Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis- Joan W Scott (1986)

Theorising Patriarchy- Sylvia Walby

Joan Scott in "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" examines the analytical
term "gender", its historical emergence and its importance. Joan describes how feminists began
to use "gender" as a way of referring to the social organization of the relationship between the
sexes. Gender first appeared among American feminists because they wanted to insist on the
social quality of distinctions based on sex. Gender stressed on the relational aspect of normative
definitions of femininity. The term gender was started to be used to introduce a relational notion.
Natalie Davis suggested the understanding of the significance of sexes, gender groups in the
historical past.
Joan in her article mentions that the term "gender" was offered by those that claimed that
women's scholarship will transform disciplinary paradigms. Feminists scholars pointed out early
that the study of women would force reexamination of the standards of the already existing
scholarly work. The writings of women into history implied a new history. Scholars of women's
studies often included class, race and gender in the writing of a new history. Interest in the class,
race and gender implied the scholars commitment to a history that included stories of the
oppressed and the scholarly understanding that inequalities of power are organized along at least
three axes. Joan writes that class rests on Marx's theory of economic determination and historical
change while race and gender do not carry such associations.
Historians that attempted to theorize about gender have remained within traditional social
scientific networks using formulations which provides universal causal explanations. The
approaches which Historians used fall into two categories- the first is descriptive, the existence
of phenomena or realities without explaining or analysing and the second is causal and it refers
to the understanding of phenomena of how and why they take the form they do. In its recent
usage, gender was a synonym for women. The Books and articles that had the subject of
women's history in the past few years, substituted gender for women in their titles. Gender as a
substitute for "women '' also used to mean that information of women implied also the
information of men. Gender was important for topics such as women, children, families and
gender ideologies as historians turned to new objects of study. Gender, though a new topic of
historical investigation doesn't address historical paradigms.
Feminists historians for the analysis of gender employed a variety of approaches but brought it
down to three theoretical positions. The first, Feminist effort to explain the origins of
patriarchy, the second, Marxian tradition with Feminist critiques and the third, divided
between French post-structuralist and Anglo-American object-realtions theorist.
Theorists of patriarchy have directed their attention to the subordination of women and found
explanation in the male need to dominate the female. Sylvia Walby identified six main
patriarchal structures which constitutes the system of patriarchy. These are: a patriarchal mode of
production, patriarchal relations within waged labour, the patriarchal state, male violence,
patriarchal relations in sexuality, and patriarchal culture. They are defined in terms of the social
relations in each other. Sylvia used a concept of social structure that had similarities with that of
Giddens.
The Patriarchal Mode of Production: The patriarchal mode of production operates at the
economic level. Here, the labour of women is taken away by their husbands within their
marriage and household relationship. The feature of this is the relation of production under
which the work is performed. Women's work vary and in the relations of production the wife is
engaged in labour for the husband who expropriates it and for this labour she is not rewarded
with money. The product of the wife's labour is the labour power, that of herself, her husband
and her children. Sylvia mentions three stages to her claim- that domestic division of labour is a
differentiation of men and women, that this leads to effects on other aspects of social relations
and that this is in itself a form of inequality.
Patriarchal relations in Paid Work: Patriarchal relations in paid work is another patriarchal
structure working at the economic level. Closure of access by men against women is the main
feature of the patriarchal relations in paid work. And this involves the segregation and exclusion
of women from paid work. The exclusion and the segregation of women from the paid work
ultimately leads to the devaluation and low wages for women. Segregation also takes into
different forms vertical, horizontal and also the differentiation of full timers and part timers.
Patriarchal State: The Patriarchal state is another patriarchal structure. Its impact on gender
relations is a result of the patriarchal nature of the state. The access to the state resources and
power as a part of a patriarchal system excludes women. Women do not exercise as much power
as men to bring to bear on the state and various branches of the state. Patriarchal relations in the
state has significant effects on gender relations such as it shapes the rules on divorce and
marriage, fertility, by legalising or criminalising abortion, contraception and new reproductive
technologies.
Male Violence: Male violence which appears as an individual phenomenon has a social
structural nature. Violence is often used as a form of power over women by men. It constitutes
various practices including rape, wife-beating, flashing, incest, sexual assault, sexual harassment
at work. The lack of state intervention to stop this unless the violence is extreme and
inappropriate structures the availability of violence to men as a resource in dominance over
women. Women often change their conduct and patterns as result of the fear of male violence.
Patriarchal Relations in Sexuality: Patriarchal relations in sexuality is an important patriarchal
structure. Here, the key patriarchal practices is that of heterosexuality, both its compulsory nature
and its internal structure and the major significance is orienting women towards marriage as a
desirable goal. MacKinnon suggests sexuality is to feminism what labour is to Marxism and sees
male control of women taking place through sexuality. Gender is socially identified and
constructed through the way of Sexuality. Sexuality needs to be specified as a separate structure
and not merged into gender itself.
Patriarchal Culture: Patriarchal culture is a structure that constitutes a diverse set of patriarchal
practices which is important in shaping gender subjectivity, distinction of genders at an
experiential level. Patriarchal culture rather than as an ideology is analysed as a set of discourses.
Theorists of patriarchy addressed the inequality of males and females but for the historians the
theories of patriarchy posed problems.
Marxist feminists as they are guided by a theory of history have a more historical approach.
Material development has shown new lines of analysis. The Marxist discussions of modes of
production are developed and the explanation for the origins and changes in gender system is
found outside the sexual division of labor. Families, households and sexuality are finally
products of changing modes of production while the early discussions among Marxist feminist
circled around the same set of problems. Powers of Desire, a volume of essays published in
1983 is the most far-reaching exploration of sexuality by American Marxist-feminists.
Comparison of American Marxist-feminist efforts exploratory and wide ranging to their English
counterparts tied most closely to the politics of a strong and viable Marxist tradition and reveals
English’s difficulty in challenging the greater determinist explanations. Gender has had no
independent analytic status of its own within Marxism and has long been treated as the by-
product of changing economic structures.
Review of psychoanalytic theory requires a specification of schools. There is the Anglo-
American school working within the terms of theories of object-relations and in contrast to
Anglo-American school, there is the French school based on structuralist and post-structuralist
readings of Freud in terms of theories of language. Both schools are concerned with how the
subject’s identity is created and focus on the early stages of child’s development to the formation
of gender identity. Object-relation theorists emphasize the influence of the actual experiences,
the post-structuralists emphasize on the centrality of language. Feminist historians have been
drawn to these theories because of either specific findings or because of important theoretical
conceptions of gender.
The problem according to Joan in object-relations theorists is that it is too limiting and so the
historians cannot apply the theories while in post-structuralists language is central and the focus
is more on the individual subject.
Gender as an analytic category came out only in the twentieth century and was absent from the
major bodies of social theory that were articulated from the eighteenth to the early twentieth
centuries. These theories built logic on the analogies to the opposition of male and female,
formation of subjective sexual identity but gender as systems of social or sexual relations did not
appear. The term gender is an attempt by contemporary feminists to stake claim to a certain
definitional ground. Joan Scott mentions that the study of the past should not be abandoned but
changes can be done and identify processes to study.
Joan Scott gives her own definition of gender which has two parts and several subsets. The first
is that cultural symbols evoke multiple representations. Second, there are normative concepts
that interpret what the cultural symbols mean. Third, a notion of politics and a reference to social
institutions and organizations and the fourth aspect is subjective identity. All four of these must
exist and not one of them operates without the others. Joan also writes that politics is an area
where gender can be used for historical analysis but that it has been the stronghold of resistance
to the inclusion of women.
She ends her article by saying that history will be richer for including gender as an analytical tool
for it will provide new perspectives on old questions and redefine the old questions in new terms,
considerations of family and sexuality, make women active participants, create analytic distance
between the language of past and our terminology and will leave opportunities about current
feminist political strategies for it suggests that gender must be redefined and restructured in
conjunction with a vision of political and social equality.