcano Press. GREER, Germaine (1991) The Change London: Hamish Hamilton. GRUHN, John G. and KAZER, Ralph R. (1989) Hormone Regulation of the Menstrual Cycle. The Evolution of Concepts London: Plenum Medical Book Co. HEPWORTH, M. (1981) ‘Sociological aspects of mid-life’ in The Controversial Climacteric Third International Conference on the Menopause, Lancaster: MTP Press. JONES, James R. and KEMMANN Ekkehad (1988) ‘Estrogen therapy and cancer’ in ESKIN (1988) 299–319 . KAHN, Alice (1984) ‘The estrogen dilemma’ Medical Self Care 27 , 40–5 . KASE, N. (1974) ‘Estrogens and the menopause’ Journal of the American Medical Association 227, 3, 318–9 . KAUFERT, Patricia A. (1982) ‘Myth and the menopause’ Sociology of Health and Illness 4, 141–66 . KAUFERT, Patricia A. and MCKINLAY, S.M. (1985) ‘Estrogen-Replacement Therapy: the production of medical knowledge and the emergence of policy’ in E.LEWIN and V.OLESEN , editors, Women, Health and Healing. Toward a New Perspective London: Tavistock, 113–38 . LAURITZEN, Ch. (1976) ‘A European viewpoint of management of the menopause’ in S. CAMPBELL editor, The Management of the Menopause and Post- Menopausal Years Lancaster: MTP Press. LAWS, Sophie (1990) Issues of Blood. The Politics of Menstruation London: Macmillan. LEESON, J. and GRAY, J. (1978) Women and Medicine London: Tavistock. LEIBLUM, Sandra R. and SWARTZMAN, Leora C. (1986) ‘Women’s attitudes towards the menopause: an update’ Maturitas 8, No. 1, 47–56 . LEWIS, J. (1980) The Politics of Motherhood London: Croom Helm. ——(1983) editor, ‘Women’s Welfare/Women’s Rights’ London: Croom Helm. LOCHIE, Cameron (1990) ‘HRT and menopause symposium: introduction’ The Practitioner 234, 8 May, 469 . McCREA, Frances B. (1983) ‘The politics of menopause: the “discovery” of a deficiency disease’ Social Problems 31, No. 1, 111–23 . McCREA, Frances B. and MARKLE, Gerald E. (1984) ‘The estrogen replacement controversy in the USA and UK: different answers to the same questions’ Social Studies of Science 14(1) February, 1–26 . MACK, T.M. et al. (1976) ‘Estrogens and endometrial cancer in a retirement community’ New England Journal of Medicine 294, 1262–67 . MCKINLAY, S.M. and JEFFERYS, M. (1974) ‘The menopausal syndrome’ British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine 28, 108–15 . MCKINLAY, S.M. and MCKINLAY, John B. (1986) ‘Health status and health care utilization by menopausal women’ in L.MASTROIANNI Jr and C.ALVIN PAUBEN, editors, Aging, Reproduction and the Climacteric London: Plenum Press, 243–62 .

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MAUDSLEY, Henry (1873) Body and Mind London: Macmillan. OAKLEY, A. (1980) Women Confined Oxford: Martin Robertson. ——(1983)‘Women and health policy’ in LEWIS ( 1983). ——(1984) The Captured Womb. A History of the Medical Care of Pregnant Women Oxford: Blackwell. OLESEN, Virginia (1982) ‘Sociological observations on ethical issues implicated in ERT at menopause’ in VODA, DINNERSTEIN and O’DONNELL (1982) 346–60 . PERLMUTTER, Ellen and BART, Pauline B. (1982) ‘Changing views of “the change”: a critical review and suggestions for an attributional approach’ in VODA, DINNERSTEIN and O’DONNELL (1982) 187–99 . PILL, Roison (1987) ‘Models and management: the case of “cystitis” in women’ Sociology of Health and Illness 9, No. 3, 265–85 . REITZ, Rosetta (1987) Menopause: A Positive Approach London: Unwin Hyman. First edition 1977. RIESSMAN, Catherine Kohler (1983) ‘Women and medicalization: a new perspective’ Social Policy 14, No. 1, 3–18 . ROSSI, Alice S. (1980) ‘Life span theories and women’s lives’ Signs 6, No. 4, 4–32 . SEAMAN, B. and SEAMAN, G. (1977) Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones New York: Bantam. SMITH, D.C. et al. (1975) ‘Association of exogenous estrogen and endometrial carcinoma’ New England Journal of Medicine 293, 1164–7 . SMITH Rosenberg C. (1973) ‘Puberty to menopause: the cycle of femininity in nineteenthcentury America’ Feminist Studies 1, 58–72 . STIMPSON, Catherine R. (1982) ‘The fallacy of bodily reductionism’ in VODA, DINNERSTEIN and O’DONNELL (1982) 265–72 . STUDD, J.W.W. and WHITEHEAD, Malcolm I. (1988) editors, ‘Foreword’ in The Menopause Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Pubs. TEO, Philip Y.K. (1990) ‘Hysterectomy: a change of trend or a change of heart?’ in Helen ROBERTS , editor, Women’s Health Counts London: Routledge. UTIAN, W.H. (1986) ‘Non-hormonal medication’ in GREENBLATT (1986) 109–25 . VODA, Ann M., DINNERSTEIN, M. and O’DONNELL, Sheryl R. (1982) editors, Changing Perspectives on Menopause Austin: University of Texas Press. WALLACE, W.A., BRUCE, V.H., ELLIOT, C.A. MACPHERSON. M.B.A. and SCOTT, B.W. (1990) ‘HRT acceptability to Nottingham post-menopausal women with a risk factor for osteoporosis’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 83, 11, 699–701 . WEISS, N.S., SZEKELY, D.R. and AUSTIN, F. (1976) ‘Increasing incidence of endometrial cancer in the US’ New England Journal of Medicine 294, 1259–62 . WHITEHEAD, M. and STUDD, J. (1988) ‘Selection of patients for treatment. Which therapy and for how long?’: in STUDD and WHITEHEAD (1988). WILSON, Robert A. (1966) Feminine Forever London: W.H.Allen. WOMEN’S HEALTH CONCERN (WHC) (1990) Report: Seeking a Consensus View London: WHC. ——(1980–1990) Annual Reports . WORCESTER, Nancy and WHATLEY, Mariamne (1992) ‘The Selling of HRT: Playing on the Fear Factor’ Feminist Review 41 , Summer 1992, 1–25 . ZIEL H.K. and FINKLE, W.D. (1975) ‘Increased risk of endometrial carcinoma among users of conjugated estrogens’ New England Journal of Medicine 293, 1167–70 .

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FEMINISM AND DISABILITY Jenny Morris

This article has its roots in a series of seminars on Researching Physical Disability, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. As a feminist I should have felt a sense of unity with other feminist researchers attending the seminars and there certainly were occasions when a sense of sisterly solidarity prevailed against the way that some of the male participants operated. As a disabled woman, however, I felt a deep sense of alienation from the nondisabled feminists present and anger that there seemed to be an assumption that they were ‘on the same side’ as me. This alienation and anger comes from the failure of feminism to integrate the concerns of disabled women into its theory, methodology, research and politics. My sense of alienation also extends to Feminist Review for, looking at my copies of back issues of this journal, the only reference to disability is a book review which I myself wrote in 1989. (Nasa Begum’s article Disabled Women and the Feminist Agenda, was published in FR40 after this article was written.) My confidence that this is an appropriate forum for this article falters. Yet I believe that feminism itself is the poorer for its failure to address the concerns of disabled women. Coming at it from another angle, I also believe that feminist theory and methodology has a major contribution to make to disability research. The alienation and anger that I feel stem from two characteristics of feminism: firstly, the way in which disability is generally invisible in terms of feminism’s mainstream agenda; secondly, the way in which, when disability is a subject for research by feminists, the researchers fail to take on the subjective reality of disabled people, instead objectifying us so that the research is alienated from our experience. Missing us out There have been two stages to the development of feminism in an academic context over the last twenty years or so. The first was that of ‘adding women in’ to the previously male-dominated view of the world. This produced some revealing studies in a number of different disciplines, but it was the second stage that was more revolutionary. Feminists found that, rather than just adding women to the subject matter of research, theories and methodologies had to be Feminist Review No 43, Spring 1993

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fundamentally challenged for existing models and paradigms were inadequate to explain women’s (or indeed men’s) realities. In so doing, feminists not only asserted that the personal, subjective experience of women was a legitimate area of research but that how this research was done had to be revolutionized. They went on to develop new paradigms, theories and, finally, a new philosophy which illustrated that feminism is not just about the study of women but is an entirely new way of looking at the world. The most recent developments in feminist thought have focused on a recognition of the experiences of different groups of women and the relationship between gender and other forms of oppression. Elizabeth Spelman, amongst other feminist philosophers, has argued in her book, Inessential Woman (1990) that feminism’s assertion of what women have in common has almost always been a description of white, middle-class women and that when other groups of women are considered they tend to be ‘added on’ as subjects of research and theorizing. White, middle-class women’s experiences have been taken as the norm and other women’s experiences have been treated as ‘different’, as the subject of particular study and analysis. Thus, white, middle-class women’s reality is the basis of general theory and analysis (in the same way that men’s reality was), and the reality of other groups of women is treated as particular, as separate from the general. Spelman writes, for example, ‘Most philosophical accounts of “man’s nature” are not about women at all. But neither are most feminist accounts of “woman’s nature”, or “women’s experiences” about all women. There are startling parallels between what feminists find disappointing and insulting in Western philosophical thought and what many women have found troubling in much of Western feminism’ (Spelman, 1990:6). Such a recognition has (potentially) as radical an effect on feminist thought as feminism itself has had on world views dominated by men and men’s experiences. Yet there are two groups of women who are missing from Spelman’s analysis. In identifying that ‘working-class women, lesbian women, Jewish women and women of colour’ have been considered as ‘inessential’ within feminist philosophy, Spelman has—in common with most nondisabled feminists—left out two important groups, namely older women and disabled women. Disability and old age are aspects of identity with which gender is very much entwined but they are identities which have been almost entirely ignored by feminists. Feminist theory has been broadened, and refined, by the placing of the issues of class and race at the heart of feminism as a philosophy and as explanation. But the issues of disability and old age are either not considered at all, or dismissed in the way that Caroline Ramazanoglu does when she justifies her failure to incorporate disabled and older women into her analysis. She writes ‘while these are crucial areas of oppression for many women, they take different forms in different cultures, and so are difficult to generalise about. They are also forms of difference which could be transformed by changes in consciousness’ (Ramazanoglu 1989:95). These are really flimsy arguments. Racism also takes different forms in different cultures yet recent feminist analysis has, quite rightly, argued that Black women’s experiences and interests must be placed at the heart of feminist research and theory. Her second statement is an extraordinary denial of the socio-economic base of the oppression which older

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people and disabled people experience—we might as well say that racism can be eradicated by compulsory antiracism training. The fact that disability has not been integrated into feminist theory arises from one of the most significant problems with feminism’s premise that ‘the personal is political’. As Charlotte Bunch acknowledges in her exploration of divisions and coalitions amongst feminists from the point of view of lesbians, women have often failed to take account of different experiences and interests. In looking at diversity among women, we see one of the weaknesses of the feminist concept that the personal is political. It is valid that each woman begins from her personal experiences and it is important to see how these are political. But we must also recognize that our personal experiences are shaped by the culture with all its prejudices. We cannot therefore depend on our perceptions alone as the basis for political analysis and action— much less for coalition. Feminists must stretch beyond, challenging the limits of our own personal experiences by learning from the diversity of women’s lives (Bunch, 1988:290). Disabled people—men and women—have little opportunity to portray our own experiences within the general culture—or within radical political movements. Our experience is isolated, individualized; the definitions which society places on us centre on nondisabled people’s judgements of individual capacities and personalities and are dominated by what disability means to nondisabled people. This lack of a voice, of the representation of our subjective reality, means that it is difficult for nondisabled feminists to incorporate our reality into their research, their theories, unless it is in terms of the way the nondisabled world sees us. This does not mean that the experience of disability and old age should be ‘added on’ to existing feminist theory. Integrating these two aspects of identity into feminist thought will be just as revolutionary as feminism’s political and theoretical challenge to the way that the experience of the white male was taken as representative of general human experience. Indeed feminism’s challenge must remain incomplete while it excludes two such important aspects of human experience and modes of social and economic oppression. Research as alienation Patricia Hill Collins, writing about the development of Black feminist thought, echoes a general concern of feminism when she says, ‘Groups unequal in power are correspondingly unequal in their ability to make their standpoint known to themselves and others’ (Hill Collins, 1990:6). Feminism’s central task has been to make women’s standpoint known to both ourselves and to others. In an academic context, this is not so much an ideological position on women’s oppression; rather it is, as Dorothy Smith says, a method ‘that, at the outset of inquiry, creates the space for an absent subject, and an absent experience, that is to be filled with the presence and spoken experience of actual women speaking of and in the actualities of their everyday worlds’ (Smith, 1988:107).

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Feminist research over the last twenty years has been characterized by an attempt to ‘create space for an absent subject’, in contrast to the way in which women have frequently been objectified by and thus alienated from ‘research on women’. Liz Stanley identifies three factors which distinguish ‘unalienated knowledge’ in feminist terms: —the researcher/theorist is grounded as an actual person in a concrete setting; —understanding and theorising are located and treated as material activities and not as unanalysable metaphysical ‘transcendent’ ones different in kind from those of ‘mere people’; and —the ‘act of knowing’ is examined as the crucial determiner of ‘what is known’ (Stanley, 1990:12) If we apply these principles to feminist research concerning disability, however, we see that such research is in fact alienated knowledge as far as disabled people are concerned. This is because the researcher/theorist has not grounded herself as a nondisabled person holding certain cultural assumptions about disability; because the understanding and theorizing have not been treated as taking place in the context of an unequal relationship between nondisabled people and disabled people; and because the ‘act of knowing’, which in this case is predicated on the social meaning of disability, has not been examined as the crucial determiner of ‘what is known’. Feminist research on informal carers is a prime example of the production of alienated research from the point of view of disabled people. Most of this research explicitly separates out nondisabled women from disabled women. Gillian Dalley’s Ideologies of Caring (1988), for example, refers to ‘women and dependent people’ as if they are two completely separate groups, whose interests, what is more, are in conflict. She introduces her book by saying, ‘This book is about dependent people and the women who usually care for them’ (Dalley, 1988:1). This separation of ‘women’ from disabled and older people is evident in most of the feminist research on caring and has major implications for the questions and issues which feminists consider important. Finch and Groves (1983), for example, identified that the equal opportunity issues around community care were those concerning the sexual division of labour between men and women as carers. In none of the pieces of research is there any analysis of equal opportunity issues for disabled and older women. This separating out of disabled and older women from the category of ‘women’ comes about because of a failure of the feminist researchers concerned to identify with the subjective experience of those who need some form of care. The principle of ‘the personal is political’ is applied to carers but not to the cared for. This general tendency is articulated by Clare Ungerson’s account of why the issue of caring is of personal significance to her. She writes My interest in carers and the work that they do arises out of my own biography. The fact that my mother was a carer and looked after my

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grandmother in our home until my grandmother’s death when I was 14 combines with the knowledge that, as an only daughter, my future contains the distinct possibility that I will sooner or later become a carer myself (Ungerson, 1987:2). Lois Keith, a disabled feminist, commented on Ungerson’s inability to see herself (and not just her mother) as potentially a person who needs physical care. Most of us can imagine being responsible for someone weaker than ourselves, even if we hope this won’t happen. It is certainly easier to see ourselves as being needed, than to imagine ourselves as dependent on our partner, parents or children for some of our most basic needs (Keith, 1990). Ungerson’s failure to identify with the interests and experiences of those who need care is then carried over into her feminist analysis. Thus she writes, ‘The second set of reasons for writing this book is that it accords with and is fed by my own commitment to women-centred issues and to feminism’. She goes on to identify what are the ‘women-centred’ issues around community care, writing It has almost reached the dimensions of banality to claim that most carers are women. Nevertheless, given the accuracy of that statement, it seems to me necessary to explore the full implications of the fact. If most carers are women, do women carers feel that what they do is particularly compatible with their female identity? Do men carers feel emasculated? How do women carers feel about caring for men? How do men carers feel about caring for women? There is more to a feminist approach to knowledge than in the documentation of the role of women in a set of social processes; while this is important, it is also necessary (and even exciting) to use issues of sex and gender to illuminate those very social processes. The topics discussed in this book are always considered from a gendered perspective; in other words, I have tried throughout to think about the issues by asking the question, do sex and gender make a difference? (Ungerson, 1987:2). Like most feminists who have written on this subject, Ungerson fails to incorporate into her analysis the fact that, not only are most carers women (although, in fact, not such a large proportion as feminists have assumed), but so are most of ‘the cared for’. Her analysis of social processes involved in the issue of caring must remain incomplete while she considers only one part of the caring relationship and, far from being exciting, research such as hers is profoundly depressing from the point of view of disabled and older women who are yet again marginalized but this time by those who proclaim their commitment to ‘women-centred issues’. Feminist research on carers is a valuable application of the principle ‘the personal is political’ and I do not underestimate the importance of the higher public

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profile of the needs of carers which this research has helped to bring about. However, the failure to include the subjective experience of disabled and older people has resulted in a dilemma being posed between ‘care in the community’ or residential care. Feminists such as Janet Finch and Gillian Dalley have then come down in favour of residential care for older and disabled people on the grounds that this is the only way to prevent the exploitation of women as informal carers. Finch writes, ‘On balance it seems to me that the residential route is the only one which ultimately will offer us a way out of the impasse of caring’ (Finch, 1984:16). The term ‘us’ in this context quite obviously does not encompass the interests of disabled women so Finch and others have been able to ignore the opposition of disabled people and their organizations to institutional ‘care’. (For a fuller discussion of feminist research on carers see the chapter on ‘Feminist research and community care’ in Morris, 1991.) Disability—a challenge f or feminism Disability is an important issue for women but the subject of ‘disabled women’ should not be tacked on as a ‘free-standing’ research subject bearing no relationship to other research areas in which feminists are engaged. In my own research, I have recently come across three examples of oppression experienced by disabled women where gender issues intermesh with disability, although in different ways: ● the rape of a young disabled woman by an ambulance attendant while she was being taken home from a residential college with a broken arm; ● the recording, by a male social worker, in the case notes of a disabled client that he thought he had discovered her masturbating and the conclusions that he drew from this about her personality; ● a policeman and social worker waiting in a hospital corridor for a disabled woman to give birth at which point they removed her baby from her under a Place of Safety Order on the grounds that her physical disability prevented her from looking after the child. These incidents are all concerned with violation of one kind or another and they all take place in the context of both unequal power relationships and oppressive ideologies. All three examples illustrate different ways in which the oppression experienced by women and by disabled people intermesh. What is more interesting to me, however, is whether the experience of the women described above appears on the main agenda of nondisabled feminist researchers—or is it, at best, tacked on as a supplementary issue, on the assumption that disabled women’s experience is separate from that of nondisabled women? My challenge to feminists, therefore, is that they need to ask themselves whether these experiences of oppression are only of interest to disabled women. I would also argue that it is not very helpful to talk about disabled women experiencing a ‘double disadvantage’. Images of disadvantage are such an important part of the experience of oppression that research which seeks to

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further the interests of ‘the researched’ must consistently challenge them. Therein lies one of the problems with examining the relationship between gender and disability, race and disability in terms of ‘double disadvantage’. The research can itself be part of the images of disadvantage. Feminist research and theorizing which is concerned with nondis-abled women has often been driven by a sense of outrage at the consequences of women’s powerlessness in relation to men. Whether it is domestic violence, rape, unequal pay or sex-role stereotyping in children’s books, such research refuses to see women as passive victims and the motivating anger is an important part of the empowerment process. The focus has very much been on men and social institutions as the problem. In contrast, there is a tendency when describing the ‘double disadvantage’ that disabled women experience to shift attention away from nondisabled people and social institutions as being the problem and onto disabled women as passive victims of oppression. If disability research is to be unalienated research then it must be part of disabled people’s struggle to take over ownership of the definition of oppression, of the translation of their subjective reality. As Alice Walker writes—‘In my own work I write not only what I want to read…. I write all the things I should have been able to read’. I don’t think that I, or many other disabled women, want to read of nondisabled researchers analysing how awful our lives are because we ‘suffer from’ two modes of oppression. If feminists are to concern themselves with disability research, such research must aim to empower disabled people. Nondisabled researchers have to start by questioning their own attitudes to disability. For example, why does Caroline Ramazanoglu dismiss disability and old age in the way that she does? Clearly, she cannot see either as a source of strength, celebration or liberation in the way that race, class and gender can become through a process of struggle. Nondisabled feminists need to examine why not. Feminist research places women’s subjective reality (i.e., experience defined in the subject’s own terms) at its core. However, when researchers (feminist or not) approach disabled people as a research subject, they have few tools with which to understand our subjective reality because our own definitions of the experience of disability are missing from the general culture. If nondisabled people are to carry on doing research on disability—as they undoubtedly will—they need to consider how they can develop an understanding of our subjective reality. It is also important that they do the kind of research which turns the spotlight on the oppressors. Nondisabled people’s behaviour towards disabled people is a social problem—it is a social problem because it is an expression of prejudice. Such expressions of prejudice take place within personal relationships as well as through social, economic and political institutions and, for example, a study of a caring relationship would therefore need to concern itself with prejudice (disablism), in the same way that studies of relationships between men and women concern themselves with sexism. Disabled people’s personal experience of prejudice must be made political— and space must be created for the ‘absent subject’ in the way that feminist research has done for nondisabled women. An example of research which needs to be done is that concerning the experience of abuse within institutions. Such research should seek to do three things:

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● name the experience as abuse; ● give expression to the anger, pain and hurt resulting from such experiences; ● focus on the perpetrators of such abuse, examining how and why it comes about. The disability movement has started to identify the different forms of institutional abuse that disabled people experience. One example is what has been called ‘public stripping’. This is experienced by many disabled people in a hospital setting. For example, Anne, a woman with spina bifida, described her experience throughout her childhood when she was required by an orthopaedic consultant to be examined once a year. These examinations took place in a large room, with twenty or more doctors and physiotherapists looking on. After the hospital acquired videotaping equipment the examinations were videotaped. She described how, when she was twelve, she tried to keep on her bra which she had just started to wear. I quote from the article which described her experience: ‘The doctor, in order to explain something about her back, took it off without saying anything to her, but with noticeable irritation. A nurse quickly apologised—not to Anne but to the doctor’ (Disability Rag, Jan/Feb 1990). Anne knew that this kind of humiliation was inflicted on her because she was, as one doctor called her, ‘significantly deformed and handicapped’. The prejudice and the unequal power relationship which are an integral part of disabled people’s experience of health services has led, in this type of situation, to both abuse and exploitation: abuse because privacy and personal autonomy have been violated, leading to long-lasting psychological consequences for many who have experienced this kind of public stripping; exploitation because, rather than being provided with a medical service (which is why people go to doctors and hospitals) people like Anne are actually providing a service to the medical profession. All oppressed groups need allies and, by doing research which gives voice to our experience, feminist researchers can help to empower disabled women. However, nondisabled feminists must also ask themselves where are the disabled researchers? students? academics? If they are truly to be allies we need them to recognize and challenge both direct and indirect discrimination. Unfortunately, most nondisabled people don’t even recognize the way that discrimination against disabled people operates within their workplace. Why do feminist academics put up with the way that most academic institutions fail to comply with the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944 which requires them to employ a minimum of 3 per cent registered disabled people. Getting disabled people into the positions where we play a full role in carrying out research and disseminating it is as important for disabled people as the same process was and is for women. As Audre Lorde says, ‘It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others—and for their use and to our detriment’ (quoted by Hill Collins, 1990:26).

Disabled women protest against offensive steretyping

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The relevance of feminism to disability research My life as a feminist began with my recognition that women are excluded from the public sphere, ghettoized into the private world of the family, our standpoint excluded from cultural representations. When I became disabled I also realized that the public world does not take the individual, particular, physical needs of disabled people into account. Just as it assumes that children are reared, workers are serviced somewhere else—i.e., in the private world of the family—so people whose physical characteristics mean that they require help of some kind (whether this need is actually created by the physical environment or not) have no place in the public world. As a feminist I recognized that men’s standpoint is represented as universal and neutral. Simone de Beauvoir wrote, ‘the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles for man represents both the positive and the neutral…whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity’. (1972, 15) Women have thus been excluded from a full share in the making of what becomes treated as our culture. When I became disabled I realized that, although disability is part of human experience, it does not appear within the different forms that culture takes—except in terms defined by the nondisabled (just as the cultural representation of women was/is defined by men). A lack of disability is treated as both the positive and the universal experience; while the experience of disability ‘represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity’. Rereading such classic feminist texts as a disabled woman, I felt that I had rediscovered the validity of such ideas all over again—it was almost like becoming a ‘born again feminist’. My feelings of elation, however, were churned up with a powerful sense of exclusion for—although feminist ideas seem so relevant to disability—none of the works which I was reading acknowledged this. The way in which a feminist perspective so obviously helps to make sense of the experience of disability illustrates the exciting potential for bringing a feminist analysis to more traditional disability research. There are two points which I want to make in this respect. The role of research in personal liberation For women like me, as Liz Stanley and Sue Wise write, feminism is a way of living our lives. It occurs as and when women, individually and together, hesitantly and rampantly, joyously and with deep sorrow, come to see our lives differently and to reject externally imposed frames of reference for understanding these lives, instead beginning the slow process of constructing our own ways of seeing them, understanding them, and living them. For us, the insistence on the deeply political nature of everyday life and on seeing political change as personal change, is quite simply, ‘feminism’ (Stanley and Wise, 1983:192).

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In a similar fashion, a disability-rights perspective—which identifies that it is the nondisabled world which disables and oppresses me—enables me to understand my experience, and to reject the oppressive ideologies which are applied to me as a disabled woman. I look to disability research to validate this perspective (in the same way that feminist research has validated a feminist consciousness). Susan Griffin identified the way in which, during the 1970s, women asserted that our lives, as well as men’s lives, were worthy of contemplation; that what we suffered in our lives was not always natural, but was instead the consequences of a political distribution of power. And finally, by these words, we said that the feelings we had of discomfort, dissatisfaction, grief, anger and rage were not madness, but sanity (Griffin, 1982:6). I look to disability research to confirm the relevance of these words to disabled people—our anger is not about having ‘a chip on your shoulder’, our grief is not ‘a failure to come to terms with disability’. Our dissatisfaction with our lives is not a personality defect but a sane response to the oppression which we experience. Unfortunately very little disability research does anything other than confirm the oppressive images of disability. The personal experience of disability Disabled researchers such as Vic Finkelstein (Finkelstein, 1980) and Mike Oliver (Oliver, 1990) have been arguing for years against the medical model of disability and in so doing they have been making the personal political in the sense that they have insisted that what appears to be an individual experience of disability is in fact socially constructed. However, we also need to hang on to the other sense of making the personal political and that is owning, taking control of, the representation of the personal experience of disability—including the negative parts to the experience. Unfortunately, in our attempts to challenge the medical and the ‘personal tragedy’ models of disability, we have sometimes tended to deny the personal experience of disability. (This is a tendency which Sally French discusses in the context of the experience of visual impairment, see French, forthcoming.) Disability is associated with illness, and with old age (two-thirds of disabled people are over the age of sixty), and with conditions which are inevitably painful. The Liberation Network of People with Disabilities, an organization which made an explicit attempt to incorporate the politics of the personal, recognized this in their policy statement. This statement included the point that, unlike other forms of oppression, being disabled is ‘often an additional drain on the resources of the individual, i.e., it is not inherently distressing to be black, whilst it may be to suffer from painful arthritis’ (In From the Cold, June 1981). To experience disability is to experience the frailty of the human body. If we deny this we will find that our personal experience of disability will remain an isolated one; we

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will experience our differences as something peculiar to us as individuals—and we will commonly feel a sense of personal blame and responsibility. The experience of ageing, of being ill, of being in pain, of physical and intellectual limitations, are all part of the experience of living. Fear of all of these things, however, means that there is little cultural representation which creates an understanding of their subjective reality. The disability movement needs to take on the feminist principle of the personal is political and, in giving voice to such subjective experiences, assert the value of our lives (see Morris, 1991). Disability research can play a key role in this. Into the mainstream The experience of disability is part of the wider and fundamental issues of prejudice and economic inequality. Black people’s experience of racism cannot be compartmentalized and studied separately from the underlying social structure; women’s experience of sexism cannot be separated from the society in which it takes place; and neither can disabled people’s experience of disabilism and inequality be divorced from the society in which we all live. That society is characterized by fundamental inequalities and by ideologies which divide people against each other—the experience of disability is an integral part of this. Just as feminists ask how and why the public world assumes that responsibilities and tasks which take place within the private world will not impinge on the responsibilities and tasks of the workplace, so disability research must ask how and why the public world assumes a lack of disability and illness. It is such a focus which takes both women and disabled people out of a research ghetto for these are fundamental questions about the very nature of social and economic organization. Disabled feminists (such as Nasa Begum—see Begum, 1990) are also demanding that nondisabled feminists put our concerns and our experiences firmly on to their own agendas. Just as Black feminists have insisted that feminist research has to address the experiences and interests of Black women so we are insisting that our experience is no longer treated as invisible. Why are we missing from feminist research on women and employment/unemployment, women and sexuality, women and housing, women and social policy, women and health? Unless such research covers our experience it can only be incomplete and inadequate, in terms of both its empirical and theoretical significance. Feminism is the poorer for its failure to integrate disability into the mainstream of its concerns and it has much to gain by redressing this omission. Notes Jenny Morris is a feminist and a freelance writer and researcher, mainly working on issues of social policy. She is the editor of Able Lives: Women’s Experience of Paralysis (The Women’s Press, 1989), author of Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability (The Women’s Press, 1991) and editor of Alone Together: Voices of Single Mothers (The Women’s Press, 1992)].

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Her latest research, Community Care, Independent Living and Disabled People will be published by Macmillan in December 1993. References BEGUM, Nasa (1990) Burden of Gratitude; Women with Disabilities Receiving Personal Care Warwick: Social Care Practice Centre/Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Warwick. BUNCH, Charlotte (1988) ‘Making common cause: diversity and coalitions’ in Christian McEWEN and Sue O’SULLIVAN, editors, Out the Other Side London: Virago. DALLEY, Gillian (1988) Ideologies of Caring—Rethinking Community and Collectivism London: Macmillan. de BEAUVOIR, Simone (1972) The Second Sex Harmondsworth: Penguin, 15. FINCH, Janet (1984) ‘Community care: developing non-sexist alternatives’ Critical Social Policy 9 . FINCH, Janet and GROVES, Dulcie (1983) A Labour of Love—Women, Work and Caring London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. FINKELSTEIN, Victor (1980) Attitudes and Disabled People: Issues for Discussion New York: World Rehabilitation Fund. FRENCH, Sally (forthcoming) ‘Disability, impairment or something in between?’ in Disabling Society, Enabling Environment Milton Keynes: Open University Press. GRIFFIN, Susan (1982) Made from this Earth London: The Women’s Press. HILL COLLINS, Patricia (1990) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment London: Unwin Hyman. KEITH, Lois (1990) ‘Caring Partnership’ in Community Care 22 February pp. v-vi . MORRIS, Jenny (1989) Able Lives: Women’s Experience of Paralysis , London: The Women’s Press. ——(1991) Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability London: The Women’s Press. OLIVER, Michael (1990) The Politics of Disablement London: Macmillan. RAMAZANOGLU, Caroline (1989) Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression London: Routledge. SMITH, Dorothy (1988) The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology Milton Keynes: Open University Press. SPELMAN, Elizabeth (1990) Inessential Woman London: The Women’s Press. STANLEY, Liz (1990) Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology London: Routledge. STANLEY, Liz and WISE, Sue ( 1983) ‘Back into the personal or: our attempt to construct “feminist research”’ in G.BOWLES and KLEIN, Theories of Women’s Studies London: Routledge. UNGERSON, Clare (1987) Policy is Personal London: Tavistock.

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‘WHAT IS PORNOGRAPHY?’: An Analysis of the Policy Statement of the Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship Anna Marie Smith

The Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship (CPC) is a British group which was established in April 1989. Its activities can be described in terms of four projects. First, the CPC has engaged in a media campaign in which it has attempted to demonstrate the direct links between pornography and violence against women. It has won a largely favourable response from the ‘quality’ daily and Sunday newspapers, and its co-ordinator, Cathy Itzen, co-authored a Cosmopolitan survey on readers’ experiences with pornography. Second, the CPC organized a conference for men on opposing pornography which was held in London in September 1990. It attracted over one hundred participants and included presentations by American antipornography activist, John Stoltenberg and the British writer, Michael Moorcock. Third, the CPC has worked with a group of lawyers to propose new laws against pornography. Itzen has stated that the CPC favours legal measures which would enable women to sue the producers and distributors of pornography for any ‘harm’ caused by this material. Its proposed legislation will be modelled on both the American MacKinnonDworkin by-laws and existing British race relations legislation. Fourth, CPC members have been active within the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL). Although they were successful in sponsoring a resolution which instructed the NCCL to consider new laws on pornography in 1989, counterresolutions against this legislative initative were passed in 1990 and 1991. The CPC’s definition of pornography is central to its overall philosophy. In their ‘Policy Statement’, they define pornography as the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/ or words, that also includes one or more of the following: women portrayed as sexual objects, things or commodities, enjoying pain or humiliation or rape, being tied up, cut up, mutilated, bruised or physically hurt, in postures of sexual submission or servility or display, reduced to body parts, penetrated by objects or animals, or presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, torture, shown as inferior, bleeding, bruised or hurt in a context which is sexual.

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Pornography does not include erotica (defined as sexually explicit materials premised on equality) and it does not include bona fide sex education materials, or medical or forensic literature. In short, we define pornography as depicting a combination of the sexual objectification and subordination of women, often including violation and violence. This definition is neither a self-evident, common-sense statement of fact, nor an irrelevant technical detail. The CPC’s attempt to define pornography rests on complex strategies of argumentation, a traditional conception of representation and, most important, a highly contestable view of gender relations. They have published two versions of their ‘Policy Statement’ which contains this definition. The two versions are virtually the same; the six sections of the statement are presented in a different order in the second version. I am using the first version in this essay. The CPC’s definition is almost directly quoted from the Minneapolis Ordinance which was drafted by Catherine Mac-Kinnon and Andrea Dworkin. MacKinnon and Dworkin’s definition has been discussed in detail elsewhere (Duggan, Hunter and Vance 1988). I shall focus instead on the ‘What pornography is’ section which leads up to the definition in the ‘Policy Statement’. The latter document is reproduced in full in Feminism and Censorship (Chester and Dickey, 1988:270–3). The six sections of the ‘Policy Statement’ can be briefly summarized as follows. The ‘What pornography is’ section features a list of different kinds of sexually explicit imagery and presents the definition of pornography which is quoted above. ‘Pornography and censorship’ addresses the CPC’s position on the censorious character of pornography, and links the limitation of pornography to the promotion of women’s civil liberties. ‘Pornography and obscenity’ criticizes existing obscenity legislation on the grounds that it ‘keeps pornography accessible to men’. Whereas obscenity legislation defines pornography ‘subjectively’, as material which is ‘“offensive”’ and ‘“likely to deprave and corrupt”’, the CPC argues that ‘pornography is concrete and objective and can be described and defined specifically’. The CPC is also critical of the censorious use of obscenity legislation against ‘art, literature and free speech’ which curtail the ‘freedoms of gay men and lesbian women’. It argues that obscenity legislation should be repealed and replaced with legislation against pornography, which would take up the CPC’s own definition. ‘Sexism’ sets out the CPC’s views on the oppression of women. Gender relations are described as a ‘system of sexism in which men as a group have access to power and privilege that women do not have’, such that women are subjected to discrimination, exclusion, violence, treatment as ‘sex objects’ and sentimentalization. The CPC states that both ‘women and men are conditioned to accept their roles as “subordinate” and “dominant” respectively’. In “Pornography and sexism”, sexist imagery is represented as a continuum, with pornography as the ‘most extreme portrayal of women as less than human and less than equal’. Pornography is supposed to ‘sexualize women’s inequality’ in that it depicts women ‘only in terms of their sexuality as represented by pornography, in which their very existence and value is defined solely in terms

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of the sexual uses to which they can be put’. Pornographic representation is supposed to be purely one-dimensional: the CPC argues that it communicates only ‘one message’, that women want and deserve to be treated with ‘contempt, humiliation and as apparently “willing” victims of exploitation and violence’. The CPC categorizes pornography as ‘propaganda against women’ in that it ‘perpetuates sexism, sex discrimination and sexual violence’. ‘Women and pornography’ addresses the relationship between pornography and sex-trade workers. The CPC argues that since ‘women are conditioned by sexism to conform to stereotyped images of femininity and womanhood’, we are ‘often unaware of the ways that they [sic] are misrepresented and mistreated, often unwillingly agree to participate in the misrepresentation and mistreatment and can even feel that they [sic] “enjoy it” or “don’t mind it”’. Sex trade workers in the pornography industry are allegedly ‘forced to go along with their exploitation by sexism…for economic reasons and are often coerced into pornography’. As a singular, monolithic ‘industry’, pornography is supposed to ‘particularly exploit black and third world women’. The CPC argues that these women are ‘forced by poverty and racial discrimination into the pornography industry which also perpetuates racist as well as sexist stereotypes’. Pornography is supposed to ‘take advantage of the existing cycle of abuse and sexual abuse’ in that it ‘plays a part’ in the sexual abuse of children, and a ‘majority of prostitutes have been found to be victims of childhood sexual abuse’. The CPC concludes that women’s participation in the sex trades is ‘damaging to them as individuals as well as to women as a group’, and that the elimination of sex discrimination in employment would ‘give women the real freedom of choice, diminishing the attraction of the pornography industry’. The ‘Policy Statement’ ends with the declaration, ‘We believe that the elimination of pornography is essential to the creation of genuine equality for women.’ The complex arguments which the CPC use in advancing their position can be brought to light through a detailed discussion of the ‘What pornography is’ section which directly precedes the definition quoted above. The header of the first page of the ‘Policy Statement’ features the CPC’s logo. The corporate character of the logo locates the CPC as a mainstream lobbying group. The design uses only the CPC’s initials; the logo could represent virtually any organization. This corporate image already distances the CPC from other grass-roots feminist groups which are less interested in working within the parliamentary system and do not use professional packaging. The CPC’s logo can also be usefully compared with the logo of an opposed feminist group, Feminists Against Censorship (FAC). Instead of an anonymous corporate design, this logo is constructed around a humorous and sexual image. The voluptuous curves and poised position of the figure’s legs and the stiletto-heeled shoes suggest femininity and sensuality. The

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figure is, however, also endowed with muscular biceps, suggesting empowerment. She is active: the stylized head of the figure takes the form of a television set and she is, literally, turning herself on. The figure is seated on a classical Greek column, which signifies her serious intellectual pursuits, and she is holding some official documents, which indicate her interest in legal research. The most important aspect of the graphic is the facial expression of the figure: she is smiling broadly, perhaps mischievously, and she is watching herself turn herself on. The FAC logo suggests an approach to sexually explicit material which crosses the high-culture/low-culture divide. It connotes women’s empowerment, rather than victimization, on the sexual terrain; it suggests that women actually do have the capacity to intervene in the creation of sexually explicit imagery, as video artists, legal scholars, active consumers, and so on. I shall demonstrate that the CPC’s conception of feminism, sexuality and representation is firmly opposed to this approach. (Direct quotations from the ‘Policy Statement’ will hereafter be presented in italics.) Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship The CPC’s use of the term, ‘Campaign’, is significant. Other British feminist groups which organize around pornography tend to use names which are genderexclusive, such as Women Against Pornography, Women Against Violence Against Women, and Feminists Against Censorship. In Britain, the name ‘Campaign…’ has been used widely; it suggests centrist or left-of-centre

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coalitions, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). By deploying the ‘Campaign…’ formula, the CPC’s name claims a centrist or left-of-centre position for its project, and signifies the inclusion of both men and women in a broad-based coalition. The CPC’s name also includes within itself the name of another feminist project, the Campaign Against Pornography (CAP). (Whether or not this was done intentionally is entirely irrelevant. As anti-censorship feminists quite rightly argue, the intentions behind a text, such as a policy statement or pornography legislation, cannot limit in advance the ways in which the text will be interpreted and applied.) The CAP organizes grass-roots consumer protests against the sale of pornography. Its only project to date is the ‘Off the Shelf!’ campaign against W.H. Smiths, a leading chain store which sells books, magazines and stationery. The CAP unsuccessfully demanded the removal of an entire list of pornographic periodicals, including nudist magazines, from W.H.Smiths’ shelves. The CPC, by including the CAP in its name, speaks to the frustrated activists who had been interested in the CAP’s project, and promises to include them in a more professional campaign. The structure of the name, ‘Campaign Against x and y’ suggests the equivalence between pornography and censorship, such that it appears that the struggle against pornography is inherently a struggle against censorship. The CPC does argue later in the text that pornography operates as a form of censorship, such that the restriction of pornography is equated with the defence of civil liberties. Since pornography is supposed to ‘silence women’, the CPC claims that ‘eliminating pornography is about promoting the freedom of women’. The CPC states, in an apparently unequivocal manner, ‘We are totally against censorship in every form.’ The restriction of pornography is equated with the restriction of racist and fascist materials, and with the prosecution of rapists and murderers. It is thereby represented as the minimal curtailment of lawlessness and injustice which is a necessary condition of women’s freedom. In the United States, the antipornography lobbies which were organized around the MacKinnon-Dworkin initiatives faced strong criticism from feminists, lesbians and gays, booksellers and artists on the grounds that these initiatives constituted a threat to civil liberties. Similar concerns about the probability of the appropriation of feminist antipornography initiatives by antilesbian and—gay police forces and judicial systems have arisen in Canada. In February 1992, the Ca-nadian Supreme Court redefined obscene material as sexual representations which ‘cause harm’ through ‘degrading’ and ‘dehumanizing’ portrayals, including bondage and S/M. Kathleen Mahoney, the lawyer who represented the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) in court, explained the strategy behind their ‘victory’. We showed them the porn—and among the seized videos were some horrifically violent and degrading gay movies. We made the point that the abused men in these films were being treated like women—and the judges got it. Otherwise, men can’t put themselves in our shoes. Porn makes women’s subordination look sexy and appealing; it doesn’t threaten men’s jobs, safety, rights or credibility (Landsberg, 1992).

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In other words, LEAF did not ask the court to make the crucial distinction between sexism and sexual explicitness, two distinct elements which may or may not coincide with one another. It gave free rein to the classic antigay male trope: men being dominated and penetrated by other men are ‘abused’ and ‘degraded’ because they are being ‘treated like women’. Their initiative had its origin in feminist intentions, succeeded because of the antigay male bigotry of the courts, and had the effect of censoring lesbian sexuality. A lesbian sex magazine, which was on sale at a lesbian and gay bookshop, was the object of the first obscenity prosecution following this decision. Glad Day bookshop in Toronto was charged for selling the American lesbian sex magazine, Bad Attitude, because it contained images of lesbian S/M sex. Members of the CPC might regard this case as exceptional, or as a necessary trade-off which sexual minorities will simply have to accept, or even as a positive development. There is, in short, no radical analysis of the operation of the police and the state behind the CPC’s approach. As Pratibha Parmar points out, the procensorship feminist demand for antiporn legislation which is modelled after race relations legislation, and their argument that pornography is a form of slavery from which all other oppressions necessarily follow, are themselves deeply racist. The CPC would acknowledge that more legislation around sexual representations would increase the power of the state and the police, but they have demonstrated absolutely no concern whatsoever about the essentially racist structure of these already excessively powerful institutions. Like the radical feminists who used to organize ‘Take Back the Night’ marches in black neighbourhoods, which only perpetuated the myth of the black male rapist, further legitimated the selective policing of these areas, and contributed to the concealment of the most common sexual offender, the white male family member, antiporn feminists have not paid sufficient attention to the struggles of blacks against official forms of racism. Parmar also objects to Itzen’s argument that race relations legislation has been successful in that it has removed racist texts from mainstream public discourse; in Itzen’s words, ‘You can’t buy racist material in newsagents.’ Itzen demonstrates a complete failure to read the tabloid and quality press in a critical manner, for these texts are simply saturated with racist legitimations, caricatures and strategies of erasure. Itzen’s point is, of course, that the crudely racist publications of the National Front and the British National Party are generally not sold in legitimate shops. It does not follow, however, that race relations legislation has made Britain a less racist society. The 1965 Race Relations Act, like many of the so-called reforms of the 1960s, did not really undermine racial oppression; it merely restricted explicit racial discourse in so far as it disrupted the public order. It left an entire edifice, the systemic and institutionalized racisms which are central to contemporary British society, wholly intact; the 1965 Act did not even outlaw discrimination in housing and employment. It should also be noted that this law’s prohibition of incitement of racial hatred was used against both white racists and radical black activists. Parmar states, ‘Nor is the Race Relations Act a piece of legislation which has had much effect in safeguarding the interests of Black people in Britain. In fact, it has often worked against our interests.’ Race relations legislation has done virtually nothing, she argues, to stop the rise in ‘racist murders, assaults, and attacks both on the streets, and in

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Black people’s homes’. Race relations legislation is also perfectly compatible with the censorship of radical black critiques of racist policing practices, such as Channel 4’s suppression of the film about the uprisings in Broadwater Farm and Handsworth, A People’s Account (Parmar, 1988:127, 128, 130). The CPC’s approach therefore risks the promotion of already racist police-force and state institutions, and it aims at the mere elimination of explicit sexual discourse from the public sphere. An analogy with race relations legislation is in this sense appropriate, for antipornography legislation would also cut both ways—against explicit feminist sexual discourse and sexist sexual discourse. As is the case with race relations legislation, it would do absolutely nothing to stop the escalation in systemic forms of sexist discrimination and violence against women. The CPC’s claim to a civil liberties stance is in this sense profoundly antilesbian and—gay and racist. The CPC has nevertheless been successful in promoting its agenda within the National Council for Civil Liberties and in working with the Women’s Section of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. The CPC’s name suggests that the CPC can represent virtually every legitimate feminist and civil libertarian position on pornography. It creatively exploits the British centre’s and left’s complete ignorance or even antipathy towards the positions of radical lesbian and gay activists and black activists. It announces, in its name, that to stand on the side of anticensorship is to stand on the side of women’s oppression, the erosion of civil liberties, racism, fascism and lawless anarchy. The CPC’s name already constitutes an attempt to rule out any criticism of its strategy as unthinkable. POLICY STATEMENT What pornography is The document’s title, ‘Policy Statement’, again underlines the professional image of the CPC. The heading, ‘What pornography is’ suggests that we can give an objective definition to pornography. This claim is itself controversial. The 1959 Obscene Publications Act did not define a set of images for regulation; it included instead a test for obscenity. Obscenity includes any material which, in the view of the courts, tends to ‘deprave and corrupt’. This Act, however, allows for some degree of contextualization, although the court’s reading is of course already delimited by its sexist, racist, anti-lesbian and—gay and class-oriented tendencies. Sexually explicit materials can be defended on the grounds that they contribute to ‘the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern’. Material could also be defended by further contextualizations: it can be placed within a total work, rather than taken as an isolated fragment, and it can be considered in terms of its target audience. The Act does not categorize, in abstraction, a set of images as obscene according to an already established list of criteria. The 1982 Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act is the first British Law which defines sexual material for regulation without reference to context. This Act gives local authorities the power to license ‘sex establishments’ and states that cinematic material which portrays or is intended to stimulate ‘sexual activity’ or ‘acts of force or restraint which are associated

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with sexual activity’ or ‘genital organs or urinary or excretory functions’ is to be controlled under its licensing provisions. The 1984 Video Recordings Act also includes an abstract definition of controlled material. Its list includes images of genitalia, excretory functions, acts of sex or gross violence and anything which ‘might stimulate or encourage’ such acts. The British Board of Film Classification can cite this list of images as grounds for cuts from the video or for the denial of a certificate altogether. This trend towards an a priori definition of pornography, without reference to context and to a target audience, and without a ‘public good’ defence, was taken further in Labour MP Dawn Primarolo’s Location of Pornographic Materials Bill. This Bill, which was introduced in the House of Commons in July, 1989, defines pornographic material as that which ‘for the purposes of sexual arousal or titillation, depicts women, or parts of women’s bodies, as objects, things or commodities, or in sexually humiliating or degrading poses or being subjected to violence’. This Bill would have limited the sale of this material to licensed premises, and would have made the sale of any other goods and services from the same premises illegal. In other words, it would have collected sexually explicit material—from Playboy to lesbian sex magazines such as Quim and gay men’s magazines such as Him—together under the same category, such that these publications could have only been sold in ‘red-light district’ type shops designed exclusively for this purpose. As was the case in the Canadian Supreme Court decision, promoters of the Primarolo Bill were entirely willing to work with anti-gay male interests. An amendment to the Bill states that the reference to women in the list of controlled images includes men. It was included in the name of ‘equal opportunities’. Although Primarolo’s Bill did not pass, it does indicate the current position of many Labour and Conservative MPs. The CPC’s argument that pornography is ‘concrete’ and objectively definable should be considered in terms of this legislative history. The shift to an a priori definition of pornography does rationalize the obscenity approach in its limitation of the judicial system’s arbitrariness. By the same token, however, sexually explicit material is increasingly considered apart from its context. The possibility that the meaning of sexually explicit images could be profoundly shaped by their wider context in nonsexist feminist works is simply ruled out. Pornography is big business. In Britain it grosses at least $500 million a year. In Europe it grosses at least $3 billion a year—more than the music and film industries combined. In this passage, the CPC draws on the populist-leftist critique of ‘big business’. Consumerism is usually understood as a problematic area in leftist discourse: the latter often represents the consumer as a docile victim of corporate marketing and retail schemes. The position of the consumer, however, is just as complex as any other social position. Consumerism may, in certain situations, become a terrain for self-expression, the assertion of collective identities and effective resistance to oppression. Consumers construct alternative products, not only by organizing boycotts, but also by redefining existing commodities and demanding new ones.

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The mainstream monopolistic pornography sector does wield a powerful grip over magazine production and distribution. In Britain, for example, the Gold brothers own several pornography magazines and Anne Summers, the chain of retail shops specializing in women’s lingerie and sex toys for heterosexuals. They have established themselves as the major distributor for virtually the entire range of magazines in London. There are nevertheless alternatives to the mainstream pornography corporations. In the United States, Candida Royalle’s Femme Productions creates and distributes heterosexual erotic films which have been recognized by the American Association of Sex Educators, Counsellors and Therapists for their promotion of positive sexual roles. Lesbian-owned erotic film production and distribution companies include Tigress Films and Fatale Films. Blush Productions, which owns Fatale Films, also publishes the lesbian sex magazine, On Our Backs. In Britain, customs officials have banned lesbian videos from these two lesbian-owned companies, and their decision was upheld in Jenny White’s 1991 court challenge. Foreign explicit safer sex materials aimed at gay men have also been banned. When Gay Men’s Press published Della Grace’s book of lesbian photography, Love Bites, in 1991, several community bookshops refused to sell it out of fear of prosecution and others argued that its images of women in nongraphic S/M poses promoted violence against women. Quim, a British lesbian sex magazine, has been hit especially hard by community censorship, with the result that its lesbian publishers have been obliged to raise the cover price. The CPC ignores the existence of alternative sexually explicit texts, and fails to recognize the fact that they are already the main targets of attack for the customs officials, the judiciary and the Obscene Publications Squad. The monopolistic character of the mainstream pornography corporations only points to the need for effective anti-monopoly legislation for publishing and the media in general; it does not rule out the possibility of genuine alternatives. We believe that pornography includes what is called ‘softcore’ pornography: portrayals of women with their legs splayed, vaginas and anuses exposed to the camera, posed ‘provocatively’, inviting sexual arousal and penetration,… In this passage, the CPC demonstrates its lack of respect for sex-trade workers which is consistent with its statements on models and prostitutes in the later ‘Women and pornography’ section. These workers are caricatured as passive victims: their bodies are ‘splayed’ and ‘exposed’. This is also the first explicit reference to the photographic medium. The CPC’s definition of pornography refers to both ‘pictures and/or words’, but its comments in this section reveals that it is mainly concerned with photographic and filmic imagery. The ‘camera’ is also situated in the place of the photographer. This use of a piece of machinery to represent a person contributes to the document’s dehumanization of the modelling session. The CPC only refers to the sexually explicit material which is supposed to fall outside the pornography category, erotica, sex-education materials, medical and forensic materials, at the end of their definition. No examples of erotic imagery,

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however, are given, in contrast to the weight of the graphically described examples of pornographic imagery. With such an all-inclusive list of sexual imagery already contained within the pornographic—this passage, after all, merely denotes images of nude women—and with the erasure of the possibility of women’s active creation of nonsexist sexual imagery, the erotic remains an empty category. …subjected to bondage, coercion and even violence. This phrase is quite distanced from the noun which it modifies, ‘portrayals’. The previous phase has guided our attention away from the image to the actual modelling session. There is a slippage here between representations of violent imagery, in which the model is not actually subjected to violence, and actual violent acts against the model. The blurring of this crucial distinction continues in the next paragraph. Again, the model is passive: she is ‘subjected to violence’. We also believe that pornography includes what is called ‘hardcore’ pornography: torture, flaying, cannibalism, crushing of breasts in vices, exploding vaginas packed with hand-grenades, eyes gouged out, beatings, dismemberings, and burnings, multiple rape, women engaged in sexual intercourse with animals, the filming of real rapes by rapists and the actual killing of women on screen in ‘snuff’ films. The most important element in this paragraph is the space between ‘hardcore pornography’ and ‘torture’: the phrase, ‘portrayals of is missing. The omission of this phrase, however, is quite consistent with the CPC’s basic approach to representation. They hold that pornographic imagery causes the viewer to engage in discriminatory and violent acts against women. From this perspective, there is no gap between the image and its effect: regardless of the context of the image, or the predispositions of the viewer, the image is supposed to cause a response which corresponds directly to the meaning of that image. According to this logic, the following statements have exactly the same meaning: 1. pornography includes images of a, b, and c; 2. pornography includes images of a, b, and c and causes the viewer to engage in actions a, b, and c; 3. pornography includes actions a, b and c. This slippage from representations of sexual practices to actual sexual practices is a key tactic in the CPC’s discourse. Their approach is located entirely within the liberal paradigm, in which public intervention in a ‘private’ matter is only regarded as legitimate when ‘harm’, in the form of acts against the individual, can be demonstrated. It is only if certain forms of sexual imagery can be shown to cause, necessarily and directly, harmful acts that the benefits of intervention are seen as outweighing the costs of regulation. The use of this liberal approach by the CPC is not accidental; both the 1979 Williams Report on Obscenity and Film Censorship and the 1957 Wolfenden Report on Homosexuality and Prostitution are structured around liberal categories such as the private/public distinction (Brown, 1990). The CPC is therefore operating within the terms of reference of this official discourse. (To say that the

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hegemonic official discourse on sexuality in Britain is ‘liberal’ is certainly not to say that it is progressive. It is liberal in the following sense: it is organized around the private/public dualism, and it assumes that the autonomous, rightsendowed, wealth-maximizing and already raced/sexed/gendered/hetero—or homosexualized individual is prior to all social relations. These aspects are central to the political thought of Locke, Bentham and J.S.Mill.) The CPC’s approach is not, in this respect, structured around specifically feminist concerns. The elements which are problematic in mainstream pornography do not fit into the liberal category of ‘harm’. Feminists should intervene in the production of sexually explicit materials not because the dominant forms of pornography are too explicit, and not because pornography causes harmful acts, but because mainstream pornography is usually structured around sexist representations of sexuality. I shall return to this point below. The distinction between images and actions is only reintroduced much later in the paragraph, with the references to the ‘filming of real rapes’ and the ‘actual killing of women on screen in “snuff” films’. The modifiers, ‘real’ and ‘actual’, imply in a retrospective manner that the other elements in the list, ‘torture, flaying, cannibalism’ and so on were images after all, in contrast to these actual events. This passage plays the image/action dichotomy both ways, with a blurring and then a re-introduction of this crucial distinction. The actual existence of ‘snuff’ films has been widely debated. In any event, rape, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, torture and murder are already illegal. The criminaliz-ation of pornography through further legislation will do nothing to assist sex-trade workers in their struggle against sexual harassment in the workplace. The references to violent imagery in this paragraph do not accurately reflect the sexually explicit material which is actually available to consumers. Images of heterosexual intercourse, nudity, genital close-ups and oral sex are the most common representations in pornography. Other forms of pornography are organized in terms of specialist subgenres; there are magazines which are devoted exclusively to representations of anal sex, while there are separate production companies, shops, films and magazines which serve the gay male market. Sado-masochistic pornography does constitute one of these specialist subgenres. S/M materials, however, are marketed to a small and distinct sexual minority. Sexually explicit material is easily ridiculed and criticized when taken out of context, and S/M materials are particularly vulnerable to misrepresentation. S/M sexual practices are not random acts of nonconsensual violence, but complex rituals and contractual sex play involving consenting adults. Taken out of their location in this minority’s subculture, representations of S/M practices can have tremendous shock value. This shock value is further heightened in this approach by the ambiguity in the references to S/M practices. ‘Torture, flaying…[and] beatings’ could refer to an image of a consensual bondage scene in which whips are used, a mainstream film such as Total Recall, or a film of actual torture from Nazi Germany. Because these references are made in inflammatory and sensationalis-tic language, rather than actual S/M terminology, the distinctions between these quite different types of violent imagery are collapsed. The other ten references, ‘cannibalism, crushing of breasts in vices, exploding vaginas’ and so on bear absolutely no resemblance to

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consensual S/M practices. Their place in a list after the S/M references, however, establishes S/M representations as morally equivalent to nonconsensual practices. It is also interesting to note that this list is almost directly quoted from Polly Toynbee’s account of the pornography which she watched as a member of the Williams Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship (Itzen, 1988:39–40); these materials were obviously not a random sampling, but a highly skewed selection prepared by interested Home Office and/or police officials. There is no evidence that violent imagery is extraordinarily concentrated in sexually explicit material, as opposed to, for example, mainstream films, television, comics or fiction. Arguing from highly selective and decontextualized examples, with a constant blurring of the distinction between violent images and actual violence, and with absolutely no attention to the distinction between sexual explicitness and sexism, the CPC equates pornography with unequivocally sexist crimes: the rape and murder of women. Because the CPC has committed itself to working within the liberal framework of official discourse, it must engage in these illegitimate manoeuvres to establish a direct link between the pornographic image and unacceptable ‘harm’. There is also a shift in this passage regarding the person who is harmed by pornography. With obscenity legislation, concern is focused on the viewer: the risk is that he or she might be ‘depraved or corrupted’ by the image. Antipornography feminist discourse, including the CPC’s arguments, generally focuses instead on the persons who are represented in the pornographic image, namely women and, in some cases, gay men. Here it is implied that our concern should be directed towards the persons who are actually involved in the production of the image. This is the one element of the CPC’s discourse which I would agree with; feminists should be concerned about the working conditions of all women, including women in the sex trade. However, if new pornographic regulations were introduced along the CPC’s proposals, and if these regulations actually did have some effect on the heterosexual pornography producers— instead of sexual minorities alone—they would only contribute to the criminalization of the sex industry. As the prostitutes rights’ campaign rightly insist, it is only with the decriminalization of the sex-trade industry that women will be able to use the legal system to obtain fair contracts, improved working conditions and more control—against abusive ‘pimps’, strip-show managers and pornographic modelling agents—over their work. We believe that the distinction between soft and hardcore pornography is misleading because pornography is a continuum of the representation of wom en as sex objects, sexually available, inviting sexual access and violation, and victims of sexual violence; women are frequently por trayed as ‘enjoying’ their treatment as sex objects or being raped, tortured or assaulted. The criticism of pornography in terms of its ‘representation of women as sex objects’ must be carefully formulated if it is to serve feminist interests. Pornography does objectify women’s bodies: it does not tell the ‘whole truth’ about women’s bodies. This is, however, true of any representation. ‘Truthful’

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and ‘complete’ representations are impossible; representation always involves displacement and reproduction which inevitably has a corrupting effect on the ‘original’. To re-present something is to take it out of one context—such as the everyday world—and to put it into another context—such as sexual fantasies. In heterosexual contact magazines, for example, ‘swinging’ couples who want to meet others often list their interests in an advertisement with a photo—usually of the woman partner in a sexual pose. These photographs are usually taken in the couple’s home, with their television, hanging plants, curtains or dishwasher in the background. These photos objectify—they do not tell us whether or not the woman is a nuclear physicist or not, or whether she has any children, and so on— but they are not sexist simply because they do not tell her whole story. They are also low-budget amateur representations which may not strike the more ‘discerning’ viewer as ‘tasteful’, and they are intended to stimulate a sexual response, but they should not be considered sexist on these grounds. Sexist sexual material differs from its nonsexist counterpart in that it organizes the representation of sexuality around an extremely limited conception of female and male desire which corresponds to a sexist conception of women’s nature. One of the common images in mainstream pornography, for example, is the man-inbed-with-two-lesbians scene. This representation is not sexist just because it presents a lesbian sexual interaction for male consumption, or because the photographer and art director are probably men, or because the female models are probably not lesbians in ‘real’ life. The image is also not sexist just because the male figure is represented as dominant, and the female figures are represented as submissive. It is sexist in so far as it suggests that the male figure is the only choosing subject, that the female figures are, by nature, passive, and that all appearances of an autonomous female sexuality—which does not revolve around the male figure’s supposedly natural interests—are ultimately swept away to reveal the female figures’ ‘true’ passive nature. This is precisely the antisexist aspect of Madonna’s Justify My Love video. It subverts the man-in-bed-with-twolesbians script by insisting, through playful gender confusion, reverse shots, the soundtrack and the narrative itself, that the sexual scenarios in the video are all controlled by women. At the end of this paragraph, the CPC lists several different elements as if they shared the same connotation: a woman’s un-coerced choice of penetrative sex, her invitation of ‘sexual access’, is equated with her victimization and rape. This equation of penetration and rape is repeated in the CPC’s definition of pornography. Images of women being ‘penetrated by objects’ are listed in the same chain of elements as images of women being penetrated by animals, and portrayals of women portrayed as ‘enjoying pain or humiliation or rape’. Rape is, by definition, a sexist practice, for it involves the violent subordination of women. Images of sexual penetration, with a penis, a hand, or a dildo, by contrast, are not in themselves sexist; the precise connotation of a particular image or act of penetration depends entirely upon its specific context. Feminism should defend and promote women’s sexual choices; in this document, the CPC dismisses many of these choices as illegitimate.

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We believe that pornography is propaganda which functions to control women and to maintain a specifically male-defined view of women. It is therefore a central means of maintaining the sexual status quo. The implications of these views for feminist thinking on sexuality and representation are crucial. If women were ‘controlled’ by sexually explicit imagery, and if that imagery were by definition ‘male-defined’, then there would be absolutely no possibility of resistance. The creation of alternative representations, and, indeed, nonsexist sexual practices, would be impossible. If this were the case, then the only legitimate strategy for women would be to abandon this terrain to sexist discourse. This scenario, however, is completely unrealistic. Like any other area of social relations, sexuality is not the site of uncontested domination and victimization, but a complex field of relations of hegemony, resistance, negotiation and subversion. Feminists have attempted to produce alternative representations in art, fiction, children’s literature, film, and academic, medical and psychological discourse. The prevalence of sexist logics and imagery in these fields has not by definition excluded the possibility of these interventions, but has made the creation of alternatives all the more urgent. As Gayle Rubin comments, ‘There were never groups called Women Against Film, Women Against Television or Women Against the Novel…. When pornography became an issue, it was treated in an entirely unique fashion.’ (Rubin, 1986) Feminists should engage in extensive criticisms of the sexist elements which run through all popular media, including pornography. We should campaign against all these forms of sexism, without contributing to the further empowerment of the racist, sexist and anti-lesbian and -gay state institutions. We should also promote the recession-threatened, low-budget alternatives to sexist sexual imagery which already exist, and encourage new feminist ventures in this field. The CPC document says that it supports ‘erotica’, but what it does is to cast women in the role of the powerless victims of male domination, and to abandon sexuality to sexism. It should also be noted that the CPC’s arguments erase both female and male subjectivity. Women are represented in their discourse as controlled by a ‘maledefined view of women’. In their ‘harm’ argument, the CPC also implicitly argues that the rapist himself makes no choice; his actions are supposed to be wholly caused by the image. The CPC’s approach therefore robs women of the possibility of resistance and excuses men from responsibility. The logic of the CPC’s discourse also calls into question the very possibility of the CPC’s own critique. In the discussion of the coercion of sex-trade workers, pornography is represented as an omnipotent, self-perpetuating cycle of abuse. The CPC states that pornography contributes to racist stereotyping and to the sexual abuse of children. It further claims that most sex trade workers are adult survivors of sexual abuse and racial discrimination. The pornographic images which are produced by their labour are supposed to contribute further to child abuse and racism. This all-encompassing model leaves many questions unanswered. Does the concentration of minority women in the sex trade reflect class injustices, and, if so, what would the censorship of pornography do to address this racially structured economic discrimination? Is it really the case that

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sex-trade workers, taken as a whole population, are more likely to have undergone the horrors of child abuse than women college professors, waitresses, nuns or full-time housewives? Does the incidence of child abuse actually decrease in cultures in which pornography is censored more heavily? Given the fact that the most common perpetrator of child abuse is a close male relative, the absolutely urgent struggle against this injustice has to rest on a radical critique of the heterosexual nuclear family—why are antipornography feminists so willing to work with the religious right-wing defenders of the family? The CPC’s own position is problematic: if women are helplessly locked into this cycle of abuse and the reproduction of the conditions of abuse for future generations of women, how does the CPC stand outside this cycle such that it can distinguish between true and false representations and interests? In the Marxist tradition, this type of argumentation is known as the discourse of the vanguard. The vanguard, or the Party, is supposed to occupy a privileged position such that it alone knows the difference between the true and false consciousness of the workers. It hardly needs to be said that in practice, this doctrine has had extremely authoritarian effects. Feminists must consistently work to empower women: speaking the ‘truth’ for ‘other’ women from a supposedly superior position should never be accepted as a legitimate strategy, especially when that ‘truth’ contradicts their/our own sense of their/our lives. Notes Anna Marie Smith is a Visiting Scholar at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University (1991–3) and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University for the spring term, 1993. A revised version of her doctoral thesis, Representing the Enemies Within: British New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality, 1968–1990, will be published by Verso in 1993. References BROWN, Beverly (1990) ‘A feminist interest in pornography: some modest proposals’ in Parveen ADAMS and Elizabeth COWIE, editors, The Woman in Question Cambridge: MIT. CHESTER, Gail and DICKEY, Julienne (1988) Feminism and Censorship London: Prism. DUGGAN, Lisa, HUNTER, Nan and VANCE, Carole (1988) ‘False promises: feminist anti-pornography legislation in the US’, in CHESTER and DICKEY (1988). ITZIN, C. (1988) ‘Sex and Censorship: the political implications’ in CHESTER and DICKEY. LANDSBERG, Michelle (1992) ‘Canada: antipornography breakthrough in the law’ Ms May/June 14–15 . PARMAR, Pratibha (1988) ‘Rage and desire: confronting pornography’, in CHESTER and DICKEY (1988).

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RUBIN, Gayle (1986) ‘Misguided, dangerous and wrong: an analysis of anti-pornography politics’, unpublished paper submitted in testimony to the National Organization of Women, April .

Resources Tigress Videos: Tiger Rose Distributing, PO Box 609, Cotati, CA USA 94928. Fatale Videos and On Our Backs: Blush Entertainment, 526 Castro, San Francisco, CA USA 94114. Quim: BM Box 2182, London WC1N 3XX UK.

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Indian Women in a Changing Industrial Scenario Edited by Nirmala Banerjee Sage Publications: New Delhi/ Newbury Park London 1991 ISBN 0 8039 9659 4 (US), 81 7036 203 2 (India), Rs250 Common Interests: Women Organising in Global Electronics Women Working Worldwide Box 92,190 Upper Street, London N1 1RQ, UK 1990 ISBN 6 9517075 0 7, £6.99 Pbk As the richer parts of the world debate the relevance of feminism and postfeminism, the focus, issues and challenges in Asia are very different. There, in the wake of export-oriented industrialization, the question of working-class consciousness among women is the main concern; the politics of difference take a secondary role. Technological changes, globalization of business and production, urban migration—the factors that change the material conditions of a society—gain major

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emphasis in studies related to women in Asia. The central concern becomes organizing strategies—within and outside the trade-union movement— for empowering women in the sphere of industrial paid work. Professor Nirmala Banerjee is well known for her extensive work on women in India’s informal sector. In the present work, she shifts her focus to women workers of the organized sector. Banerjee shows on the basis of a rigorous survey of five exportoriented industries that the integration of women in factories in India is still based primarily on the promise of their cheap and flexible labour. Womenspecific skills are generally devalued, resulting in lower wages for women. The overall picture is still not clear; but generally, the increased quantity of employment for women has not necessarily improved the quality of women’s work. Has the quantitative gain in employment altered the bargaining power of women? The other contributors to this volume attempt to answer this question. Kumud Pore’s work on the garment and electronics industries, and Vijay Rukmini Rao and Sabha Husain’s research on the

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garment industry reveal that the status and self-confidence of working women depend understandably on their class and educational background. Women in unskilled occupations feel that ‘the employment in a factory by itself does not change women’s status. It does not give them more control in the family, nor does the wage provide for an independent life’ (p. 176). In a modern industry, such as electronics, women in semi-skilled occupations, in contrast, express a ‘more positive attitude to work…once they have tasted the economic independence of some kind they would not like to lose them’ (p. 234). The trade unions, in the traditional mode, are apathetic to women’s needs and demands; they become less effective as the decentralization of work from large factories to smaller units becomes prevalent. Isa Baud’s article on the textiles industry reveals the causes and extent of subcontracting in the wake of modern technologies. Rao and Husain likewise trace the link between the organized and unorganized sectors, by stressing the phenomenon of putting out and homebased work in the manufacturing sector. It is the flexibility and dispensability of their labour that make women workers attractive to employers in the current phase of uncertain volatile and export-led industrialization: ‘the special role that women had been assigned in these industries was not really to take systematic advantage of their low reserve force or special skills…but more to cope with the uncertainties of this transition period’ in an exportorientated industrialization (p. 297). While the conclusions are based on careful specific analysis of the Indian experience, they will also be illuminating for those who work on the

impact of paid employment on women’s lives in other regions. The book by Women Working Worldwide—an educational and resource network based in London and Manchester—complements Nirmala Banerjee’s perceptive book and documents the struggle of women to empower themselves in this transitional phase. Taking the electronics industry as an example, the book demonstrates the prospects and problems women face in organizing themselves, in footloose global industries for better pay and decent working conditions. The book is based on the firsthand experience of women activists from 13 countries—South Korea, the United States, Scotland, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Italy, Malaysia, Japan, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. Each country-based chapter includes a well-researched profile of the role of the electronics industry in the national economy; it also gives a comprehensive account of the changing role of women in the labour movement. The chapters, in addition, include first-hand accounts from women activists on the challenges and possibilities of new ways of organizing in the workplace, in trade unions and in women workers’ organizations. The book thus uniquely combines academic rigour with immediacy of experience. Women Working Worldwide is an organization that pledges to supply background information on multinational companies’ strategies and movements, through its research with women workers, so that they can formulate their demands vis-à-vis the management, from a position of power. This is no mean task in the context of a global industry such as microelectronics where ‘management can

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tell workers everywhere that they are measured against anonymous workers somewhere else, who supposedly make fewer demands and work more productively for lower pay’ (p. 14). The book should find its rightful place in academic circles, particularly among those who study the labour movement, international networking, women’s employment and the electronics industry. The reasoned arguments and well-documented casestudies make it highly readable. It stresses the commonality in the experience of women, yet shows the awareness that although as women we share common interests, there are dangers in making global generalizations. Swasti Mitter

Technoculture Edited by Constance Penley and Andrew Ross University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis 1991 ISBN 0 8166 1932 8 $15.95 Pbk ISBN 0 8166 1930 1 $39.95 Hbk Feminism Confronts Technology Judy Wajcman Polity Press: Oxford 1991 ISBN 0 7456 0778 0 £9.95 Pbk ISBN 0 7456 0777 2 £35.00 Hbk These are two very different books, with very different approaches to understanding the relationship between the constructions of technology and of gender. If you look at the covers and only read the introductions, you would be forgiven for thinking the authors had identified fairly similar projects for themselves. Further reading would soon convince you of the dangers of

judging books by their covers. They have black backgrounds, sans serif typeface, and slightly futuristic pictures. Judy Wajcman’s features a still of a robot in the shape of a woman from the film Metropolis; Constance Penley and Andrew Ross’s has a collection of springs, coils and other metallic objects. Before going any further, it is important to note that the Penley and Ross book is a collection of fourteen essays by nearly as many authors covering a wide range of topics and not claiming to be exclusively feminist in its concerns or approach. The shared concern is with ‘the politics…currently at stake in those cultural practices touched by advanced technology’ (p. xii). In this review, I shall concentrate on those chapters, including the introduction, which do focus explicitly on some genderrelated issues. Wajcman’s book fills an important gap in the ‘gender and technology’ literature. The literature so far has been either edited collections or case studies of a particular occupation, industry or technological application. Some of these have been valuable contributions in furthering our understanding of the role of technology in constructing and reproducing gender relations, going far beyond the particulars of their own concerns. None the less, this book will be of great use to people new to the area, students and teachers seeking a single book which offers a coherent account and review of the literature. Wajcman begins by reviewing the theoretical literature about feminist critiques of science and technology. She then goes through different sites of use: production, reproduction, the home and the built environment. She also explores the notion that technology is a reflection of masculine

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values and ideals. She covers an impressive range of literature; even though she exhibits an English language bias, it does span three continents. It is within the first chapter, covering feminist critiques of science and technology, that Wajcman reveals her own approach to the topic. As a result of her earlier work (Wajcman and MacKenzie, 1985), Wajcman is firmly identified with the social shaping approach to understanding the relationship between technology and society. This is the approach which rejects the idea that technology, for all intents and purposes, falls out of the sky; that technological artifacts are simply an embodiment of the ‘laws of nature’ and thus are neutral, value free and will have good or bad effects on the societies in which they are introduced depending on the ways that they are used by people. The social shaping approach is concerned to demonstrate how technological choices and designs reflect the values and priorities of the individuals, organizations and countries involved in making them. In other words, very simply, technologies are quite likely to reflect patriarchal and capitalist interests. But there are problems with this approach. By focusing on where technologies come from, and suggesting that technologies somehow embody these values, it is not clear from where possibilities for change might come. Technologies are nearly always seen as somehow reinforcing women’s oppression, whether that be at home, work or in the hospital. But Wajcman herself cites the example of the telephone—originally seen by Alexander Graham Bell and others as a broadcast medium (you would listen to a concert from another city through your telephone) and then as something

for business. Women appropriated telephones: as a means for reducing social isolation. There is another tension within Wajcman’s book, although this one is not inherent to social shaping. Although she uses examples frequently and effectively, she seems to view technical change as a kind of metanarrative, drawing heavily on Marxist forms of analysis. She also attempts to recognize differences between women. But there are also differences between technologies, and using examples does not adequately capture those differences. As mentioned above, Wajcman does review the material about technology reflecting and reinforcing masculine culture, but she does not pay much attention to the ways in which technology can affect cultural products and practices, such as music, film and video. These issues are the concern of Technoculture. One of the essays by Constance Pen-ley, ‘Brownian motion: women, tactics and technology’, provided me with one of the most unusual reading experiences I have had for some time. You might not guess from the title, but it is an article about a subgroup of Star Trek fans: heterosexual women who write stories and draw pictures about a supposed sexual relationship between Captain Kirk and Mr Spock. (Pictures are provided, so I now know what a Vulcan penis looks like.) With new technologies like videos and tape editors, there is a new genre. It is now possible, and women are apparently doing it, to re-edit old episodes of Star Trek with popular love songs, in order to convey romantic and sexual love between the two men. Pen-ley is suggesting that through their interest in Spock and Kirk, a small group of women has gained access to technical

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skills. First they had to learn reproduction and printing skills in order to circulate their stories and pictures; now they are learning to operate editing suites. I doubt that Rupert Murdoch or CBS and Sony are worrying about their corporate futures as a result. The ownership of the production of cultural products is becoming increasingly concentrated globally. Also, this equipment is still not cheap. Access to it is very much determined by one’s income. This essay illustrates what is wrong with a certain strand of cultural studies. It is ahistorical in its analysis: it does not attempt to contextualize or locate this admittedly fascinating phenomenon, neither within an analysis of changing patterns or global media ownership nor within an exploration of women’s fantasy lives. The book does include an interview with Donna Haraway (author of ‘A manifesto for cyborgs’ (Haraway, 1985), which became something of a cult article in certain circles) and a short article by her. These are not for the uninitiated. You will need a copy of the ‘Manifesto’ by your side. Reading the interview, I felt rather like a guest at a party where I didn’t know the people and didn’t speak the language. This is a shame, because Haraway does have some interesting things to say about the fact that we do live in a technological world, and as a result people are not the same as they were even a hundred years ago. This is an American book. There are very few references to anything published outside of the United States. It also reflects that strand of cultural studies which presents you with information about some eye-opening phenomena but leaves you with far more questions than answers. This is not what was expected after reading

the introduction. The introduction presents a very clear and well-argued case for rejecting both the ‘disempowering habit of demonizing technology as a satanic mill of domination’ and ‘postmodernist celebrations of the technological sublime’ (p. xii). It also rejects the idea that people are dupes, the unwitting objects of producers and advertisers. It claims to recog nize the material and social contexts in which people actively use and shape technologies. The remaining essays do not live up to that promise. Sally Wyatt References HARAWAY, Donna (1985) ‘A manifesto for cyborgs’ Socialist Review 80, 65–107 . WAJCMAN, Judy and MACKENZIE, Donald (1985) editors, The Social Shaping of Technology Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

A Persian Requiem Simin Daneshuar Peter Halban: London 1991 ISBN 1 8700 15 401 £13.95 A Persian Requiem, originally published in 1969, was a first novel by Iran’s first woman novelist. It has seen sixteen reprints, sold over half a million copies, and achieved the status of a classic, literally shaping the ideas of a generation. Yet when asked about the specific appeal of the novel, most readers are at a loss to pinpoint a single, or even prominent aspect to account for this phenomenal success. Is it the uniquely feminine perspective, allowing the reader to travel freely between the microcosm of the family

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and the larger framework of society? Is it the actual plot which mimics so presciently the events of the Islamic Revolution? Or does it lie in the deftly woven anecdotes and fragments which add up to a descriptive whole? It is each and all of these, and perhaps more. Set in the southern Persian town of Shiraz in the early 1940s after the Allied Forces have occupied Iran, the novel opens directly into the life of Zari, a traditional housewife anxious to protect the welfare of her hearth and home against the pervasive, corrupting effects of the foreign presence. We see a cross-section of personalities drawn from the local élite through a moderately wealthy middle-class family from a religious background down to servants and villagers. We see the un-scrupulousness of the Persian aristocracy, the exploitation of the tribal khans, and the contradictions of ideal and practice in the young Communist party in Iran. But perhaps the most important perspective we are afforded is the theme of ‘dawning’ or ‘awakening’ which is realized through the central character, Zari. This is the first time, in modern Persian literary prose, that the world is perceived through female eyes. The reader journeys with Zari from the limited sphere of her home and family to the harsher demands of a turbulent society, caught in the crossfires of political exigencies. To what must she commit herself: her needy, fragile children, or to her husband’s unrealistic ideology? And is there such an option as ‘cutting away’? Those female characters which people this story with their generally cunning, survivalist abilities would seem to suggest that whatever needs to be achieved must be done within the existing framework. It is no accident

that the ‘feminist-poetess’ Mrs Fotouhi, is a madwoman committed to the local asylum. In the end, as Zari comes into her own and out of Yusef s shadow, we realize that no matter what the extent and nature of the struggle, there are no clear-cut, linear answers to explain the birth of a political being, that a woman’s dilemmas within a developing society defy simplistic solutions, and that vision is necessary to transcend the daily temptations of corruption. What is conveyed in the narrative, however, is a sense of Zari’s isolation, even in her so-called political activity. Her efforts seem random and transient, her vision inwardly directed and private. Along with the other women in the story, she is able to make use of the traditional means of power at their disposal (sister-hood-by-oath, taking sanctuary, networking, etc.) to expand their influence to the public sphere. And the women are able to move their men. A richly woven tapestry of cultural detail, A Persian Requiem interests the reader on many levels. The female perspective is subtly counter-pointed with the web of political intrigue, and we learn much about modern Iran at the same time as becoming increasingly involved with the highly charged drama which lies at the core of this gripping story. Maryam Mafi Women’s Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective Edited by Pat Hudson and W.R. Lee Manchester University Press: Manchester (St Martin’s Press: New

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York) 1990, ISBN 0 7190 2377 7 £35. 00 Hbk The publication of this collection is an indication of how women’s history has developed, the rewards to be reaped from the struggle with mute or intractable sources, how painstaking the research has had to be, and finally how slowly insights gained from all this effort have been to percolate into general economic and demographic history. In their important, articulate introduction, the editors raise some key questions, not least in querying the very definition of ‘work’ itself. They emphasize issues of women’s work in the creation of all social and political identity as well as the better known function of maintaining family income and status. These and other themes are addressed through investigations of ideology, law and state policy, the sexual division of labour both as it changed and as certain elements remained constant, through tech nology and the organization of work, and through concepts of the family economy. ‘Common sense’ explanations such as suitability of tasks through physique or the need for women to be near the home, are quickly discarded. Throughout the volume, the primacy of social derogation of women’s status and women’s work is manifest, from the early modern period to the midtwentieth century. Covering such a ‘long sweep’ allows the various authors to shed light on the vexed question of whether or not women’s position (economically at least) gained or lost during ‘industrialization’. The carefully differentiated studies of various times and places furthers the nascent belief that this may be unanswerable—and

ultimately the wrong question to be asking, politically as well as intellectually. For, as Hudson and Lee point out, women’s work, the family economy and family strategies are not merely reactive in the process of change but pro-active in a way which contributes to that change, in both material and ideological outcomes. They make a necessary plea to mount a real challenge to traditional analyses to the point where they potentially undermine their own enterprise in admitting that this type of ‘separate treatment of women may serve to endorse their particularized and marginal status compared to men’ (p. 35). However such reconstructions are vital on the road to re-evaluating mainstream issues and debates such as class formation, standard of living, demographic behaviour, or the relationship between parts of the economy and society. The history of work looked at from this fresh perspective will require some very radical changes indeed. One of the great strengths of the collection is its attention to and stress on differences between types of women, between regions and areas, between periods of time. The studies range from sixteenth—and seventeenth-century Wüttemberg woollen weavers to the wellrepresented nineteenth century where German agricultural families, French urban artisans and labourers, British provincial tradesmen, professional and farming families, Lancashire cotton workers, and Nor-wegian farmers and labourers are variously considered. Moving into the twentieth century we are given Staffordshire potters, Russian working-class women, Coventry car workers, and the family

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economy of the Liverpool docklands. It is evident from this range that, for women, so often defined as marginal, local variation in conditions could be crucial. Despite the wealth of detail unearthed by each study, certain themes emerge; again and again what is meant by work is called into question by the inclusion of women. For example as Ida Blom points out, when married women’s work on family farms is included, the percentage of economically active married women in Norway more than tre-bled. But gender expectations also framed the way ‘work’ (or nonwork) was formulated as Clare Evan’s sensitive piece on unemployment during the Lancashire ‘cotton famine’ of the 1860s shows. Temporary work pro vided by charities and Poor Law Guardians alike for male cotton workers was framed through the concept of men as producers of labour power and production; women were treated as potential reproducers, governed by life-cycle events. Women could find paid employment in the interstices, at the margins or, as Catherine Hall points out, provide hidden resources ranging from labour power itself to capital and the ‘production’ of personnel to man (sic) economic institutions. In other words, so long as it was not openly recognized, when women ‘greased the wheels of the labour-market, they were permitted an enormous range of economic activity’ as Richard Whipp documents for both married and single women in nineteenth-century potteries (p. 97). Hints as to how the economic activities of women were maintained, despite formal denials, appear in many of the chapters. Women were defined through their status of wife and

mother, through the institution of marriage. In turn, these concepts were crucial to definitions of the family. Significantly, Anne Meyering’s re-use of LePlay’s famous family studies shows how his narrow definition of ‘family’ overlooks the existence of groups like single people and other forms of ‘economy’ and contributes to standard gender definitions. As so many of these essays graphically show, the relation of the family economy to the wider economy simply cannot continue to ignore the construction of gender. As household heads, as privileged workers (if only with the privilege of working 14–16 hours in abysmal conditions), men in many situations used their social and political status to block women’s full participation in the waged economy. Nor, as Sheilagh Ogilvie demonstrates for seventeenthcentury Germany, was this a function of an industrial system. The male weavers of Wüttemburg gathered in their Guilds and Corporations were in a strong position to close ranks against possible competition from women workers (as well as ensuring a steady supply of wifely unpaid labour at home). Linda Grant’s investigation of Coventry echoes this in a twentiethcentury context. The strong consciousness of hierarchy among male car workers (even when it was factually no longer true) was not about skill alone, it was also about men and masculinity. In a collection as varied as this one, inevitably there are differences of purpose as well as approach. Some concentrate exclusively on women, while others take on issues about men and masculinity. The individual pieces cover a great variety of sources of all kinds: documentary, statistical, qualitative. This gives a rich,

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‘grounded’ sense as well as a real feeling of diversity which is absent from some of the more recent freefloating, textually based studies. Not surprisingly, one of the strongest impressions left on the reader is the sheer variety of situations in which European women were to be found in the last four centuries. For nonspecialists, the collection taken as a whole performs a valuable service. If nothing else, it brings to light those so often ‘hidden from history’, from Catherine Hall’s merchants’ and small manufacturers’ wives and daughters to Pat Ayers’ pawn-broking, thieving neighbourhood women among the poorest. It is full of stories interesting in their own right as well as important historical insights, if only unromantic negative findings about lack of change or the demonstration of local variation. It is to be hoped that it will soon appear in paperback and become more accessible to the wider readership it deserves. Leonore Davidoff Motherhood: Meanings, Practices and Ideologies Edited by Ann Phoenix, Anne Woollett and Eva Lloyd Sage: London 1991, ISBN 0 8039 83134 X £10.95 Pbk, ISBN 0 8039 83131 1 £30 Hbk This collection analyses the representation and treatment of mothers and mothering in psychology. The relationship to psychology is important, for the discipline is both the resource for the normative models of mothering that are critically addressed within this book and the domain of its intervention. Motherhood is analysed as central to the maintenance of sexist,

ethnocentric and heterosexist models of the family and the sexual division of labour. Definitions of good (and therefore ‘bad’) mothering function to regulate women through health and welfare practices, which are also recycled as popular common-sense knowledge. This ‘social construc tionist’ perspective will come as no surprise to feminists. But feminism has made little impact on dominant psychological models and methods, and this book is an example of the new wave of critiques of psychological models and practices that are now beginning to emerge from feminists working within the discipline. The focus of the book is on how psychology has constructed models of mothering and the ways it has distorted or failed to reflect women’s experiences of mothering. There is a clear structure and organization, with the theoretical and political analysis that guides the collection set out in the first two chapters and themes and current debates drawn together in the editorial Afterword. The second section addresses the consequences of the ‘mandate for motherhood’ for all women, firstly in Anne Woollett’s account of the perspectives of women engaging in fertility treatments. This is followed by Harriette Marshall’s particularly useful analysis of contemporary child-care advice literature, updating similar work done in the 1970s and mid-1980s, and demonstrating that there is little variation beneath the current rhetoric of ‘parenting as equal partnership’ from the old theme of motherhood as idyllic and as women’s true vocation. The section on ‘The “right time” to have children’ highlights how the normative model of the ideal mother positions those either younger or older than her as social problems. Ann

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Phoenix contrasts the patholo-gizing popular and academic representation of young mothers with empirical work and with the women’s own accounts, and Julia Berryman discusses the myths and realities, the social trends and the medicalization, of having children in one’s thirties and forties. The final section on ‘The question of employment’ consists of a helpful and succinct evaluation by Barbara Tizard of the pronouncements of child-care experts on ‘the effects’ of women engaging in paid work outside the home, historically and currently, and, from an organizational perspective, an analysis by Suzan Lewis of the consequences of the elision of women and mothers for women’s conditions and status at work. This last contribution is especially welcome because it underscores the wider context in which ideologies of mothering function to keep women economically subordinate. Not surprisingly, the book is clearest in its political perspective in the chapters written by the editors. But it is also unfortunate that chapters devoted to indicating specific structural absences within the literature sometimes reproduce those very features that are subject to criticism in other chapters. In particular, several of the chapters reporting studies conducted by the authors take as their sample white, middle-class, married mothers without even explanation or apology—exactly as criticized early on in the book. And, in giving ‘case study’ vignettes from her observational research, Jacqueline McGuire’s account of variability of mothering styles in relation to the gender and age of the children threatens to lapse into precisely the sort of classification and evaluation of

mothering practices that the book sets out to problematize. While the book constitutes a critical appraisal of the psychological literature, there are uncertainties or ambivalences about how far the critiques extend. These are most evident in the fourth section entitled ‘Mothering real children in real circumstances’, and this is where one of the underlying tensions within the book becomes manifest. How could three examples (of women mothering a deaf child in a chapter by Susan Gregory, of bringing up sons or daughters discussed by Jacqueline McGuire, of having several children in Penny Munn’s contribution) be sufficient to attest to the diversity and variability of women’s experiences of mothering? While issues of ‘race’ and sexuality were clearly evident in the conceptual framework guiding the book, some more detailed corrective account of lesbian mothering and implications of the cultural chauvinism of psychological research would have been useful. There are also more general political and methodological questions at issue. While highlighting the ideological and regulatory basis of psychological accounts of mothering, its commitment to providing a more adequate and more accurate account based on, and recognizable by, women as mothers is contradictory. A guiding theme of the book is that the research does not reflect women’s experiences, but this leaves unaddressed the question of whether it could reflect women’s lives, and, further, whether it should. There is no guarantee that ensuring psychology has a ‘more accurate’ representation of women’s experiences of mothering will necessarily be politically progressive, given the current functions and

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organization of psychology—in the editorial introduction Ann Phoenix and Anne Woollett describe well the polarized and equally unsatisfactory treatment of black women in psychological literature as either devalued absence or pathologized presence. It could be argued that formulating critiques which assume that a discipline like psychology can be ‘improved’ is reformist. But this would be to ignore the strategic impact this persuasive book will have for its audience within psychology. It is however important for all of us struggling to make similar interventions to recognize that the enterprise involves internal contradictions. In the case of this book, even if it were possible to add in more and more factors or categories to reflect women’s experiences, this attention to diversity would eventually collapse into a muddled homogeneity which flattens out, and treats as equal, women’s different, and differently privileged, positions. Moreover, notions of accuracy, truth and reality underlying this position leave unquestioned the knowledgeproducing practices of empirical psychology. Erica Burman Naked Authority: The Body in Western Art 1830–1908 Marcia Pointon Cambridge University Press 1990 ISBN 0 521 50999 3 £14.95 Pbk ISBN 0 521 38528 8 £35 Hbk In 1989 Marcia Pointon asked which direction ‘a theorised art history might take in the 1990s?’ (Pointon, 1989). The direction she offers in this book of essays is a careful and multilayered

analysis of paintings as material objects in their own terms. It is an analysis she regards as the public responsibility of art historians, one which she believes they have recently failed. Despite her general welcome, it is history labelled ‘new’ she claims most culpable. That history, whose purpose lies in deconstruction of the artefact, is most vulnerable to the charge of dealing best with the worst paintings1—or of not dealing with them at all, but with merely their surrounding discourses. New art history has not accounted for the needs and desires of artists and viewers who make and respond to certain artefacts regarded as ‘best’. Pointon herself does not labour issues of qualitative judgement but does proclaim that many canonical works have ‘an abiding power to move people’ (p. 3) and despite being institutional ‘high’ art forms, their effect is personal. So she deals here with ‘important’ paintings that are also Very popular’. In her first essay on the female nude Pointon disposes of the popular binary opposites posited by Kenneth Clark and John Berger. Clark’s notion of the natural body outside culture and against which art is to be measured, along with Berger’s proposition that the nude be true woman ‘translated into art by love’ (p. 17) are dismissed as ‘deeply flawed’ (p. 33). But also she urges acknowledgement that depiction of the female nude does not always represent male power over women. Instead Pointon argues that such rigid categories of viewing position cannot be so established because representation of the body will constantly shift. Her agenda throughout these essays is to examine the unstable boundaries of such movements in order to gain an understanding of whether, and how,

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such images articulate power, and over whom. The chapter on psychoanalysis maps more fully the terrain of succeeding essays, as Pointon addresses the ‘unacknowledged investment’ of art history in psychoanalysis. In asserting similarities between these disciplines (most delightfully, an obsessive concern in looking for lost objects) and by making the case for transference relations in academic scholarship, Pointon properly acknowledges her masters. She peals the ring of Great Fathers—Kenneth Clark is ‘brilliant’ and E.H.Gom-brich ‘justly celebrated’, then Max Friedlander and Ernst Kris in Chap-ter Two are followed hard by War-burg, Wolfflin, Riegl, Pevsner and Panofsky. Hugh Honour and John Fleming are merely ‘useful’, though art historians manqués are properly trounced—and we find John Berger reduced to a signature, a mere sign to represent the ideas of others. Here are the big knocks aimed most frequently at sons and siblings, spectacularly at Michael Fried, descendant of the Father-ghost of Greenberg (dismissed by absence from this dramatis personae). Whilst berating Michael Baxendall for being ‘short-sighted over questions of gender’ (p. 3) she also swipes at Carol Duncan with her own phrase ‘male sexual appetite’ as being without specificity.2 But a woman—and beside that roll-call the names of the women have appeared— Anita Brookner, for example, represents traditional values, Linda Nochlin plays comrade at arms. Thus was the field delineated for the demonstrably authoritative Pointon to disrupt the smooth transitions of lineal descent. Marcia Pointon deals with issues of gender, and as a feminist she has an interest in unravelling texts as a seeing woman. The result is work of

satisfying scholarship and fascinating insights. Pointon asserts that both art and art history are places where ‘displaced’ repetition of the Oedipal scene can be enacted, as her succeeding case-studies demonstrate. She addresses what she names as ‘inter-subjectivity’ (p. 1) by which she means the subjectivities of artists and readers, across time. For example, one study looks at the issue of desire in relation to the invisibility of women’s fertility in nineteenth-century society. Pointon suggests that attempts to encompass this unseen within the seen in paintings of fertility and maternity, were prompted by male fear of castration which, according to this semiotic, psychoanalytic approach, express the painter’s fear of fusion with the lost mother, that pleasure which was sacrificed for power. In another example Pointon uses Julia Kristeva’s insight which insists on the simultaneous reassurance and instability of motherhood, with its promise of transcendence. Here she offers Re-noir’s late nudes, in particular The Judgement of Paris, as works which express that artist’s abjectness, his condition of absolute fear, and his desire for reversion to Kristeva’s pre-Oedpial master-mother relationship. As Pointon’s Renoir approaches death, Kristeva’s ‘sublime point at which the abject collapses in a burst of beauty that overwhelms’ would provide a convincing knell (Kristeva, 1982:210). Yet again, in a study of Michael Fried’s analysis of Thomas Eakin’s The Gross Clinic, this historian is taken to task for dabbling in psychoanalysis merely to confirm and reiterate the transference situation. In his patriarchal narrative male power is again represented against female lack, and in order to proclaim the value of the male role within art history.

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Marcia Pointon contains the issues she raises within her case-studies, and there is no concluding chapter. As a result this book of essays provides openings with which we may engage. Two essays I found particularly stimulating were those on Delacroix’s Liberty on the Barri cades and Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur I’herbe. Pointon’s analysis of De-lacroix’s painting shows how the construction of sexuality here, which at once heroicizes and demonizes woman, is ambiguous. Liberty is both the allegorical good (freedom) and bad (licence) woman, a duality which may be explained in Melanie Klein’s object relations theory (Mitchell, 1986).3 Klein suggested that the infant’s splitting of the object results in severance of love and hate, so it seems that Delacroix’s approach to Liberty sways between those two emotions, and also between sexuality and politics, allegory and realism. Pointon names Le Déjeuner sur I’herbe as Manet’s successor to Liberty, in examining the relationship between the real and ideal in French nineteenthcentury painting; again, allegory threatens to collapse into the real. However the lack of narrative closure in Le Déjeuner turns attention to the act of reading. Pointon’s analyses of these two paintings can be taken I believe, to represent case-studies of radical negativity. Feminine negativity is a principle proposed by Julia Kristeva as a means of escape from the im-passe imposed on us by Jacques Lacan’s fixed gender hierarchy. He asserted that woman is only the excluded Other of male discourse (the symbolic) and that indeed, ‘there is no such thing as woman’ (quoted in Irigaray, 1985:87). For Kristeva, the very exclusion of woman from the symbolic realm

privileges her to express the repressed truth which cannot be spoken of in social life. It is this which has potential to disrupt fixed linguistic and social codes in the form of feminine negativity. From Pointon we gain insight into Liberty as a representation of that principle, here fragmenting the conventions of audience response. This is marked by the frequent re-use of her image, severed from the violence and the real (male) world which is actually her context. And Manet’s female nude also possesses qualities of radical negativity. It is she who holds the balance of power for the viewer, she who has subversively challenged male authority, as the word and the body interlock across that picnic area. Pointon shows how the story that cannot be told in Le Déjeuner (what after all, is he saying?) has been treated either to participative acts from viewers, or to symbolic inversion of the gender hierarchy. Kristeva claimed that radical negativity possesses subversive political potential. To my mind, Pointon’s work illuminates that articulation in the shape of Liberty. Nevertheless, on reading her two essays I was drawn to return to Pointon’s Introduction, to her stated aim of accounting for the ‘intersubjectivities’ of artists and viewers. These she has discussed in varieties of ways throughout, and although the issue of gender constantly erupts, its intersubjectivity does not. I believe however, that she did propose it for Le Déjeuner. Pointon does not connect with the use of this same term —intersubjectivity—by Drucilla Cornell and Adam Thurschwell (1987). Their work builds on Kristeva’s softening of the gender categories which has conceptually undermined the Lacanian Oedipal

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structure. Kristeva showed the interdependence of masculinity and femininity, in that identity, known only through the relational Other, makes interdependence internal as well as external. In other words, both femininity and masculinity possess the Other of their own self-difference, each thus having an internal dialectic which is beyond the gender system. It is this dimension which Cornell and Thurschwell identify as one which may generate intersubjectivity, that is, the potential of communicative freedom. Their thesis however, involves a rejection of the feminine exclusivity of Kristeva’s radical negativity. This, they demonstrate, leads to an essentialist position which is one Kristeva herself would wish to avoid. Pointon noted that Delacroix finally sought control of the female power he had raised, ‘striding towards the viewer over the bodies of dead men’ (p. 73) by means of carefully placing his signature (the word of his male power) on the painting. In Le Déjeuner however, there is no such attempted resolution, the word and the body are indeed shown by Pointon to be interdependent. Articulation of the word is promised (the male hand so gestures) but is not spoken. The naked body preventing his articulation is unstable, her clothes lying nearby remind us of her de-socialized position, together with all that she hides from him. But neither male nor female (not word nor body) has the power. In refusing to identify the power-holder, Manet gives the space to selfdifference. It would seem that the intersubjectivity of artist and viewers of Le Déjeuner can occur only in that dimension beyond the gender system. Gillian Elinor

Notes 1 The case cited by Pointon is a review by Anita Brookner in The Observer 15 May 1988. 2 Here Pointon cites C.Duncan’s article was first published in Artforum in as 1982, in its reprint form and date; it 1973, and at that time represented one of the earliest, and extremely helpful, feminist art historical analyses. 3 See especially chapter, ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ (1940)

References CORNELL, D. and THURSCHWELL, A. (1987) ‘Feminism, negativity, intersubjectivity’ in S.Benhalib and D.Cornell, editors, Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late Capi talist Societies Cambridge: Polity Press. IRIGARAY, Luce (1985) This Sex Which is Not One, trans. C.Porter and C.Burke, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. KRISTEVA, Julia (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection New York: Co-lumbia University Press. MITCHELL, Juliet (1986) editor, The Selected Melanie Klein Harmondsworth: Penguin. POINTON, Marcia (1989) ‘Wimagery’ Art History March .

Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety Marjorie B.Garber Routledge: New York and London 1992, ISBN 0 415 90072 7, £25.00 Hbk ‘One thing that sticks out about the codpiece…’(p. 122) is a painful pun,

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but forgivable were it the exception rather than the rule. However, multiplied across the 400 pages of Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety, it is calculated to set on edge the teeth of even the most tolerant reader, particularly given Marjorie Garber’s grating literary combination of twee wordplay and ingenuous insertion of the authorial voice. Glib chapter and subheadings —‘Clothes encounters of the third kind’—are matched by a multiplicity of abstruse and unexplained introductory quotations; while paragraphs which open with, ‘It is not clear to me who reads these novels and magazines, but some statistics suggest that male transvestites are largely middle-class, heterosexual and married’, (p. 96) only serve to further undermine the author’s authority. This immature prose style is coupled with a tendency not to define her terms, and to casually toss in complex and undersubstantiated conclusions while spending pages chattily discussing irrelevant material. For example, Garber uses the historically and culturally specific ‘gender bending’ (p. 62) in relation to Harvard’s ‘Hasty pudding theatricals’ of the mid-nineteenth century. Although she is Professor of English at Harvard University, Garber also apparently finds the concept of ‘great theater’ unproblematic, given her statement that: ‘The notion that there has to be a naturalness to the sign is exactly what great theater puts in question.’ Similar linguistic imprecision is demonstrated by Garber’s willingness to ask the reader to: ‘Consider such cannonical moments of greatness in the history of drama as the ancient Greek theater; the public theater of the English Renaissance; Kabuki and Noh

theaters in Japan; the Chinese opera. This is a short list which could easily be made longer. But it is enough to give the sense that transvestism and theater are interrelated, not merely “historically” or “culturally”, but psychoanalytically, through the unconscious and through language’ (p. 39–40). Garber is, however, less willing either to support this sweeping statement, or even to explain the role of transves-tism in the cited dramatic traditions. She is also guilty of neither numbering her illustrations nor referring to them within the text, a fundamental omission which suggests that Vested Interests may have been written and/or published in haste. Garber’s ability to undersubstantiate her conclusions is especially frustrating given her continual insertion of irrelevant information, anecdotes and asides. For example, Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual is patronizingly introduced as, ‘this invaluable and immensely readable little book’ (p. 44). Garber then quotes its advice on breast binding and crotch padding—using two men’s ‘“dress socks”’—at length, before informing the reader that: ‘as it happens, in men’s clothing parlance this bulge in the trousers is technically described as “dressing”, and is taken into account by custom tailors, who will ask a man whether he “dresses right” or “dresses left”’ (p. 46). This discussion extends across several pages with no greater justification than to support Gar-ber’s uncontroversial assertion that, ‘in the lives of the transvestites or transsexuals who find this pamphlet helpful, the “construction” [of gen-der] itself becomes literalized and essentialized’ (p. 47). Vested Interests is divided into two sections, ‘Transvestite logics’, which

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‘explores the way that trans-vestism creates culture’ and ‘Trans-vestite effects’, which addresses ‘the way that culture creates transves-tites’ (p. 16). The book is structured around Garber’s theoretical premise that the transvestite acts as an indication of ‘“category crisis,” disrupting and calling attention to cultural, social, or aesthetic dissonances’ (p. 16). Ultimately, she asserts, ‘transvestism is a space of possibility structuring and confounding culture: the disruptive element that intervenes, not just a category crisis of male and female, but the crisis of category itself [Garber’s italics] (p. 17). Given the book’s theoretical motivation, Garber reasonably disavows any attempt ‘to produce a seamless historical narrative of the “development” of the transvestite figure’ (p. 16). Rather, Vested Interests utilizes an undeniably fascinating miscellany of sources—the plays of Shakespeare, Madonna’s pop videos, the film Tootsie, or transvestite/transsexual self-help manuals—with Garber ranging from one to another in support of her argument. Much of this argument rests upon the theories of Freud and Lacan, and large areas of Garber’s analysis can be frustratingly difficult to follow for the reader who is unfamiliar with their work. More so, since her convoluted prose style mystifies rather than clarifies, while the book’s linguistic and theoretical im-precisions prejudice one against painstakingly pursuing Garber’s more complex psychoanalytic discussions. For example, in the context of her argument ‘that fetishism is a kind of theater of display—and, indeed, that theater represents an enactment of the fetishistic scenario’ (p. 120), Garber writes: That the fetishistic patient is

sometimes in fact a transvestite renders more complex but also more plausible the argument that the transvestite on stage or in culture is himself/herself a festishization. The fetish is a metonymic structure, but it is also a metaphor, a figure for the undecidability of castration, which is to say, a figure of nostalgia for originary “wholeness”—in the mother, in the child. Thus the fetish, like the trans-vestite—or the transvestite, like the fetish—is a sign at once of lack and its covering over, as in the case of Freud’s patient’s athletic support-belt—a garment very similar to devices worn, as it happens, by some present-day female-to-male trans-vestites’ [Garber’s italics] (p. 121). To utilize a wide variety of texts, while also respecting their inherent differences, and simultaneously to sustain an argument throughout a book of this length is a difficult undertaking, and one to which Garber appears unequal. Garber has amassed a fascinating and extensive collection of historical material, together with some potentially illuminating theoretical concepts. However, in order to qualify as a useful academic text Vested Interests needs to be ruthlessly edited and rewritten. As it stands, the book resembles the ‘Fool’ and his outsize ‘“bauble”’, an allusion ‘to the common wisdom that fools had extra large genital equipment to compensate…for their lack of brain-power’ (p. 124). Vested Interests boasts an over-inflated body of material, but one which ultimately fails to satisfy its reader. Katrina Rolley

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The Colour of Love: Mixed Race Relationships Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Anne Montague Virago: London, 1992 ISBN 1 85381 221 8, £6.99 Pbk Understanding E very day Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory Philomena Essed Sage: London 1991 ISBN 0 8039 42567, £16.95 Pbk ISBN 0 8039 42559, £34 Hbk ‘Race’, Culture and Difference Edited by James Donald and Ali Rattansi Open University, Sage: London 1992 ISBN 0 8039 85800, £10.95 Pbk ISBN 0 8039 85797, £35 Hbk As Europe threshes around in the throes of confusion over the character and form that its Fortress should be given, the challenges facing activists against racism, and those working in the area of cultural studies seem at times to overwhelm all but the most astute thinkers. Yet the need for intellectuals to address the issues with courage and clarity has never been greater. Contemporary European states have reacted to the presence of several million immigrants of non-European origins with a mixture of containment and control, with many countries still talking about inte-gration, decades after the first racial attacks made it obvious that no matter what black people did, or whether or not they ‘adjusted’, white racism was intent on obstructing it. Nowadays we are witnessing new waves of racial violence, not to mention new

techniques of regulation and administrative coercion developed by the European states to deal with the situation. The feature which bureaucratic and mob racism share is that both are about the assertion of the New European identity as an Aryan one, and there is nothing new about the xenophobic rejection of nonwhite people. With the stopping of black immigration (‘New Commonwealth immigration’ in the official jargon) black Euro-peans have become internees in the Fortress, placed under increasingly heavy surveillance in a world ever more sharply divided between the affluent élites of the West and that of the plundered wastelands of the Rest. In Sweden, land of icy lakes and emerald forests, a serial killer of black people, nicknamed The Laser Man after his choice of weapon, carried out his chosen mission for two years before finally being apprehended on the eve of the 1992 midsummer celebrations. Scandalized, the Swedish intelligentsia was somewhat relieved to learn of this killer’s connections with German neo-Nazi groups, and of his trips to South Africa, where he purchased his weapons and ammunition. They have decided that he must be mentally ill, a psychopath with foreign connexions who in no way reflects true popular Swedish opinion. More generally, the existence of black Europeans is finally provoking the long overdue interrogation of the foundations of European identities, and that of European nationalism. That nations comprise racially and culturally homogeneous peoples has never been more than a narcissistic phantasy which used to be fuelled by the expansionist dreams of old dictators, but must now be jettisoned like an ill-

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fitting skin. In this context, spas-modic eruptions of racial violence and entrenched bureaucratic racism can be viewed as the neurotic symptoms of rejection, the abscesses of obsolescence on a body politic that is not coping well with a changed situation. Such ailments seep from the heart of European nationalism, and are not easily soothed by education about cultural difference, or information along the lines that all great civilizations have been thrown up by the seething creativity springing out of the numerous free and forced exchanges amongst diverse peoples. These initiatives have been unable to succeed, because the opportunism of politicians in multiparty democracies has kept racism in play. The racism of the European privileged classes may differ from that of the powerless, but the one nurses and propagates the other. European racism has become increasingly complex in recent years. Thinking in pan-European terms reveals the local variations in the ways in which racism has evolved over the years, but at a general level, the myth of whiteness lurks in the interstices of the power structures and organizations of all European so-cieties, taking on new tactics of exclusion and reassertion, deploying new technologies of violence, inventing new rules and regulatory devices. Direct violence by fascist groups, police and hostile neighbours are complemented by the more insidiously pathogenic activities of welfare bureaucracies. The editors of ‘Race’, Culture and Difference aim for it to be a collection which interrogates multiculturalism and anti-racism, and considers how a radical theory of culture can overcome the limitations of both. They see this

intellectual task as paving the way for the practical goal of creating a ‘radically pluralist culture’ for postcolonial Britain. They argue that we can best address the confusions of race, racism and antiracism, and evade the weakness of multiculturalism by a ‘critical return to the concept of culture’. It is probably worth considering whether the intellectual and political problems that have beset the antiracist struggle can be resolved by cultural theory, but it seems that we do also need to consider exactly how we can ensure that the concept of ‘culture’ (however ‘critical’ our return to it may be) will be kept fully loaded with the power politics that antiracist theory has been emptied of. It is now highly fashionable to engage in that thing called ‘cultural studies’ and to draw on the poststructuralism expounded by well-known French philosophers, but most contemporary radical intellectuals are remaining understandably reticent about the political implications of working in this paradigm. It would have been useful for the contributors to consider how the replacement of one contested term ‘race’ with the equally contestable ‘culture’ and ‘difference’ will help. The references to the inspiring advances in cultural production suggest that once again, practitioners show the way and intellectuals follow with theorizations. Unfortunately, ‘Race’, Culture and Difference lacks theoretical coherence, despite the submissions of its editors, who have taken care to display political correctness by including contributions from women on feminism, and from a Muslim on Rushdie; and by generally ensuring that most of the contributors are black people working in the general area of ethnic studies, or are women working on feminism or in

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gender studies (but why aren’t gay intellectuals represented here?). All the same the quality is very uneven. Also I wondered why it was necessary to include Fanon’s over-cited 1952 essay, considering that the existentialist style of the essay sits uneasily in the midst of contemporary writing which uses a different conceptual vocabulary. Breaking down the stifling disciplinary boundaries of the social sciences seems to have produced a loss of conceptual clarity. Although it cannot be bad that the idea of objective and value-neutral science has been rejected, there remain problems for the way in which academics treat and express politics in their work. Political and strategic claims are often grander than their paradigms, claims which are asserted often enough as a substitute for a lack of intellectual rigour. None the less, the strongest contributions provide us with conceptually clear and useful discussions of antiracism (Gilroy), gender and fundamentalism (Yuval-Davis) ethnicity (Hall) and philosophy (Young). Taken together these will prove useful as a textbook in key areas of cultural studies, even if they are not quite able to fulfil the ambitious goals set out by the editors. Philomena Essed’s Understanding Everyday Racism was greeted with a blaze of publicity when it first came out in the Netherlands. The seemingly gentle title was what made the book controversial, in a way that needs to be explained to the non-Dutch readership. For the Dutch have a rather sanctimonious image of themselves and are adamant that racism happens elsewhere, and not in their country, whose people are tolerant and liberalminded. Whether they dislike being described as racist or not, surely no amount of denial will do away with the very apparent segregation of their

housing and employment policies. Perhaps this finger-pointing race politics is what helped fuel some of the most energetic anti-apartheid activisim in Europe, an activisim which owes something of its intensity to the intimate historical blood-and-money links between Holland and Afrikanerdom. In any case, Dutch intolerance of the word ‘racism’ in the title is, as I said earlier, what created a furore. After all the fuss, it is ironic to find that the book is not about understanding white racism as such, but a cognitive psychological study of black women in Holland and the USA, who experience racism day in and day out. Given the lack of existing publications addressing the lives and situations of black people of the Netherlands, it is regrettable that so little of her text is given over to the voices of the twenty-eight women of Suri-namese-African descent she conducted unstructured interviews with. Because it was written as her doctoral thesis, Essed has been obliged to devote a great deal of space to the exploration of a motley collection of psychological hypotheses which bear little relation to the author’s stated theoretical goals. Leaving aside questions of politics, Essed states her theoretical objective as being ‘Understanding’ how black women comprehend their everyday experiences of racism, and to argue that this is a form of ‘political cognition’. She makes a rather idiosyncratic distinction between what she is doing theoretically (‘Understanding’ with a capital ‘U’) and what black women do every day (which she calls ‘comprehension’ of racism). Essed does indeed look at the ways in which black women cognitively process their experiences of racism and so

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accumulate a particular type of political knowledge, but perhaps because she does not really explore the place of racism in Dutch politics, she ends up focusing on cognition rather than on what is political about it. Her definition of ‘the everyday’ informs those who did not already know that racism is not limited to the extreme actions of fascists and lasermen, but a habitual social practice among white people in certain societies. Perhaps one reason why Essed does not locate racism in Dutch society is because she decided to compare black women’s cognition of racism in California with that of their sisters in the Netherlands, and has thus come up with a typology of cognition in which she argues that the latter have a more ‘cultural’ comprehension. Alas, Essed does not bother to spell out either the theoretical or political implications of this distinction. Although we are left to wait for other studies to inform us about the dynamics of racism and the ways in which it is being resisted by black Netherlanders, it is the first study on black women’s experience in the Netherlands and Essed is not to be shortchanged simply because there have not been any others on areas we would be interested to know about. We eagerly await more work from the Centre for Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam, whose antiracist academics face an uphill struggle for professional survival among those of their Dutch colleagues who have enormous difficulty accepting that they are racists. If both Understanding Everyday Racism and ‘Race’, Culture and Difference suffer from being burdened with too many academic preoccupations, the same can certainly not be said of The Colour of Love.

Although it uses the same method of collecting people’s stories as Essed does, Alibhai-Brown and Montague’s book is devoted entirely to what the people whom they interviewed say about their intimate relationships with people who are racially and/or culturally different from themselves. It is a mine of unadulterated information on the ways in which this difference features in intimate relationships in a divided society. The first part of the book concentrates on famous couples, presumably in deference to some notion that it is a good thing to use a parade of public figures as role models —if famous people do it it must be OK. More interesting are the starkly honest accounts of the less famous contributors, who have been painstakingly selected from the various classes and castes of Britain’s various nonwhite cultural and racial groups, as well as from the various mixtures thereof. The inextricability of race and culture in these people’s lives makes one wonder why academics have spent so much time theorizing their separateness, only then to spend more time considering the ways in which they may interact. People in mixed relationships are no different from anyone else it would seem, often holding racial and gendered stereotypes and biases about other social groups and on occasion displaying internalized hatred of their own group. The Asian man who uses white and African women for fun and sex but would only consider marrying one of his own kind, or the dreadlocked athletics teacher who deeply despises black women, are people who exist and fall in love, in defiance of the assumption that ‘normal’ people are rational or that ‘love’ exists in some ideologically pure space outside the social world.

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Contradictions do not only exist within individual subjects, but across relationships—the blond partner of the black man who states that he could never go with a black woman proudly declares that neither of them think in racial terms at all. These rich personal stories depict the way in which the power structure of British society finds resonance in the emotional structures and desires of her people, but also how racism can be resisted and rejected at those deeper levels of social life. The historical and racial loading of desire appears to work both ways, facilitating love and hate in such a way that we can only conclude that where there is social apartheid, love will always have its racial content. On the other hand, as an explanatory concept or a theory, ‘race’ is revealed to be rather like the Holy Book in its capacity to be everywhere and nowhere, and to explain everything and yet nothing in the racial and cultural pot-pourri that The Colour of Love reflects. The dynamism of social reality has given rise to an ongoing struggle which affects us all in disparate ways, and which all three books try to address in their very different ways. If theory and understanding are what we need, there has to be a great deal more work and inspiration. It remains to be seen whether contemporary studies of race and culture will succeed in facilitating or otherwise assisting the difficult metamorphosis of culture and poli-tics into forms more compatible with the changes that the global movements of people have already wrought on European societies. Amina Mama

Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 1850–1914 Eleanor Gordon Clarendon Press: Oxford 1991 ISBN 019 820143 5, £35.00 Hbk Our Mothers’ Land. Chapters in Welsh Women’s History 1830– 1939 Edited by Angela V. John University of Wales Press: Cardiff 1991 ISBN 0 7083 1129 6, £10.95 Pbk ISBN 0 7083 1120 2, £25 Hbk Until recently the development of women’s history in Scotland and Wales lagged behind that in England. The lag implied a backwardness in feminist theory and practice, which in turn led to the easy assumption of exceptionally male-dominated societies. The late 1980s saw the growth of historical investigation into the position of women in Scotland and Wales, including the two books under review. Eleanor Gordon and Angela John both question comfortable national stereotypes which are above all masculine in construct. They also show differences as well as similarities between the position of women in Scotland and Wales, and in England. Eleanor Gordon’s study not only challenges the focus of labour history in Scotland on the skilled male working class, but asserts the necessity to revise the concept of skill by taking gender into account. The tendency in labour history is to categorize women’s waged work as unskilled, or at best semi-skilled, and then only at the cost of the dilution of male skills; to assume that the male workers’ interests were identical with those of their class, whereas women’s interests could undermine class solidarity. The

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tendency also is to generalize that women’s experience as workers was premised upon their subordination as a gender; but as Gordon shows, a full understanding of women’s position in the labour market depends on local studies balancing the simple explanation of the sexual division of labour disadvantaging women. Traditionally, textiles has been a major employer of women, heavy industry of men; but whereas in the nineteenth century the west of Scotland had these ‘choices’, the Welsh economy was dominated by coalmining, seriously restricting employment opportunities for women. Thus while domestic service was the major employer of women in Wales even into the twentieth century, the textile town of Dundee was remarkable for its unemployed men and for the dominance of the mill girls. Gordon reveals that even in the traditional flax and linen industries, Dundee employers succeeded in making the prestige tasks of power spinning and weaving a female preserve. While Dundee was unique in Britain in its reliance on female labour, the labour hierarchy, with women subordinate to men, pertained even in such a ‘women’s town’: skilled women workers were paid less than men and were supervised by general male overseers. However, Gordon’s painstaking research shows that whereas in England the sexual hierarchy itself determined which sex got the job (leaving women unskilled), in Scotland the sexual composition of the labour force was crucial for deciding what form the labour process took (skilled women supervised by men). Further, she believes that middle-class notions of domesticity were undermined by the centrality of female employment in Dundee. Still,

gender divisions remained fundamental to society. Even the Dundee mill girl was defined by her household responsibilities. Dundee was exceptional. Yet Gordon’s study reinforces the generalization of two labour markets, one for women and one for men, with the former inferior to the latter in terms of authority, skill and pay. It also undermines the assumption that work was a negative experience for women, and the stereotype of the subordinate, passive woman worker. Our Mothers’ Land paints a bleaker picture of women’s work in Wales, even as it asserts the significance of their contribution to the formation of Welsh society and culture. In the period under review, 1830 to 1939, there were lower rates of participation of women in the Welsh than in the Scottish, or English, paid labour force, and fewer job opportunities—even fewer in the industrial south than in rural west Wales—with women concentrated in domestic service. As a result, many young and single women migrated to the south and south-east of England, to help support their families at home. Most women in Wales married, due to few alternative ‘careers’, and the dual pressure of the Victorian and Nonconformist domestic ideal. Welsh patriots sought improvements in female education because they saw the mother’s role as crucial for the nation, notably as guardian of the national language and culture. In fact, it was crucial for the economy too. Although many working-class and farmers’ wives were not formally employed, they had to respond to the demands of their husbands’ work, especially coalmining, within a harsh home environment of serious overcrowding and lack of even basic amenities. At

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the same time, these women took a pride in their domestic labour, which was much more than simply servicing their men. In such a sex-segregated economy, with such a strict division between public and private, women asserted control over their workplace, the home. They exercised a wider influence through the imposition of local community sanctions, thus helping to shape popular culture even as they reinforced their domestic ties. Domesticity was further strengthened by visual as well as written images in women’s magazines, beginning with Y Gymraes (The Welshwoman) in 1850. The ideal Welshwoman—self-sacrificing, sober, virtuous and maternal—was a response both to the English criticisms of Welsh morality found in the 1847 Education Report, and to the social unrest of Chartism and the Rebecca riots in which a dangerous female presence had been discerned. Even those women —from the upper and middle classes, either from England or influenced by English ideals—who played a significant role either in running their husbands’ businesses or in the various reform and suffrage movements, did not challenge the domestic ideal. Like the working-class women, they manipulated it to give them room for manoeuvre in the public realm. Yet the middle-class women also sought to use their public role precisely to impose the domestic ideal on their social inferiors. Our Mothers’ Land is a challenge to the stereotype of Wales as a land of fathers. It also shows the different cultural and political contexts between Wales and England. Thus it was not simply patriarchy which inhibited the development of the suffrage campaign in Wales, but national pride, hurt by the Pank-hurst attack on the Liberal

Party in general and on Lloyd George in particular. In addition, Welsh women lacked the economic interests to encourage them to demand a political say. As Deirdre Beddoe shows in the final chapter, this situation changed little for women in economic terms in the inter-war period, even as they won the vote. She insists on the necessity of placing the history of women in Wales within the broader context of the history of women in Britain as a whole. Yet what is so valuable about both the books under review is the difference, the divergence, between women in Britain. It has been too easy to assume a single position of women, based on the English model, given the pioneering work by feminist historians in England. What Eleanor Gordon’s detailed study and Angela John’s varied collection show is the complexity of the interaction of gender with nationality as well as class. Jane McDermid

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LETTER

Dear Feminist Review, I was interested to read Cynthia Cockburn’s ‘In listening mode’ in FR39 which touched on reactions many Western women have had when in contact with today’s Russian and Eastern bloc women. Cynthia Cockburn (CC) addresses several important issues but I’d like to share some personal views based on my own recent experience. First of all, the ‘market economy’ which Russia and the other countries are so wholeheartedly embracing obviously includes not only ‘rich’ countries with ‘conventional Western wealth and choices’ for some, but also the vast areas of the developing world such as Latin America where most people have little or nothing. However, I have been asking my Moscow friends about their joining this market economy set-up: none of them mention poverty and, if pressed, they say that the exploited should ‘protest and refuse low wages’. They do not say that capitalism is at fault nor give any political analysis of the defects of the market economy. In fact, the discussion often ends in ‘If you think your system is bad, you should try “socialism”!’ Secondly, the Eastern bloc women (is there a better name?) whom we generally meet or who make public statements are usually university educated and they look to their Western counterparts for comparison of standard of living and choices. Surely it is the people at the bottom of the pile in each system whose lives should be compared since professional people these days are liable to unemployment or loss of home. CC’s checklist of the ‘contents’ of her socialism is valuable but the way we make comparisons between systems is highly debatable. Russian women may hanker after our material goodies, but we can envy their principles—now rapidly being abandoned—of women’s science education (free), job opportunities and crèches, as well as a cheap, comprehensive transport system. (A friend who

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recently emigrated to Minneapolis could not get to her work, language classes nor anywhere else because there was absolutely no public transport even in the near downtown area.) Which brings me to the broader issues of what values we will hold as feminists in the future. Again CC’s definition of a feminist perspective is useful but can we put it into practice under global capitalism? ‘An end to exploitation’ in a competitive, profit system? ‘Non-violence’ in an economy which thrives on the arms trade? ‘A rationality of care’ in a system which condones massive unemployment and sees women as a disposable workforce? There has been a ‘revolution in the East’ but not a feminist revolution. This is the issue we women in the East and West have to confront. In sisterhood, Natasha Hodson (Visiting Lecturer, Dept. of Languages, City University, London)

NOTICEBOARD

Conference ‘Gender Issues and Refugees: Implications For Development’. The Centre for Refugee Studies and The Centre for Feminist Research at York University will be hosting a conference in May 1993 focusing on ‘Gender Issues and Refugees: Implications for Development’. A primary objective of the conference is to establish a deeper understanding of the current research and analyses being undertaken in the field of gender and refugee studies. The conference will embody a North/South feminist perspective on refugee issues. Paper presentations and panel discussions, in either French or English, will address issues of a timely nature, and will stimulate broader crosscultural analysis in this area. Some travel funding will be available for paper presenters and discussants from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. For further information contact: Farhana Mather, Conference Coordinator, Centre for Refugee Studies, Suite 322, York Lanes, York University, 4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3.

New MA in Women’s Studies at the University of Salford Women’s Studies has become a very popular option at universities and polytechnics around the country. Now an MA degree in Women’s Studies has been set up in the Manchester area and is recruiting students. This new MA at the University of Salford begins in October this year and is looking for anybody who is suitably qualified (with a degree or other relevant qualification) and who is interested in such subjects as feminism, women’s writing and women’s role in social and political life. The course is taught mainly by five women lecturers at Salford University who specialize in literature, politics and sociology.

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It is a part-time degree with sessions held in the evenings. It is flexible; students can complete the degree in a minimum of two years or a maximum of five. Fees are very reasonable and payable in instalments. For further information telephone (44) 061 745 5954. New publication UCG Women’s Studies Centre Review, A.Byrne, J.Conroy and S.Ryder, editors, UCG WSG, Galway, 1992, viii-132 pp., 13 pl., 3 fig., pbk. £6 (Ir.) ISBN 0 951 9466 09. The Women’s Studies Centre in University College Galway organizes teaching and research, including seminars and conferences, in the many areas covered by gender studies. The first volume of the UCG Women’s Studies Centre Review was published in May 1992. It contains three sections: Women in Irish Society, Women’s History, Women and the Arts. The topics range from ‘Women in ancient Europe’ to ‘Irish women scientists’, from ‘The Irish travelling woman’ to ‘Women in Latin American writing’. Its contents are of interest to a mixed public of general readers, students and specialists. The UCG Women’s Studies Centre Review is available from major Irish booksellers and most University bookshops, or from the Secretary, The Women’s Studies Centre, c/o the Archway, University College, Galway, Ireland. Phone: 091–24411, ext. 3035/3009; Fax: 091–25700; Telex: 091–28823. Price £7 (including p&p) to Ireland and the UK, or $20 (including p&p) to Transatlantic and Continental addresses. EqualityWorks Equality Works is a new training and consultancy partnership set up by Annie Hedge and Jane Farrell. We provide consultancy and deliver tailor-made courses and training packages mainly in the public sector. We also write self-study packs and handbooks to complement the training. The purpose of Equality Works is to make organizations more effective and equitable by Developing systems and practices which combat institutionalized oppressions; Developing the skills of individuals in a wide range of key areas. Equality Works therefore delivers a wide range of courses including recruitment and selection, curriculum development, positive appraisal, combatting harassment, managing equal opportunities, service delivery. The courses are positive, participatory, and designed after careful needs analysis and negotiations. All our work is based on an integrated approach to equality issues. We have run courses in a wide range of organizations including the Institute of Education, London University, the National Union of Public and Civil Servants, the London Borough of Haringey, Wolverhampton Local Education

NOTICEBOARD 113

Authority. Please telephone 071–284–2574 or write to 11 Carleton Gardens, Brecknock Road, London N 19 5AQ if you would like more information or to arrange a meeting. Call for Papers Proposals for papers for the Women’s Studies Network (UK) Annual Conference, to be held 16–18 July 1993, are invited for the following conference strands: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

Violences Lesbians in Theory Women’s Studies, Ethnic Studies, Black Studies Women and Religions Women and Cultural production Managing Women

Papers by women from diverse ethnic backgrounds, of diverse ability and sexual orientation for all six strands are most welcome. Please send proposals (up to 200 words) and any queries to: Gabriele Griffin, Dept. of English, Nene College, Moulton Park, Northampton NN2 7AL.

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FAMILY SECRETS: CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE: Introduction to an Issue: Family Secrets as Public Drama, McIntosh. Challenging the Orthodoxy: Towards a Feminist Theory and Practice, MacLeod & Saraga. The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse: Notes from American History, Gordon. What’s in a Name?: Defining Child Sexual Abuse, Kelly. A Case, Anon. Defending Innocence: Ideologies of Childhood, Kitzinger. Feminism and the Seductiveness of the ‘Real Event’, Scott. Cleveland and the Press: Outrage and Anxiety in the Reporting of Child Sexual Abuse, Nava. Child Sexual Abuse and the Law, Woodcraft. Poem, Betcher. Brixton Black Women’s Centre: Organizing on Child Sexual Abuse, Bogle. Bridging the Gap: Glasgow Women’s Support Project, Bell & Macleod. Claiming Our Status as Experts: Community Organizing, Norwich Consultants on Sexual Violence. Islington Social Services: Developing a Policy on Child Sexual Abuse, Boushel & Noakes. Developing a Feminist School Policy on Child Sexual Abuse, O’Hara. ‘Putting Ideas into their Heads’: Advising the Young, Mills Child Sexual Abuse Crisis Lines: Advice for Our British Readers. 29 ABORTION: THE INTERNATIONAL AGENDA: Whatever Happened to ‘A Woman’s Right to Choose’?, Berer. More than ‘A Woman’s Right to Choose’?, Himmelweit. Abortion in the Republic of Ireland, Barry. Across the Water, Irish Women’s Abortion Support Group. Spanish Women and the Alton Bill, Spanish Women’s Abortion Support Group. The Politics of Abortion in Australia: Freedom, Church and State, Coleman. Abortion in Hungary, Szalai. Women and Population Control in China: Issues of Sexuality, Power and Control, Hillier. The Politics of Abortion in Nicaragua: Revolutionary Pragmatism—or Feminism in the Realm of Necessity?, Molyneux. Who Will Sing for Theresa?, Bernstein. She’s Gotta Have It: The Representation of Black Female Sexuality on Film, Simmonds. Poems, Gallagher. Dyketactics for Difficult Times: A Review of the ‘Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality?’ Conference, Franklin & Stacey 30 Capital, Gender and Skill: Women Homeworkers in Rural Spain, Lever. Fact and Fiction: George Egerton and Nellie Shaw, Butler. Feminist Political Organization in Iceland: Some Reflections on the Experience of Kwenna Frambothid, Dominelli & Jonsdottir. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, Talpade Mohanty. Bedroom Horror: The Fatal Attraction of

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Intercourse, Merck. AIDS: Lessons from the Gay Community, Patton. Poems, Agbabi. 31

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THE PAST BEFORE US: 20 YEARS OF FEMINISM: Slow Change or No Change?: Feminism, Socialism and the Problem of Men, Segal. There’s No Place Like Home: On the Place of Identity in Feminist Politics, Adams. New Alliances: Socialist-Feminism in the Eighties, Harriss. Other Kinds of Dreams, Parmar. Complexity, Activism, Optimism: Interview with Angela Y.Davis. To Be or Not To Be: The Dilemmas of Mothering, Rowbotham. Seizing Time and Making New: Feminist Criticism, Politics and Contemporary Feminist Fiction, Lauret. Lessons from the Women’s Movement in Europe, Haug. Women in Management, Coyle. Sex in the Summer of ‘88, Ardill & O’Sullivan. Younger Women and Feminism, Hobsbawm & Macpherson. Older Women and Feminism, Stacey; Curtis; Summer skill. ‘Those Who Die for Life Cannot Be Called Dead’: Women and Human Rights Protest in Latin America, Schirmer. Violence Against Black Women: Gender, Race and State Responses, Mama. Sex and Race in the Labour Market, Breugel. The ‘Dark Continent’: Africa as Female Body in Haggard’s Adventure Fiction, Stott. Gender, Class and the Welfare State: The Case of Income Security in Australia, Shaver. Ethnic Feminism: Beyond the Pseudo-Pluralists, Gorelick. Restructuring the Woman Question: Perestroika and Prostitution, Waters. Contemporary Indian Feminism, Kumar. ‘A Bit On the Side’?: Gender Struggles in South Africa, Beall, Hassim and Todes. ‘Young Bess’: Historical Novels and Growing Up, Light. Madeline Pelletier (1874–1939): The Politics of Sexual Oppression, Mitchell. PERVERSE POLITICS: LESBIANISSUES Pat Parker: A tribute, Brimstone. International Lesbianism: Letter from São Paulo, Rodrigues; Israel, Pittsburgh, Italy, Fiocchetto. The De-eroticization of Women’s Liberation: Social Purity Movements and the Revolutionary Feminism of Sheila Jeffreys, Hunt. Talking About It: Homophobia in the Black Community, Gomez & Smith. Lesbianism and the Labour Party, Tobin. Skirting the Issue: Lesbian fashion for the 1990s, Blackman & Perry. Butch/Femme Obsessions, Ardill & O’Sullivan. Archives: The Will to Remember, Nestle; International Archives, Read. Audre Lorde: Vignettes and Mental Conversations, Lewis. Lesbian Tradition, Field. Mapping: Lesbians, AIDS and Sexuality An interview with Cindy Patton, O’Sullivan. Significant Others: Lesbians and Psychoanalytic Theory, Hamer. The Pleasure Threshold: Looking at Lesbian Pornography on Film, Smyth. Cartoon, Charlesworth. Voyages of the Valkyries: Recent Lesbian Pornographic Writing, Dunn. Campaign Against Pornography, Norden. The Mothers’ Manifesto and Disputes over ‘Mutterlichkeit’, Chamberlayne Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multi-National Reception, Mani. Cagney and Lacey Revisited, Alcock & Robson. Cutting a Dash: The Dress of Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, Rolley. Deviant Dress, Wilson. The House that Jill Built: Lesbian Feminist Organizing in Toronto, 1976–1980, Ross. Women in Professional Engineering: the Interaction of Gendered Structures and Values, Carter & Kirkup. Identity Politics and the Hierarchy of Oppression, Briskin. Poetry: Bufkin, Zumwalt. ‘The Trouble Is It’s Ahistorical’: The Problem of the Unconscious in Modern Feminist Theory, Minsky. Feminism and Pornography, Ellis, O’Dair, Tallmer

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Who Watches the Watchwomen? Feminists Against Censorship, Rodgerson & Semple. Pornography and Violence: What the ‘Experts’ Really Say, Segal. The Woman In My Life: Photography of Women, Nava. Splintered Sisterhood: Antiracism in a Young Women’s Project, Connolly. Woman, Native, Other, Parmar interviews Trinh T.Minh-ha. Out But Not Down: Lesbians’ Experience of Housing, Edgerton. Poems: Evans Davies, Tóth, Weinbaum. Oxford Twenty Years On: Where Are We Now?, Gamman & O’Neill. The Embodiment of Ugliness and the Logic of Love: The Danish Redstockings Movement, Walter. THEME ISSUE: WOMEN, RELIGIONANDDISSENT Black Women, Sexism and Racism: Black or Antiracist Feminism?, Tang Nain. Nursing Histories: Reviving Life in Abandoned Selves, McMahon. The Quest for National Identity: Women, Islam and the State in Bangladesh, Kabeer. Born Again Moon: Fundamentalism in Christianity and the Feminist Spirituality Movement, McCrickard. Washing our Linen: One Year of Women Against Fundamentalism, Connolly. Siddiqui on Letter to Christendom, Bard on Generations of Memories, Patel on Women Living Under Muslim Laws Dossiers 1–6, Poem, Kay. More Cagney and Lacey, Gamman. The Modernist Style of Susan Sontag, McRobbie. Tantalizing Glimpses of Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs, Fraser and Boffin. Reflections on the Women’s Movement in Trinidad, Mohammed. Fashion, Representation and Femininity, Evans & Thornton. The European Women’s Lobby, Hoskyns. Hendessi on Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Iran, Kaveney on Mercy. SHIFTINGTERRITORIES: FEMINISM & EUROPE Between Hope and Helplessness: Women in the GDR, Dölling. Where Have All the Women Gone? Women and the Women’s Movement in East Central Europe, Einhorn. The End of Socialism in Europe—A New Challenge For Socialist Feminism? Haug. The Second ‘No’: Women in Hungary, Kiss. The Citizenship Debate: Women, the State and Ethnic Processes, Yuval-Davis. Fortress Europe and Migrant Women, Morokvasíc. Racial Equality and 1992, Dummett. Questioning Perestroika: A Socialist Feminist Interrogation, Pearson. Postmodernism and its Discontents, Soper. Feminists and Socialism: After the Cold War, Kaldor. Socialism Out of the Common Pots, Mitter. 1989 and All That, Campbell. In Listening Mode, Cockburn. Women in Action: Country by Country: The Soviet Union; Yugoslavia; Czechoslovakia; Hungary; Poland. Reports: International Gay and Lesbian Association: Black Women and Europe 1992. Fleurs du Mal or Second-Hand Roses?: Nathalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, and the ‘Originality of the Avant-Garde’, Elliott & Wallace. Poem, Tyler-Bennett. Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading, Snitow. Qualitative Research, Appropriation of the ‘Other’ and Empowerment, Opie. Disabled Women and the Feminist Agenda, Begum. Postcard From the Edge: Thoughts on the ‘Feminist Theory: An International Debate’ Conference at Glasgow University, July 1991, Radstone. Review Essay, Munt. Editorial. The selling of HRT: Playing on the Fear Factor, Worcester and Whatley. The Cancer Drawings of Catherine Arthur, Sebastyen. Ten Years of Women’s Health 1982–92, James. AIDS Activism: Women and AIDS Activism in Victoria, Australia, Mitchell. A Woman’s Subject, Friedli. HIV and the Invisibility of Women: Is there a Need to Redefine AIDS?, Scharf and Toole. Lesbians Evolving Health Care: Cancer and AIDS, Winnow. Now is the Time for Feminist Criticism: A Review of Asinimali!. Steinberg Ibu or the Beast: Gender Interests in Two Indonesian Women’s Organizations, Wieringa. Reports on Motherlands: Symposium on African, Carribean and Asian Women’s Writing,

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Smart. The European Forum of Socialist Feminists, Bruegel. Review Essay, Gamman. FEMINIST FICTIONS: Editorial. Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and the Decolonization of Feminine Sexuality, Makinen. Feminist Writing: Working with Women’s Experience, Haug. Three Aspects of Sex in Marge Piercy’s Fly Away Home, Hauser Are They Reading Us? Feminist Teenage Fiction, Bard. Sexuality in Lesbian Romance Fiction, Hermes. A Psychoanalytic Account for Lesbianism, Castendyk. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Problematic of Slavery, Ferguson. Reviews.