Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:44:22.848Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Perspectives Against Interests: Sketch of a Feminist Political Theory of “Women”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2011

Laurel Weldon
Affiliation:
Purdue University

Extract

Do women share interests? Seeking interests that women share is theoretically problematic and politically undesirable for feminists. Efforts to redefine interests as subjective, contingent and/or context sensitive are unsatisfying for those who want to link women's representation to the fact of their oppression, exploitation, and discrimination. Fortunately, we need not posit shared interests to make strong claims about the importance of women's representation. Nor do we need such a concept to explain why women work together across significant institutional barriers and social differences. Overlapping, entwined sets of global and local social structures define “women” as a social collectivity. Women in diverse organizational, social, and national contexts organize to alter this complex configuration, forging relations of solidarity and shared identities in the process. But this is not reducible to shared interests. Moreover, focusing on things that women have in common de-emphasizes issues that mainly confront marginalized groups of women and/or that are group or context specific but critical to achieving gender justice. Fortunately, feminist theorists have identified bases for political representation and mobilization that offer more useful accounts of social group politics (e.g., Mansbridge 1995; Mohanty 2003; Young 1997, 2000;). The idea of social perspective is one such concept.

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Burns, Nancy. 2007. “Gender in the Aggregate, Gender in the Individual, Gender and Political Action.” Politics & Gender 3 (March): 104–23.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought. Boston: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Diamond, Irene, and Hartsock, Nancy. 1981. “Beyond Interests in Politics: A Comment on Virginia Sapiro's ‘When Are Interests Interesting? Political Representation of Women,’American Political Science Review 75 (3): 717–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Julia, and Straub, Kristina. 1995. Body Guards. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. 2000. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. 2nd ed.Cambridge MA: South End.Google Scholar
Steven, Lukes. 2005. Power: A Radical View. 2d ed.New York: Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar
McBride, Dorothy, and Mazur, Amy. 2010. The Politics of State Feminism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane. 1995. “What Is the Feminist Movement?” In Feminist Organizations, ed. Marx Ferree, Myra and Yancey Martin, Patricia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2734.Google Scholar
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Morris, Aldon, and Braine, Naomi. 2001. “Social Movements and Oppositional Consciousness.” In Oppositional Consciousness, ed. Mansbridge, Jane and Morris, Aldon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2037.Google Scholar
Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Erin. 2004. “The Double-Edged Sword of Women's Organizing.” Women & Politics. 26 (3/4): 2556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sapiro, Virginia. 1981. “Research Frontier Essay: When Are Interests Interesting? The Problem of Political Representation of Women.” American Political Science Review 75 (3): 701–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vickers, Jill. 2006. “The Problem with Interests: Making Political Claims for ‘Women.’” In The Politics of Women's Interests, ed. Chappell, Louise and Hill, Lisa. New York: Routledge, 538.Google Scholar
Weldon, S. Laurel. 2006. “Inclusion, Solidarity and Social Movements: The Global Movement on Gender Violence.” Perspectives on Politics 4 (1): 5574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1997. “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective.” In Intersecting Voices. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar