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MATERNALISM IS BAD FOR WOMEN
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MATERNALISM IS BAD FOR WOMEN1. Skocpol'S GENDER ANALYSIS IS SIMPLISTIC AND INCOMPLETE Eirinn Larsen, PhD. researcher at European University Institute, "Gender and the Welfare State: Maternalism: a New Historical Concept?" A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF CAND.PHILOL. THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN, NORWAY. Spring, 1996, p. np. To Gordon, the problems in Skocpol's interpretations are already present in the outset of the book: she fails to produce any adequate definitions of what she means by "paternalist" and "maternalist". Gordon continues: "This failure exemplifies ways in which Skocpol's approach to the influence of gender is undeveloped in relation to the theoretical level of much scholarly gender analysis today". Clearly, Gordon indicates that Skocpol's analysis is not matched by familiarity with scholarly debates on gender. Gender means "female" for Skocpol, and Gordon claims that "she produces an entirely celebratory account of the women's organizations she studies. She has no critique of maternalism". Skocpol uses maternalism as an opposition to paternalism, without directly expressing the distinctions between the two concepts, with the exception of the structural differences mentioned above. The absence of such a specification and definition is a result of her failure to ground her concept of gender in questions of male and female power, says Gordon. Gender is, after all, not merely a neutral or benign difference; it is a difference, or rather a set of meanings culturally constructed around sexual difference, in a context of male domination. In the entire book there is no discussion of male power in general or in its specifics -or, to put it inversely, of the fact that the forms of political power with which Skocpol is so concerned are shaped by their maleness.The maternalist strategy was after all a result of women's lack of political power, says Gordon, and thus the concepts of paternalism/maternalism refer to an inequity of power in relation to both gender and generation. 2. Skocpol's essentialism reinforces a destructive gender binary. Eirinn Larsen, PhD. researcher at European University Institute, "Gender and the Welfare State: Maternalism: a New Historical Concept?" A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF CAND.PHILOL. THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN, NORWAY. Spring, 1996, p. np. The stratification of the American welfare system into the social insurance and public assistance program, often called the two-track welfare system, was, in the way Gordon sees it, a result of gender values shared by both men and women, in order to maintain the family wage system. ...male and female welfare reformers worked within substantially the same gender system, the same set of assumptions about proper family life and the proper sphere for men and women. By not employing gender as a male/female opposition, Gordon is able to underscore that men and women were holding similar visions of the economic structure of the proper family in which the welfare state took its form. However, while these gendered assumptions did not necessarily express antagonism between men and women, they were anything but universal: "they expressed a dominant outlook, to be sure, but one that did not fit the needs and understandings of many less privileged citizens". In other words, Gordon thinks it is false to believe that a kind of unity among women was present at this time. Women's activism was as much as men's, determined by class as much as by gender. "Specifically, this supposed unity denies that women's agency also derives from other aspects of their social position." Gordon continues: She [Skocpol] generalizes about these "maternalists" as if they were manifestations of some universal female principle. They did share some fundamental beliefs and assumptions about proper role of government and the proper construction of families, but Skocpol identifies these commonalties no more than their differences. ADAM SMITHPHILOSOPHER/ECONOMIST 1723 - 1790Life and WorkThe “founder of modern capitalism,” Adam Smith, was born in Kirkaldy, Scotland in 1723, the son of a Scottish judge. After attending Glasgow University and Oxford, Smith embarked on a long career of lecturing in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Paris, where he associated with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire. Smith never intended to be an “Enlightenment Philosopher,” his chief concerns were in jurisprudence and economics. His famous Wealth of Nations, although it echoed Enlightenment assumptions concerning human nature and the benefits of technological progress, was at the time merely a document designed to identify the way nations can productively grow and avoid the stagnation of feudalistic state control. Smith was a “moral philosopher,” but this term had quite a different meaning than what we associate it with today. “Moral” for early philosophers simply meant “human,” thus the moral philosopher was concerned with social and political theory rather than the physical sciences. To Enlightenment thinkers, however, the methodology of the hard sciences promised to shed light on questions of human nature as well. Smith and his contemporaries honestly believed that, given the proper formulas and sufficient empirical data, the actions of individual humans and their society could be predicted with the same accuracy as the laws of Newtonian physics. CapitalismThe Eighteenth Century was the dawn of the historical transition for Feudalism to Capitalism. The former was characterized by a landed aristocracy which owned most of the wealth and land, allowing peasants to exploit aristocratic resources which would sustain the serfdom while vastly increasing the wealth of the feudal lords. But as the small traveling mercantile class began to accumulate more and more wealth independent of the aristocrats, the merchants became more powerful while the lords became increasingly irrelevant. Philosophy followed suit, giving us Locke and Rousseau who dejustified the Divine Right of kings and replaced it with a world view theoretically granting sovereignty to all citizens. By the time of Adam Smith’s death in 1790, the Revolutions in America and France materialized both the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism and the natural rights philosophy that accompanied this transition. Rather than invention” capitalism in The Wealth of Nations, Smith merely sought to describe it. Smith’s two major contributions to economics were (1) the Labor Theory of Value, and (2) social cohesion under Capitalism, the theory better known as the “Invisible Hand.” But Smith also wrote a philosophical tract on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Although most people identify Smith as the proponent of ruthless economic competition, his works are replete with arguments for compassion and even included some recognition of the role of government in ameliorating Capitalism’s often brutal division of labor. Searching for a universal standard of measure in economics, Smith contended that the value of a commodity was equal to the quantity of labor the holder of the commodity could exchange it for. Thus, if I have an apple, its “value” is the amount of work I can make another person do in exchange for that apple. If, however, someone trades me a banana for an apple, then I must assume that the apple and the banana are roughly equal in labor value. Additionally, it is important not to confuse this particular theory of value with the Labor Theory of Value proposed by David Ricardo and later Karl Marx. Those two economists turned Smith’s Labor Theory Upside down: For them, the value of a commodity was the labor required to produce it, not the labor for which it could be exchanged. But the important philosophical point raised by the any Labor Theory is that it assumes, in the fashion of the Enlightenment, that a universal standard of measure is possible. If this is true, then it is indeed possible to predict the results of large flows of capital, which implies that the entire economic base of society can be understood and hence economic mishaps (recessions, depression) can be avoided. Smith articulated this economic optimism in his second major contribution, the theory of the Invisible Hand. Smith believed that, left uninterfered with, everyone’s individual actions would cohere with everyone else’s, resulting in a natural, progressive maximization of the good of all An individual player in the economic game might believe his or her actions are motivated solely by self-interest, but the collective sum of self-interested actions would serve the interests of all. To be sure, mistakes will be made and misery will sometimes exist (hence Smith’s reluctant admission that the government must sometimes step in) but progress will still occur, like a child who occasionally skins her knee, but still grows stronger and wiser, society will progressively shake of its injuries and grow economically and culturally. 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