Women Exclusion in Democracy - Essay Example

Democratic s Have Historically Been Founded Upon The Exclusion of Women: What, If Anything, Does This Tell Us About The Nature of Democracy as aSystem of Government? Democracy, as a system of government, cannot just be understood as a remote machinery for state governance that works in accordance with some specific political theories. If one takes into account the social inequalities that are prevalent in contemporary democratic states, it would have to be concluded that the true ideal of democracy has failed to come to existence even today. However, in a paradoxical circumstance, the high ideals of democracy have always been based on numerous exclusions, and a major sect at the receiving end of such exclusions and negligence happens to be women. This remains the case even today, if the discourses on democracy are not restricted to the mere exercise of the right to vote or to hold an office. The idea of democracy dates back to the ancient Greek and Roman forms of governance and a prototype of the modern democratic government were perhaps found in India, in the 6th Century BC. However, the ideological elements of a democratic state are still in the developing stage, as the concerns of various minority sects emerge every day. In all the ancient forms of democracy, the right to participate in the governance and policy decisions was restricted to certain privileged sects, mostly men. In ancient Greece and Rome, women and slaves were excluded from the running of the government of the people, where the idea of ‘people’ was attributed solely to free men. In ancient India, though women were given ample opportunity for education and participation in the theoretical aspects of governance, they were prohibited from the actual material aspects of it, thereby denying them any agency in the system. The Middle Ages focused on the limited participation of people in the governance, where the traditional hegemonic structure of nations was mainly decided by the clergy. Even in the 18th and 19th Century when the United States emerged as a liberal democracy, the ostensibly democratic rights reserved for the white adult male citizens left out various ethnic minorities and women from active participation in the system. The historically exclusive nature of democratic ideals had even been transformed to strong and open dictatorships in the early part of Twentieth Century, but the Second World War led to a lot of introspective analyses that brought back the idea of democracy both a system of government and as an ideology that reflects the general quality of life in every sphere. The nature of democracy, in its Aristotelian and historically developed terms, relates to the participation of people in the rule of the state. The right to decide on the policies and function of the government may vary, depending on the various aspects of democracy ranging from the representative, liberal, social and direct forms. A majority of nations in the contemporary world claim that they follow one or other form of democratic government, though the ideological and material aspects of them vary significantly. There are some developments in the line of a global democracy. According to Derek Heater, A democratic state requires a plurality of for a within which its citizens can operate as socially and civically conscious individuals. In the same way, it is now recognized, an effective and respected form of global governance requires as an integral portion of the system a similar kind of participative undergirding. (Heater, Derek 1996, p.210) The nature of democracy, whether it extends to such global propensities in the post-national world or remains local, has not yet reached a level where it can claim to be an inclusive one, where a ‘participative undergirding’ exists. The exclusion of women from the democratic governments through centuries has thus become a topic that demands some clear definitive analysis and possible solutions. C. Pateman, in the essay ‘Feminism and Democracy’ points out how the Feminist endeavors to bring to public notice the inequalities faced by women in a democratic society are countered by “the liberal argument that social inequalities are irrelevant to political equality” (Pateman, C. 1989, p. 211). It may be argued, as he reveals, that legal reform over a century and the concept of universal suffrage have succeeded in placing women as the “civil and political equals of men” (p.210). However, a democratic state has to operate not just on the political sphere, as the very idea of democracy is rooted in equality, of all kinds. The Nobel Prize winning Economist Amartya Sen states that “democracy is not about ballots and votes, but also about public deliberation and reasoning” and he tries to remind the modern democratic states of the birth of a “government by discussion” in ancient Greece and several other ancient civilizations (Sen, Amartya, p. 53). Participation, involvement and concern from and for all sects in the state, on an equal basis must be the prerogative of a true democratic government. Needless to say, the exclusion of women from such a government is an unpardonable atrocity. The Aristotelian notion of men and women in the polis comprises the inevitable use of power by the free man, or the head of the family, towards the slave, the children and the women. This was however confronted as a moral question. Jean Bethke Elshtain draws on the debate whether “Aristotle’s logic of explanation is necessarily rather than historically linked to the exclusion of women, slaves and unfree underclasses from political participation” (Elshtain, p.53). Linking the Greek ideology of the polis to the modern democratic states and the Christian attitudes to it, Elshtain quotes Pope John Paul II’s words, “…participation as essential of the person is a constitutive feature of any human community” (p.53). Hana Arendt observes that the teachings of Socrates and Plato relied a lot upon the “everyday experiences in private life” and Aristotle assumed that “at least the historical origin of the polis must be connected with the necessities of life…” (Arendt, p. 37). Though the “rise of the city state and the public realm occurred at the expense of the private realm of family and household” (p. 29) ancient Greece maintained the sanctity of family and the space related to it unlike ancient Rome. Even as Plato’s political teachings “foresaw the abolition of private property and an extension of the public sphere to the point of annihilating private life altogether”, he considered “the boundaries between one estate and another, divine, without seeing any contradiction” (p. 30). Though the ancient civilizations excluded the powerless and meek communities from the administrative process, the emphasis on the concept of participation of all these communities in the conduct of the administration holds some hope for the first step towards an inclusive democracy. According to Jodi Dean, ….democratic participation guarantees and anchors the inclusion of social members. Rather than simply implying parliamentary democracy (with it problems of low voter turnout and general passivity on behalf of the electorate) or a reliance on discourse in “the official public sphere”, participation in a democratically conceived civil society operates on a variety of levels and calls for the further formation of spaces for democratic will-formation and participation. (Dean, p. 96) The right to vote cannot be misinterpreted as the opportunity given to the common people by some other chosen people, who eventually wield the power of governance. The ongoing debate on the misplaced concept of a ruling and ruled class in a democracy exposes the exclusive nature of contemporary democratic governments. The notion of equality must be based on a non-essentialist, all-inclusive society, though it may be easy to discard it as a utopian ideal. But in the present world, as Noam Chomsky points out, “What remains of democracy is largely the right to choose among commodities” (Chomsky 2007, p.139). The inclusion of women in such a democracy is highly problematic, as the entire issue of assuming an identity and getting it acknowledged by others, can be irretrievably linked to the precepts of marketing and commoditization and its inevitable web of power relations. The question of creating an awareness and empowerment among women regarding their rights and scope in a democratic environment seems necessary even in the wake of the twenty first century. Issues related to religion and nationality seems to project multiple identities of women, and it posits a situation where women from different parts of the world define their freedom and rights differently. For an upper class educated woman from Iraq, the ability to hold a driving license and to own a car for daily use may be a great symbol of freedom while the fact that she wears a headscarf may not be an infringement on her freedom, as long as she wears it for her religious convictions. For an American working woman, it may sound absurd to be restricted on her dress habits, and a sexist comment at the workplace may be a sign of violation of her basic rights in a world that she wants to hold equal opportunities. For many uneducated poor women of the world who are constrained to their households, the question of inequality may not arise as often as in any of the two cases mentioned above. How can one incorporate the various needs of al these women in a global democratic world without even hinting at the concept of homogenization remains a very complex issue. The curious fact about women assuming power in a democratic state is that the so-called third world, often seen backward in acknowledging the rights of women, are far ahead when compared to the first world. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had very powerful women prime ministers while Europe, but for negligible exemptions, and the United States have not really succeeded in acknowledging a woman leader by giving her the highest office. However, it remains the fact that the first world pioneered the fiercest forms of feminism and has dealt with the issues related to the place of women in the public domain, while in many of the nations mentioned above, domestic violence and lack of proper education stop women from achieving an equal social status. Pateman demarcates the areas where democracy excludes women from a full and equal participation. By referring to John Stuart Mill’s famous essay ‘On the Subjection of Women’, he elaborates on the way Mill, even as he is reflecting on the not much talked about issue of women’s rights as early as the 1860s, fails to interpret or justify the time and energy taken away from a female citizen for the so-called ‘natural’ share in the division of labour in a marriage, which makes any other preoccupation than the one related to the family as secondary and less significant. He argues for individualism and participatory democracy, making clear how the social trajectory is inextricably linked to the political realm. Ruth Lister refers to the existence of citizenship as a ‘status’ and ‘practice’ belonging to the political traditions of liberal right and civic republican respectively. She also traces the extension of “social citizenship rights” to “embrace new categories, demanded by social movements: important examples are reproductive rights and the right to participate in decision-making” (Lister, p.72). This may present a picture of democracy that has progressed a long way from what Pateman looks at in 1989 as a system that puts women in an eternal subject position and extracts their consent surreptitiously or exerts coercion in other cases. However, the insightful arguments that Pateman raises about the contrast among the private/public, domestic/official, social/political binaries in the democratic system throws light on the possibilities of inequalities and exclusions in different forms that will have to be addressed and contested even in today’s world. When addressing women’s issues in the contemporary democratic world under the aegis of identity politics, there is apt to arise a few problems related to misrepresentations and essentialism. Women’s issues are eclectic in nature and can be seen only in the light of the differences in emphasis, ranging from the issues related to a working woman and a housewife, an urban woman and a rural woman, a woman belonging to the so-called first world and the second and third worlds, an educated woman and an uneducated woman. Fighting the adversities of essentialism, one must take into account different priorities of women belonging to the coloured and white communities, heterosexual and lesbian women, women who prefer to get married and those who would like to stay in a live-in relationship or remain single, and so on. To add to it is a whole lot of issues that are strongly related to feminism, like that of the gays and so-called third sex, which come under gender studies. In a democratic set-up, the representation of all these minority groups in the decision-making level may be significant, but more essential is an ambience where every individual and community gets an opportunity to participate in the debates related to the polity and to represent themselves in the social strata. To get such an ambience, what Lister terms “a politics of solidarity in difference” (77) may perhaps need to come to existence. The roots of gender inequality can be fond in the argument that women are dependant to the paterfamilias, the male head of the family, in the Roman civilization. Women, slaves and children were not considered self-governing individuals and Anna Yeatman interrogates this age-old social and cultural precept in her essay ‘Feminism and Citizenship’. According to her, In order to bring women into citizenship, feminism has to elaborate on the assumptions of natural right in such a way that women can claim an independent capacity to reason and thus be self-governing rather than be the dependants of patriarchal household heads (Yeatman 2001, p.141). The real way for women to a decent place in the democratic system is only through such a status of self-governance, an assertion of individuality, which had been denied to them through centuries. Referring to the number of prominent women in the democratic governments would remain a bogus act as long as the general condition of women has not changed. Participation of women in the democratic territory cannot be ensured by just exhibiting a few exceptional, privileged women. Governments have to take into serious account the education and empowerment of women regardless of class and race if they aim at an inclusive socio-political structure. The idea of multiple identities propounded by theories like post-structuralism and grounded by the double-sided universal and particular concerns of globalization makes the place of women in a democratic situation both expedient and ungainly. Expedient in the sense that women can have agency through their participation and representation in various communities. Ungainly because these representations may not entirely based on the concerns of women. Religion, socio-political groups and even specific sexual communities provide agency for women in the modern world. But this is not the kind of agency that respects the differences among women all over the world. The exclusive and essentialist concerns of such communities and the multiple identities women assume in accordance with them may raise a number of interesting issues that accommodates women from all over the world. But it is possible that these issues may lack the focus and force that they deserve, as long as they neglect the ‘solidarity of difference’ among women. Yeatman emphasizes the necessity for a “transnational regional sense of identity and membership” and observes that :contemporary post-colonial feminist theorists who are working with ideas of diasporic, non-hegemonic and fractured identities can be seen as portending such developments” (p. 149). Women who need to free themselves from the hegemonic element of democracy and to find their rightful place in it may need to detach themselves from the traditional social apparatus and think beyond cultural constructs. Instead of playing an inactive role in the democratic governance that uses coercive power that sidelines or excludes them, women need to reassert a sense of necessity in the system. Jane Mansbridge in the essay ‘Reconstructing Democracy’ recounts the power relations that Michel Foucault deems inescapable in human association and tries to propagate the idea of “democratic persuasion” (Mansbridge, p. 132) that would better accommodate women in the system, though the presence of power may have to be contested consistently. In the remarkable conclusion of the essay Mansbridge states that “the battle against domination cannot be restricted to the formal institutions of government. It must be waged on all fronts, including within the self.” (p. 132) The cultural construct of masculinity and femininity has also contributed a lot towards their respective places in democracy. Literature, a strictly male domain until recently, has played a massive role in the creation and regulation of masculinity which placed the male members of the society at a pedestal. In times of urgency and sustenance like the wars and geographical explorations, masculinity had been celebrated to a great extend. The creation of language, with the help of dictionaries, had been much augmented by male-centred thoughts and precepts. Edward Said points out in his Culture and Imperialism that even the emergent post-colonial Anglophone or Francophone literatures, contrary to their presumptions, end up being a tool “to mobilize consent, to eradicate dissent, to promote an almost literally blind patriotism” (Said, p. 310). The place of a woman in national cultures, and in the post-colonial, post-national situations, had been restricted through the ages. The mismanagement of gender differences has made it almost impossible to carry out any sensible communication among them, or even to connect them, presumably for a noble cause. According to Anthony Giddens, Difference – whether difference between the sexes, difference in behavior or personality, cultural or ethnic difference – can become a medium of hostility; but it can also be a medium of creating mutual understanding and sympathy. (Giddens, p. 24) The same exclusive nature of contemporary democratic governments nurture xenophobia, brands different sects who belong to less privileged and troubled nations as terrorists, discounts the presence of women insignificant in any sphere of the government. The current world that aims at global governance carries the heavy weight of accommodating various minority sects and communities on a cosmopolitan basis. The concept of a post-national, global village poses many challenges to the concept of a non-essentialist, inclusive democracy. The legitimate place that women have to assume in this situation has to be decided upon with due respect to differences. Cultures of hybridity and syncretism can create ample space for the women who need to participate in democratic processes. But there still remains the task of educating the masses, including women, of the need for an inclusive society and democracy. Universal suffrage does not address the issues related to the private lives that women lead. Nor can the ostensibly legal rights assigned to women serve its true purpose unless all kinds of social inequality end. Decision making and participation in a democratic system are to be extended to women, which would hopefully lead to a government of the people, by the people and for the people in every possible sense. As the contemporary political issues around the world reveal, democratic governments are still based on the exclusion of women. If this needs to change, the first step that has to be taken is to reduce the distinctions between the concepts of private and public lives. The significant part played by women in the domestic sphere has to be acknowledged, as in the case of ancient Greek civilization. But beyond that, the natural rules regarding the division of labor in the domestic sphere will have to be reconsidered. Mill’s affirmation that women would choose the natural rule even if they are given a choice will have to be contested in the modern world where women have proven that they can perform well in any area where men usually work. Democratic governments have to make a deliberate attempt to shake off the age-old precepts regarding the place of men and women in the familial, social and political sphere. The status of women as a dependent on the male head of the family has to be altered. It must be recognized that women are self-governing individuals capable to contribute to the state in every way similar to men. A new line of thought has to emerge, acknowledging the significant part played by women in the socio-political sphere, but not affixing specific roles to them that are not affixed to men. In all parts of the world, there still remains the need to take an inclusive stance towards women and many other fragmented and sidelined minority communities. Women will have to rise above identity politics and look forward to what Ruth Lister calls “differentiated universalism”. Hopefully this will bring in an effective, pragmatic democratic government that rises up to its true ideals. All these hopes, the urgency for a change, point towards the present state of affairs in which democracies function on the exclusion of women. References Arendt, Hannah, “The Human condition”, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Chomsky, Noam 2007, “Hegemony or survival: america’s quest for global dominance”, Allen and Unwin, Australia. Dean, Jodi, “Solidarity of strangers: feminism and identity politics”, University of California Press, Berkley. Elshtain, Jean Bethke “Public man, private woman: women in social and political thought”, Princeton University Press, New Jersey Giddens, Anthony, “Beyond left and right: the future of radical politics”, Heater, Derek 1996, “World citizenship and government: cosmopolitan ideas in the history of western political thought”, Macmillan Press Limited, London. Lister, Ruth, “Citizenship and difference: towards a differentiated universalism”, Loughburrough University, London. Mansbridge, Jane 1996, Reconstructing democracy in “Revisioning the political”, Westview Press. Pateman, C 1989, Feminism and democracy in “Disorder of women: democracy, feminism and political theory”, Polity Press. Said, Edward 1994, “Culture and imperialism”, Vintage Books, New York. Sen, Amartya 2006, “Identity and violence: the illusion of destiny”, Allen Lane,England. Yeatman, Anna 2001, Feminism and citizenship in “Culture and citizenship”, Sage. Read More