Abstract
Social inequalities—from racism to sexism—are not aberrations, but rather are deeply embedded in society and reinforced by state power and market systems. Therefore, the current social order stands as a fundamental obstacle to social justice. A logical conclusion of this observation is that social change movements may be better off thinking and acting beyond the state and capital as targets of reform and/or as reliable partners.
Introduction
As gender equality has increasingly become a public concern, proposals for a remedial plan to ensure gender equality have also become increasingly relevant. However, the public discourse has largely centered around utilizing the state as a mechanism for delivering this equality. The modern state, for this article, is described as being a highly institutionalized and sovereign monopoly of force over a territory that is characterized by authoritarian institutions like police, military, and a capital-oriented economy(). This article argues that gender inequality is a direct extension of qualities that are inherent to the state. Specifically, these qualities are the propensity of the state to operate according to and forcibly impose particular assumptions about gender roles through the enforcement practices of the police force(), its propensity to immobilize women as dependents within the household, and its propensity to perpetuate a capitalist economic system that requires domestic labor required for the reproduction of the workforce-- labor that is disproportionately considered the responsibility of women(). Thus, inherent to changing gender roles is a resistance to the state’s propensity to be overly restrictive and controlling.
In this paper, I intend to discuss gender inequality as a direct extension of the state, critique current approaches to gender equality that predictably call on the state to reform itself, and argue why an approach to gender equality that does not involve the state might be the most effective. The article begins by discussing the nature of the state as being inherently authoritarian, coercive, and systematically representing the interests of men. Then, it will explore how these qualities that are inherent in the state exacerbate gender inequality. Finally, the article will suggest that the public discourse, by considering practices that require the state to be the only method of achieving gender equality, degrades the revolutionary potential of feminism and that expanding the discourse to solutions beyond the state would be probative.
The Nature of the Modern State: A Feminist Nightmare
Being that the characteristics that comprise the modern state result in it being authoritarian, oppressive, and violent by nature, it is important for gender equality discourse, which calls for solutions that operate within the state, to expand its scope to include solutions that suggest operating outside of state-formulated ones. The modern state’s origin and evolution show that the state is a product of aggression, and through the various stages the state has passed through, its fundamental qualities have been maintained(). For instance, the state has maintained a cyclical relationship with warfare in that states, created through war, perpetuate and initiate war. This is no coincidence as militarization, warfare, and institutionalized hierarchy are intrinsically correlated to the formation of the state. Being that the state is a direct product of and has its origins in warfare, oppressive methods for maintaining control are inherent in the state’s nature— a nature that can be and has been used to oppress women specifically.
Since the state system is inherently oppressive, feminist discourse should shift from trying to operate and promote equality within an oppressive system to calling into question the power structures that enable their oppression. All states, being monopolies of violence over territories, have a propensity to exercise their authority in oppressive ways. About women specifically, the state uses its coercive tendencies to create restrictive gender roles that serve its interests. If one deviates from these imposed norms, they are confronted with the oppressive or even violent nature of the state. By calling into question the power structures that exacerbate gender inequality, feminists further the revolutionary and progressive potential of their movement.
Even in states that are considered democratic, coercion, oppression, and violence are utilized to reinforce state legitimacy, which is why feminists should seek to challenge all state power structures. State coercion can be characterized as requiring citizens to do something they would not otherwise choose to do. The idea of state oppression, which applies to the state using its political authority to limit its people ' rights, is synonymous with violence which can be defined as an explicit action by the state to inflict physical harm. From this, we can consider violence, oppression, and coercion to be stages of state authority with coercion being the least forceful and violence being the most.
The Modern State and the Ideology of Gender Inequality
Though steady progress has been made, achieving gender equality has been stalled by the modern state system’s inculcation and legitimization of gender roles. In the early 1960s, the discourse around gender equality in the United States was relatively limited by the fact that the vast majority of people believed that women belonged in the “private sphere”(). Conventional wisdom held that participating in the labor force and being a mother were mutually exclusive phenomena. Medical professionals asserted that women of normal mental health had an innate feminine desire to be dependent and home-bound. In one extreme case, a woman was admitted to a psychiatric institution by her doctor and prescribed electro-convulsive therapy for “waking up one morning saying she was not going to do housework anymore”(). This opinion continued past the late 1970s when roughly 66% of Americans held the belief that it was “much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family”(). In short, the public was largely a proponent of the fact that women should act in a private sphere of domesticity.
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The notion of there being a “private sphere” (i.e. the family) that is a separate entity from the economy is a construct of a capital-oriented economy, a product of the state, and constitutes the ideological framework that women’s oppression is built on. In societies with capitalist economies, women are disproportionately responsible for domestic labor, while men are disproportionately responsible for the provision of income, achievable through participating in wage labor. This distinctive form of situating men and women into restrictive gender-based divisions of labor has a historical legacy that can be traced back to earlier class societies. These divisions have further been exacerbated by the capitalist mode of production’s separation of domestic labor and wage labor.
Furthermore, domestic labor’s unique characteristic of being considered a separate form of labor from wage labor is further worsened by a social system of male supremacy. The highly pervasive differentiation of domestic labor from wage labor in the context of male supremacy lays the foundation for several prominent ideological frameworks that legitimize and support a male-dominated division of labor. Under capitalism, domestic labor, which is overwhelmingly done by women, will be necessary for propagating the workforce and thus a sexist restrictive system of labor will be perpetuated.
This concept of a “private sphere of domesticity” is reinforced by other coercive and restrictive state institutions, namely the police and the courts. The legal system follows a principle of specific gender assumptions. For example, police are often hesitant to act in cases of brutal domestic violence out of respect for 'family' privacy. Procurators are often hesitant to prosecute cases of domestic abuse because of the challenges it presents, and the fear that the prosecution won't succeed. The courts often subscribe to the belief that these cases should not be the responsibility of the judicial system to mediate, but rather that they are best dealt with through arbitration or restitution. It is also the police who instruct women to avoid leaving the home without accompaniment 'in the interest of safety' when they struggle to locate a still-active rapist or murderer. This adds a secondary control element to this initial danger. The state's relationship with the woman is then more implicit and less intrusive for the reason that 'the state also determines a room, the home, in which its agents will not intervene, but in which power is left to the man'
The state's reluctance to act on domestic abuse, its immobilization of women as dependents in the home, and its effort to punish females who deviate from traditional gender roles, results in a type of house arrest that is no less oppressive than incarceration. The state then does not need to rely on secondary measures of repression or control but rather it can operate by constructing a family form that exercises primary and informal forms of control.
The understanding that gender inequality is a direct extension of the state further becomes evident in the existence of structural impediments deliberately designed to force men and women into specific gender roles-- ones that do not reflect their personal preferences. To illustrate, a study conducted in 2011 found that roughly 66% of younger women and 42% of older women considered “being successful in a high-paying career” as “very important” or “one of the most important things” (). Similarly, a different 2011 study found that sixty-five percent of fathers believed that fathers should provide the same amount of childcare as mothers do. Despite this, around the same time, sixty percent of “full-time working mothers” reported they had a preference to work part-time as opposed to full-time time, and only sixteen percent of “stay-at-home” mothers expressed wanting to re-enter the workforce full-time(). A sociologist, Pamela Stone, conducted a study on a group of mothers who decided to leave their jobs after getting pregnant. Her study revealed that although the mothers framed their decision as a “personal preference”, their decision to leave their profession was ultimately a product of necessity. The women described unsympathetic employers, inflexible hours, and husbands who could not partake in child care as actively due to a lack of workplace benefits. It thus becomes evident that even when public opinion reflects ideals of holding gender equality in esteem, oppressive state institutions prevent equality from being achieved.
Thinking Beyond the State
When feminists demand greater gender equality from governmental bodies, these initiatives may seem to represent the ability of grassroots movements to push state actors on big progressive issues, but they also suggest the desire to expand alarming, manipulating, authoritarian, and violent state power. Therefore, public discourse on gender equality is not proposing solutions to how we can foster gender equality beyond the state, but instead how we can do it through greater state intervention.
This reluctance to challenge power structures enforced by the state is counterproductive to the gender equality movement. For instance, in the early twentieth century, liberal feminists pursued gender equality by advocating for the right to vote. Women only came to challenge the public/domestic dichotomy with the emergence of anarchist feminists and early radical feminists. The suffragist's ideology eventually became the popularized view in the feminist movement, and the private sphere became overlooked as a feminist issue. Perpetual gender inequality made it evident that the positive impact of feminist reforms could not and did not eradicate systems of domination that created those inequalities.
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