14 Introduction Some Facts in the Case 15 aggravated assault,88 per cent of those arrested for arson,and Table 4 Women at upper levels of the state so on through other crimes of violence.Figures for other recent years are very similar. Country Date Body So far as the official and semi-official figures go,then,it appears that men are more commonly than women the victims of serious Parliaments interpersonal violence,and even more commonly the perpetrators. (1)United States 1984 Congress 4 The same is true of the institutional violence represented by the (2)Japan 1985 4 police,the prison system and the military.At the census of 1981 (3)Soviet Union 1985 Supreme Soviet 33 Australia had 30,200 police officers;94 per cent of them were (4) India 1985 (federal) 9 (5)Australia 1985 (federal and state) 9 men.In June 1983,the most recent figures,there was a national (6)Colombia 1975 prison population of 10,200;96 per cent were men.The United States in 1983 had a prison population of 224,000;93 per cent fudges were men.This pattern too is international.The following figures (1)United States 1985 state and federal courts are the percentage of prisoners in 1974 who were men: (2)Britain 1984 high,circuit and county courts 3 Canada 97% (3)Soviet Union 1984 People's courts 36 West Germany 97% (4)India 1986 2 (5)Australia 1985 all federal courts Japan 98% Italy 95% Generals (1)United States carly 1980s 0.6 The situation in the military is similar.In June 1984 the (2)Japan 1986 nil Australian army,navy and air force between them had a total (3)Italy 1986 nil strength of 71,600,of whom 93 per cent were men.A comparison (4)Australia 1986 nil of the major NATO forces in 1979-80 shows the same pattern: the police,the bureaucracies,the soldiers?It is notoriously difficult United States 92% to locate actual power-holders with any precision,but a reasonable France 95% first approximation is possible,by looking at three groups from West Germany 99.9% whom some key power-holders are certainly drawn:judges, Britain 95% generals and members of national parliaments (see table 4).The statistics on parliaments are relatively easy to get,and are shown The dominance of the military by men was even more complete for countries chosen from the six groups defined earlier.Figures in the past.The United States armed forces,for instance,were for judges and generals are scrappy but illuminating.As a change, 99 per cent men in 1960,1965 and 1970.The percentage of the figures given in this table are the percentages of woomen in the women began to creep up in the early 1970s,with a formal policy groups named. of expanding women's role in the military starting in 1973.In The Soviet Union looks rather good on these figures.But in the most armies,nevertheless,women are forbidden to have a combat communist systems power resides more in the Party than the role.In anti-aircraft units in Britain during World War II women parliament-and in the Central Committee of the Communist were allowed to do every job,including aiming the guns at the Party of the Soviet Union,the participation of women in 1981 German planes-but not to pull the trigger. was 4 per cent. What of those who control the machinery of state,who direct At the end of an excellent review of the world-wide evidence on
16 Introduction Some Facts in the Case 17 women in politics ten years ago,Kathleen Newland argued that The second assumption is that the two levels'of fact discussed a global change in the political position of women was under way. in this chapter -personal life and collective social arrangements Legal equality (for example the right to vote)was now established -are linked in a fundamental and constitutive way.It makes no and there was extensive participation in grass-roots politics.'Yet sense to theorize one without also theorizing the other.I introduced women have only rarely surfaced among the leaders in politics. this chapter with a case study,not to humanize the statistics,but They are nearly absent from the positions where policy is hammered because of this basic point about method.The large-scale structures out,where decisions are made,where real power resides.'Ten of gender relations are constituted by practices such as those Delia years later it seems that not a great deal has changed.The levers Prince and her family are engaged in.At the same time their of state power are still in men's hands. practice cannot float free;it must respond to,and is constrained by,the circumstances which those structures constitute. The facts just recited are a very small fragment of the evidence This is an abstract point in theory,but it is also a tangible now available on the social positions of women and men and on reality.A final point about Delia will illustrate this.Delia told us relationships surrounding different forms of sexuality.Though she wanted to be a veterinarian.Her parents knew of this and some of the details will be relevant to later steps of the argument, were willing to bear the cost of her training,not a small matter just one conclusion needs to be drawn here.The patterns of gender for them.When we returned to that school several years later to and sex that appear through this evidence are not just an important report back and follow up,we learnt how things had turned out feature of human life;they are specifically social.They involve Delia had left school at sixteen,as she had predicted;and she had inequalities of income,the working of institutions,the distribution found a job.It was a notable one both in terms of the general of power,the division of labour and other distinctively social facts. sexual division of labour and the specific history of her parents' Whether these social facts have non-social causes will be considered marriage.She was not a veterinarian but a veterinary nurse. in chapter 4. There would be value in thinking through a life history in Two assumptions or working hypotheses underpin the argument greater depth,as will be argued in Part III;but it is also important that follows.First,that the facts set out in this chapter are to know that conclusions go beyond the one case.Accordingly I connected with each other;that is,we are dealing not with a will leave the Princes at this point and move on to other sources shapeless heap of data but with a social structure,an organized in later chapters.The approach to personal life that their interviews field of human practice and social relations.This hypothesis is helped to develop nevertheless remains basic to the treatment of needed to get the analysis under way,though the evidence cited historical,psychoanalytic and other evidence. already suggests that it is sound,given the way similar patterns It has been difficult,and remains difficult,to get the field of reappear across different fields of social life.A general concern of gender relations into focus.Strong emotions are involved.For the book,and the specific topic of Part II,is how this structure many people it is threatening even to see these patterns as social. can be understood. It is comforting to think the patterns are 'natural'and that one's There is no convenient name for this subject.Terms like 'sexual own femininity or masculinity is therefore proof against challenge. politics'and 'patriarchy'are useful in pointing to parts of it but Western intellectuals,by and large,have helped this evasion.The not to the whole.An American conference in the mid-1970s grand systems of philosophy and social analysis,from Thomism managed to invent a whole new science of gender and call it through Marxism to functionalism and systems theory,have taken 'dimorphics';luckily no more was heard of that.Gayle Rubin the gender arrangements of the day pretty much for granted. wrote of'the sex/gender system',which is better but begs questions Conventional politics marginalizes 'women's issues'equally firmly. about what exactly a 'system'is.Kate Young and her co-authors Nevertheless feminism,gay liberation and the research they speak of'the social relations of gender',the most precise term but have stimulated,have now made a case that cannot be ignored. an awkward phrase.'Gender relations'is a reasonable abbreviation A vast field has been opened up and existing theory and practice and I will use it as a name for the whole domain. must be reconstructed in the light of it.The habit of mind that
18 Introduction Some Facts in the Case 19 treats class,or race,or North-South global relationships as if gender did not matter,is obsolete-and dangerous.For the facts Education,Labour Market and Finance of gender do not go away.Aid programs to Third World countries, by ignoring gender in principle,in fact give resources to men (pp.8-11).Figures on illiteracy and post-secondary education (recalcu- rather than to women.Industrial and nationalist militancy that lated)from UNESCO Statistical Yearbook,(1984),tables 1.3 and ignores questions of gender reinforces men's violence and the 1.4:various years for different countries.Labour-force participation patterns of masculinity that lie behind it.The question of human statistics from the World Bank's World Tables,(1980),pp.460-5. survival,in the face of a global arms race and widespread Australian occupational segregation figures from Social Indicalors, environmental destruction,requires us to understand a play of (1984),p.178;for a revicw of segregation in the Australian labour social forces in which gender has a major part. market see the Women's Bureau report on The Role of Women in the Econom,(1981),pp.22-33.International data and quotations from OECD document Women and Employmenl,(1980),p.42.Newland (1980)is an excellent short introduction to the sexual division of labour on a world scale.Material on financial discrimination from NOTES Niland (1983)and report in the Australian,(4 February 1983). Crimes of Violence Introductory (p.I).On how easy it is to fall into stereotypes about 'typical girls',see (pp.11-14).Domestic violence statistics:United Statcs,Straus (1978), Griffin's book of that name (1985). p.446.Scotland,Dobash and Dobash (1979).Police station figures from Report of the NSW Task Force on Domestic Violence (1981). A Teenager and her Family This report,and Scutt (1983),compile the scattered Australian evidence.Rape statistics:Australia,Year Book Australia,(1985),p. (pp.1-6).This study is based on intervicws from the research described 221.United States,Statistical Abstract of the United Staltes (1985). in Connell,Ashenden,Kessler and Dowsett (1982).Sec two papers National sexual assault estimate from ABS Cat.4505.0,Crime Victims with a focus on gender and education:Connell et al.(1981)and Survey,Australia,1983,Preliminary,(1984).Homicides and assaults: Kessler ct al.(1985). ABS Cat.4505.0;ABS Cat.3303.0,Causes of Death,(1983);ABS Cat.4502.1,Higher Criminal Courts,NSW,1983;NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research longitudinal study on homicide by Wallace (1986);Statistical Abstract of the US,(1980,1985). The Public World:Incomes and Wealth (pp.6-7).Statistics on Australian earnings and work-force from the Homophobia Australian Burcau of Statistics (hereafter ABS)Cataloguc 6101.0, Labour Statistics,(1978),p.71;and from ABS Cat.4101.0,Social (pp.12-13).Sydney and NSW statistics on court cases in Bureau of Indicators,4 (1984),pp.171,192,213,214.The adjustment for Crime Statistics and Research (1978/9),pp.10,33-7.Patterns of people with no income is based on 1981 census figures for women oppression of homosexual people are documented in the remarkable and men aged fifteen and over,in ABS Cat.2443.0,Census-Summary report of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board(1982).Canadian raids Characteristics of Persons and Dwellings,(1983).The ILO study is documented in Body Politic,94 (1983);105 (1984);117 (1985).New summarized in Women at Work,1 (1983),pp.4-5.Eastern Europcan York beatings and other harassment are documented by Rosen figures quoted by Molyneux(1981).The Latin American study,with (1980-81).Gay Hotline phone-in 19 to 21 July 1985 report by Police figures dating from 1968-72,is summarized in Latin American and Gay Liaison Unit(NSW Police Community Relations Burcau press Caribbean Women's Collective (1980),p.182. relcase)
20 Introduction Police,Prisons,Military (p.14).Australian figures from Social Indicators,(1984),pp.263, 273.United States figures from Statistical Abstract,(1980,1985). Part I International comparisons on prisons from Hcron House Book of Numbers (London:Pelham Books,1979),p.323.Military figures: Australia,Year Book Australia,(1984),p.45;NATO,Chapkis (1981), p.88;United States Statistical Abstract,(1980),p.375. Theorizing Gender State Office-holders (pp.14-16).Newland (1975)is an excellent general source on women's participation in the political system,though narrowly defined;the quotation is from p.33.Other sources of figures quoted:Australia, Federal Court Library;Sawer (1985).United States,Stille (1986); Hacker (1983)and Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report,(10 November 1984).India,Japan and Italy,letters from respective embassics.Soviet Union,Perchenok (1985).Britain,Central Office of Information, Women in Britain,(1984)
2 Historical Roots of Contemporary Theory There is no widely accepted framework for understanding the facts set out in chapter 1.There are several conflicting ways of looking at them.The aim of the next three chapters is to come to grips with these approaches and derive from them a systematic basis for understanding gender. The first step is to ask where they eame from and how they gained their present shape.The outline in this chapter is far from being a complete history of ideas.That would be a massive undertaking in its own right.Yet we need some kind of historical framework,on the principle that social theory never occurs in a vacuum.It must always be understood,and evaluated,as itself a practice with a context. Secular Morality Social-scientific theories of gender are a Western invention,as far as I know,and definitely a modern one.Other civilizations have had their own ways of dealing with human sexuality and the relations between the sexes.As Indian eroticism and Chinese family codes illustrate,these can be as sophisticated and elaborate as anything the West has created.But they are different kinds of cultural formation. Nor was this perspective part of European culture from the start.Sex and gender in the writings of medieval and Reformation intellectuals were,by and large,items in a debate about the moral relationships among men,women and God.Such a framework