Regimes And Masculine Political Cultures example essay topic

An Indonesian activist writing in 1996 claimed the male-dominated regimes and masculine political cultures encouraged by these men created a politics that is competitive, heavily dependent on military force and infused with aggressive macho political habits. Feminine political culture, in contrast, reflects the legitimacy of the people. It is a political culture of calm, radiating, listening tolerance. He goes on to ponder why Cory, Suu Kyi and Megawati, managed to become important opposition leaders (Peletz 89). His explanation or answer is two-pronged.

On the one hand, a spirit of resistance slowly arose as a result of living under the siege of a political culture which glorifies supremacy and violence. On the other, the fear and insecurity, which becomes an overweening feature of life under authoritarian regimes was momentarily harnessed by women who appear to represent alternative past and future regimes. While Richlands claims are certainly exaggerated, his point is clear: there are enormous differences in the key political values and styles of male and female politicians. I wish to argue that these differences can be traced to female subordination within the state and the family. I will turn now to the formal and academic part of my argument. I wish first of all to say a few things about the exclusion of women from government and politics.

For centuries, men ran governments and wrote political philosophy, the experience of women (having) little influence on democratic practice or thought. (Peletz) These are the words of a feminist scholar opening a debate on the ways we think about democracy. Her point was not merely that men dominate the worlds of politics and scholarship or that democracy theorists are wrong to think that citizens are sex-less, but that males and females understand and experience politics in dramatically different ways. To make this point in yet another way, every political system or polity displays an unequal ordering of relations among its male and female citizens, a structure or a constitutional order that R.W. Connell describes as a gender regime. In American colloquial usage, this word regime has a negative connotation. In political science, however, it is a neutral term which denotes constitutional structure or composition.

For example, we say the UK has a parliamentary regime, or that the USA, has a presidential regime. The idea of a gender regime means that everyday behavior is ordered or organized around sexual distinctions and role expectations embedded in coupled relationships between wife-husband, boss-secretary or mother-father. Connell argues that all of our institutions have gender regimes. The state has a gender regime, so does the family and the University. Even the street has a gender regime.

The character of the gender regime of each institution is determined by three things: (1) there is a distinct, though not often mandatory or rigid, division of labor between men and women who staff the organization or institution. (2) there is an explicit, if often subtle, ideology that seeks to normalize or naturalize the hegemony of masculine values, power and leadership. (3) there is conflict and tension between everyday political assumptions of human equality and mutual respect between men and women and the reality of masculine hegemony. For example, and it is often said, women in many societies in Southeast Asia enjoy fairly high social status. As wives, mothers and daughters they are treated well, even honored and respected. Nevertheless, in decision-making, they are everywhere subordinated to their husbands, fathers and, in widowhood, their brothers, that is, kept in their place.

Gender roles in the family are not only different and complementary in many respects, they are highly undemocratic. In the realm of politics, there are similar fusions and conflicts arising from the sharp division of labor by sex, the fusion of personal emotional-professional obligations and responsibilities, and inequalities in shares of power. Like the family, the state has an institutional form or structure. Its gender regime may be mapped or traced by examining three key structures which I will examine in turn.

There is a sharp, sexist division of labor among the personnel of the state. While all civil servants may wear uniforms, the men are armed, and the women are not. Most of the top jobs are distributed by men to other men with most deals for jobs and contracts being cut in wholly male networks. The men in gray suits (British) or the backroom boys (USA) really are almost exclusively men, the exceptional female interloper, for example, Imelda Marcos, serving to prove the rule. The twenty to thirty per cent of Southeast Asian women who have succeeded in obtaining civil service appointments are concentrated in the lower ranks with limited promotion prospects. The masculine assumption of rights to dominance is so ubiquitous, strong and ordinary that it sometimes has curious effects.

In 1993, the coalition government formed in the wake of UN-sponsored elections had no women ministers (Peletz 94). A man was named to head the newly created State Secretariat for Women. This decision was treated by dismay by the Cambodian womens movement which had an obvious candidate for the job. When the Secretariat was upgraded to a Ministry in 1998, it became a Ministry for Womens and Veterans Affairs. Womens affairs are not easily or ideologically linked to veterans affairs but viewed from within the states gender regime, there is a paternalist, protectionist urge to care for the nations women who should in turn help to care for the nations heroes.

There are official ideologies asserting the superiority of masculine ways. State leaders typically advertise or advocate actions deemed forceful, tough, and virile or strong. Leadership therefore must be strong leadership. Authoritarians often attempt to justify the unlawful use of the army and the policy against unarmed civilians by citing a need to preserve stability. The destabilizing effects of violence and aggression against society are not recognized. Official gender ideologies denigrate wimps, indecisiveness, incompetence or physical weakness as less than masculine or, absurdly, feminine.

They are almost invariably homophobic. The authoritarian New Order in Indonesia actively promoted gender differences in society and attempted to assimilate the family gender regime to the gender regime state. President Suharto became Pak Har to or Father / Protector Suharto, domineering, avuncular and generous in his relationships with friends and family (and certainly his household) but menacing and ruthless with opponents, anyone deemed treacherous within the family and his power networks. Gloria Arroyo, clearly conscious of the hegemonic, masculine values embedded in the gender regime of the Republic of the Philippines has recently demonstrated masculine toughness in suppressing street riots.

Yet she promised to heal the wounds of society as she campaigned for last Monday elections, a decisively feminine and democratic standpoint. Perhaps more significant, recalling that there are multiple masculinities represented among the personnel of most states, and that democratic leaders of either sex must distinguish the masculinities associated with militarism and other authoritarian impulses from those compatible with rule of law, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has several times instructed the military of their duty to be faithful to the Constitution. The machismo factor makes it difficult for most any army in Southeast Asia to accept a woman as commander-in-chief. I interpret President Arroyos reportedly, strong and decisive action against protestors calling for a return of former President Estrada as evidence that she feels threatened on this gender battlefront.