Joan Scott - Gender and the Politics of History, Chapters 2 and 4

Chapter 2 "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis"

Scott begins this chapter by discussing the history of the meaning of the word gender. In previous centuries it had only a grammatical meaning, but has now gained a meaning that involves the social relations between the sexes. It first appeared among American feminists as a distinction from the biological determinism of the term "sex". It was also offered by those who felt that women's scholarship would change the basic disciplinary paradigms. A history of women, for example, would lead to a new history for everyone. In addition, the interest in class, race and gender suggests a commitment to the stories of the oppressed which have previously been ignored. However, although there appears to be equality among these three concepts, in actuality there is not. Class has a more clarified meaning based primarily on Marxian ideas of economic determination and historical change, but there is no such clarity or coherence for race or gender. The meaning of gender has ranged from various theoretical positions to simple descriptive meanings.

Feminist historians have begun to look towards theoretical formulations rather than descriptive ones, but these formulations remain within the traditional social scientific framework. She separates two categories of approaches: descriptive and causal. The descriptive approach tends to use the word "gender" as a less threatening synonym for "women". In this way, it is a new study, a study of things related to women that have not yet been investigated.

The causal approach boils down to 3 theoretical positions: 1) attempts to explain the origins of patriarchy (O'Brien, Firestone, MacKinnon); 2) a marxist feminist approach ( Hartmann, Kelly, Powers of Desire authors); 3) a French post-structuralist (PS) and Anglo-American object-relations (OR) theorists that draw on psychoanalysis to explain the production and reproduction of gender identity (Chodorow, Gilligan, Lacan). Scott finds problems with each approach. Those who focus on patriarchy do not show the connections between gender inequality and other forms of inequality and they focus on physical difference, assuming the ahistoricity of gender. Marxist feminists are more historical but are limited by the requirement for a material explanation for gender, gender tends to be viewed as a byproduct of economic structures and has no independent status. The two schools that depend on psychoanalysis are concerned with how identity is created and focus on early stages of child development. OR focuses on experience while PS focuses on language, but Scott finds both problematic for historians. OR is too literal and relies on "relatively small structures of interaction to produce gender identity and to generate change" (pg. 37). She finds PS instructive, but feels that "it does not permit the introduction of a notion of historical specificity and variability" (pg. 39).

Scott argues that feminist historians need to reject the idea of a fixed and permanent binary opposition of gender and introduce a genuine historicization and deconstruction of sexual difference. Feminist historians need to develop gender as an analytic category and seek meaningful explanations rather than universal causality.

Scott's definition of gender rests on the connection between two core propositions: 1) "gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes" (pg. 42); and 2) "gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power" (pg. 42). The first proposition involves 4 interrelated elements: a) cultural symbols that evoke many and often contradictory representations; b) normative concepts that direct, limit and contain the interpretation of these symbols; c) politics, social institutions and organizations; d) subjective identity. These elements make up the first part of Scott's definition and they always operate together. How they are related to one another, however, is a question for historical research. The second part of the definition is developed more as well. Gender is not the only way of signifying power, but it is a persistent one. Concepts of power may build on gender, but they are not always explicitly about gender (see Chapter 4). Gender has a legitimizing function. "When historians look for the ways in which the concept of gender legitimizes and constructs social relationships, they develop insight into the reciprocal nature of gender and society and into the particular and contextually specific ways in which politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics" (pg. 46).

Scott argues that political history has occurred on a gendered field. If the opposition between male and female is problematized rather than assumed, we must ask different questions: what is at stake when gender is invoked to justify or explain political positions? In what ways are implicit understandings of gender being invoked? This approach will provide new perspectives on old questions and redefine those questions in new terms. It also holds promise for feminist political action by redefining and restructuring gender "in conjunction with a vision of political and social inequality that includes not only sex but class and race" (pg. 50).

Chapter 4 "Women in The Making of the English Working Class"

This chapter is basically an application of Scott's approach. She does a textual analysis of E.P. Thompson's classic work The Making of the English Working Class(which I have never read) to demonstrate how gender constructs politics. She sees this text as representing the tradition within which feminist-socialists were located and had to confront when they formulated critical perspectives. Her purpose is to show how Thompson's view relies on gendered representations and to illuminate "the subtle and central presence of gender in conceptions of working-class politics" (pg. 83).

Thompson conceives of class as a singular conceptualization, like an individual. It therefore contains little room for diversity or difference. Therefore, "woman" represents disunity and incoherence, and must be dropped out and marginalized. He uses the term "man" as a universal representation of humans, but it is in fact a story about men. "Class is, its origin and its expression, constructed as a masculine identity, even when not all the actors are male" (pg. 72).

Consequently, women are constantly associated with domesticity even when women workers are the topic, thereby underlining the association of class with the politics of male workers. This association with domesticity compromises women's political consciousness. "Because of their domestic and reproductive functions, women are, by definition, only partial or imperfect political actors" (pg. 74). Their actions are therefore mainly invisible. When Thompson does discuss female political behavior, it is organized and evaluated in a gendered manner. He portrays rational, secular politics as the natural, inevitable form of class consciousness rather than a product of struggle and debate. Tom Paine (The Rights of Man) is portrayed as the ideal political actor, a masculine symbol of class politics. Joanna Southcott, a religious and charismatic leader with a large following, both male and female, is portrayed as a negative image, and as a feminine image. Her methods of political action were wrong, in fact, Thompson does not even define them as political behavior.

"Work, in the sense of productive activity, determined class consciousness, whose politics were rationalist; domesticity was outside production, and it compromised or subverted class consciousness often in alliance with (religious) movements whose mode was 'expressive'. The antitheses were clearly coded as masculine and feminine; class, in other words, as a gendered construction" (pg. 79). Class and gender are inextricably linked, as identity, as representation, and as social and political action.

Finally, Scott suggests new interpretive possibilities that result from closely examining the discourse surrounding class consciousness. First, we could examine how categories of class are formulated through representation at specific historical moments. We could look at the part played by appeals to sexual difference: how gender legitimizes particular meanings of class. And, we could examine how conception of class organize social experience. Thompson said that the terms used to express class were time and place specific, but he never asked how the concept itself was constructed. Scott argues that gender played an important role in the construction of the concept of class, just as it is key to the construction of politics in general.