Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap: Gender Inequalities from Multiple Global Perspectives (Sustainable Development Goals Series) 9811611734, 9789811611735

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SDG: 5 Gender Equality

Angela Fitzgerald   Editor

Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap Gender Inequalities from Multiple Global Perspectives

Sustainable Development Goals Series

The Sustainable Development Goals Series is Springer Nature’s inaugural cross-imprint book series that addresses and supports the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. The series fosters comprehensive research focused on these global targets and endeavors to address some of society’s grand challenges. The SDGs are inherently multidisciplinary, and they bring people working across different fields together toward a common goal. In this spirit, the Sustainable Development Goals series is the first at Springer Nature to publish books under both the Springer and Palgrave Macmillan imprints, bringing the strengths of our imprints together. The Sustainable Development Goals Series is organized into eighteen subseries: one subseries based around each of the seventeen respective Sustainable Development Goals, and an eighteenth subseries, “Connecting the Goals,” which serves as a home for volumes addressing multiple goals or studying the SDGs as a whole. Each subseries is guided by an expert Subseries Advisor with years or decades of experience studying and addressing core components of their respective SDG. The SDG Series has a remit as broad as the SDGs themselves, and contributions are welcome from scientists, academics, policymakers, and researchers working in fields related to any of the seventeen goals. If you are interested in contributing a monograph or curated volume to the series, please contact the Publishers: Zachary Romano [Springer; [email protected]] and Rachael Ballard [Palgrave Macmillan; rachael. [email protected]].

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15486

Angela Fitzgerald Editor

Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap Gender Inequalities from Multiple Global Perspectives

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Editor Angela Fitzgerald University of Southern Queensland Springfield Central QLD, Australia

ISSN 2523-3084 ISSN 2523-3092 (electronic) Sustainable Development Goals Series ISBN 978-981-16-1173-5 ISBN 978-981-16-1174-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 Chapters 10 and 11 are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see licence information in the chapters. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

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Setting the Scene: What Is the Gender Gap and How Will It Be Explored? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Angela Fitzgerald

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Femininity in Dispute: Perspectives of a Comparative Study of Professional Women in Puebla and Barcelona . . . . . María Arteaga-Villamil

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Aspirational Mobilities and the Gender Gap: The Experiences of Skilled Mexican Women in a Childcare-Based Cultural Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mirza Aguilar-Pérez Gender Parity in Political Representation: Advancing Descriptive Representation and Confronting Challenges Permeated by Gender, Class and Ethnicity. The Case of Mexico and Bolivia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edmé Domínguez Reyes Political Violence and Women Participation at the Municipal Level: Mandatory Gender Parity and It’s Challenges for Indigenous Women in Multicultural Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paloma Bonfil Addressing Gender Gaps in Contemporary Galician-Language Fiction: The Cases of Ursula Heinze, Silvia Bardelás and Beatriz Dacosta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eva Moreda Rodríguez On the Margins and Beyond: The Translation of Contemporary Galician Women Fiction Writers in Multilingual Spain and the Anglosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Olga Castro Color Me Color Struck: Colorism in Popular Culture Vis À Vis the Visual Canon of Lupita Nyong’o, Robin Rihanna Fenty, and Serena Williams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Courtney C. Young

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Contents

(En)gendering Complexities: A Look at Colorism in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philathia Bolton

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10 The Most Invisible Maternal Experience? Analysing How Maternal Regret Is Discussed in Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Tiina Sihto and Armi Mustosmäki 11 International Responses to Regretting Motherhood . . . . . . . . 121 Valerie Heffernan and Katherine Stone 12 Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics: Challenging Current Narratives on Pain and Health . . . . . . . 135 Irina Poleshchuk 13 The Subversive Act of Navel Gazing: How Maternal Experiences Are Lost from the History of Philosophy to the Gender Gap and a Subsequent Lesson from Maternal Subjectivities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Valerie Oved Giovanini

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Setting the Scene: What Is the Gender Gap and How Will It Be Explored? Angela Fitzgerald

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book and its contribution to examining gender inequality, more commonly referred to as the gender gap, by offering diverse perspectives and analysis of women’s lived experiences from a broad range of settings and contexts. This collection complements existing literature analyzing gender inequalities, by honoring feminist epistemology that recognizes knowledge as situated knowledge and the centrality of women’s lived experience. This book adopts a methodology referred as ‘critical friend’— where every topic covered includes a critical response from another researcher. This collection makes an important contribution to our collective understanding of gender inequalities. This book adds topics not usually discussed when referring to the gender gap, as well as covering more common topics like inequalities in terms of employment, payment, and political representation and participation. All chapters are based on qualitative research and have in common an approach the embraces interdisciplinary, intersectional, and intentional research. This volume gives recog-

A. Fitzgerald (&) University of Southern Queensland, Queensland, Australia e-mail: angela.fi[email protected]

nition to non-tangible dimensions of the gender gap, which are as important as those dimensions captured by the gender gap indicators. This chapter explains the critical friend methodology that coheres the contributions, as well as details about/of the particular feminist practices and research methodologies that ground this work, which provides further links between the chapters despite the diversity of perspectives. This opening chapter concludes by outlining how the collection is organized into three key areas— labor markets and politics, culture, and motherhood—and providing insights into what each chapter covers.

1.1

Contextualizing This Volume

For a long time now, feminist scholars and activists, women grassroots organizations and many non-governmental organizations and notfor-profit entities have been addressing gender inequalities and fighting for women’s rights. This critical mass of mobilization and awareness played a crucial role at the United Nations (UN) fourth world conference on women— Action for Equality, Development and Peace— held in Beijing in 1995. The platform for action adopted at this crucial meeting marks the inclusion of gender equity within the goal of

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_1

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sustainable development, and the mainstreaming of gender equity and women rights within development organization, in a way that had no historical precedent. Despite the massive effort to incorporate women’s rights and gender equity within global agreements, national policies, and development interventions, there has been consensus on the need to better monitor progress and define indicators to measure progress. This need for better indicators to measure progress and to have a clear road map to achieve development goals translated in 2000 into the millennium Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established after the adoption of the UN millennium declaration. The SDGs were adopted in 2016 by the UN General Assembly, as a follow-up to the millennium development goals that expired in 2015. The SDGs include 17 inter-linked goals to be achieved by 2030, aimed at guiding development policies and interventions and to provide instruments to measure progress. SDG 5— achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls—includes several targets and strategies. When it comes to measuring the gender gap, we have the SDG gender index (SDG-GI), which measures the gender gap according to 51 indicators across 14 of the 17 official SDGs and covers 129 countries across all regions of the world (Equal Measures 2030, 2019). We also have the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) introduced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2006, which benchmarks national gender gaps on economic opportunities, education attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment based on 14 indicators (World Economic Forum, 2020). These metrics and the country ranking allow for comparisons to be made across and within regions and income groups, which in turns facilitates better advocacy as well as understanding of the challenges and opportunities we face for advancing gender equity and women empowerment. Some broad-brush features of the 2020 report include the fact that overall, on average, gender parity is at 69%, a marginal improvement on the

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previous year. But this does mean that there is a gender gap of, on average, 31% that remains to be closed. Parity has nearly been achieved in the areas of educational attainment (96%) and health and survival (97%), but there is still a significant gap to bridge for women to experience parity in political empowerment (25%) and economic participation and opportunity (58%). This overall positive trend was, however, supported by reporting that suggested that the gender gap can be closed in 99.5 years if this progress continues to track in similar direction and at the same pace. This is almost 10 years quicker than reported previously. There is a need to distinguish the different use and meaning of the notion of ‘gender gap’. It is frequently used broadly to highlight the systemic differential opportunities, access to resources, income, assets, and power that men and women and boys and girls face. On a more restricted meaning it is used to refer the gender index that measures the status and evolution of the gender gap as explained above (SDG-GI and GGGI). In this volume, we use the term gender gap in its broader meaning to refer to the systemic disadvantages that women and girls face when compared to boys and men, in terms of access to education, resources, income, power, and so on. While the metrics in place to measure the gender gap have proven useful for tracking, planning, and expanding advocacy toward gender equity and women empowerment, they are limited in terms of capturing and illuminating the roots and reproduction of these gendered gaps. They are also limited for uncover the lived experiences of women in ways that inform this quantitative measure. This is precisely the aim of this book: to present how the gender gap is experienced by women in different contexts and doing it in ways that statistics and figures cannot achieve. Of special interest is the exploration of the intersectionality of gender, in terms of class, race, ethnicity, as presented in the chapters that follow. Over three decades ago, Johnston Conover (1988) considered the gender gap in light of feminist studies. She concluded that while the notion of the gender gap goes some way to

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Setting the Scene …

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highlight the inequalities faced by women, it is the work of feminist research that identifies and addresses the specific issues. Despite the passing of time little has changed in some regards with this insight striking a chord with the intent of this collection. At the core of the feminist work, if we are to make significant headway toward the achievement of SDG 5, there needs to be an acknowledged shift from knowing what gender inequalities exist to understanding why they exist, so that meaningful action can be taken. While the gender gap as a measure can provide a unified call to action, it is feminist research methodologies that have been drawn upon and applied to conceptualize a range of gender inequalities and initiate deeper conversations about what is needed to achieve gender justice.

project, eight more women joined as critical friends (and one co-contributor) from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico, and the United States. These 14 women (plus the collection editor) had the opportunity to (re)convene for a week in January 2020 with the support of the Faber residency program. The purpose of this meeting was to provide time and space to workshop the collection chapters as a group, to improve the individual and collective quality and cohesion of the overall collection. It also provided an opportunity to spend time together more informally sharing stories, learning from each other, and providing support for the chapters’ development process. The benefit of considering the gender gap through the range of conceptual and theoretical perspectives shared in this collection is threefold:

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• Gaining new understandings about what the gender gap means and looks like in these contemporary times from the perspectives of women; • Greater awareness of the context-specific experiences, successes, and personal challenges faced by women locally and globally will provide research-based evidence with which to consider possibilities for change; and • Constructing new knowledge about women’s lived experiences of gender inequality with the intention to bring about social and societal change for all women and girls as aligned with the intention of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.1

How This Book Started

Before diving into our methodological approach, it is important to refer to the formation of this book. This collaboration between women who share their stories and provide analysis through this collection has somewhat serendipitous origins. It all started in a residency program, Faber, in Catalonia during October 2018, where 12 women from across the world (Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Catalonia, Columbia, Finland, Galicia, Iran, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the United States) were brought together in recognition of their feminist academic and/or activist activities in their respective fields. In the course of this residency, the women shared their research projects and interests through presentations and conversations, resulting in a decision to formalize their connections through a book project. As the proposal process progressed, two key suggestions were made that would result in a greatly improved final product: to unify the collection around the notion of gender inequality and to strengthen the collection’s critical depth and breadth. This led to the subsequent focus on the gender gap and the introduction of critical friends, a well-established methodology that is described in more detail below. While six women from the original group continued with the

The collection is guided by the following two research questions: 1. What does our diverse work tell us about women’s lived experiences of the gender gap locally and globally? 2. What hope does the work of the contributors offer of finding solutions to bridging this gap?

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The intention of SDG 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030 (United Nations, 2015).

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About the Methodological Approach for Crafting This Volume

A methodologically important component of this collection is the inclusion of critical friends as part of the research approach. In some academic traditions, a critical friend is considered to be a knowledgeable other, who draws on their experience and expertise to provide feedback on a colleague’s written work and/or research (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller 2014). In this instance, a critical friend was invited by each chapter contributor to provide further insights on and a critique of their chapter as well as better position their work within the relevant wider communities and bodies of knowledge. The intention of this approach was to deepen the level of critical analysis in the collection and to move the insights shared from quite localized contexts to more global perspectives. Equally, this methodology was embedded in the collective approach to broaden understandings of how the gender gap is experienced by women and to invite rigorous discussion about the possibilities and challenges inherent in these various perspectives. Initially, this process caused some confusion. While critical friend methodologies are wellestablished in qualitative research traditions, within this specific group nobody shared understanding nor experience of the critical friend methodology. While all of the contributors were eventually able to locate a colleague who was internationally recognized for their expertise and experience of their particular area of interest, the notion of this person providing commentary on the chapter as a critical friend was not universally understood (e.g., how they would to this, for what purpose, etc.). The workshop became an important site to collectively make sense of this role: over the course of the three days a shared understanding of this methodology emerged. Evolving from the workshop process was an agreed-upon general premise that for each grouping two standalone chapters would be produced in conversation, with clearly articulated

links. The chapter of the original contributor/s would essentially provide insights into a specific perspective or context within the premise of their argument or thesis, a micro viewpoint of sorts, whereas the chapter of the critical friend would provide a bigger picture or more holistic understanding of the focal argument or thesis by taking a more macro perspective. While this general premise would stand, there was an acknowledged need to maintain some flexibility in the critical friend approach to ensure different contexts and traditions were respected. The nature of the conversation and the ways in which the connections are made were recognized as being potentially slightly different for each chapter grouping. The critical friend methodology has not only influenced the relationship and connections between the paired chapters, but also the wider collection as well. The workshopping process provided a platform for each chapter to be allocated a fixed amount of time (45 min) for discussion. Prior to this discussion, chapters were allocated to two reviewers and these reviews were shared with the group. Subsequently, this opened up discussion among the whole group with the intention that the generous sharing of feedback should be taken up with the spirit of improvement and quality. This process resulted in moving beyond just the paired chapters, opening up scope for connections to be made across numerous chapters in the collection. In the end, the workshopping process revealed the layered ways in which we were drawing on the critical friend methodology: initially, as a way to improve the coherence of the collection, but then to deepen critical analysis and provoke different ways of thinking as a result of the diverse range of voices at the table.

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About Feminist Research Methodologies

While the backgrounds of the contributors are diverse, the collection is united around the shared use and application of feminist research

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methodologies and feminist practices to explore the gender gap from the perspectives of women. At its core, feminist research aims to both construct new knowledge and produce social change while being informed, historically, by women’s struggles against multiple forms of oppression (Brayton et al. 2000). This collection aligns with these intentions by creating a platform in which new perspectives intended to inform structural change can be drawn together as a possible response to the realities of women’s lived experiences of the gender gap. In acknowledging that the experiences of women are not homogenous, the gender gap can be imagined as a site of potentially multiple oppressions that are realized in different ways and to different effects. In leveraging this collection to make sense of the gender gap, we seek to shed light on well-known and often invisible, but for some reason still widely acceptable, conflicts, tensions, injustices, and social blindness. Additionally, this research tradition is characterized by diversity and seeks to remove power imbalances or social inequities (Kiguwa 2019). The varied contexts, perspectives, and approaches represented across the contributing chapters speaks to the interdisciplinary nature of this collection. Also, by valuing the voices and experiences of a wide range of women as well as positioning their expertise as important and valued, the contributors have sought to be as objective as possible in their insights and interpretations. Simply put, feminist research can be characterized as research done by, for, and about women to agitate and initiate making a difference (Frisby et al. 2009). This collection centers around studies by women researchers that individually use practices reliant on feminist research methodologies with the shared aim of giving voice to the experiences of varied cohorts of women as a means of, ultimately, closing the gender gap in its various incarnations. In response to feminist research methodologies, feminist practice seeks to initiate projects of social change that have an impact within and beyond the boundaries of the academy (Fonow and Cook 2005). While a contested term, feminism can be understood as a network of practice designed to eliminate women’s oppression in a range of forms,

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such as socially, economically, and politically (Ferguson 2016). The contributions to this collection are empirical and philosophical examinations of what the gender gap is and what it means for the contexts in which the contributors explored. These insights have an important role to play in terms of raising questions and possible avenues for further exploration. This collection has the potential to make a significant contribution in terms of shaping feminist practices in relation to identifying and closing the gender gap. It is important to note, moreover, that the critical friend methodology engaged to inform and develop the chapter contributions can be considered as a feminist practice. With much scholarship performed in isolation, and with dialogue not valued enough for informing research understanding, this opportunity to be genuinely collaborative and conversational in responding to and citing each other’s work goes some way toward overcoming female sensibilities that have long been ignored in the academy. This approach to practice is also a positive way to proactively address the gender gap.

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Our Guiding Principles

This collection makes a valuable contribution to knowledge and understandings about the gender gap by following these principles: i. Use of an interdisciplinary lens; ii. Acknowledgement of the intersectionality of women’s lived experiences; and iii. Having an intentionality in exploring local issues through a global lens. Each of these three components will be explored in some detail below to make further sense of its contribution.

1.5.1 Interdisciplinary The contributors to this collection come from a wide range of research traditions and philosophical stances. Their work is also situated in a variety of conceptual and theoretical areas as well as contexts. Having such a diverse range of

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perspectives and lens provides incredibly rich insights into what the gender gap means to women and why attempts to disrupt and deconstruct it matter. Collectively, we are aware, however, that there are important voices missing from these stories, such as queer identities and disability advocacy. In generating the conversation that we have, we hope that a range of diverse voices will respond to the issues we raise and thus assist in providing these and other valued insights in the future.

1.5.2 Intersectionality The gender gap as a unifying theme has provided contributors to this collection with a point of departure from which to uncover and explore other gaps (e.g., class, ethnicity, culture, language, etc.) that contribute to the lived experiences of women. This shift in focus equally lends a richness to the chapters as it is a clear acknowledgment of the complex and layered realities that women must navigate and negotiate. It is important to recognize that women experience the gender gap, and any ‘gap’ they face, in different ways, which is what these chapters fundamentally illustrate and bring to life. It should be acknowledged that a specific, contextually developed notion of intersectionality has been identified for this collection, which has then been applied quite broadly as a reflection of the varied nature of the contributions. Each chapter, either individually or collectively, does not attempt to look at all possible intersections as it they were on a level playing field. While these works foreground other gaps alongside the gender gap as they make sense for the particular context, we invite readers to look for and notice ‘missing’ gaps that might be apparent based on their experiences and perspectives.

1.5.3 Intentionality This collective body of work is distinctive in the array of approaches deliberately taken to capture and share diverse experiences of and perspectives of women on the gender gap and the pervasive

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impact it has. By intentionally situating the contributions within specific localized or regional contexts, the authors are able to provide in-depth insights and targeted critical analysis. The addition of the ‘critical friend’ element provides further insights that locate the lived experiences within the global sphere or body of knowledge, therefore contextualizing any nuanced understandings for a broader audience and wider impact. Additionally, this collection provides another point of difference by attempting to shift the gaze away from being solely Anglo-American or European in the focal contexts. Importantly, what this understanding of intentionality does is enable contributors to bring different ways of positioning ‘women’ and/or ‘femininity’ to the fore. The different approaches taken to defining and locating women are addressed within each chapter. While it is not uncommon for academics to receive feedback and reflections on their research and/or academic writing from an informed and experienced colleague, we have found little evidence of a ‘critical friend’ publishing a significant standalone piece of work in response to and in conversation with an original argument. This particular innovation was co-constructed by the contributors over time and offers readers a point of difference as they engage with these collaborative and responsive insights into the gender gap from the perspectives of women.

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Outlining the Structure of the Book and the Chapters’ Focus

While the paired chapters speak to the gender gap and each other in different ways, they also dialogue and connect with other chapters within the collection to various degrees to shed new light on particular issues or to provide a different contextual interpretation. In recognition of these synergies, the collection of chapter was organized in three sections as a way to scaffold the reading experience. 1. The gender gap in labor markets and politics; 2. Culture and the gender gap; and 3. The motherhood gap.

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The three sections should be interpreted as interconnected rather than existing in clearly delineated categories. While each of the twelve chapters has been placed within a particular section, depending on the aspects of the gender gap that it best represents, we realize that many of the chapters have some connection with other sections beyond their assigned section.

1.6.1 Section 1: The Gender Gap in Labor Markets and Politics The collection begins by considering the gender gap in labor markets and politics. This first section is informed by work that explores the ways in which women experience work and the workplace (Chapter 2: Arteaga-Villamil and Chap. 3: Aguilar Perez) as well as the ways in which women are represented and participate in the political sphere (Chapter 4: Dominguez and Chap. 5: Bonfil). These works provide an important starting point as they occupy and agitate in spaces where long-established debates about the gender gap as experienced by women exist. Section 1 opens by seeking to understand the gender gap as it is more traditionally conceptualized: in the male-dominated worlds of work and politics. Maria Arteaga-Villamil uses Chap. 2 to examine the conflicts and tensions around the notion of femininity in the workplaces of professional women in Mexico and Spain. Her comparative analysis identifies the similarities and differences in how these two cohorts manage their roles as both leaders and visibly gendered workers in highly masculine work contexts. In Chap. 3, Mirza Aguilar Perez further teases out the complexities of the work space for women through her focus on the Au Pair program. Her focus on Mexican participants in this US-based initiative highlights a number of significant dichotomies, including the tensions between young women seeking a cultural and educational exchange in an international context and host families seeking low-cost care work with stereotyped notions and expectations of what this means.

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Chapters 4 and 5 are tied together by their examination of gender inequality in terms of political representation and participation of women using Mexico and Bolivia as case studies. Through Chap. 4, Edme Dominguez emphasizes the obstacles that women must overcome to achieve a future with guaranteed political rights, while tackling the remaining challenges that women continue to face despite achieving attained formal political parity at national and local levels. Paloma Bonfil continues this thread in Chap. 5, but focuses more specifically on the conditions faced by Indigenous women in these contexts, where gender and ethnic identities and socioeconomic conditions all intersecting to impact on these women’s ability to fully exercise their political rights.

1.6.2 Section 2: Culture and the Gender Gap The focus of this collection then turns to examine the links between culture and the gender gap. This second section shines a light on the promotion (or lack thereof) and portrayal of women in literary spheres and traditions (Chapter 6: Moreda Rodriguez and Chap. 7: Castro) before juxtaposing popular culture references to women with insights from key works of literature (Chapter 8: Young and Chap. 9: Bolton). While women may experience a certain visibility in these spaces, these works tease out the layered and nuanced invisibilities that are also experienced and contribute to the gender gap as experienced by women. This section seeks to further understand the form and extent of the gender gap for women in the creative arts industries from localized and global perspectives. In Chap. 6, Eva Moreda Rodriguez focuses on the perceived ‘boom’ of women novelists in the Galician-language literary scene. She warns that this claim needs to be taken with some caution and provides an analysis focusing on the careers and writing of three authors that starts to disentangle the ways in which increased visibility of women’s writing has benefitted some authors, but not others. By

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way of response, Olga Castro furthers this interrogation in Chap. 7 by considering the possibilities and obstacles faced by Galicianlanguage women fiction writers as they seek to enter and be recognized in other, larger literary markets via translation. In this journey to recognition, particularly in multilingual Spain and the Anglosphere, this work highlights the impact of this merging of issues related to gender, ethnicity, and language on not only the novelists themselves, but also literary audiences worldwide. This set of chapters draw upon popular culture to provide a commentary of how race and gender, particularly understandings and experiences of Blackness as experienced by women, intersect. Chapter 8 unpacks the notion of colorism in contemporary, American celebrity visual culture through the stardom of three women. Through this exploration, Courtney Young highlights the ways colorism impacts these women and their work in predominantly ‘white spaces’ as well as the ways colorism widens the gender gap in popular culture. Following on from this chapter, Philathia Bolton uses Chap. 9 to provide some global context to colorism by using select novels to examine the impacts of colorism prior to this contemporary movement. This work brings to the fore the gender divide that is reinforced by colorism, which by its nature is hierarchical, white, and patriarchal.

1.6.3 Section 3: The Motherhood Gap Finally, this collection seeks to examine the influence and impact of the motherhood gap. This third, and last, section tackles the controversial notion of maternal regret and how it is negotiated by various stakeholders and societies (Chapter 10: Sihto and Mustosmäki and Chap. 11: Heffernan and Stone), followed by philosophical querying of what it means to navigate experiences of chronic pain and maternal life (Chapter 12: Poleshchuk and Chap. 13: Giovanini). Through this specific focus, the interrogation of an identity that continues to be shrouded and overshadowed by

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particular societal expectations—motherhood—is brought into sharp relief in terms of how it is informed by the gender gap. This grouping of chapters refers to the persisting gender gap in terms of the cultural roles and expectations of men and women. This final section explores the gender gaps that exist in the area of motherhood, particularly in terms of the lived experiences of what it means to be a mother. In Chap. 10, Tiina Sihto and Armi Mustosmäki challenge the reader to consider the little explored or discussed the notion of maternal regret. Their research analyzes a discussion around this issue on an anonymous online discussion board for Finnish mothers, with attention given to how those expressing regret articulate this sentiment and to the subsequent comments in response to the regretful mothers. Valerie Heffernan and Katie Stone in Chap. 11 position the preceding discussion of maternal regret for Finnish mothers within an international context by comparing and contrasting it with similar media debates in Spain and the Anglophone countries. Their analysis reveals that while maternal regret is more easily understood and thus more readily accepted in countries where institutional support mechanisms for mothers are lacking, more generally the inordinate pressures placed on mothers to juggle a range of competing demands makes it inevitable that some women will experience regret. Chapter 12 draws on phenomenological perspectives to provide insights into mothers’ lived experiences of chronic pain and highlights a gendered gap that exists in approaches to Western medical knowledge and practice. Irina Poleshchuk’s work exposes the complexity of the ethical dilemmas that mothers with chronic pain experience. She articulates new ethical possibilities and diverse subjectivities to inform how we consider these relations. As a response to this chapter, Valerie Giovanini uses Chap. 13 to guide and extend the reader’s understandings of maternal chronic pain using Levinas’s ethics as a means for further examining maternal subjectivity. She draws on a range of contemporary research and lived experiences to posit a strong

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argument regarding the need to reconsider traditional values that do not address the reality of maternal experiences or the pre-ontological relationality. In responding to the two research questions, the intention of the collection is to illuminate what lived experiences and subsequent critique reveal about the current state of the gender gap, and to generate rich and vigorous conversations about ways we can work to redress this imbalance, in regard to the SDG 5, the metrics used to measure the gender gap and beyond. Through this collection, the chapters inform and challenge thinking about women’s lived experiences of the gender gap. This work is a unique offering in the broader field of feminism as it is truly interdisciplinary, intersectional, and intentional. This contribution was made possible by uniting the chapter contributions through a theme rather than a discrete discipline or subject area, allowing for a broader perspective on exploring the key issues and experiences informing the gender gap. This form of exploration is important and valuable because it means that a more holistic understanding of women’s lived experiences of gender inequity is documented and shared. The result is a more realistic determination of the key issues and concerns from the perspective of numerous stakeholders, which ultimately informs ongoing conversations about the implications of this evidence-based work both locally and globally.

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References Brayton et al (2000) Introduction to feminist research. Retrieved from https://www2.unb.ca/parl/research.htm Coghlan D, Brydon-Miller M (2014) Critical friend. In: Coghlan D, Brydon-Miller M (eds) The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (Vol 1). SAGE Publications, New York, NY, pp 245–246 Equal Measures 2030 (2019) Harnessing the power of data for gender equality: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index. Retrieved from https:// www.equalmeasures2030.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/ 07/EM2030_2019_Global_Report_English_WEB.pdf Ferguson A (2016) Feminist perspectives on class and work. In E.N. Zalta (Ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/feminism-class/#toc Fonow MM, Cook JA (2005) Feminist methodology: New applications in the academy and public policy. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30 (4), 2211–2236 Frisby W, Maguire P, Reid C (2009) The ‘f’ word has everything to do with it: How feminist theories inform action research. Action Research 7(1):13–29 Johnston Conover P (1988) Feminists and the gender gap. The Journal of Politics 50(4):985–1010 Kiguwa P (2019) Feminist approaches: An exploration of women’s gendered approaches. In: Laher S, Fynn A, Kramer S (eds) Transforming research methods in social science: Case studies from South Africa. Wits University Press, Johannesburg, South Africa, pp 220–235 United Nations (UN) (2015) Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un. org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for %20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf World Economic Forum (WEF) (2020) Insight report: The global gender gap report 2020. World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland

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Femininity in Dispute: Perspectives of a Comparative Study of Professional Women in Puebla and Barcelona María Arteaga-Villamil

Abstract

This chapter examines the conflicts around the acceptance/rejection of idealized femininity within the workplace of two groups of professional women in Puebla (Mexico) and Barcelona (Catalonia/Spain). Drawing from a qualitative study based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, the chapter explores the following two concepts: first, how top labor hierarchies are impacted by the portrayal of (hegemonic) femininities/ masculinities and secondly, how these women mobilize or reject particular expressions of femininity in order to advance in their professional careers. The focus is not why fewer women get to the top of their profession, but rather how the participants position themselves in relation to the inherently gendered practices and norms in the organizations and the multiple ways in which they contest or adhere to the traditional ideas of femininities in order to legitimize their position as leaders in their professions. Through the use of feminist narrative research, I provide a fine-grained analysis of stories of women who struggle to fit the dominant archetype of authority along with the

M. Arteaga-Villamil (&) The Women’s Building (UNITED STATES), San Francisco, USA e-mail: [email protected]

risk that these women face when they do not comply with this archetype. Attention is given to the problematic dominant view of women transgressing femininity and their accounts of how they manage their position as visibly gendered workers within highly masculine work dynamics. Further, the link from the personal to the sociopolitical aims to improve our understanding of contemporary women’s challenges and responses in the light of renewed gender regimes, power, and ideologies.

2.1

Introduction

Increasingly, women in many societies across the globe have assumed positions or professions that for a long time were considered a male-only realm. Although women have gained relevant positions within labor organizations, this has not been at the same rate or level as their male peers, regardless of the qualifications that women have acquired (Fallon and Stockstill 2018). The literature about the lack of women’s representation in upper organizational spaces coincides with the existence of what have been termed ‘glass ceilings’ or ‘sticky floors’, which are linked to imperceptible culturally embedded assumptions and beliefs about the competencies of women that can impede their advancement to the top of the labor pyramid (Barragan et al. 2010). There is plenty of literature focused on identifying the

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_2

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barriers that women face in reaching the top and the strategies needed to overcome those barriers (Menard et al. 2003; Mills 1992; Parasuraman and Greenhaus 1993). Although this literature has been useful in identifying organizational practices that pose barriers to women’s advancement, it explains little about the experience itself, as it tends to dismiss the expectations and the symbolic values of women’s complex experiences with/at work. All too often, the professional experiences of women, especially their experiences as ‘professionals’, are overlooked (Arteaga 2016). The cultural and social construction of what we refer to as ‘work’ is produced and lived in different ways depending on the context. Work, as Weeks (2011) states, produces not just economic goods and services but also “social and political subjects so the assembling of a particular working subjectivity is influenced by different systems of oppression where gender is central to enforce, perform, and recreate norms and expectations” (p. 8). The weight of those norms and expectations is a fundamental feature in the multiple and dynamic identity construction of women as ‘professionals’ in our contemporary society. Gender as a relation does not operate by itself. Gender is a social relation that enters into and partially constitutes all other social relations and activities (Acker 2006). According to this, the gender structure imposes a series of social dichotomies for women and men which can vary according to time and place and with its intersection with other categories (such as class, sexuality, race, age, and nationality). Even though women are subordinated to men structurally in the patriarchal gender order, the overlap of the gender structure with other relations of power based on race/ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, age, culture, and geography means that gender oppression is neither materially experienced nor discursively enacted in the same way for women everywhere. It is necessary to note, though, that even though power may be ‘everywhere’, gendered subjects are affected by it in different ways (Lazar 2005).

M. Arteaga-Villamil

Studies (Acker 1990, 2006; Cockburn 1988; Wacjman 1998) show that attempts to minimize oppressive structural factors through the adoption of egalitarian ideals within organizational structures are limited because the labor organization is usually guided by people with assumptions based on certain cultural norms. These studies show how organizations and the dynamics of workplaces are interactive processes, where the creation of meaning is always in relation to the subjects that take part in those processes. In this chapter, I aim to offer a nuanced understanding of the complex workings of gender ideologies in perpetuating women’s subordination within corporate hierarchies. I do so by exploring the journey of progress and struggles, along with the variety of ways in which two groups of women strive to negotiate their relationships and social positions at work by addressing important aspects such as acceptance, resistance, negotiation, and manipulation, among others. These intentions are especially pertinent in present times, where patriarchal and capitalist ideologies have become increasingly complex and implicit systems of oppression. I do not want to merely critique how the contemporary managerial/leadership discourses that affect women’s employment prospects are mediated by their capacities to embody normative femininity; rather, I want also to offer a feminist political understanding of how the reproduction of gendered relations is still core in structuring labor within current capitalism. In the following sections, I present the multiple factors that either enabled the women who participated in my research to hold high-level positions at work or prevented them from doing so. I begin by offering insight about the methodology and the socio-demographic context of this study. I then interrogate the supposed neutrality of management discourses and I unpack the narratives of what women should (or should not) do in order to manage and to become a manager. Subsequently, I discuss the attitudes these women adopted to counter the problems they face as managers as they recall some of the overt ways in which their performance is

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routinely gendered in everyday workplace interactions. Finally, I will discuss the intentionality of the women in adopting/rejecting stereotypical roles and the options these decisions represent in the legitimization of gendered relations at work.

2.2

Methodological Approach

In order to analyze the negotiation of gendered working identities at top management within institutional spaces, I draw on material from an ethnographic project I conducted as part of a larger qualitative study of female managers early in their careers in Puebla (Mexico) and Barcelona (Catalonia/Spain). In order to justify the selection of the locations for the two case studies, as well as their comparability, this section will offer some statistics regarding the condition of women in both geographical locations. I embarked on the exploratory study to identify the nuances of this macro-level data. According to a Catalyst report (2019) on Women in the Workforce, Mexican women’s participation in the labor force continues to lag behind their male counterparts. In 2017, 44.1% of women were in the labor force, compared to 79.0% of men. Given the relative inflexibility of companies in the labor market and the poor formation of a welfare state, Mexican women are heavily engaged in the informal economy, and women (58.8%) are more likely than men (50.1%) to hold informal jobs. It is worth mentioning that women’s representation in senior roles has shown improvement for 3 years in a row (2017–2019). In 2018, by way of example, Mexican women held 34% of senior positions and 75% of companies had at least one woman in senior management. However, this is a low number if we consider that in Mexico, more women graduate with postsecondary degrees (53%) than men. Despite this, few women hold board seats and women hold only 5.7% of positions on major corporate boards, which is well below the 14.7% global average. In the case of Spain, Las Heras and Grau (2017) observed that the female labor force in

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2017 was 46.4%. The percentage of women in managerial positions was 37%, with the majority of Spain’s top earners being men. While there are more women than ever in the workforce in Spain, it is noteworthy that over 37% of companies with more than 100 employees do not have any women whatsoever on their top management team. Equally striking is that 39% of companies in Spain have no women on their board of directors. Although the situation of women in Spain has improved considerably in the last two decades, young women, despite being on average more highly educated as a cohort than young men, have lower employment rates for all levels of educational attainment (OECD 2019). In Spain, 50% of 25–34-year-old women had a tertiary qualification in 2018, compared with 38% of men. According to Salido (2002) women are still more likely than men to be working on temporary contracts. Spanish women represent a high proportion of those working in part-time jobs (80%), with their temporary employment rates five percentage points above men: 34.5% and 29.9%, respectively (Salido 2002). I used a historical-biographical approach (Cassell and Fillis 2006) to design the interviews, as I wanted the interviewees to have a chance to articulate their experiences and also to have the opportunity to reflect upon their professional development. The interviews ranged from one to three hours in length. Since my concern is not women in isolation but vis-a-vis different actors within particular gendered orders, the interviews took place in different spaces, such as the workplace, their personal residences, coffee shops, and gyms. By using a feminist intersectional approach (Cho et al. 2013), this study considers that the development of a professional career is not defined in isolated terms but in relation to factors including the individual’s gender, background class, family type, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. I believe that this approach offers a suitable frame for understanding why different categories intersect and how they came about in the first place, as well as how gender (re)produces material life and property while also producing social relations, values, norms, and dispositions (Salem 2018).

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Notes about the Professional Women From each location, 10 women aged between 30 and 45 years participated in this study (20 women in total). Participants were recruited through the snowball technique, which relies on working with existing participants to recruit future participants by drawing on their networks and acquaintances. In order to achieve a broad perspective, I interviewed women in managerial positions in different types of organizations (e.g., public and private, family business, national and multinational companies) and in different types of roles (e.g., top and divisional managers, executives, and entrepreneurs). Across this chapter, I will oftentimes refer to the group as a whole (the 20 women participants) or specify which group I am referring to by specifying the geographic location.1 These women demonstrate that they (along with their parents and family) have invested in their educational background; before participating in higher education, most of the interviewees (14) attended private schools, three attended a semi-private school2 and three attended public schools. Since they were looking to enhance their competitiveness in the labor market, all of them speak three languages (Spanish, English, and German) fluently (half of them even speak a fourth language, usually French), and all of them have studied and/or lived abroad for least 3 years. Furthermore, all the women had completed a Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s level studies. In three cases, the interviewees had a Ph.D. Most of the participating women were highlevel managers or area directors, but they were not part of a board of directors. In two cases, the interviewees had founded their own company. At the time of the study, a large number of the interviewees (12) worked in the private sector, six in the public sector, and two in the not-forprofit sector. 1

For more information about the demographics of each group of women, see Appendix 1. 2 Semi-private schools are educational centers created by the initiative of civil society but publicly funded. The education expenditures are supported partially by parents and by the state.

M. Arteaga-Villamil

With reference to partners and offspring, five of the interviewees declared they were single, though two of these had previously been married; four were in a relationship but not cohabiting; nine lived with their partner; and two women were married. Six of the interviewees had children, with one of these women assisting to raise the children of her partner. To address the different lived experiences of the women, I want to bring together an analysis located in geographically and culturally diverse contexts with reference to what is commonly labeled as the ‘third’ world and also what is considered the ‘first’ world. I want to suggest that even within similar groups, it is necessary to attend to points of commonality and differences. Through the rich data collected from these groups of women, I want to first rethink how the jobs at the top of the labor hierarchy are impacted by the portrayal of (hegemonic) femininities/masculinities and secondly, how these women mobilize or reject particular expressions of femininity in order to advance in their professional careers. Given the small size of the sample as well as the sampling method, I do not make any claim to representativity; rather, this chapter aims to offer a deeper insight that can provide new reference points and also encourage a review of established categories. As Fraser and MacDougall (2017) have pointed out, “the goal of narrative feminist research is not to find universally generalizable themes and understandings of experience but to offer insights, glimpses into others’ worlds and ways of seeing the world” (p. 10). I aspire here to produce a feminist critique that will allow us to understand oppressive practices and relations with the ultimate goal of transforming our social reality.

2.3

Managing Like a (Male) Boss

Buttner (2001) argues that while research on women’s leadership styles has shown that men and women lead in similar ways, there are also some demonstrated differences between genders. Buttner goes on to cite Bass (1991) as showing

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that women demonstrate more evidence of drawing on transformational leadership approaches than men and refers to several studies that she believes support the view that women have more highly developed interpersonal skills than men. These studies (e.g., Frank 1988; Heilman et al. 1989) have shown how, despite some differences in management style by gender, there are fewer differences than expected, especially when studies control for the effects of age, work role, and achievement. In comparing such studies, it is noticeable that female and male managers were more similar than different in personality and motivation factors, as well as ability. As Fiske (2012) argues, “social categories such as gender, race, and age immediately impinge on impressions, whether we like it or not” (p. 33). This is more noticeable in the global management context, where women who adhere more to norms of heteronormative femininity are commonly “liked but not especially respected. Recipients of pity and sympathy, they are viewed as low-status but harmless and nice, not exactly management material” (Fiske 2012 p. 36). Fisk (2012) notes that pity in the context of women is an ambivalent emotion, in that it implies a “subjectively benign attitude that depends on the target remaining subordinate” (p. 36). This means that the sympathy continues only based on the status of the other’s inferiority, so the use of pity in this sense is deeply paternalistic. Debates about the differences between male and female abilities/capacities to ‘manage’ have changed in the last decades. As mentioned above, women have amassed technical expertise and have climbed the ladder to reach higher positions, but they are still scarcely represented at senior levels and even less common in male-dominated professions. Although it is difficult to ascertain whether this is due to hostility (overt or not) toward women or toward what it is considered feminine, it is known that prescriptive gender stereotypes (implicit beliefs that women should be, for example, nice and low-status) usually anticipates backlash against agentic (i.e., competent) women (Rudman and Glick 2001; Rudman and Phelan 2008 as cited in Fiske 2012).

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The women managers whom I interviewed spoke extensively about how they exercise leadership and authority in a work culture that associates power with masculinity, and they expand on how they encountered gendered regimes at work, as represented by the following quotations: Sometimes you have the feeling of constant anxiety because you have to master the art of being un/noticed in different moments… It took me ages to find the balance because one thing is true: people do not like to be told what to do by a woman. Maria S.3 … It’s like a paradox: we’re working together but at the same time not {laughs} I don’t know if you understand me? Emilia C. You know that you are the boss[…] You have the title, the credentials, but still it is not enough{.} There is always something or someone who reminds you “this is not your site, you are not in charge here”. Lina B. When you think of a manager, what comes to mind? A man, isn’t it? People still get dazed when someone presents me as the “boss” Elsa Ch.

Some of the narratives (shared below) also pointed to how women who exert leadership are often treated with mistrust and even nastiness: Once I was giving a workshop to the Police Department. The Deputy Lieutenant wrote me a ‘very nice’ email telling me that he was a very busy man and that he did not see what he could learn from me. That workshop was a requirement for him to apply for his promotion, so I just replied to him that he should not expect my signature. He arrived late and he did everything reluctantly. At the end I gave him my signature, but I also told him that he was very disrespectful to me and that one expects more from a public officer. He got mad and he told me that no pendeja4 was going to scold him. Paola B. I’ve never stopped being the “girl” {emphasis} in the office. The “pretty” girl, the “hot” girl… They look at me, raising their eyebrows with the face of “girl, you don’t give me orders”[…] It’s tiresome. Marta C. People usually think that because you are a woman you are delicate. When I get serious and I give orders, I still see their faces thinking, you bitch! 3

Key transcription system: {.} Denotes a pause. ... Denotes a section of text omitted. 4 Female moron.

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M. Arteaga-Villamil Years and years of being the boss and people still have qualms about me. Elsa Ch. […]Colleagues and subordinates always look you up and down, like asking “does she know what she’s doing?”. I have the feeling that being a woman gives them a pass that allows them to question everything you do. Marina P.

Other women recall struggling to conform to the demands of work practices and spaces, as we read below: …. they (male students) seemed very surprised, a woman doing a PhD in Computer Science and she did not study engineering previously? I am the gossip that they always tell their friends. Lidia R. The simplest thing you do is always disturbing, no matter how insignificant it is. Even now, people do not forget that I dared to wear pink construction boots or a glossy safety helmet. My peers mocked me because they said I was playing Bob the Builder and that my choices were unprofessional. I do not see how pink boots decreased my competence. Marcela C. My boss doesn’t talk, he yells, all the time. Nobody says anything, it’s quite normal in our office. Once I raised my voice, and it was because we were in a meeting very close to a construction site. Sometime later, my assistant told me in confidence that people took it very badly that I yelled at them during the meeting. Celia L.

These narratives highlight how women can exert power—even in an authoritative manner— like a male boss. Nonetheless, this may create an over-visibility, resulting in a negative impact on the woman’s level of agency in the organizational space. It seems, then, that while it is officially acceptable for women to ‘do power’ explicitly in the workplace, there is an underlying pressure on them to counter or neutralize the effects of the authoritative and ‘masculine’ strategies by engaging with more ‘feminine’ behaviors. Some of the narratives also convey that women can achieve participation in organizations only if they first renounce or inhibit their true selves in order to conform more fully with the male desire for the organization (Höpfl 2010). In some cases, it is observed that women intentionally adopt stereotypical roles in an attempt to create comfortable relationships with male clients and network members. Although each group developed different strategies to survive as female managers, both groups had a limited

behavioral repertoire because as women they are assigned a variety of stereotypical and highly constraining roles. The narratives also reflected how women managers have little or no entitlement to claim the workspace as their own. Despite the fact that they occupied positions of power and influence, and have gained some of the material benefits of being at the top, they were (and continue to be) symbolically ‘other’, and as such, most of them will struggle to be fully accepted as a member of the club. No women in the participating groups openly acknowledged that they work in a patriarchal organization. However, they were clear in pointing out how their ‘otherness’ prevented them from participating in the ‘homosociability’5 at work. For these women, it was certain that men prefer other men to work with, to undertake a project for, to team with, and ultimately, to associate with.

2.4

Gendered Processes in Ongoing Interactions: A Cross-context Comparison

As highlighted, many of the problems encountered by women in positions of power can be attributed to the tradition of viewing rational thought as masculine and emotional responses as feminine. This dualism is often reflected in people’s behavior in everyday interactions at work, which acts to (re)produce the power and dominance of male structures. The narratives of the women from Barcelona show similarities with the necessary attitudes to deal with the problems they face as female managers and they recall some overt ways in which their performance is always gendered in workplace interactions. 5

As Blair-Loy (2001) mentions, homosocial relationships are those in which men spent time playing golf, watching sports, serving on community boards, or going out for drinks together. They (men) took it for granted that the other powerful people they would be dealing with would be other men. This is how the networks of prospective clients and other professional service providers who refer business to one another are predominantly male.

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When I met Maria S, she was the Program Director for an NGO that helps women entrepreneurs to create solid networks. While she was talking to me enthusiastically about her work, she changed the topic to begin to tell me about her previous work: I was the Operations Chief of a big chemical company. I think it was my dream job {.} Why did I quit? I was the ‘Chief’ yes, but I was not {.} you know what I mean?{.} I had to fight for almost everything and everything I said was frowned upon… It was tiresome. Maria S.

The aforementioned narrative is consistent with the narratives of other women in the Barcelona group, as we observe below: I don’t want to “slap” them in the face with my authority, you know? Sometimes the rough approach can bring worse consequences… You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, or how is that saying? Emilia C. I think a lot before acting… I’m the boss, but I don’t want to intimidate or anything. I don’t want to be seen as the “bossy bitch” or anything like that. Nuria E. It is always a tug of war… You don’t want to impose yourself, they don’t want to listen to you. God forbid you if you act tough, if you yell at them, or if you show some strength… you’ll always be “the difficult one” Gema B.

Meanwhile, the narratives of the woman from Puebla also depicted the ways in which male dominance and values are reproduced through everyday work interactions. Although these women also faced barriers based on their gender, it is noticeable how gender works as a dual process, in which it can sometimes be exposed and at other times invisible: … I used to be such a good girl. I used to do everything they (male peers and superiors) asked me to… by doing that they only saw me as their secretary{.} Then I said to myself, ‘No more!’ {.} I decided to be more of a bastard than pretty so that they could no longer say no if I want to be the boss. Yolanda T. In my first job I was like a little mouse: I didn’t make noise or anything, I didn’t want to attract attention… That doesn’t work if you want to manage a project or if you want the things to get done. I can be nice or I can be tough, it depends on the situation. Irene A. I just got tired of being nice, you know? I used to smile all the time and said yes to everything… and

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well, people took me for a fool! One day I said to myself, enough! I’m not going to be the dumb one that nobody pays attention to… If you want a fierce boss, you’re going to get it… Celia L.

Even though the excerpts describe similar situations, where the women faced reluctance, skepticism, or uneasy situations regarding their gender at work, the two groups of women used different strategies to confront, gain, or maintain a powerful position in the workplace. The female managers from Barcelona asserted the importance of using the correct channels and how the use of these channels bring legitimacy to their positions. More broadly, I noted that the women from this group were aware of the turmoil that their sex/gender signified at work and they wanted to carry out their tasks unobtrusively. I also found that the women from Barcelona attempted to create a ‘professional’ image through presenting themselves in what they called a more ‘neutral’ presence, i.e., not exhibiting more feminine traits than necessary. The women from this group paid attention to the type of clothes they wear (length, fit, and color), the type of makeup, the hairstyle, the type of shoes, the tone and volume of their voice, and mannerisms (among others). The articulation of this ‘neutralizing’ ritual, or what might be considered as a kind of de-feminization, shows how gendered institutionalized processes force women to normalize a routine where they have to modify their conducts and presentation in order to minimize their womanhood, because the expression of femininity undermines their professional status. Wajcman (1996) argues that “the social construction of management is one in which managerial competence is intrinsically linked to qualities attaching to men” (p. 355). In almost all organizations, men create and dominate gendered structures, processes, and practices in ways that are hostile to women and limit their freedom(s) to behave. Thus, some of the routes to success in such male-dominated organizations is through women presenting themselves in ways that conform with stereotypically male behavior (Gardiner 1999). The interviewees recognized the dilemma of being considered ‘too little’ or ‘too

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much’ in terms of their feminine expressions. Even though they must not display excessive femininity, the suppression could not be total. The refusal of normative femininity may lead toward exclusion and alienation among peers and subordinates. The compliance with this normativity was a subject for all the women in the Barcelona cohort who were keenly aware that particular characteristics would be seen as unacceptable for women (or acceptable for men). Nevertheless, by seeking agreement, the women from Barcelona often avoid disapproval at all costs, which translates in a paradoxical fear. They are afraid to hold back but they are also afraid of disavowal. Through this process, many women in this group end up internalizing a gendered self-perception about themselves and the role they must assume, which at the end aligns with social expectations. Within this unintentional reproduction of gendered relations at work, women develop the idea of what they do as ‘worthwhile’, i.e., they carry out invaluable work that demands great effort and involves a series of sacrifices that justifies their lack of promotion, lower salaries, and lack of personal life. In the case of women managers from Puebla, I observed a different version of compliance with heteronormative femininity within the workspace. The women from this group did not have any problem exhibiting their femininity at work. They did not want to hide their womanhood, and, for them, it was a source of pride being a woman in a position of power. The narratives of this group of women show how they were pleased to discuss their achievements and performances and that, at least at work, they did not struggle with balancing their attitudes or behaviors. The women managers from Puebla were not afraid to exercise power in an (allegedly male) authoritative manner or to cross the lines of the gender norms for what is considered appropriate workplace behavior for women. They did not consider that demonstrating explicitly masculine behaviors (such as the use of swear words, strong command voice, and explicit imperatives) affected their legitimacy as leaders. As described below, they were also willing to confront their

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employers to negotiate better contracts or claim more benefits: …this is the real world, it won’t change by clicking my heels… At the end what I care about is finishing the job, not what they (subordinates) think of me. There will always be problems{.} because men and women are simply different. Marcela C.

While the women from Barcelona did not openly acknowledge their class as a factor impacting on their success, the managers from Puebla were very conscious of their capabilities and resourcefulness as women from the uppermiddle class. Women in this group accepted that their privileged family environment could have helped in the closing of a contract or in attracting a client. Although these women commonly saw their competence contested, they were not afraid to exercise their agency by making use of the networks passed down by their kin circle. For them, the use of these networks helped them to subvert the social disadvantages produced by their gender. The women from Puebla were also more comfortable with their self-presentation as physically attractive. Women in this group described complicated strategies to appeal to male egos by presenting themselves as fashionable but avoiding being challenged as presenting as overly sure of themselves (e.g., cocky). As Yolanda T. told me: …Men love to have an attractive woman to present in public, that idea that nowadays a woman does not have to pay attention to her appearance is not true.

Despite the commitment to work exhibited by these women, their narratives also show how the use of family networks poses a restricted longterm employment scenario. Family solidarity helps women to reach the top level in jobs faster, not because of a change in societal rules but rather to enable them to achieve their role within the family dynamics, namely, as a wives and mothers, sooner. As we can observe in the narratives below, the faster they get to the top of the labor hierarchy, the sooner they will be able to drop out of the workforce in order to fulfill their domestic roles within the family.

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Femininity in Dispute: Perspectives of a Comparative Study … For me, it’s about doing everything you can right now… being the boss, making money, doing business, all that… It’s not like you can go around being a full-time boss and a mother… You know what they say, you can’t serve two masters… Ema M. I don’t want to waste my time being resentful because some people underestimate me at work… I’m not going to be here forever. In the future, when I will be only focused on raising my family, I don’t want to think about the time I wasted dealing with nonsense. I want to have a good memory of the time I used to work. Celia L. … yes, you are the boss and all that important stuff but it is only a phase of your life. I think that in a few years, when I will be focused on something other than work, I won’t remember that X or Y thought I wasn’t professional enough… you know? Lina B.

Although these women did not openly reveal concessions to conform into the heteronormative femininity at work, they expressed reservations about whether women could commit to both family and work, with an implicit acceptance that their career eventually would have to be postponed because of family obligations. Even though all women agreed that societal expectations are changing, their willingness to retain their traditional mothering/domestic role highlights that this rapidly ascending certainty is not about transgressing the traditional categories of gender; instead, it may be about the readjusting of the lines of patriarchal domination to parallel neoliberal capitalist labor values. As Pérez Aguilar (2015) reflects in her study with Mexican au pairs in the United States (and draws on in Chap. 3), well-educated women experience the contradictions generated by fulfilling a clear set of requirements that may include: being between 18 and 26, being bilingual, having knowledge of communication technologies, requiring a driver’s license, etc., while also being expected to align with the attributes expected of stereotypically Mexican women (e.g., being a good cook, caring, loving, good with children, etc.). In this vein, the group of women from Puebla is situated under what Pérez Aguilar refers to in her work as the ‘cosmopolitan dilemma’, i.e., relatively privileged Mexican women who find themselves embroiled in the contradictory experiences of the

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construction of femininity for the Mexican middle class. It should be added that the groups of women discussed in this chapter and Chap. 3 continue to be privileged subjects compared to women in the lower echelons of the workforce, who suffer abuse and exploitation not only because of their gender but also because of their class, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and age. As Pérez Aguilar (2015) observes, we cannot ignore how distinctions based on stereotypes among women produce hierarchies and differences, and when these differences are portrayed as static, these representations attach women to the scope of otherness. Moreover, the differentiation of women through stereotyping (e.g., by beauty, reliability, etc.) produces further material effects within work dynamics, for example, in working conditions, workloads, and in the negotiation of salaries, among other issues.

2.5

Conclusions

As I have argued, this chapter offers insight into the progress and struggles of women in positions of leadership, along with the variety of ways in which the participating women strived to negotiate their social positions and relationships at work through addressing aspects such as acceptance, resistance, negotiation, and manipulation. By going beyond the usual macro discourses based on economic data, censuses, and indicators of welfare, I have attempted to explain women’s expectations and the symbolic value of their complex experiences with/at work. By acknowledging and reporting these women’s experiences, I have illuminated the similarities and differences in the strategies employed by each group to succeed within the maledominated work environment. For the Puebla cohort, I identified that the women found that emphasizing their femininity or displaying typically masculine appropriate behaviors resulted in better outcomes or, at least, a more sustainable way to engage in work relationships. By contrast, the women in the Barcelona cohort tended to present themselves in a more neutral way. My

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intention is not to argue that some strategies are better than the others, nor that the strategies adopted by one group were more effective than the other. I merely want to iterate how the reported strategies are just that: strategies to cope and find a way to maneuver within a maledominated workplace. They are not inherent attributes of the women who use them; rather they are repertoires of action for women in a highly gendered system. The women’s narratives show clearly that there is no unilateral way for women working in high-level positions in work organizations to embody gender. However, we can identify certain patterns that delineate gendered heteronormative relationships, discourses, and practices. Regardless of the strategy of image-management deployed by each group of women, it can be observed that the intention was the same: to overcome the baseline lack of trust in female managers and to find a way to prevail against male camaraderie. Each group attempted to create comfortable relationships with male colleagues and subordinates at work. This is important, because in all work interactions, although gender is not always explicit, it is always relevant. It may operate in the background (or not) but it consistently constrains and molds the behavior of each participant, in some cases, offering or restricting options within an intricate and complex net of variables, including gender, class, ethnicity, nationality, and age. This study found no evidence to support research portraying women as more intuitive than men. I want to be cautious about connecting this work with the trend of the so-called ‘feminine management style’. Although this tendency puts emphasis on the particular ways in which women perform their managerial responsibilities, this enthusiasm continues to reproduce the naturally inherent of the feminine at work organizations, since the women’s conduct depends on the retraditionalization of female particularities. I argue that this change in the discourse does not imply a feminization of the managerial spaces. Rather,

M. Arteaga-Villamil

the success of the growing number of women in upper organizational levels depends, on the one hand, on their success in adapting themselves and their lifestyles to a patriarchal structure that accommodates men and the traditional lifestyles of men and, on the other hand, to their access to enough material resources (Arteaga 2016). This chapter also shows how traditional societal expectations of how a woman should behave usually confine women to a dual range of what is acceptable behavior for them. When it comes to embracing ‘masculinity’ as a survival tactic in the workplace, women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. We observe how women’s efforts to traverse the landscape of (gendered) managerial dynamics without tripping on the landmines laid for women tends in some cases to reinforce the gendered dynamics that women were trying to escape from. Most importantly, we observe that gender still can constrain levels of agency. The tenacity of gender is expressed in the contradictory behaviors that these women are encouraged to perform at work. Within these, gender remains as a main feature that executive women continue to feel and to do (West and Zimmerman 1987) in more traditional ways, despite the rise of new managerial discourses. As is discussed by Pérez Aguilar in Chapter 3, gender is a central category that reflects historic relationships between states, as well as more recent economic and cultural relationships. Her chapter offers us an insight into how female workers engaging in cultural exchanges also respond to socially constructed images of what is considered ‘desirable’, placing them in the awkward position of confronting cultural and gender stereotypes. Current labor configurations cannot be separated from the socially perceived status of women as naturally caring, mothering, and domestic, because as is shown by the experiences of women participants in the opening two chapters of this collection, work as a relationship, as a site, and as an activity cannot easily be separated from its gendering.

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Appendix 1: Socio-demographic profile of the participating women

References Acker J (1990) Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society 4(2):139–158 Acker J (2006) Inequality regimes: Gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender & Society 20(4):441–464 Aguilar-Pérez M (2014) The cosmopolitan dilemma: fantasy, work and the experiences of Mexican au pairs in the United States. In: Cox R (ed) Au pairs’ lives in global context—sisters or servants?. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp 203–219 Arteaga-Villamil M (2016) Meritocracy vs gender: neoliberal ideologies and female subjectivities in a group of young professional women in Barcelona. Int J Humanit Cult Stud 3(2), 211–233 Barragan S, Mills A, Runte M (2010) The Mexican glass ceiling and the construction of equal opportunities: Narratives of women managers. J Workplace Rights 15(3–4):255–277 Bass B (1991) Debate: It’s time to stop talking about gender differences. Harvard Business Review, (January-February), 151–153

Blair-Loy M (2001) It’s not just what you know, it’s who you know: technical knowledge, rainmaking, and gender among finance executives. In: Vallas S (ed) The transformation of work: Research in the sociology of work. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, UK, pp 51–83 Brenner OC, Tomkiewicz J, Schein VE (1989) The relationship between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics revisited. Acad Manag J 32(3):662–669 Buttner EH (2001) Examining female entrepreneurs’ management style: An application of a relational frame. J Bus Ethics 29(3):253–269 Cassell C, Fillis I (2006) A biographical approach to researching entrepreneurship in the smaller firm. Manag Decis 44(2):198–212 Catalyst (2019) Women in the Workforce—Mexico: Quick Take. Retrieved from https://www.catalyst. org/research/women-in-the-workforce-mexico/ Cho S, Crenshaw KW, McCall L (2013) Toward a field of intersectionality studies: theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: J Women Cult Soc 38(4):785-810

22 Cockburn C (1988) Machinery of dominance: women, men, and technical know-how. Pluto Press, London, UK Connell RW, Messerschmidt JW (2005) Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society 19(6):829–859 Fallon K, Stockstill C (2018) The condensed courtship clock: How elite women manage self-development and marriage ideals. Socius 4:1–14 Frank EJ (1988) Business students’ perceptions of women in management. Sex Roles 19(1–2):107–118 Fraser H, MacDougall C (2017) Doing narrative feminist research: intersections and challenges. Qualitative Social Work 16(2):240–254 Fiske ST (2012) Managing ambivalent prejudices: Smartbut-cold and warm-but-dumb stereotypes. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 639(1):33–48 Gardiner M (1999) Gender differences in leadership style, job stress and mental health in male- and femaledominated industries. J Occup Organ Psychol 72 (3):301–315 Heilman ME, Block CJ, Martell RF, Simon MC (1989) Has anything changed? Current characterizations of men, women, and managers. J Appl Psychol 74 (6):935–942 Höpfl H (2010) A question of membership. In P Lewis & R Simpson (eds) Revealing and concealing gender (pp 39–53). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Las Heras M, Grau M (2017) Management in Spain: Where are the women? Retrieved from https://www. ieseinsight.com/doc.aspx?id=1912&idioma=2 Lazar MM (2005) Politicizing gender in discourse: feminist critical discourse analysis as political perspective and praxis. In: Lazar M (ed) Feminist critical discourse

M. Arteaga-Villamil analysis: gender, power and ideology in discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK, pp 1–28 Menard SW, Powell GN, Graves LM (2003) Women and men in management. SAGE Publications, London, UK Mills AJ (1992) Organization, Gender and Culture. In: Mills AJ, Tancred P (eds) Gendering organizational analysis. SAGE publications, London, UK, pp 93–111 OECD (2019) Why don’t more girls choose to pursue a science career? PISA in Focus, n° 93. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/why-dont-moregirls-choose-stem-careers.htm Parasuraman S, Greenhaus JH (1993) Personal portrait: The lifestyle of the woman manager. In: Fagenson A (ed) Women in management: trends, issues, and challenges in managerial diversity. SAGE Publications, London, UK, pp 186–211 Rudman LA, Glick P (2001) Prescriptive gender stereotypes and backlash toward agentic women. J Soc Issues 57(4):743–762 Salem S (2018) Intersectionality and its discontents: intersectionality as traveling theory. Eur J Women’s Stud 25(4):403–418 Salido O (2002) Women’s labour force participation in Spain. (Working paper). Madrid, Spain: Unidad de Políticas Comparadas (CSIC Madrid) Wacjman J (1998) Managing like a man. Polity Press, Oxford, UK West C, Zimmerman DH (1987) Doing gender. Gender & society 1(2):125–151 Weeks K (2011) The problem with work: Feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics, and postwork imaginaries. Duke University Press, London, UK

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Aspirational Mobilities and the Gender Gap: The Experiences of Skilled Mexican Women in a Childcare-Based Cultural Exchange Mirza Aguilar-Pérez

Abstract

This chapter explores the experiences of skilled Mexican women who provide childcare in private homes in the United States of America (USA) through a program called Au Pair. These experiences illustrate how the neoliberal migration industry focuses on migrant domestic workers to reduce costs, therefore, expanding the gender gap in the care labor market. The Au Pair program focuses on cultural exchange with participants holding J-1 Visas for the USA. Contemporary migration regimes have enhanced the value of skills and education, which opens up opportunities for mobility. However, mobility does not in itself transfer cultural capital, as becomes evident in this specific Au Pair program, because the agencies present it not as an educational exchange but an affordable childcare option for USA families. Thus, the participants find themselves in a complicated position. They expect to be in a more symmetrical relationship, but instead, they are treated by the families, in most cases, like cheap labor and associated with cultural and gendered stereotypes. I present, from a qual-

M. Aguilar-Pérez (&) Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]

itatively orientated research project, the narratives of skilled Mexican participants in the Au Pair program and explore how they experience for one side a dislocation in terms of class and for the other side, a reaffirmation of traditional gender role as a caregiver. I focus on how labor conditions from the Au Pair program have resulted in a political response, how participants are fighting to improve labor practices, and how some labor rights organizations have offered support. This chapter and the previous one, share a number of contexts, including the participation of women from Mexico and problematic class and gender stereotypes about women in labor markets. Through both chapters, while we explore different angles, we still make a significant contribution to understanding gender and class relationships, in particular, how it is necessary to transform labor markets to close the gender gap.

3.1

Introduction

This chapter was developed through a situated research experience and, as part of this bookwriting project, allowed me to integrate a critical friend methodology (Foulger 2009; Hultman et al. 2012; Loughran and Brubaker 2015) in the written process. This chapter is connected with the one written by Maria Arteaga-Villamil (see Chap. 2), which analyzes the gendered practices

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_3

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and norms in the labor market and the multiple ways in which professional women from Puebla, Mexico, and Barcelona, Catalonia/Spain contest or follow the traditional ideas of femininities in order to legitimize their managerial positions. Arteaga-Villamil uses Chap. 2 to center her analysis around professional women who “demonstrate that have invested in their educational background” (page number to be added later). While in this chapter, I explore narratives from young women who are trying to develop educational skills to enable them to move towards developing professional ones. The two chapters share a number of contexts, including the participation of women from Mexico and problematic class and gender stereotypes about women in labor markets. Even when research participants were part of a well-educated, middleclass group, they still experienced, as demonstrated by Arteaga’s informants, societal expectations, and neoliberal capitalist labor values. Through both chapters, while we explore different angles, we still make a significant contribution to understanding gender and class relationships, in particular, how it is necessary to transform labor markets to close the gender gap. This chapter is structured into five parts. The first part explores why care matters as an analytical and political category. It explores the problematic way in which neoliberal globalization shapes childcare more as an individual feminized task than a social one and how the undervaluation of reproductive work deepens the gender inequalities at different levels. The second and third part examines how ambiguous policies of labor support childcare work in the USA. This ambiguity enables access to cheap migrant labor and highlights how the migration industry has capitalized on the Au Pair program. The fourth part reflects on how such labor policy has found a political response in the case of Au Pair participants and how that kind of practice helps to reduce gender inequality in reproductive labor. Women’s paid care work and the globalization of childcare matters in relation to several key aspects, such as the structural gaps of labor in reproduction and the impact this has on affected women from different classes and economies,

M. Aguilar-Pérez

which has implications for states, capital, communities, and the reproductive workers themselves. Finally, I present the conclusions. Through this chapter, I present the narratives of skilled Mexican participants in the Au Pair program using a qualitative analysis to highlight the ways in which they face for one side a dislocation in terms of class and a for the other side a reaffirmation of traditional gender role as a caregiver. I present data from twelve semistructured interviews that were recorded in 2013 and 2018 (see Appendix 1 for a summary of the participants and their demographics). I collected information from 2011 to 2019 to create a long-term digital ethnography about the Au Pair program, including from blog and video blog participants, host parents and agencies sites, and discursive artefacts from the USA State Department and immigrant rights organizations about the J-1 visa program.1 Domestic work2 and care work3 are both feminized occupations, which are typically poorly remunerated because they often do not require qualifications and, in many places, are considered ‘activities for women’. This chapter considers the gender gap in reproductive work 1

The Exchange Visitor Visa (J-1) is a non-immigrant visa issued by the U.S. Department of State that enables foreign nationals to come to the United States to teach, study, conduct research, demonstrate special skills or receive on the job training for periods ranging from a few weeks to several years. It was developed to expose individuals from around the world to the culture and institutions of the United States and to foster a better understanding between nations on a variety of issues through educational and cultural exchange programs (Exchange Visitor Program 2020). 2 Domestic work may include tasks such as cleaning the house, cooking, washing and ironing clothes, taking care of children, or elderly or sick members of a family, gardening, guarding the house, driving for the family, and even taking care of household pets. A domestic worker may work on a full-time or part-time basis; may be employed by a single household or by multiple employers; may be residing in the household of the employer (live-in worker), or may be living in his or her own residence (live-out) (ILO 2018a). 3 Care work is broadly defined as consisting of activities and relations involved in meeting the physical, psychological, and emotional needs of adults and children, old and young, frail, and able-bodied (ILO 2018a).

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among men and women and reflects on how, despite being skilled and young, women are considered more suitable to perform care activities than men due to their gender. To conclude, I propose some possibilities in terms of interrogating the Au Pair program and care work. These possibilities include making visible the different stereotypes and their inherent assumptions about women as natural caregivers and emphasizing the different political responses from the Au Pair participants to position the program more as temporal work rather than a cultural exchange.

3.2

Who Cares? Why Care Matter?

Care matters because we all depend on each other. Care takes place in all sectors of the economy, not just in the domestic sector where it is usually unpaid, but also in various sectors of the paid economy at micro-, meso-, and macrolevels (Himmelweit 2007; Williams 2018). Williams (2018) describes the different levels in the following ways. The micro-level is the everyday experience of care and care work. At this level, care is “saturated in the social relations of both inequalities and care relations of gender, class, race, disability, age, sexuality and migrant status” (p. 4). The meso-level binds together the institutional, social, political, and cultural factors, which shape the relationship between national care policies, migration, and employment regimes. The macro-level contemplates global capitalism with its hierarchies and inequalities centered on gender, class, and national origins. At this level, “the transnational political economy of the transnational movements and practices of care labor (…) international political actors” (Williams 2018, p. 4). Care as a category is related to other concepts, such as social reproduction and domestic work. Social reproduction has origins in Marxist analysis, which ties it to production and capitalism for women and the requirement of the state to perform the necessary work to ensure the continuation of the labor force. Williams (2018) mentions that Marxist-feminists explored the

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gender and class inequalities that accompany social reproductive practices within the context of patriarchal welfare capitalism. Dalla Costa (2009) considered domestic work in the 1970s as a form of production since it ‘produces’ the human beings that make up the workforce. Nevertheless, the concept has recently been expanded, as Anderson (2007) mentions Domestic work is not only about the essential maintenance of physical bodies and is not confined only to caring for people who are part of the labor force. (…) Domestic work is also concerned with perpetuating culture and society, and the social standing and lifestyle of households (p. 25).

Care activities are comprised of two types: (i) direct personal care activities, such as feeding a baby or helping an older person to take a bath; and (ii) indirect care activities, such as cleaning or cooking. These two types of care activities cannot be separated from each other, and they frequently overlap in everyday life, both in households and in institutions. Additionally, care work takes place within a caring relationship between a caregiver and a care receiver. Care work can also be recognized as unpaid or paid. According to the ILO (2018a), unpaid care work is a central issue in determining whether women enter into and stay in labor markets along with the quality of jobs they perform. Care workers may be in an employment relationship where the employer is a private individual or a public agency, or they may be self-employed. The majority of the care work worldwide is undertaken by unpaid carers, mostly women and girls from disadvantaged and marginalized contexts. Paid care work, as reported by International Labor Organization (ILO) (2018a), is performed for profit or pay within a range of settings, such as private households (as in the case of domestic workers), public or private hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, schools, and other care establishments. The crisis of social reproduction in the ‘sending’ countries has led to substantial outflows of labor to sustain social reproduction through domestic work and care in ‘receiving’ countries, for example, from Mexico or the Philipines to the USA.

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Nancy Fraser affirms that exist an interlinked systemic crises of ecology, social reproduction, and finance contributing to the contemporary crisis of global capitalism. The crisis in social reproduction denotes “the affective and care processes upon which not only productive labor but human solidarity depend are jeopardized by the crisis of social reproduction” (Williams, citing Fraser 2014, p. 13). As Fiona Williams suggest the retrenchment of public services and the marketization of care have contributed to the commodification of women’s previously unwaged labour, and the effect of employing migrant labour to do this work merely displaces those hidden reproductive processes that support the productive edifice (2014, p. 13)

In summary, care workers are mostly women, frequently migrants, and usually working in the informal economy for low pay. Paid care work will remain a relevant future source of work, especially for women. Globally, two-thirds of care workers are women. Ironically, despite the importance of care work, women who perform it are often trapped in low-quality jobs. Considering care work as a significant component of everyday life is a political task for feminism to fight for better labor conditions is a proactive way to reduce the gender gap in the world of work.

3.3

Au Pair Participants as Providers of Care Work in the USA

According to the last USA census (Moran 2019), childcare providers can be classified as being relatives or nonrelatives of children. Relatives include mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, and other relatives such as aunts, uncles, and cousins. Non-relatives include in-home babysitters, neighbors, friends, and other nonrelatives providing care either in the child’s or the provider’s home, including family daycare providers. Coordinated care covers contexts such as daycare, nursery or preschool, and federal Head Start programs for those aged five years

and younger. Approximately 12.5 million of the 20.4 million children under 5 years of age in the United States experience regular childcare arrangements. Of this population, the majority were in relative care with 33%percent of children in nonrelative care. In the context of this chapter, it is crucial to understand the situation for professional in-home caregivers in particular. Whether employed through an agency or acting as independent operators, in-home carers provide assistance with activities of daily living, such as dressing, bathing, medication management (if it is necessary), light housework, and running errands. The salary of these professionals may be offset by things like accommodation, food, or access to a vehicle for personal use. In the Spring of 2011, Laughlin (2013) reported that 32.7 million mothers lived with at least one of their children aged under 15 years. 24% percent of these mothers (essentially 1 in 4) reported they made cash payments for the care of at least one of their children and that they paid an average of $135 per week for this service (approximately $7,020 a year). More generally, families, with children under five, paid on average, $179 per week or over $9,300 a year for childcare. Unemployed mothers were less likely to be paying for childcare than employed mothers. In 1985, families with employed mothers spent, on average, $84 per week on childcare. By 2011, this average weekly payment had increased to $143. Traditionally, housewives and mothers managed all aspects of reproductive work. With increases in the employment of mothers, they are performing less unpaid care work, and it is instead being transformed into paid work. This work is extensively regulated by general working laws and agreements in the USA. Paid care work is mostly performed by other women, not well paid and with lower status. Carework is constitutive for the production of value, “this value is largely not recognized in society because the cultural predication of this labor connotes it as ‘non-productive’ and its labor force is devalued through its prescription as feminized and racialized labor” (Gutiérrez-Rodríguez 2010, p. 8)

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Significant issues, such as the growth in the numbers of women in wage-earning jobs, the persistence of the racial and gendered division of labor, the considerable decrease in state support for social reproduction, and the increasing privatization of childcare have given rise to a growing demand for domestic and childcare workers (Anderson 2007, 2014; HondagneuSotelo 2011; Parreñas 2001). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 84.2% of all immigrant workers employed in domestic services in the USA were born in Latin American countries, mainly Mexico (34.6%) or Central America (28.4%) (Ariza 2011). Historically in the USA, migration, both internal and international, has played a significant role in domestic and childcare labor markets. Ariza (2011) has described migrants as having a structural bond with this niche. The increasing demand for domestic workers has led to the evolution of private providers, including agencies that serve as intermediaries between a female immigrant workforce and families seeking the care of their children. In 1986, the USA introduced the Au Pair program to provide “a window into the American experience” (Bellafante 2006) for foreign women to be placed as “an equal”4 in the host of an American families. Au Pair participants are positioned as being like a “daughter” or “older sister” who provides childcare in the family home. The Au Pair program as a form of mutual cultural exchange is clearly articulated in the official discourse as legitimated by the US Government and the promoting agencies. The program is rated as a cultural exchange as identifiable by the category of visa granted: the J-1 visa. This visa is for “nonimmigrant exchange visitors” and is granted only to foreigners who carry out temporary study and work activities in the USA. Participants must find a sponsor that serves as an intermediary in this cultural exchange. The rules and conditions of the Au Pair program contain inconsistencies and “blurred boundaries” (Williams and Balaz 2004). Au Pair program participants are neither students nor Au pair means as “an equal” in French.

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workers, and they are not recognized as immigrants or tourists even though they must always be foreigners (Cox 2015a, b). Participants are required to pay taxes and have a Social Security number even with a J-1 visa. The US Government and agencies present au pairing as a form of cultural exchange, but in this context it is a form of cultural exchange that involves full-time, live-in care work (up to 45 h per week). In the opinion of Anderson (2014), (…) being considered part of the family distinguished the au pair from a service relation: neither au pairs nor host families wished this relation to be one of a servant (…) However, for the purpose of immigration control (..) being part of the family’ was in opposition, not to be a servant, but to being a worker. (p. 86).

The Au Pair program is now promoted widely across the USA as a flexible and affordable childcare option. Agencies promote it as being lower cost and offering more opportunities for host families than other forms of care. The Au Pair program is not classified as “work” due to immigration control, even when daily Au Pairrelated activities are connected with paid domestic and care work. However, rather than participants receiving a wage, they receive a payment referred to as “pocket money”, which is well below the minimum wage in the USA. This “limited commodification” (Anderson 2014) is essential to legitimize the educational and cultural component of the program. The separation between activities and the concept of work is problematic in terms of the deepen the process of delaboration.5

3.4

Skilled Mexican Women in a Cultural Exchange

University student migration is frequently synonymous with highly skilled mobility. International students are often perceived to be more mobile due to the nature of their qualifications and 5

Delaboration is defined as the ability of companies to evade workers’ rights using labor intermediation and subcontracting through which an employment relationship becomes a sale of services as regulated by civil law (Celis and Valencia Olivero 2011).

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the increasingly internationalized space that is higher education. As mentioned above, the J-1 visa includes a series of educational and cultural programs in the USA, which is very attractive to university students seeking an international experience. There are several specific programs linked to the J-1 visa, which differ in terms of the general purpose of the visit as well as the duration of the visa. While most of the programs are pitched to qualified workers, who come to work or research in their field of expertise, there are other programs such as Au Pair, EduCare, SWT, and Camp Counselor that require participants to perform lower skilled labor activities. The participants of these particular programs come under the banner of the Exchange Visitor Program (EVP), which is essentially temporarily paid work. This program is marketed to participants in the following way. Young leaders eager to hone their skills, strengthen their English language abilities, connect with Americans, and learn more about the United States (…) J-1 visa exchanges include a cultural component that allows participants to engage more broadly with Americans and share their own cultures with their U.S. host communities (US Department of State 2018).

Mexican young women participating in the Au Pair program are coming from a complex context, which includes high levels of youth unemployment and low salaries even for skilled professionals. Participants must fulfill a number of requirements to be part of the program, including having knowledge of English, aged between 18 and 26 years, acquainted with information and communication technology, have a driver’s license, demonstrate proven experience in childcare, be of a single status, and have no children. Au Pair participants are mostly women as social reproduction and care work continue to be feminized. Arteaga-Villamil indicates in her research about professional women that even when women are well situated, they tend (…) in all work interactions, although gender is not always explicit, it is always relevant. It may operate in the background (or not) but consistently constrains and molds the behavior of each participant, in some cases, offering or restricting options within an intricate, complex net of variables such

as gender, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, among others (see p. x, Chapter 2).

The research I have conducted shows that most first-time Mexican participants in the Au Pair program arrive in the USA enthusiastic about engaging in a cultural exchange. However, once they settle in with their host family, they often discover that the cultural exchange aspect is diminished and that their presence is more related to a display of status by the host family. For Au Pair participants, the care work they undertake for their host families is physically and emotionally demanding. I have previously argued (Aguilar-Perez 2015) that agencies discourse around “cultural exchange” produces a mismatch of expectations between host families and the Mexican Au Pair participants. This results in what I term a “cosmopolitan dilemma” which is as a result of class dislocation and is experienced when participants seek to become cultured global citizens but find themselves facing housework and childcare. Most of the participants found the discourse of the agencies problematic even when they have understood that labor relationships occurred more frequently than a cultural exchange, as Penelope indicate “It is an experience that I recommend if you know that you come to work. You don’t come to be part of an American family, that’s a lie. That’s a marketing speech” Au Pair participants are aware of the double discourse related to the program. Agencies also perform a double discourse through offering an opportunity for educational exchange to interested young women in Mexico, but selling affordable care work to interested families in the USA. Agencies, in the USA, argue that the Au Pair program cost for families is around $360 per week compared with $525 for daycare centers or $680 for a professional nanny. Agents and agencies are essentially part of a “migration industry” understood as “a set of actors, organizations, and social and economic infrastructures that, on the one hand, facilitate international population movements and, on the other, market them” (Hernández León 2012, p. 59).

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Aspirational Mobilities and the Gender Gap …

The majority of the participants had attended university and had been employed in various jobs generally related to their qualifications and professional career path. In Mexico, women with this background do not undertake childcare as a regular activity. Finding themselves in the USA as full-time childcare workers, the au pairs were physically and emotionally exhausted most of the time. Across the 21 narratives, I found that care work exceeds the participants’ ability to engage in the educational and cultural component of the program. The narrative below describes a day in the program from Valeria’s perspective, who cared for five children. From 7:30 to 9 in the morning, I help the children to be ready for school (…) from there, I start again around noon, this time is right when they are at school, the little ones come from school, I give them lunch, they are awake for a little while, and they take a nap, from 1 to 3, but then I keep working (…) I take care that the laundry is already done, that the kitchen is clean, or if the children were playing before, then pick up. (…) Around 3 pm, the kids get up, I try to take them to the park, or the library, or to be in the patio, like they have one, a routine outside the house, this one, like at 6 in the afternoon, uh, they eat dinner, the mother is here, the mother is the one who prepares dinner, I really don’t get into that, because what you have to have is very special for food and so, this. I bathe them, at around 7, 7:30, since it is done (…) already after I finish working, this one, they have a gym here, I exercise and now my day is over (laughs) Now yes, uh … is what I’m telling you, that it kind of crashed a little in terms of my expectation because to study for example, eh, I’m only going to be able to do it on my day off, and I my day off, I do not have a free weekend, my days off are during the week, because, on weekends, since the children are very hyperactive, the parents have them in some sport, so they have a zillion thousand games, and the mother has to be in the games of the 12-year-old, and the father in the games of the 9-year-old, then, I take care of them the little ones, so… (Valeria).

Almost every participant experienced a sort of deskilling in the Au Pair program through the performance of caring duties. Cuban (2013) defines “deskilling” as a way to make the skills of a worker (in this case, professional migrant women’s expertise) obsolete. The experience of deskilling has a set of adverse outcomes associated with it, which in this case includes

29

deprofessionalization through a feminized occupation and having to face stereotypes of being a “loving and caring woman”. Finding a sense of accomplishment in completing those duties is sometimes contradictory to the sense of deskilling. In domestic work and children care, there exists another complex issue: emotional work. The caregiver and care receiver relationship that exists in the Au Pair program is not exceptional in the sense that love and care are a significant feature of the experience. Zelizer (2005) argues that “contact between the personal and economic spheres corrupts both of them” (p. 207). This is especially the case for paid family care workers as the concept of paying for care often comes with hostile warnings about the contamination and undermining of moral obligation. As Ada mentions, In September 2013, I returned to Mexico. I really miss my host kids, when I see photos or videos, I am sad. Anyway, I had sent an email to my host mom months ago asking how the children were and that if I could visit them soon. She did not answer the email; I thought she would be busy. Yesterday, I looked it up on Facebook and added it and asked the same thing: how were they, that I missed them a lot, and that if I could go visit them soon. SHE DON’T ANSWER ME. It’s amazing how we love and care about children and the parents on the contrary when you leave they forget about you, as if you had just been a ‘cat’ cleaning the house. (Ada – Facebook post)

In this case, there is a genuine affection for the children who were cared for and the nature of the Au Pair program in this regard. As BesenCassino (2018) suggests, in their everyday lives, many home-care workers have to walk that delicate line between love and money. This clash of work and love is reflected in confusion over which set of rules should be applied: rules of work or rules of the host family in the instance of the Au Pair program. The Facebook post from Ada also identifies the separation between the care activities, which she has performed as an au pair, and those performed by a domestic worker. She replicates classism herself when she refers to the domestic worker as a “cat”.6 Furthermore, she distances The term “cat” is a pejorative way to refer to domestic workers in Mexico.

6

30

M. Aguilar-Pérez

herself from that labor category. She perceives herself as a middle-class, young woman whose aspirations to migrate are tied to her experience of cultural exchange. With this in mind, it is interesting to consider how Au Pair program participants can demand better conditions if they are not workers in relation to the discourse and even not considered workers by themselves.

3.5

Making Visible Non-recognized Labor

The J-1 visa program, with its cultural orientation, is not a job in the strictest sense. The exchange students’ pay is lower than the minimum wage, which was neither enough to cover their investment of traveling to the USA satisfactorily nor fully engage with their educational or cultural expectations. It is difficult for labor and immigrant rights’ organizations to take action for J-1 visa holders in terms of labor exploitation situations, as Sulma Guzman, the Policy Director of Centro de los Derechos del Migrante,7 mentions The big problem with J-1 visa is that unlike H2A visa and H2B visa, it is that the labor department does not regulate J-1, and when I try to explain that this is a labor program, the answer is: “No, it is a Culture Exchange program, it is an exchange program, they are young people, students who want to see American life (Sulma, interview 2020).

Nonetheless, in 2011 at the Hershey Company plant in the state of Pennsylvania, 400 exchange students went on strike supported by the National Guestworker Alliance (Preston (2011a, Aug. 18, 2011b, Aug. 17). Contrary to the program’s emphasis on cultural exchange and legal workday regulations, the young people 7

Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) is a binational migrant workers’ rights organization. CDM supports Mexico-based migrant workers to defend and protect their rights as they move between their home communities in Mexico and their workplaces in the United States. CDM is strategically located in the United States and Mexico to provide migrant worker communities with access to the necessary educational, legal, and policy resources to defend their rights (Centro de los Derechos del Migrante 2020).

encountered long shifts in the factory, often at night. Another significant case was in 2012 when the Global Workers Justice Alliance (Veronikis 2013, Mar 06) reported that a dairy company called Global Cow recruited a group of J-1 visa exchange students, and they were reported to be working 55 h per week. In Pennsylvania in 2015, J-1 visa holders presented a complaint to the U.S. Labor Department and State Department regarding the working conditions in a McDonald’s restaurant. The involved exchange students complained about working double shifts, low salaries, and poor quality accommodation (they stayed in the owner’s basement). Early in 2019, Au Pair participants from several parts of the world filed a suit against the U.S. State Department as designated sponsors of the J-1 Au Pair program in the Denver Federal Court, alleging various claims including the weekly stipend being paid to them by hosting families. A settlement was reached, and claimants will be compensated. Nearly 100,000 au pairs, mostly women, who worked in American homes over the past decade, will be entitled to payment from the awarded US$65 million dollars. Part of the claim was that 15 companies authorized to bring au pairs to the USA promoted to keeping their wages low and ignoring overtime and state minimum wage laws (Slevin 2019). This lawsuit was launched with assistance from Towards Justice, a nonprofit law firm. The settlement creates a significant fund in which to pay individual claims from au pairs, expenses incurred in advancing this lawsuit, and the court-appointed lawyers for the au pairs. In another case, filed on December 2, 2019, a federal appeals court affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Cultural Care Au Pair. This court decision confirmed what the Attorney General’s Office told Cultural Care in 2015: au pairs are domestic workers protected by the minimum wage, overtime, and Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (DWBOR) laws of the state. Centro de los Derechos del Migrante has launched a virtual campaign about au pair labor problems, and they have collected testimonies of participants. These cases demonstrate the unfair use and application of the J-1 visa. All these cases

3

Aspirational Mobilities and the Gender Gap …

provide a precedent because it is a recognition that the participants perform paid labor even when it is a cultural exchange. I agree with Ellis (2017) about the effect of these actions on international mobility, in that programs like Au Pair, “the increase in demands for cheaper care providers pressure this foreign exchange system whose effectiveness has historically depended on relatively limited and only semi-regulated interactions between smaller numbers of au pairs and families” (p. 5).

3.6

Conclusion

According to the ILO (2018b), “there is a recognition that progress in closing the gender pay gap has been slow, in spite of significant progress in women’s educational attainments and higher female labor market participation rates in many countries” (p. 20). The growing professional women labor market is itself an achievement, but it is not enough, as documented by Arteaga-Villamil in Chap. 2. The gap does not reduce enough despite women being wellpositioned. This resistance to change has roots in how gendered labor markets are historically formed. If we want to eliminate the gender gap, we need to understand how it develops and to have a political response to reverse it. Arteaga-Villamil presented the notion of problematic feminity in dispute, which references the way professional women need to portray themselves in order to be accepted in the labor space, especially when in management and leadership roles. This chapter extends the findings in Chap. 2 by presenting how gendered inequality affects the workplace in a specific

31

niche that is paid care work, which also involves professional women. In the Au Pair program, I draw to the fore several problematic issues. Participants are in practice childcare workers and the cultural exchange component is diffuse more because of immigration controls than everyday practice. The Exchange Visitor Program (EVP) associated with the J-1 visa reveals a process of delaboration, which is the ability of companies to evade the workers’ rights using labor intermediation and subcontracting. Young Mexican participants arrive in the USA through an aspirational migration experience embedded in a marketing promise: save money, travel, study, and improve your English language. On the contrary, they often found just a symbolic profit in the EVP, but they always found significant amounts of paid care work to perform. The traditional gendered nature of the care labor market puts the participants at risk of being exposed to a deskilling process, which is complex itself, due to affection and love shown for the host children and feminity normative reality apparent in this domestic work. Chapters 2 and 3 are complementary because both analyze labor markets and how gender and class are present in labor trajectories for professional women and how they struggle in these experiences to change labor spaces and close the gender gap. Finally, in this chapter, I presented how Au Pair participants with the support of migrants organizations demonstrate the unfair use and application of the J-1 visa and how these cases provide a precedent that is a recognition of the participants perform paid labor, even when it was intended to be cultural exchange.

32

M. Aguilar-Pérez

Appendix 1: Overview of Mexican Participants from the Au Pair Program Pseudonym

Age

Education

Mexican state origin

US state of program

Au Pair program year

Penélope

30

Psychology B.A.

Guanajuato

Maryland (x2)

2011–2013

MT Girl

30

Agroindustrial Engineering

Puebla

Virginia (x2)

2011–2013

Belén

26

Law B.A.

Coahuila

California

2013

Upis

26

Tourism Student

Guanajuato

Maryland

2012–2013

Frida

33

Ph.D. Student

Aguascalientes

Ilinois

2007–2008

Tita

27

Chemistry B.A.

Chihuahua

Washington

2013

Valeria

27

Financial administration B.A.

Monterrey

New York

2013

Verónica

28

Gastronomy B.A.

Ciudad de México

New Jersey

2012–2013

Adriana

28

Financial administration B.A.

Estado de México

Virginia

2012–2013

Miranda

27

Biology Student

Ciudad de México

New York

2012–2013

Laura

27

Tourism Student

Torreón

New York

2013

Lu

25

Child care Studies Student

Monterrey

NewYork

2013

Liz

25

Psychology B.A.

Puebla

Washington DC

2015–2017

Circe

25

Sociology Student

Puebla

New Jersey

2015–2016

Clara

26

Administration B.A.

Puebla

Washington DC

2015–2017

Pamela

29

Image Consultant

Puebla

New York

2014–2016

Diana

25

Nurse

Puebla

Maryland

2017

Lenu

29

Graphic Design B.A.

Puebla

New York

2014

Tina

27

Software Engineering Student

Puebla

Phoenix

2012–2014

Susana

23

Student

Puebla

Washington DC

2016–2018

Lidia

25

English Language B.A.

Puebla

Boston

2017

References Aguilar-Perez M (2015) The cosmopolitan dilemma: fantasy, work, and the experiences of Mexican au pairs. In: Cox R (ed) Sisters or servants? Au pairs’ lives in global context. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, pp 203–208

Anderson B (2007) A very private business: exploring the demand for migrant domestic workers. Eur J Women’s Stud 14(3):247–264 Anderson B (2014) The magic of migration, immigration controls and subjectivities: the case of Au Pairs and domestic worker visa holders. In: Romero M, Preston V, Giles W (eds) When care work goes global: locating the social relations of domestic work. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp 79–94

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Ariza M (2011) Mercados de trabajo secundarios e inmigración: el servicio doméstico en Estados Unidos. Reis. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, núm. 136, octubre-diciembre, Madrid, Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, pp 3–23 Bellafante G (2006) To give children an edge, Au Pairs from China, The New York Times, 5 September 2006. Accessed https://www.nytimes.com Besen-Cassino Y (2018) The cost of being a girl: working teens and the origins of the gender wage gap. Temple University Press, Philadelphia Celis JC, Valencia Olivero NY (2011) La deslaborización en los supermercados colombianos. In: En Pacheco E, De la Garza E, Reygadas L (coords) Trabajos atípicos y precarización del empleo. El Colegio de México, México, pp 341–364 Centro de los Derechos Migrantes (CDM) (2020) Our Story. Accessed https://cdmigrante.org/ Cox R (ed) (2015a) Au pairs’ lives in global context: sisters or servants?. Palgrave, London Cox R (2015b) Migrant domestic workers and the globalization of childcare. In: Ansell N, Klocker N, Skelton T (eds) Geographies of global issues: Change and threat. Geographies of children and young people, vol 8. Springer, Singapore, pp 1–18 Cuban S (2013) Deskilling migrant women in the global care industry. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke Dalla Costa M (2009) Dinero, perlas y flores en la reproducción feminista. Akal, Madrid Ellis BA (2017) Stuck in a vicious cycle? Career aspirations and entrapment among Turkish au pairs in the United States. Int Migr Integr 18:847–862 Exchange Visitor Program (2020) J-1 Visa Exchange Visitor Program. Accessed https://j1visa.state.gov/ participants/videos/j-1-visa-exchange-visitor-program/ Foulger TS (2009) External conversations: an unexpected discovery about the critical friend in action research inquiries. Action Res 8(2):135–152 Gutiérrez-Rodríguez E (2010) Migration, domestic work and affect: a decolonial approach on value and the feminization of labour. Routledge, New York Hernández León R (2012) La Industria de la migración en el sistema migratorio México-Estados Unidos. Trace. Travaux et Recherches dans les Amériques du Centre 61:41–61 Himmelweit S (2007) The prospects for caring: Economic theory and policy analysis. Camb J Econ 31(4):581– 599 Hondagneu-Sotelo P [2001] (2011) Doméstica. Trabajadoras inmigrantes a cargo de la limpieza y el cuidado a la sombra de la abundancia, México, D.F., Miguel Ángel Porrúa – Instituto Nacional de Migración Hultman YO, Edgren G, Jandér K (2012) Implementing the critical friend method for peer feedback among

33 teaching librarians in an academic setting. EvidencedBased Lib Inf Pract 7:68–81 International Labour Organization (ILO) (2018a) Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work. ILO, Geneva, Switzerland International Labour Organization (ILO) (2018b) Global wage report 2018/19: What lies behind gender pay gaps. ILO, Geneva, Switzerland Laughlin, L (2013) Who’s minding the kids? Child care arrangements. Accessed https://www2.census.gov/ library/publications/2013/demo/p70-135.pdf Loughran J, Brubaker N (2015) Working with a critical friend: a self-study of executive coaching. Stud Teach Educ 11:255–271 Moran K (2019) Perspectives on the child care search process in low-income, urban neighborhoods in the United States. Early Child Dev Care. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/03004430.2019.1641703 Parreñas RS (2001) Servants of globalization, women, migration and domestic work. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA Preston J (2011) Companies point fingers as students protest conditions at chocolate plant, The New York Times, 18 August 2011. Accessed http://www. nytimes.com Preston Y (2011) Foreign students in work visa program stage walkout at plant, The New York Times, 17 August 2011. Accessed http://www.nytimes.com/ Slevin C (2019) Au pairs win $65.5 million settlement in Denver lawsuit, 9 Jan 2019. Accessed https://www. denverpost.com/ US Department of State (2018) J-1 visa, EVP. Facts and figures. Accessed https://j1visa.state.gov/wp-content/ uploads/2018/03/J1VIsa-fact-sheet-2018.pdf Veronikis E (2013) More than 50 student guest workers, supporters storm McDonald’s demanding better wages, living conditions. Penn Live, 06 Mar 2013. Accessed http://www.pennlive.com/ Williams F (2014) Making connections across the transnational political economy of care. In: Anderson B, Shutes I (eds) Migration and care labour: theory, policy and politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke Williams F (2018) Care: intersections of scales, inequalities, and crises. Curr Sociol 66(4):547–561 Williams A.M. and V. Balaz (2004) From private sphere to public sphere, the commodification of the Au pair experience? returned migrants from slovakia to the UK. Environ Plann A 36(10): 1813–33 Zelizer V (2005) The purchase of intimacy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ

4

Gender Parity in Political Representation: Advancing Descriptive Representation and Confronting Challenges Permeated by Gender, Class and Ethnicity. The Case of Mexico and Bolivia Edmé Domínguez Reyes

Abstract

Chapters 4 and 5 address the obstacles to achieve effective political participation for all women in Latin America—a necessary step to implementing meaningful gender equality, by looking at the experience of Mexico and Bolivia. This chapter addresses the remaining challenges women face in countries where formal gender parity in political representation has been attained at the national, and sometimes even at the local, level, focusing on the Mexican case, where despite an increase in female members of parliament in the 2018 elections (in which the lower legislative chamber consisted of 49.2% women and 51% in the higher chamber, respectively), political violence and harassment on the basis of sex continues to occur at all levels of power. The subsequent chapter (Chap. 5)

I would like to express my enormous gratitude to Robyn Baker who helped me enormously in the formatting and many practical details and edits to finish this article. E. Domínguez Reyes (&) School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

continues to analyze the Mexican situation, where in spite of the parity in political representation mentioned above, ethnicity and poverty are formidable obstacles for Indigenous women to be taken seriously and respected even if they become elected. Chapter 4 presents as well the case of Bolivia where gender parity in political representation was attained in 2014 before than in Mexico. Given the fact that part of the legitimacy of the Morales government was a revaluation of the Indigenous cultures, many more Indigenous women than in Mexico, became elected at the national and local levels. However, as in Mexico, many of these elected women (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) had to confront serious challenges to the exercise of their office in the form of harassment and even political violence. Both chapters arrive at the conclusion that gender parity in political representation is only the first step in the strive to attain a real gender equality at all levels in our societies. This gender equality is not only about joining the already existent political institutions but about transforming them.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_4

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4.1

E. Domínguez Reyes

Introduction

Achieving parity in political representation has been one of the central struggles for women across the world. In the Beijing’s Platform of Action at the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), two of the agreed-upon objectives were to “take measures to ensure women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making” (strategic objective G1) and to “increase women’s capacity to participate in decision-making and leadership” (strategic objectives G2).1 As we know, this participation in decision-making processes is essential to change the inequality and discrimination many women suffer in most societies. However, as many women2 discover, achieving parity in political representation is only the first step towards gender equality, and the subsequent step of changing daily realities after elections can prove to be a lengthy and painful process. In most countries, including two Latin American countries, gender quotas and other mechanisms have been successfully introduced and consequently achieved some of the best female political representation in the world. For example, by 2014, the Bolivian parliament consisted of 53.1% and 44% female politicians in the lower chamber and upper chamber, respectively, (Women in National Parliaments 2016). Similarly, the 2018 parliamentary elections resulted in women forming 49% of Mexico’s lower chamber and 51% of the upper chamber. Although these figures may be considered substantial victories in theory, the reality of their impact must be analyzed further as to what has really been obtained and what are the next steps for achieving parity in political representation. In this paper, I will present two cases exploring the background, context, and general advances of Mexico and highlighting the national and local level of female 1

As outlined on p. 125 of the Beijing Platform. We are aware that using the word women may be interpreted as essentializing. We acknowledge the intersectionality all studies should have, as this article later on demonstrates. But speaking about general quota laws and political rights we cannot find any other word to describe this process.

representation in Bolivia. This chapter serves as a foundation from which the next chapter (Chap. 5) will deepen into the intersectional analysis of the experience of Indigenous Mexican women. As a result, this comprehensive presentation of the conditions of women’s political participation reveals the advances and challenges of these countries as well as the lessons that can be learned from these cases.

4.2

Mexican Women’s Political Rights

Despite the crucial role that women played during the Mexican Revolution in the early twentieth century, Mexico was one of the last countries in Latin America to formally recognize women’s political rights. Indeed, women were granted the right to vote in municipal elections in 1948 and only in 1953 was this right expanded to include federal elections in 1953. This lengthy process is a sharp contrast to the ambitious structural reforms that social movements hoped to achieve through the Mexican Revolution.3 The fruit of this revolution, Mexico’s 1917 constitution, included labor and agrarian reforms but, in spite of their active participation in the struggle, no political rights for women. The official argument for not granting such rights was that, as women, they were easily influenced by the Catholic Church and thus susceptible to manipulation, which could pose a threat to the revolutionary government. After the 1929 revolution, Mexico’s first official political party, the PNR (Partido Nacional Revolucionario) came to power by mobilizing the various revolutionary factions, organizing their animosity, and transforming it into a political force. By doing so, the PNR maintained a dominant position in the political arena by reinforcing its one-party hegemony from 1929 until the year 2000, or about 70 years. Fidelity to the party guaranteed a political career

2

3

The Mexican Revolution was a seven year civil war fought on behalf of indigenous, peasant, and industrial workers groups that included a substantial number of women within each faction.

4

Gender Parity in Political Representation …

and rapid personal gain through its never-ending network of corruption. Needless to say, women had no role to play as political actors in a system based on a structural and extremely strong “machismo” culture, which explicitly defined women as dependent upon and subordinate to their male counterparts. In the 1940s, a surge in feminist thought swept through mostly middle-class sectors which lead to a rapid rise in the movement’s outreach. The urban-popular movement, on the other hand, organized women among its rank and file and only started to include specifically women’s claims during the 1970s. However it was not until the 1980s when a culmination of events, from the neoliberalisation of the economy to the 1985 earthquake, allowed for cooperation between the two movements (Dominguez 2001). In the midst of these changes, the first UN Women’s World Conference took place in Mexico City.

4.2.1 Intersectionality Similar to how a natural disaster served as a platform for the feminist movement to expand its influence into the urban-popular movement during the mid-1980s, the 1994 Zapatista uprising was a pivotal event that allowed feminism to reach the Indigenous movement.4 Indigenous women from Chiapas, a southern state of Mexico, had already begun to draft several rights for women to be guaranteed by the state and by their communities during the uprising, which became the “Ley revolucionaria de las mujeres” (The Revolutionary Law for Women).5 This direct 4

In 1985, a huge earthquake destroyed a significant amount of Mexico City’s historical districts, causing many apartment houses to collapse. This prompted those affected to mobilize collectively, in which women took a leading role in participating and organizing these urban, popular movements. During the preparation and the execution of the Zapatista uprising, women also occupied key positions. Several of the commanders leading the occupation of the cities in Chiapas during this uprising, for example, were women. 5 The revolutionary laws for women were made known some months before the uprising: First–Women,

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expression of Indigenous feminism was met with scepticism by several urban middle-class feminists, largely because they suspected that the Zapatista women were being manipulated by their male comrades. This divergence in opinion provoked a debate between the urban middleclass and the “field work feminists” who believed the Zapatista women’s demands were authentic and had to be respected as such (Dominguez 2014). In spite of this debate, the agency among Indigenous women and their struggle for gender equality started to take form and become more prominent within the Zapatista women’s demands. Notwithstanding the general broadening of the movement, women’s political participation would not gain concrete significance until the second decade of this century. In addition, bringing about such participation in practice entails the need to overcome class and ethnicity borders.

4.2.2 Entering into the Era of Affirmative Action In 1993, a limited reform in the form of Article 175 was brought to the Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales

regardless of their race, creed, color or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in any way that their desire and capacity determine. Second–Women have the right to work and receive a just salary. Third–Women have the right to decide the number of children they have and care for. Fourth–Women have the right to participate in the matters of the community and have charge if they are free and democratically elected. Fifth–Women and their children have the right to Primary Attention in their health and nutrition. Sixth– Women have the right to education. Seventh–Women have the right to choose their partner and are not obliged to enter into marriage. Eighth–Women have the right to be free of violence from both relatives and strangers. Rape and attempted rape will be severely punished. Ninth– Women will be able to occupy positions of leadership in the organization and hold military ranks in the revolutionary armed forces. Tenth–Women will have all the rights and obligations which the revolutionary laws and regulations give. Source: http://schoolsforchiapas.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/03/Zapatista-WomensRevolutionary-Laws.pdf.

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(COFIPE).6 This piece of legislation raised the subject of using small-scale forms of “affirmative action”, such as establishing electoral quotas, to encourage political parties to increase the participation of women as candidates (Freidenberg 2017). Although it was not binding nor established a numerical “quota”, this legislation was the first initiative of its kind and led to state-level reforms in Chihuahua and Durango (capital cities of their respective states) during that decade. The 1996 electoral reform, for example, included non-binding guidelines for introducing a gender quota of 30 percent for candidates. Binding procedures for the implementation of this electoral quota only appeared in 2002, however, and applied to a proportional majority candidates. In 2008, the quota was increased to 40 percent for general elections with binding alternate lists (one man–one woman) for a proportional majority candidates. Nonetheless, political parties could navigate legal loopholes in order to avoid adhering to the policy in practice, such as holding primary elections within the parties and thus be able to elect male-only candidates (Freidenberg 2017) The “Juanita scandals” of 2009 and 2011–2012 were perhaps one of the most prominent examples of this practice, as female candidates that had been elected at federal or local positions continuously resigned shortly after taking office in order to be replaced by their deputies, who were always men. By doing so, the electoral quotas were met but the political power remained in the hands of male politicians. In parallel to this replacement of female elected candidates by their male deputies in Mexico, female candidates elected at the municipal level in Bolivia were also affected, as shall be discussed below. Finally, in 2014 a new politicalelectoral reform in Mexico incorporated policy recommendations from the Convention for the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) committee and established a new set of binding parity rules for all candidacies

6

COFIPE translated means the Mexican Federal Law for Electoral Institutions and Procedures.

E. Domínguez Reyes

for elected positions at both the federal and state level. Until that piece of legislation came into effect, compliance with parity rules was not enforced at the federal level. As a result, it greatly expanded the scope of gender equality in elections and, through its binding character, set into motion the necessary mechanisms to make it possible (Freidenberg 2017). Moreover, according to the 2014 rules, both the candidates and the deputies would be of the same sex in order to dismantle the previous pressure for elected female candidates to resign in favor of their male counterparts. As can be seen in Figs. 4.1 and 4.2 below, the representation of women in both chambers increased dramatically from that of 1990 to the proportions reached in 2015 and 2018, respectively. This means that, in spite of all the hindrances observed above, the quotas have worked in increasing women’s representation at the national level. This also means that Mexico has attained, as Bolivia did before, the highest level of parity in Latin America. Although good news statistically this does not necessarily reflect that substantial parity, that is to say, a real power and respect for elected women has yet to been attained. As we shall see in the next chapter this parity in Mexico is not really reflecting intersectionality as Indigenous women are still far from being represented in these figures. Although the government is considered leftleaning under Lopez Obrador, who became Mexico’s current president on December 1, 2018, it has become evident that his administration is not particularly interested in fulfilling feminist demands nor improving the sociopolitical status or representation of women. These actions, or lack thereof, were a stark contrast to the ambitious goals for reform that the president called for since taking office, outlining a series of changes that constituted a so-called “The Fourth Transformation”. By referring to a “transformation”, Obrador implies that his presidency marks the fourth historical moment of the country following a preceding series of structural change: (i) the Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, (ii) the “Reform” era of the mid1860s that separated the state from the Church

4

Gender Parity in Political Representation …

Fig. 4.1 The increase in women’s representation in Mexico at the national level

39

Representation of Women in the National Legislature of Mexico Lower Chamber 1991

Lower Chamber 2015

Lower Chamber 2018

7.4%

42.6%

49%

Upper Chamber 1991

Upper Chamber 2012

8.8%

32.8%

Upper Chamber 2018 51%

Fig. 4.2 Representation of women in the National Legislature of Mexico. Sources: Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) (2019) and Murillo (2018)

and (iii) the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917). This discourse was strongly populist and mostly targeted systemic issues such as corruption and illegitimate privileges. Feminist groups, on the other hand, were deeply disappointed at his lack of gender awareness. However, the new composition of the federal government serves to show a degree of progress, given that eight women were appointed to ministerial positions, several of which govern key sectors such as interior security, labor, environmental issues, energy and the economy. This female team publicly promised that one of its shared priorities is to address gender equality, perhaps a result of the efforts of the proportion of new ministers who regard themselves as feminists (Monroy 2018). Nonetheless, the executive level cannot be considered the most advanced governmental branch in gender equality. No woman has ever been president. Throughout Mexican history, only nine women have become governors across all thirty-two states; the most recently elected being the governor of Mexico City who came to office in 2018. Furthermore, as of December 2017, only 14.2 percent of the elected mayors in

Mexico were women.7 Moreover, most political parties have demonstrated a lack of adherence to, or perhaps simply a lack of interest in, the preexisting structural changes that have been established to implement gender equality. Even the party that has been in power since the 2018 elections, the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (MORENA—National Regeneration Movement) tends to prioritize initiatives that promote “social diversity”, or the inclusion of young people, LGTBI + individuals, and Indigenous groups, over gender equality.8 An important feature in the Mexican context is its political campaign culture. Indeed, campaigns are not oriented around a personal profile of a given candidate, but rather campaigns are controlled by, and pander to, the inner workings of the party machinery. This is especially striking at the federal level in national elections, but also 7

This is especially noticed by ONU Mujeres Mexico, which collects data on the political participation of women at the municipal level (2017–2018). 8 As demonstrated by the ‘Estatuto de Morena’ (Mexico 2013).

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evident at the state (regional) and even at the municipal (local) level. As a result of these internal party procedures, most of the necessary steps to become a candidate have to be overcome within the parties, not the public political sphere. As many studies have shown, women are continuously disadvantaged by these party-based processes, often finding themselves ranked at the bottom of candidate lists.9 They lack the necessary support, networks, and other resources needed to gain equal consideration compared to potential male candidates. In addition, these internal competitions and procedures often subject the female members to sexual harassment. Therefore, it is evident that despite gradual numerical advances, underlying obstacles continue to make women’s political participation extremely difficult in Mexico; presumably as a socio-political strategy to reduce the number of active feminist representatives, and further disadvantage them once they take office. As explained above, even political parties that can be considered “progressive” or leftist, like MORENA, ultimately give priority to “social diversity inclusion” over gender equality. Moreover, having openly feminist agenda when taking office is regarded as incompatible with a sustainable political career. For this reason, some of the elected women from MORENA try to distance themselves from positions that could be considered typically feminist. As an example, one of MORENA’s female deputies in the lower chamber declared that she favors the criminalization of abortion and will actively work for it, even if many of her party comrades are for the legalization (Milenio 2019). This decision is more aligned with the traditional rightist party, Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN—National Action Party), which is strongly connected to the Catholic church as well as an active opponent to the legalization of abortion and the so-called “gender ideology” of feminists (Muñoz 2018).

E. Domínguez Reyes

4.2.3 Wrapping Up: Challenges and Strategies The socio-political situation has been particularly hard for elected women in Mexico, given that the country has suffered from increasingly widespread violence since 2006. This has been clear at the municipal level which witnessed, from July 2004 to March 2018, as many as 178 murders of female mayors or ex-mayors, 19 of which took place during the pre-campaign months. These chilling figures do not even consider the high extent of physical aggression aimed at politicians of both sexes.10 Moreover, women as candidates or politicians are particularly vulnerable as they become known as “public personalities” and their private life and profile are consequently easily targeted by political opponents with more scrutiny than their male counterparts. At this level, women have to face the hardest aspects of authoritarian and patriarchal structures due to the structural reluctance to forfeit any power. For example, recent figures have illustrated genderbased political violence in Mexico. In 2008, a survey among female politicians revealed that 62 percent believed that a gendered form of political violence existed across the levels of government. Other reports have revealed that between the years 2016 and 2018, 200 complaints regarding this kind of violence emerged among female politicians.11 One of the main findings of a 2018 study by ONU Mujeres (UN Women), which consisted of surveys and interviews across about 248 Mexican municipalities, is that gender-based political violence has become normalized to the extreme extent that women assume that such violence, most frequently sexual harassment, is assumed to be “part of the rules” for women participating in politics. As a consequence, women have resorted to a strategy of being perceived as “masculine” as possible to decrease the risk of harassment and be “taken seriously”.12 ONU Mujeres México, ‘Participación Política de las mujeres a nivel municipal: proceso electoral 2017–2018’, p. 10. 11 Ibid, p. 17 (Consulta Mitofsky 2020). 12 Ibid, p. 49. 10

9 Further context is provided by: Rodriguez (1998), Rodriguez (2003) and Piscopo (2016).

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Gender Parity in Political Representation …

Given that many informal spaces of power have been closed to female politicians, they have used other strategies to carry out actions in office, such as including men in their teams who can carry out political negotiations.

4.3

Bolivia: The Strength of a Women’s Movement at the Intersection of GenderEthnicity

A similar issue surrounding gender in the political sphere can be seen in Bolivia. In this context, however, we see the strength of a forceful women’s movement since the 1980s. This case is particularly relevant not only due to the movement’s advances towards achieving political parity for women, but also because of the diversity of the Bolivian population and the inclusion of the Indigenous and poor (although this demographic has changed somewhat since 2006). Long before the Moviemento al socialismo (MAS) became the ruling political party in 2006, the Bolivian women’s movement consisted of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous women. Such participation was in line with the first quota law, adopted in March 1997, that established a 30% rule for women in the lists of candidates. In 1999, a new regulatory law for political parties included this 30% quota for women in article 19, thus affirming its binding character. Nonetheless, resistance to the implementation of these laws led to systematic obstacles, such as the continual ranking of women at the bottom of candidate lists, placing women in solely deputy-level positions, or assigning female politicians to campaign for positions that they would have less chances to be elected. To counter this trend, the 2004 “Law on civic organizations and indigenous people” incorporated the rule of “a quota of 50% for women in all candidacies for positions of popular representation” (Ley de Agrupaciones ciudadanas y Pueblos indígenas 2004) and introduced the principle of “rotation” for elected positions, according to which a male elected candidate should choose a female deputy and

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vice versa. It should be noted that this “rotation principle” has become a two-sided coin, per se, as new councilors face obstacles to serving a complete electoral mandate and this is especially difficult for women councilors. Women councilors are therefore at risk of not serving a complete mandate regardless of their elected position, as their position would either be forfeited to their male deputy or they would inherit an incomplete mandate following the resignation of their male predecessor. The 2009 constitution greatly advanced parity in political representation, as it established the principle of equal participation of men and women for pluri-national legislative elections in Article 8; largely as the result of lobbying on behalf of women’s groups.13 In order to bring about this constitutional achievement, Indigenous women and urban-based feminists joined forces to draft rules for gender parity. These rules applied not only to electoral positions, but also to institutional procedures like “the Electoral Tribunal, the Judicial Branch, the Constitutional Court and even the selection of leaders in autonomous Indigenous territories’’ (Htun and Ossa 2013, p. 12). Furthermore, the Supreme Electoral Court ratified this principle by ruling in favor of the application of “parity and rotation” principles according to this piece of electoral legislation. As a result, parity (50%) at all levels was finally implemented in 2010 (PNUD 2012). At the municipal level, elections occur through a closed list of candidates who are then elected through proportional representation. This system tends to favor the effectiveness of affirmative action (PNUD 2012). The process of selecting candidates is also relevant to these procedures. In contrast to Mexico, where political parties remain the central force that controls the selection and success of candidates, many candidates in Bolivia, especially at the local level, come from civil society organizations that work on concrete issues. Therefore, in many cases the organization 13

In these coalition indigenous women’s groups gave priority to gender quotas over general ethnic quotas as was the original proposal. See: http://pdba.georgetown. edu/Electoral/Bolivia/Leyes/LeyAgrupaciones.pdf.

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E. Domínguez Reyes

or the candidate bears the burden of campaign costs, which are often steep. Another consequence of this system is that the personal character and background, such as being a leader of a social movement, is more valued on behalf of the political community than being a loyal party follower. Many of the women interviewed in our fieldwork were social movement leaders themselves. They had been chosen by consensus on behalf of their entire community according to certain criteria, from marital status to previous leadership experience, and consequently granted their leadership position on the condition that they remain accountable to the community, not to the party that gives them an affiliation to contend. This is the case of one of our informants in the highlands near La Paz: I was chosen by the community because of my engagement in the school and sport activities of my neighborhood. I did not belong to big organizations like ‘Las Bartolinas’ but people knew me because of my engagement and even my economic activities. The people voted for me. The MAS was to endorse my candidacy but finally they said no so it was the Sin Miedo party (the ‘Fearless party’) who endorsed it. (Councilor Achacachi 2014).

At the national level, however, party affiliation and loyalty can be extremely important when selecting candidates, to the same extent as in Mexico. In the same way, this internal party dynamic may revert to a subordination of gender interests and instead shifting the focus towards a given politician’s loyalty towards the party. Finally, Bolivia became one of the leading countries in achieving representative parity at the legislative national and local level. By 2014, Bolivian women represented 53.1 percent of all the seats in the lower house and 44 per cent in the upper one (Inter-Parliamentary Union Archive 2014). At the local level 51 percent of all municipal assemblies were composed of women after the 2015 municipal elections even though only 8.5 per cent of all mayors were women (Página Siete 2019). However, parity in figures did not automatically translate to equality in the everyday experience of female representatives,

partly due to the integration of Indigenous traditions into a political system that is characterized by its susceptibility to manipulation.

4.3.1 Traditions as Potential Threats to Parity The Bolivian case requires specific analysis of Indigenous traditions from the highlands, which have been channeled into the official ideology of the MAS government. For example, the concept of complementarity between the sexes implies that sexual dualism comes from “nature” and should be practiced in all spheres of society. This concept has become a subject of debate due to its explicit gender roles and boundaries. According to Burman (2011), the “Chacha-Warmi” principle of gender complementarity already existed among the Aymara Indigenous people (who live in the highlands and are one of the two majority Indigenous groups in Bolivia) before colonialism and, as a result, female Aymara leaders who are currently fighting for women’s rights have to leverage the potential for gender equality since decolonization and not their Indigenous culture. According to the perspective of non-Indigenous, middle-class feminists as well as Indigenous communitarian and anarchic feminists like Julieta Paredes and the Mujeres Creando group, the “Chacha-Warmi” concept can be demystified as a form of patriarchal machismo that existed during pre-colonial times and has been persevered in most Indigenous communities (Mokrani and Uriona 2009; Burman 2011; Htun and Ossa 2013). In spite of these differing opinions, both sides agree upon the lack of correspondence between the notion of “Chacha-warmi” as a cultural ideal and as a social-political practice (Burman 2011). In other words, gender complementarity as a cultural ideal can be deeply asymmetric in the socio-political realities of the Indigenous communities as several studies have confirmed (for example, ACOBOL 2013a; Domínguez and Pacheco 2018).

4

Gender Parity in Political Representation …

Also, the dialectical relationship between gender complementarity and socio-political asymmetry is illustrated by the “Thaky” tradition, which regulates the system of community authorities and responsibilities, notably the ‘rotation principle’ in the rural areas already mentioned. This is also a consequence of the “Chacha-warmi” principle and tradition. According to the latter, positions of authority in the community should only befall people who are “complete” in the sense “that no unmarried man or woman may be designated to a position of authority in either the rural community or the urban neighborhood” (Burman 2011, p. 79). The couple should be a model for the community, in which both men and women are expected to assume this responsibility. However, several studies point to the fact that even within the “Thaky” organization of leadership, women are expected to play a secondary role to men, who are still the official decision-makers (Quispe et al. 2003). As this system of community authorities, which is based on the ideal of complementary unity, remains prevalent among Indigenous communities in the highlands, it has a definite impact in the municipal councils’ election systems. The latter is a liberal, individualized system that represents territorial units and the main socio-economic organizations within these geographical zones. Several Indigenous communities want to adapt this model to support their traditional “complementary” rules, however, which most directly relates to issues of putting parity “spirit” into practice (ACOBOL 2013a, b).14 In other words, Indigenous communities have agreed that the complementary principle can be applied by electing both a woman and a man for the same position: one as titular and the other as deputy (ACOBOL 2013a). This is mandatory within the “Law of reform to the Electoral code” which outlines this rotation principle (Ley de Agrupaciones ciudadanas y Pueblos indígenas 2004) Nonetheless, several

43

communities enforce the tradition based “convened agreements” (acuerdos pactados) in which women councilors are expected to leave their elected position to pass it to their male deputy in the middle of their term, which is 5 years in total. Although it is possible that a female deputy can also benefit from this rule, it seems that their male counterparts benefit the most.15 As a result of decentralization reforms (i.e. the Autonomy Reforms), an increased flow of financial resources to the municipal level has made municipal councils seem more attractive to the communities (ACOBOL 2013a). Thus, the convened agreements, combined with the fact that many newly elected women are reluctant to comply with them, have increased political violence and all kinds of harassment in order to force the titular women to step down.

4.3.2 Parity in Figures, Contested Equality in Reality The Bolivian case also demonstrates how such violence tends to increase with the presence of women in national and local government, where women are perceived as intruders and challengers of the establishment. This observation can be nuanced through intersectional analysis, but the central claim remains valid despite the complexity of this issue. It is understandable that Indigenous women with low levels of education suffer the most socio-political discrimination (even when their male pairs have the same educational level). However, through our interviews we have seen that even urban women with higher educational levels suffer some kind of harassment (as documented in the quotes below), which affirms the crucial role of gender as a variable in this political system (Domínguez and Pacheco 2018).16

15

14

ACOBOL (Asociación de Concejalas de Bolivia), ACOLAPAZ (Asociación de Concejales de la Paz) and COSUCRE) are support organizations for women councilors in Bolivia, la Paz and Sucre, respectively.

This fact has been demonstrated by several studies carried out by ACOBOL (2013). One of these studies was carried out in 24 municipalities in 9 regions (departments) in Bolivia. 16 Domínguez and Pacheco, ‘Beyond parity in figures’ (pp. 5–6).

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E. Domínguez Reyes I was harassed and I was completely alone, even my rights as a mother, feeding my baby, were not respected by the president of the council, a man. They didn’t succeed in frightening me, to leave the council. When I started I was somehow shy, inexperienced, now I’ve learned to defend myself against any verbal or psychological aggression … (Councilor Tupisa 2012) In Bolivia, there’s a high degree of violence of political, sexual, domestic violence against women that are hidden behind political and legalistic decisions… Yes, I’ve suffered political violence before it was considered a crime…. I was also attacked physically during the political campaign in front of my house, I had a double fracture in the nose. That case was never cleared up and the investigation was closed. (Councilor Sucre 2012).

Ideological and socio-cultural structures: Machismo as an everyday practice Many of the women councilors in the past administrations wanted to continue their political career, to become mayors… but it’s an internal struggle, it’s very much an issue of power and women have not reached such positions… (Jessy Lopez, interviewed at ACOBOL Nov 2012)

According to the conclusions of a study regarding the municipalities and the reforms of the latest years, there is a tension between progressive rules regarding women’s rights and patriarchal state and social structures, which consequently serve to limit the application of these rules (ACOBOL 2013). Indeed, it seems that these structures shape a reaction of resistance and aggression against perceived threats. There is a body of research demonstrating that an increase in the number of elected women “may pose a threat to the dominant group’s favored status and provoke backlash from male legislators” (Krook 2015, as cited in Barnes 2016, p. 32; Franceschet and Piscopo 2014, p. 106). As we saw regarding ideological and structural obstacles to gender equality, machismo can be seen as an expression of a sort of “toxic masculinity”. In other words, as an aggressive and even violent masculinity that remains a pervasive phenomenon among all social classes in Bolivia and creates a culture of political violence, as well as many other obstacles most elected women have to confront. It is part of a hegemonic cultural practice, which is being questioned by new norms regarding gender

equality but remains deeply rooted in the gendered realities of everyday life. To confront this machismo, many of our interviewees assume “essentialist” arguments. That is to say they attribute to women certain “natural virtues” and capabilities (like honesty) and argue that as men represent the contrary they feel threatened by women who try to “uncover” them. As the quotes below illustrate, machista attitudes reveal a fear of women because they (women) are considered much better (honest, transparent) than men. I think that “machismo” is still persistent in this area or perhaps they think that women cannot lead ahead the municipality. Really it’s a pity as I think that women are as capable as men…they stopped me from assuming office, they blocked the municipality offices during 24 days, it was only thanks to the central authorities that I could enter the offices…it’s the fear of losing power I think. In this case, the fear of the ousted mayor to lose his power in the region. Also the fear that women are more transparent, more honest, we don’t like corruption.. That’s my point of departure as interim mayor. (Mayor 1, 2012). Men see us as a threat we could say, as we know that women will always walk straight, that they are more transparent, instead men are always recurring to tricks.. men see that [honesty] as a threat..machismo makes them reject women as authority, as I’ve seen it…(Councilor Lupalaya 2012)

However, this “essentialism” may be counterproductive by raising high expectations of “exemplary behavior” and consequently leading to disappointments on behalf of the party and public in general.

4.3.3 Resistance, Councilor Women’s Strategies Many of the women that have resisted machismo practices have suffered the consequences in different forms of political violence. According to our own fieldwork and other studies, two strategies used by female councilors to overcome the above-mentioned problems and effectively serve while in office can be identified. These strategic approaches are individual and collective strategies, respectively. At the individual level, a key

4

Gender Parity in Political Representation …

indicator has been the support of personal advisors or consultants as represented by the quote below. During the first three months I was alone and I had to oversee reports and complaints and at that moment my husband hired a personal adviser for me. We already had an advisor and an engineer in the municipality, but I didn’t trust their reports because they didn’t belong to my party, they’re people from the mayor… (Councilor Achacachi 2013)

The fact that councilors receive a salary of their own, although low, permits them to finance such consultancy. The collective strategies are mostly based on the use of the organizations that have been created to support women at the national and regional level, notably women councilors and mayors, such as ACOBOL, ACOLAPAZ or COSUCRE. Political harassment became one of the motivations leading to the formation of ACOBOL: One of the motivations behind the creation of ACOBOL is precisely because of a case of political harassment, although that was not the term used at that time. The founder of ACOBOL. Gloria Aguilar, as a municipal councilor, was subjected to slander to force her to resign through false arguments. She went to the press and started a hunger strike. She said that even if she had resources and the support of her family it was not easy for her to prove her innocence.. she then reflected that if she, in spite of these resources, had to go through such an ordeal, how could it be for those with less resources living in rural areas. That’s how the idea to create ACOBOL was born…to push for a law that forbids such practices… (Interview with Jessy Lopez, coordinator of ACOBOL, cited in Dominguez and Pacheco 2018: p. 8)

ACOBOL was founded in 1999 as a resource against political harassment. It became a civil society initiative, in which a national nongovernmental organization (NGO) was joined by several local NGOs alongside international support for their cooperation. The aim of such collective action was to create outreach projects that could empower women who held elected governmental positions at the local level. Although the ACOBOL seeks public funds in

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general, most of its budget for regional areas still comes from international donors or member fees (about 5% of a councilor’s salary and 6.5% for mayors). At both its national and regional levels, the organization encourages democratic practices. Firstly, it is led by women councilors who are elected to the national or regional committees and assume the responsibility to overview and decide upon the organization’s activities and projects as well as appoint national or regional coordinators and other technical and legal personnel (Lopez 2012). ACOBOL and its regional organizations assist municipal councilors and mayors at a political, juridical, technical and capacity-building level. At the political level, they lobby the national parliament and government to create new laws or improve the existing ones, such as addressing the issue of political violence and harassment. Through their initiative, Law 243 was finally approved in May 2012, which explicitly forbade harassment and political violence against women. Afterwards, ACOBOL continued its campaign to raise awareness and find ways to regulate and implement the new law. In September 2015, the Law 243 was finally given a regulatory mechanism to ensure its implementation, even though ACOBOL had already promoted a model as to how to proceed with a “special regulation for the ethical commission within the Municipal Council” (Lopez 2015, e-mail communication) which was approved in several municipalities. The organization also assists women councilors or mayors who require legal counseling when facing harassment and threats. But perhaps the most public form of its assistance is its capacity-building activities, such as specific courses on budget administration or project management. Upon request, ACOBOL and its department offices also offer technical assistance to all councilors or mayors, even though there remains the problem of reaching more municipalities in the rural areas compared to easily accessible and interconnected cities.

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4.4

E. Domínguez Reyes

Conclusions

Bolivia is an extremely relevant case that demonstrates that an increase in descriptive representation does not necessarily lead to gender equality regarding access to power and decisionmaking. Similar to the Mexican case, Bolivia has experienced several positive changes regarding parity rules and Indigenous rights within the framework of a pro-gender governmental platform and powerful women’s alliances. Nonetheless, advances in legislation and in the number of women in elected positions have provoked resistance, which for various reasons sometimes originates from women themselves. There are evident socio-cultural obstacles associated with patriarchal structures at all levels of society that may perpetuate an environment where both men and women resist a factual sharing of power. This is exemplified by the studies made in Mexico and the interviews carried out in Bolivia, which show that other women had participated in the political violence exercised against them (see for example Freidenberg 2017; Domínguez and Pacheco 2018). Apart from these structures, socio-economic obstacles continue to disempower women, especially poor, Indigenous and uneducated women, even though several of these challenges transcend differences in class, culture, rural or urban environments. It is therefore evident that gender is an essential explanatory variable. Here we see, once more, that institutions and rules may encourage women on the one hand, while limiting their access to real gender equality on the other; largely through the inherent lack of respect for elected women compared to the case of elected men. Both cases show that there are structural obstacles, notably machismo and the toxic masculinities it entails, that are the real hindrances to achieving gender equality at the political level (and all other realms of society). In order to confront the advances women have attained regarding political participation, these kinds of resistant masculinities embrace new crusades against “the gender ideologies” that frame all the rights associated with gender (not only women,

but also LGBTQ rights) that characteristically machismo societies have managed to recognize as a threat to the very family and moral values that, according to them, have sustained these societies for centuries. Descriptive parity is only the first step in attaining gender equality in political representation. It cannot be the final aim of the struggle, as it is only the beginning of implementing meaningful gender equality. In both Mexico and Bolivia, this step remains a challenge and a gendered gap at the political level.

References ACOBOL (2013a) El acoso y la violencia política hacia las mujeres en Bolivia. Avances formales y desafíos reales para la igualdad. La Paz, Bolivia: ACOBOL ACOBOL (2013b) Modelo de reglamento especial y ruta crítica para la Comisión de Ética del Consejo Municipal: promoviendo la aplicación de la ley no. 243 Contra el Acoso y Violencia Política hacia las Mujeres. ACOBOL, La Paz, Bolivia Barnes TD (2016) Gendering legislative behavior: institutional constraints and collaboration. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY Burman A (2011) Chacha-warmi: silence and rival voices on decolonization and gender politics in Andean Bolivia. J Latin Am Stud 43(1):65–91 Consulta Mitofsky (2020) Elecciones 2018: Mujeres en la política. http://consulta.mx/index.php/encuestas-einvestigaciones/elecciones/item/1265-elecciones2018-mujeres-en-la-politica Domínguez E (2001) Citizenship and women in Mexico: searching for a new political culture? Views and experiences of participants and non-participants in political action. In: Sisask A (ed) SIDA studies 3: discussing women’s empowerment, theory and practice. SIDA, Stockholm, Sweden, pp 88–112 Dominguez E (2014). Feminismo, Clase y Etnicidad: hegemonía o tolerancia. Women, citizenship and political participation in Mexico, Haina IV Red HAINA Iberoamerikanska Institutet, Göteborgs Universitet Domínguez E, Pacheco M (2018) Beyond parity in figures: the challenges in reality of municipal women councillors in Bolivia. Iberoamericana: Nordic J Latin Am Caribbean Stud 47: 1–12 El Instituto Nacional Electoral (n.d) Elecciones: Participar Y Votar En Igualdad. https://igualdad.ine.mx/ elecciones/ EZLN (1994) Zapatista women’s revolutionary laws. http://schoolsforchiapas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/ 03/Zapatista-Womens-Revolutionary-Laws.pdf

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Fourth World Conference on Women (1995, September) Platform for action. https://www.un.org/womenwatch/ daw/beijing/platform/decision.htm Franceschet S, Piscopo JM (2014) Sustaining gendered practices? Power, parties, and elite political networks in Argentina. Comp Polit Stud 47(1):85–110 Freidenberg F (ed) (2017) La representación política de las mujeres en México, 1st edn. Instituto Nacional Electoral & Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico Htun M, Ossa JP (2013) Political inclusion of marginalized groups: indigenous reservations and gender parity in Bolivia. Politics Groups Identities 1(1):4–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2012.757443 Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) (2014) Women in National Parliaments. http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/ arc/classif011214.htm Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) (2019) Women in national parliaments. http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/ classif.htm Ley de Agrupaciones ciudadanas y Pueblos indígenas (2004) National congress. http://pdba.georgetown.edu/ Electoral/Bolivia/Leyes/LeyAgrupaciones.pdf Lopez Jessy interview (2012) as representative from ACOBOL Milenio (2019). Lilly Téllez se molesta por ‘trapo verde’ y se pronuncia contra el aborto. https://vanguardia. com.mx/articulo/lilly-tellez-se-molesta-por-trapoverde-y-se-pronuncia-contra-el-aborto Muñoz L (2018) Ideología de género y las nuevas guerras del sexo. https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Ideologia-degenero-y-las-nuevas-guerras-del-sexo?id_rubrique=1714 Mokrani D, Uriona P (2009) Informe de Coyuntura: Mujeres y Pueblos Indígenas en la ley de Régimen Electoral Transitorio. La Paz, Bolivia: Coordinadora de la Mujer Monroy J (2018) Objetivo: hacer “de la equidad de género una realidad”. https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/ politica/Objetivo-hacer-de-la-equidad-de-genero-unarealidad-20180819-0076.html

47 Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (2013) Estatuto de Morena. https://lopezobrador.org.mx/wp-content/ uploads/2013/02/Estatuto-de-MORENA.pdf Murillo IA (2018) Elecciones 2018: participación histórica de las mujeres. https://desinformemonos.org/ elecciones-2018-participacion-historica-las-mujeres/ ONU Mujeres México (2019) Participación política de las mujeres a nivel municipal: proceso electoral 20172018. http://mexico.unwomen.org/es/digiteca/ publicaciones/2019/03/participacion-politica-de-lasmujeres Página Siete (2019, April 9) ¿Cuál paridad? Bolivia tendrá 310 alcaldes y solo 29 alcaldesas. https://www. paginasiete.bo/nacional/2015/4/9/cual-paridadbolivia-tendra-alcaldes-solo-alcaldesas-52861.html Piscopo JM (2016) When informality advantages women: Quota networks, electoral rules, and candidate selection in Mexico. Govern Oppos 51(3):487–512 PNUD (UNDP) (2012) Estudio de Caso Bolivia. Participación Política y Liderazgo de las Mujeres Indígenas en América Latina, 117. Cochabamba, Bolivia, Diciembre 2008, Mexico: PNUD Quispe, E, Aguilar, A, Rocha, R, Norka A (2003) Tierra y Territorio. Thaki en los ayllus y comunidades de exhacienda. La Paz, Bolivia: Universidad Técnica de Oruro, CEPA (Centro de Ecología y Pueblos Andinos) y PIEB (Programa de Investigación Estratégica de Bolivia) Rodriguez VE (1998) The emerging role of women in Mexican political life, building strength in numbers are quotas the answer? In: Rodriguez VE (ed) Women’s participation in Mexican political life. Westview Press, Bouldïer, CO, pp 1–20 Rodriguez VE (2003) Women in contemporary Mexican politics. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX Women in National Parliaments (2016) Women in Parliament 2016: the year in review. http://archive. ipu.org/pdf/publications/WIP2016-e.pdf

Political Violence and Women Participation at the Municipal Level: Mandatory Gender Parity and It’s Challenges for Indigenous Women in Multicultural Contexts Paloma Bonfil

Abstract

5.1

This chapter is the continuation of the previous one (Chap. 4) focused on women’s experiences of parity regarding political representation and involvement in Mexico and Bolivia. This one specifically deals with the particular conditions Indigenous women face regarding their political rights. It considers the challenges women face as the gender gap in political participation persist in countries where the democratic system is considered an unquestionable social asset. This chapter also reflects upon how the intersectionality of gender, ethnic identity, and socioeconomic conditions represent obstacles for fully exercising political rights. By doing so, this chapter aims to expose both the exclusion of Indigenous women and their resistance (of Indigenous women vis-ávis) to extended racism, invisibility, and limited political rights. It also explores Indigenous women’s political participation and leadership within traditional systems of governance as a different path for achieving their political rights. As a whole, this chapter provides a brief comparative analysis of the national and ethnic contexts for women political participation in Mexico and Bolivia.

Political participation is a central value in world democracies. Democratic social structures are theoretically open to both men and women as individuals, yet, present figures show the prevalence of a gender gap in regard to women’s access to decision-making spheres, power, and governmental positions. On the other hand, class and ethnic inequities, among others, are factors of exclusion for the vast majority of Indigenous women all over the world. This chapter analyzes the intersectionality of gender, class, and ethnicity in relation to the challenges that Indigenous women of Latin American countries still face while trying to exercise their political rights, both within their own communities and in the national democratic system.1 Although focusing on Mexico, this paper takes as a reference point the case of Bolivia (which has been discussed in Chap. 4) since both countries have significant Indigenous population and a legal framework that protects and recognizes Indigenous rights to their own political structures, autonomy, and selfdetermination. With different results, this has led 1

Introduction

The concept of intersectionality is used in this paper in two senses. First, as a term that includes the ways through which diverse inequalities stemming from gender, socioeconomic conditions and ethnic identity intertwine for P. Bonfil (&) indigenous women’s subordination and exclusion. SecInterdisciplinary Group on Women, Work and ondly, as a concept that refers to an alternative discourse Poverty, Mexico, USA on collective rights composed by indigenous movements e-mail: [email protected] and representations. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 49 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_5

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to strengthening the internal Indigenous political structures. With the advancement in the recognition of women’s and Indigenous peoples’ rights, it would be logical to infer that Indigenous women have reached a point of being able to effectively exercise their political rights. However, as we shall see in the case of Mexico and its parallelisms with Bolivia, the reality lags behind from what the legislation prescribes. In reality, Indigenous women still face a specific gender gap comprising what has been labeled as triple discrimination: being women, being part of poor collectives, and being members of Indigenous groups.

5.2

Political Pluralism: Political Rights and the Dual Citizenship of Indigenous Women in Mexico

In this section, I’ll present the political context in Mexico from the perspective of the gender gaps that Indigenous women2 face in association with their political rights. I will be taking as point of reference the situation in Bolivia to highlight the underlying condition of exclusion, racism, and gender discrimination that deepens the gap and the challenges that Latin American Indigenous women face regarding their political rights. While this chapter is focused on Mexico, the Bolivian case allows us to affirm that even with important national differences, Indigenous women are subject to discrimination and face similar gender gaps in both countries. Mexico is ranked as the eight most Indigenous populated country in the world. Among its general population, which surpasses 120 million people, more than 12 million individuals identify themselves as belonging to an Indigenous group Though recent discussions have challenged ‘women’ as an essentialist concept that excludes the diversity of gender sexualization, I think the word in this context is the best way to refer to a segment of population that shares discrimination, exclusion, gender roles and exploitation mainly because of its biological difference and the cultural construction of gender. It also responds to a common agenda through which they consider themselves ‘women’ and ‘sisters’.

2

and over 68 mother languages are spoken (Intercensal Survey 2015). This diverse cultural heritage is paralleled with a generalized condition of exclusion, inequality, and poverty among Indigenous individuals and collectives. Figures show that 87.5% of Indigenous municipalities present high and extremely high marginalization levels and that 17.8% of the Indigenous population is illiterate, which is three times that of the national average (CDI 2017). Furthermore, according to the National Council of Poverty Evaluation, 73.2% of the Indigenous population was in poverty in 2014 (Coneval 2015). The right to political participation and to access decision-making processes are constitutionally enshrined for Indigenous women in Mexico. Despite the establishment of mandatory gender parity in political participation, as discussed in Chap. 4, underlying structural inequality is still a central obstacle to achieving this gender parity in practice. This inequity is due to several factors that undermine the realization of the above political and social rights, notably gender, ethnic, and socioeconomic unfair conditions among the most important ones. These inequalities have prompted a series of Indigenous women’s organizational processes and political struggles to defend their right to participate in the political arena and legitimize their presence in the national electoral processes and in the local internal systems—both at municipal and communal levels. As already described in Chap. 4, 25 years ago, this demand was articulated by the Indigenous women who joined the Zapatista movement through the most representative text on the subject: the Revolutionary Law for Women (Ley Revolucionaria de Mujeres, issued on 1993 by the Zapatista Revolutionary Army, Mexico). This was the first text that stated women’s right to choose their partners, to decide on how many and when to have children, and their right to participate in public and collective issues. Indigenous women from the Zapatista Movement became an inspiration for the subsequent political and ethnic gender agendas and mobilizations. Nonetheless, these efforts on behalf of Indigenous women, as well as those of the feminist movement more broadly,

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Political Violence and Women Participation …

have achieved very little progress in terms of reducing their shared marginalization and subordination. Women’s involvement in political representation and governmental positions is crucial to achieving gender justice and addressing women’s specific social needs through public policies. At the same time, it contributes to the removal of widespread gender prejudices and cultural stereotypes within the formal democratic systems. These were the principles that guided the quotas and parity demands issued by the feminist movement in Mexico as well as other affirmative actions that seldom reach the lower levels of political public administration, in other words: municipalities in rural areas that consist of Indigenous communities. These public spaces at the local level, where we can find a majority of the Indigenous population, are not accessible for women and are part of what has been labeled as a ‘simulation scheme’.3 Just a glance at the figures of women’s political participation in Mexico reveals an obvious set of differences and inequities among women from various socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. This is because these factors affect the set of opportunities available to women who are pursuing a political representation or a government appointed position. It is therefore evident that affirmative action, legal advancements, and mandatory parity have not brought about the same results for poor women, especially for Indigenous women who face general discrimination and exclusion.

3

Institutionalized democracy in Mexico states that all women should have the same political rights and opportunities as men. Obeying the law has led to multiple political arrangements that ‘simulate’ women being in charge: either by electing spouses or daughters of male political leaders; by forcing elected women to resign once in charge, favoring male colleagues for a number of reasons; or by creating political voids around them, interfering with their chores and limiting their maneuvering, the result being leaving them with no effective voice nor choices. These are common strategies aimed to reduce indigenous women’s political participation to a very limited range of action, thus they’ve been labeled as a ‘simulation scheme’.

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Indigenous women in Mexico are entitled to two kinds of political rights: (i) Those that stem from the formal and institutionalized democratic system, which entails the individual citizenship rights granted to anyone born in this country allowing them to vote and being elected regardless of sex, gender, ethnic origin, or socioeconomic status; and (ii) Collective political rights constitutionally granted to members of Indigenous communities, which mainly consists of the right to their identity, their territory, their language, their culture, their customary laws, and their internal forms of selfdetermination, justice, and governance. This condition varies from that of Bolivia, for example, where Indigenous political rights are the basis of national rules and where women have had full access to the public sphere as part of an Indigenous movement that entered the national government over a decade ago. Political pluralism clearly exists in Mexico as well as in other Latin American countries that recognize Indigenous collective rights, such as Guatemala, Ecuador, Perú, and Bolivia. The concept of political pluralism originated from an ideological principle that considers diversity as a social asset instead of a problem. The constitutional recognition of Indigenous collective rights in both Mexico and Bolivia has resulted in a form of legal pluralism as an effect of Indigenous political projects and demands (Martínez 2017). These contexts allow Indigenous women to exercise their political rights as national citizens as well as members of an ethnic or Indigenous community. In these contexts, Indigenous women’s rights are protected by a double system associated with their double citizen affiliation. Therefore, Indigenous women’s citizenship is built upon, exercised through, and legitimized by this conjunction of legal and political pluralism. It is still too soon to assess women’s role in these processes, but current information on this matter shows that even within these alternate forms of governance, Indigenous women face the same political restrictions as elsewhere.

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In Bolivia, the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo or Movement towards socialism) political party held the national government for fourteen years, which allowed many Indigenous women to access public positions both in the government and inside the party. This representation is a stark contrast to that of the Mexican case, where Indigenous women in positions of power are the exception to a broader norm of exclusion and are not supported in accessing public spaces. In Bolivia, on the other hand, the government embodied the Indigenous movement and was, therefore, shaped by it. In Mexico, the national democratic system systematically excludes forms of Indigenous representation. Among other modes of democratic institutionalization to facilitate Indigenous political participation are the different steps undertaken to guarantee Indigenous representation, such as the establishment of the so-called Indigenous municipalities, which are characterized as having more than 40% population of native language speakers. These approaches have, however, been questioned for their supposed inability to effectively ensure equal conditions in the political contest. At the same time, these steps have represented new, albeit scarce, opportunities for Indigenous women’s participation in particular contexts. Recent Indigenous political participation in Latin America has led to candidacies for national governments in Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Mexico, in which Indigenous politicians won the national government in Ecuador and Bolivia and Indigenous women became presidential candidates in Guatemala and Mexico. There is an undeniable discoursive and legal advancement on Indigenous political rights and the institutionalization of multiculturalism in these countries in parallel to the Indigenous demands for recognition of their own political projects, especially at local levels. At the national level, Indigenous women’s political participation in Bolivia has been occurring since the 1990s through a series of mobilizations that resulted in the calling of the National Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution and, ultimately, led the MAS party to win the general elections in 2005. These

P. Bonfil

periods have seen an unprecedented level of participation on behalf of Indigenous women, not only in numbers but also in key public positions. Most Indigenous women in the national parliament have been representatives of the MAS party, but they also belonged to other parties. On the other hand, there have been Indigenous women at different levels of the public administration, and three of them were designated federal ministers (Román and Paz 2008). Indigenous women’s political participation in Bolivia differs from the process in Mexico in relation to numbers, forms, and spaces. In Bolivia, women are also more present in their diverse peoples’ political organizations and in their own feminine associations, such as Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Indígenas de Bolivia (CeNAMIB or National Confederation of Indigenous Women of Bolivia) or the Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolivia Bartolina Sisa (National Confederation of Peasant and Indigenous Women of Bolivia, Bartolina Sisa). This points to an important difference with the Mexican case, where Indigenous women’s organizations are still marginalized in the national context. As can be seen above, articulated political participation for Indigenous women in Bolivia and Mexico has been very different. In the former, it has merged with the official structures and institutions, while in the latter, it has struggled for spaces within the democratic system of representation. Indigenous women in Bolivia have developed a governmental experience, even at national levels, while in Mexico they have developed their own strategies to become visible. Regardless, in both cases, they face gender discrimination and political violence.

5.3

Indigenous Women’s Experiences in Local Participation

Indigenous women’s participation in the democratic system is not a new development, but it has always been marginal. The Mexican electoral process of 2018 with its new regulations on

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Political Violence and Women Participation …

gender parity allowed for an increasing number of Indigenous participants to the point that, it is safe to say, led to different forms of Indigenous women political participation. There are some women leaders that have challenged and overcome traditional cultural and gendered limitations for women’s participation in politics as well as limitations imposed by poverty, lack of formal education, and machista4 stereotypes. Other women have held political and administrative positions at the local level and have contended for political positions within political parties’ structures. To achieve that, they have conducted long and difficult processes of political militancy in political parties or social and Indigenous organizations. In Bolivia, on the other hand, the Indigenous national government for fourteen years allowed Indigenous women’s access to local, regional, and national positions, supported by public policies and institutions. Testimonies and academic studies register that even in these relatively positive circumstances, Indigenous women in Bolivia have also faced significant obstacles in their political trajectories. In Mexico, overcoming obstacles and disadvantages is often the case of Indigenous women mayors, deputies, or even a few senators. There is another sector of Indigenous women who participate in what can be characterized as the ‘Indigenous movement’. These women have 4

Machista is a concept that refers to a widespread notion of masculine predominance over women. It is considered the basis of patriachal societies and ideologies. In Latin American countries, specially in Mexico, it reflects the cultural acceptation of women’s discrimination and male gender violence in all aspects of social relationships. In the indigenous organizations’ political discourse, ‘machista’ expressions are considered a legacy of the Colonial rule, in opposition to an ‘ancestral’ ideology of a complementary balance between sexes, expressed in the sacred relation with the Mother Earth. For indigenous women, overcoming discrimination means the necessity to deconstruct this notion and accept that machista expressions and values are nowadays deeply rooted in indigenous communities as a first step to transform this condition. Since power and public spaces are culturally considered a masculine domain, women involved in politics and in decisión making spheres are regarded as transgressors, and are object of discrimination and violence.

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built their power outside the formal democratic structures and institutions and engage in demonstrations, meetings, and different kinds of public actions, as well as gather in peasant, indigenous, or women’s organizations. These forms of political participation allow them to negotiate and propose changes inside their communities, organizations, or even at the national level. Women who participate in these contexts are usually the ones who adhere to gender demands and agenda. Political participation for Indigenous women is a complex process as it implies the right to individual choices and opinions as founding principles of the ‘occidental’ or ‘Wwestern’ democratic system.5 This, therefore, implies the possibility of incidence in the most intimate and personal circles of social relationships, such as family and marriage, for example. In this sense, Indigenous women leadership is built through a series of difficult processes that consist of successive transgressions and breakages that ultimately give birth to a women’s agenda. This is the micro-dimension and agency of Indigenous women’s citizenship that is reflected in their demands for addressing sexual and reproductive rights, gender violence, income earning, political participation, cultural rights, and access to productive and economic resources, among others. Indigenous women’s political participation can be found mainly at the local (e.g., municipal) level as well as in collective action. For Indigenous women, the community level represents both the most accessible and prohibited political space. If community is defined as a definite territorial setting, crossed by a dense network of cooperative and confronting social relationships, it is obvious that Indigenous women’s political participation will be determined by gender, class, and ethnic conditions. Due to a hierarchical and male-dominated structure 5

Indigenous peoples claim that democracy is an imposed form of social organization. It has been brought and forced upon them by external subjects which, in turn, are expressions of domination and discrimination. Democracy is considered an external form of political organization, in opposition, customary law wields like their own traditional way of social organization, one that prioritizes collective rights upon individual ones.

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of governance, female participation in their own communities is as difficult as participating in a discriminatory democratic system. Indigenous women are still struggling to make their voices heard (hacer oír su palabra) in local community assemblies, as well as within the Indigenous movement. These demands are diverse and depend on whether women are completely or partially excluded from decision-making spaces and public spheres as well as whether or not they have the right to vote and opine. Economic restrictions pose another obstacle to Indigenous women’s local participation, because customary law dictates that public positions are held for free (without salary) as a service to the community. Therefore, an individual must have the means to support himself or herself while holding a position (cargo). Women have seldom the opportunity to do so, since they are not usually entitled to property (e.g., of land, of money, and of productive means), and holding a community position would therefore require family economic and labor support. Economic independence is key for Indigenous women’s participation regardless of legislative and other institutional initiatives aimed at guaranteeing their political rights. Participation through political parties is no different. In some interviews conducted with Indigenous women members of political parties (Bonfil and Barrera 2018), they have emphasized the importance of economic possibilities in their trajectories. In any case, these examples demonstrate that ethnic origin, gender, and socioeconomic status are formidable obstacles to an important sector of women in Latin American countries. Unless these combined factors are addressed, the widening gender and ethnic gap will only get deeper leaving Indigenous women behind, both in Mexico and Bolivia.

5.4

Political Opportunities and Obstacles for Indigenous Women

As explained in Chap. 4, the 2018 electoral process in Mexico and the political realities in Bolivia demonstrate the fragility of Indigenous

women’s rights. In Mexico, even with the undeniable political advancement of women, especially with the constitutional reform that established mandatory parity in the electoral processes through political parties, racism, exclusion, gender discrimination, and poverty continue to represent obstacles for Indigenous women’s political participation. As Esperanza Palma (2019), a feminist leader, puts it …even with the advancement of this political reform, we cannot forget that, as it’s usually the case in all spheres of political life, parity democracy entails unequal and contradictory processes and thus, numeric achievements and substantive equality agendas coexist with discriminatory practices and perceptions (para. 5).

While facing these adversities and inequities, Indigenous women of different countries have launched mobilizations and agendas demanding their rights to political participation and representation, both to the State and national society, as well as to their own traditional and customary political systems. These mobilizations shed light on the circumstances that interfere with their political aspirations evidencing them as forms of exclusion and discrimination, which in turn result in a ‘second class’ citizenship for Indigenous women. While segregating indigenous minorities in Mexico is publicly illegal and politically incorrect, this does not mean that discrimination is over. On the contrary, it has adopted new forms and disguises, tinted with benevolence, charity and paternalism that conceal deep inequality regarding indigenous people (Sonnleitner 2013, 16–17).

In Mexico, the political administrative structure comprises three levels: federal, state, and municipal, respectively. This lower administrative level consists of 2457 municipalities across the country, in addition to a larger number of rural and Indigenous communities. This is the territorial and political space where Indigenous women’s political participation takes place and where it faces the greatest amount and most direct forms of gender violence. Municipal and communal contexts are key for Mexican Indigenous women’s political participation and mobilization since they represent

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Political Violence and Women Participation …

public structures of authority and decisionmaking that directly affect women’s lives and needs. They are geographically close and accessible to women for a variety of reasons, such as people who occupy governmental positions at this level are usually known to the local population. This proximity allows women to express their concerns and demands and to follow up on the institutional or the traditional authority’s response. This primary public experience is also the seed of Indigenous women’s local leadership and the possibility to make the community or micro-local level of political participation an important reference point in the struggle for Indigenous women’s political rights in Mexico. Therefore, it is not possible to understand or have a general overview of the diverse meanings and forms of Indigenous women’s political participation without addressing this context in full. Political life for Indigenous people begins within the community, since this is the place where common territory, history, language merge, and collective social organization is displayed. Most importantly, perhaps, it is where public decisions are taken in matters of individual and collective issues. It is a common characteristic that community Indigenous political structures are based on a hierarchical public positions system of decision-making, conflict resolution, and the construction of living and coexisting standards. These systems grant rights to their members differentially, depending on age, gender, and social status and are generally known as ‘customary law’ (usos y costumbres). They constitute an array of community norms that are being constantly adapted and shaped according to different contexts. Therefore, there is a great variation of customary laws from one community to another or between different Indigenous groups. Nevertheless, Indigenous peoples from Mexico and Bolivia have a shared custom regarding the exercise of authority, in which men are predominantly the decision-makers of their community while women are entitled to a mediated citizenship (as wives, daughters, and sometimes as widows or sisters). This means that they share public responsibilities with their male

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counterpart but that authority and power, as understood as decision-making capabilities, are still a masculine attribute. If one considers the persisting conditions of racism, exclusion, and discrimination in Indigenous realities, both in Mexico and Bolivia, it is possible to visualize that these internal political systems represent at the same time, spaces of opportunity and obstacles to Indigenous women’s political participation. Despite being an extended gender-based and cultural division of social duties, Indigenous communities have undergone extreme transformations over recent decades, where there is a growing number of Indigenous women holding public positions at municipal and local levels. This process is undoubtedly, a new and promising opportunity for the enlargement of political spaces accessible to women at the municipal and community levels. Nevertheless, women engaged in public and political participation endure constant and different forms of violence since their public involvement is still regarded and perceived as a transgression of cultural and traditional dictates in terms of gender roles. This collective experience, as unorganized and fragmented as it is, represents a cultural step toward a new gender paradigm within Indigenous communities and political discourses. However, though Indigenous women’s political participation is constantly growing it is not publicly and generally accepted. As a result, such participation raises a set of contradictory facts: the advancement on legal protection of Indigenous and women’s rights on one hand and an increasing level of gender political violence on the other. Since this is not the place to dwell into a more detailed analysis of the obstacles that Indigenous women are facing in Latin American countries, I would like to conclude this section underlining that political participation opportunities for Indigenous women are a result of a collective action to re-signify the existing legal framework in community contexts and a cultural process of individualizing Indigenous collective rights. In this regard, challenging traditional gender stereotypes of femininity and the social place accorded to women has brought resistance

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and a variety of expressions of gender violence, both in Mexico and Bolivia.

5.5

Political Violence Against Indigenous Women

Political violence against women comprises all actions and omissions from individuals and public servants against a woman for being a woman (i.e., gender violence), which have a certain kind of impact upon them and affects their political rights: the right to vote, to be nominated and elected, and the right to hold a public position. Political violence against Indigenous women combines gender and ethnic discrimination, racism, sexism, and even class exclusion. It expresses itself in various ways, such as mocking those women who dare to compete politically; attacking personally those women who run for positions or join activism; or exerting pressure on women candidates to resign and grant their position to a male partner, among others. Political violence against Indigenous women is a current phenomenon within internal political systems and in political parties’ structures where additional forms of discrimination occur while registering candidacies and putting women in places where they can hardly compete, threatening women who are willing to participate in an electoral process, distributing unequally access to radio or TV as well as economic resources for political campaigns. Indigenous women have also denounced diversion of economic resources allocated to promote women’s political leaderships as well as impediments for Indigenous women’s political participation on the basis of cultural traditions and precepts, especially within Indigenous communities’ customary laws. This is just the basis upon which all kinds of aggressions that stem from gender stereotypes arise. In other words, harassment, sexual violence, and even extreme forms of violence such as murder or feminicide. Political gender violence is a widespread phenomenon in Mexico. During the local elections of 2017–2018, the federal electoral court (Tribunal Federal Electoral del Poder Judicial

de la Federación) heard 107 sentences associated with political gender-based violence. Alongside this, the Fiscalía Especializada para la Atención de Delitos Electorales (FEPADE)6 opened six investigations on gender political violence and 41 files after emergency calls. Equally, the National Electoral Institute registered 31 cases of gender-related political violence (Bonfil Sánchez 2019). On the other hand, community genderbased political violence is seldom denounced or registered and usually disregard gender violence as a public matter, since local authorities are mostly men. Political violence against women is a practice that undermines equality and citizenship principles as well as threatening the rights and even the lives of women willing to engage in politics. Under these conditions, recent years have witnessed an increasing number of Indigenous women appealing to electoral authorities for the protection of their political rights within their communities. This has uncovered two divergent systems: one sustained upon individual rights and the other upon collective rights. Indigenous women who struggle for political participation and representation are frequently caught in the middle. The decision to participate politically has never been an easy choice for women in general and is even more difficult for Indigenous women since it poses threats against every aspect of their lives. At the local level, obstacles related to the accessibility to the political cycle (from the nomination of candidacies up to performance in the position) are prevalent ranging from personal, physical, or verbal attacks to the internal dynamics of political parties and the electoral systems regarding gender equity. It is important to note that in Mexico and Bolivia there are national laws that protect women’s rights and establish equity as a norm. The failure in guaranteeing these rights is part of what international UN organizations have labeled as the implementation gap. So, despite affirmative action, quotas, and other inclusive measures, there are 6

FEPADE is the prosecution office responsible for investigating electoral offences.

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Political Violence and Women Participation …

still relatively few Indigenous women holding political or governmental positions. This situation is shown as an imbalance, resulting from what some Indigenous women have called electoral ‘traps’.7 In any case, Indigenous women’s involvement in politics through political parties or existing channels within their traditional governmental systems has questioned gender stereotypes and ignited diverse oppositions, thus revealing the existence of new conflicting domains within local communities. Indigenous women’s public and political participation is associated with the fragmentation of communal social tissue under the pressure of external interests, as well as with the increasing participation of women in extra domestic income earning activities that have reshaped women’s position within the family and the community as a whole. In this sense, restrictions to women’s political rights can be seen as an expression of the lack of recognition of their contribution to collective life, in their communities and in society in general.

5.6

As a Final Word

Indigenous women face social and cultural restrictions when participating in politics, as well as discrimination against their ethnicity and gender, even when current legal frameworks recognize their political and citizenship rights. These obstacles emanate from their traditional institutions, worldviews, gender stereotypes, and roles. Such obstacles are so strong that those women involved in politics are considered cultural transgressors and treated as such in that they face social stigma and political violence. On the other hand, institutionalized democratic structures have proven to be an enormous obstacle to Indigenous women’s participation, for reasons of gender as well as ethnicity and class. These 7

Indigenous women’s leaders have stated that since not the laws nor the practices of political parties have led to a greater extent of their public participation and, on the contrary, have produced greater political violence against them, they can be regarded as traps for indigenous women’s involvement in the political arena.

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gender and ethnic gaps regarding Indigenous women’s political rights are present in contexts as diverse as the Mexican and Bolivian ones, confirming that regardless of the national and political contexts, gender and ethnic discrimination and exclusion prevail in Latin American countries. Indigenous women’s political participation is a clear example that gender gaps still exist between recognized and legitimized rights and the actual conditions to exercise them, leading to the simulation and demagogic situations that have been discussed in this chapter. This gap covers both national democratic structures and the political Indigenous discourses that assign women a conservative role as preservers of their roots, identities, and cultures as a form of patriarchal domination and control. While trying to overcome these inequities, Indigenous women have fought a difficult struggle and resistance, simultaneously protecting their ‘internal’ rights as women within their families, communities, and organizations and their ‘external’ rights as members of marginalized and exploited peoples. Comparative analysis shows that even if Indigenous women in Bolivia were able to attain a formidable degree of political participation, due in part to the success of the MAS and its claims on ethnic justice, the contradictions within their own communities and the national political and social system are still significant. This brings me to conclude that the gender gap is extremely difficult to close without the intersectional class and ethnicity gaps being also closed or reduced.

References Bonfil P, Barrera D (2018) El camino recorrido de las mujeres indígenas. Partido de la Revolución Democrática. Instituto Nacional Electoral Bonfil Sánchez P (2019) Democracia pendiente y en camino. Una mirada propia a la participación y la violencia política contra mujeres indígenas. GIMTRAP AC, Mexico Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI, 2017) Indicadores sobre las mujeres indígenas. Resultados de la Encuesta Intercensal. https://www.gob.mx/cdi/articulos/indicadores-sobre-

58 las-mujeres-indigenas-resultados-de-laencuestaintercensal-2015 Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (Coneval) (2015) Resultados de la pobreza a nivel nacional y por entidad federativa 2012–2014. https://www.coneval.org.mx/Medicion/ MP/Paginas/Pobreza_2014.aspx Ley Revolucionaria de Mujeres. http://enlacezapatista. ezln.org.mx/1993/12/31/ley-revolucionaria-demujeres/ Martínez RA (2017) Pluralismo Jurídico en el constitucionalismo mexicano frente al nuevo Constitucionalismo Latinoamericano. Revista Direito e Praxis 8 (4):3037–3068

P. Bonfil Palma E (2019) La paridad no es como la pintan. Voz y voto 319:13–16 junio Román O, Paz S (2008) Participación política y liderazgo de las mujeres indígenas en América Latina. Estudio de caso. Bolivia. Mexico: PNUD-GIMTRAP AC Sonnleitner W (2013) La representación legislativa de los indígenas en México. De la representatividad descriptiva a una representación de mejor calidad. Serie Temas Selectos de Derecho Electoral. Mexico: Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación

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Addressing Gender Gaps in Contemporary Galician-Language Fiction: The Cases of Ursula Heinze, Silvia Bardelás and Beatriz Dacosta Eva Moreda Rodríguez

Abstract

While women writers in all literary systems across space and time have faced and still face barriers to their activity because of their gender, the ways in which the gender gap manifests itself is influenced by the intersections of gender with a range of other social categories that conform their identity (race, class, sexuality, language, ethnicity, age, disability, among others). Nevertheless, in some instances, different writers in one particular context may suffer the gender gap to different extents, in ways that neither the array of available intersecting categories nor the issue of literary value seems to fully explain. To disentangle the reasons why this is the case is never a straightforward enterprise and requires a context-sensitive approach. The Galicianlanguage literary scene provides a particularly fruitful field to study, in a context-sensitive way, how these different oppressing factors interlock with each other. Here, women novelists remained very scarce until the early twenty-first century, when some significant advances took place and led to what some refer to as a “boom” of women novelists in

E. Moreda Rodríguez (&) University of Glasgow (SCOTLAND), Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected]

Galicia. However, these claims must be examined carefully. Inequalities still persist, manifested in how the increased visibility of women’s writing has benefitted some authors, but not others. In an attempt to further disentangle the forces that keep the gender gap and some women novelists excluded or less visible, I analyse in this chapter the careers and writings of three such writers: Ursula Heinze (b. 1941), Silvia Bardelás (b. 1967) and Beatriz Dacosta (b. 1967).

6.1

Introduction

In literatures throughout the world, women who write experience the effects of a gender gap due to their gender, but the ways in which this gender gap manifests itself are ever-changing and even contradictory as Russ (1983) points out in her pioneer book How to suppress women’s writing. Some women writers do not live in an environment that supports and nurtures their writing in the first place (e.g. Spender 1986; Davies 1994), while others might find difficulties to have their work published under their own name or at all (e.g. Hobby 1988; Barbeiro Carneiro 2006), or become erased from public life and the canon (e.g. Ayres 2003; Busby 1992; Smyth 2017). These different manifestations of the gender gap are informed by the intersections of gender with a range of other social categories that conform their identity (race, class, sexuality, language,

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_6

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ethnicity, age, disability, among others) within interlocking systems of oppression (Hooks 1984). Nevertheless, in some instances, different writers in one particular context may suffer the gender gap to different extents, in ways that neither the array of available intersecting categories nor the issue of literary value seems to fully explain. To disentangle the reasons why this is the case is never a straightforward enterprise and requires a context-sensitive approach. Indeed, while we are certainly likely to find patterns across contexts in space and time, ‘onesize-fits-all’ solutions to accounting for these multiple intersections rarely exist. Galician-language literature1 presents an extremely interesting case study due to the recent rapid yet still incomplete advancement of women writers, in parallel, with the increased scholarly interest in them and their writings. This advancement, however, has not benefitted all women writers equally: some have become more visible and widely read as a result, but others have not, even though their fiction might be thematically and/or formally innovative in at least some respects. In this chapter, I focus on three such writers and discuss the intersections that have kept them relatively invisible: Ursula Heinze (b. 1941), Silvia Bardelás (b. 1967) and Beatriz Dacosta (b. 1967). Since these three authors have received little attention in literary scholarship, one of my aims is to call attention to their work, identifying formally or thematically innovative elements and suggesting strategies for reading these by reference to trends and traditions in Galician-language literature. At the same time, though, by providing a detailed and context-sensitive case study, I also aim to address questions concerning the gender gap in women’s

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writing that are broadly applicable outside Galician-language literature, and that might be particularly relevant to other minoritized literatures. I demonstrate how understanding the reasons why these writers have remained invisible necessitates that we consider broader structural factors other than their texts, and I focus in particular on issues of public persona and active presence in the literary scene. Such issues are certainly not exclusive of the Galician-language literary system, but they manifest themselves in specific ways which I disentangle here, hoping to provide an example of how these intersecting levels of oppression might be unravelled in other contexts. My approach is indebted to the tenets and principles developed within the so-called Estudos Galegos [lit. Galician Studies] field. Pioneered by Xoán González-Millán in the US the 1990s and initially developed mostly in universities outside Galicia under the influence of other Modern Language Studies areas (Colmeiro 2017), Estudos Galegos moved away from the so-called criterio filolóxico [lit. linguistic criterion], which was at the time mainstream in scholarship about Galician culture developed in Galicia. Whereas the criterio filolóxico privileged the philological, linguistic and stylistic study of Galician-language literary texts,2 Estudos Galegos expanded its object of study to a broader range of artistic and cultural products and practices (including cinema and music), regarding them as communicative acts taking place in a broader social and ideological context, and not simply as autonomous works.3 Contrary to what had been the dominant tendency in literary scholarship within Galicia for decades, Estudos Galegos also invites The criterio filolóxico is ultimately indebted to the national literature model that became normalized in many literatures (including Spanish literature) in the nineteenth century and that presupposes the existence of a single national language (Liñeira 2015). 3 A key influence here is Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystems theory, which expands the focus of literary studies to a range of literary and semi-literary texts which exists in connection with networks of agents (authors, publishers, readers, literary, models); together, they constitute a multiplicity of interconnected systems (Miguélez Carballeira 2013). 2

1

Galician, a Romance language, is spoken in the Spanish comunidad autónoma (region) of Galicia, having coofficial status with Spanish. According to the latest government-organized Enquisa estrutural a fogares. Coñecemento e uso do galego (Structural survey to households on knowledge and usage of Galician, 2019), almost 90% of Galicians (population 2.4 million) can speak Galician to some extent, but only about 50% uses it solely or predominantly in their everyday life, and the decline is more marked among urban and younger populations.

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Addressing Gender Gaps in Contemporary Galician-Language Fiction …

researchers to regard Galician identity as flexible, hybrid and subject to constant negotiation, rather than as essential, fixed, and immutable (Romero 2012). The Estudos Galegos model is particularly fruitful when applied to women’s writing, as it allows us to consider both issues of reception and the literary market in instances where literary analysis, even though necessary, might not provide satisfactory answers by itself.

6.2

A Boom of Women Novelists?

In this section, I will present the context in which Heinze, Dacosta and Bardelás write focusing on the issues faced by both Galician-language writers generally, and by women writers specifically. Due to the fact that Galician is a minoritized language, it can be expected that Galicianlanguage writing faces barriers to visibility both in the worldwide literary market (accessible only via translation) and in Spain itself (a market sometimes accessed via self-translation by bilingual Galician writers). These barriers will be analysed by Castro in the next chapter. It might come as more of a surprise, though, that Galician literature is minoritized in Galicia itself. There are several reasons why this is the case. Firstly, a historical disparity in social status exists between Galician and Spanish in a clear diglossic situation,4 with the latter being considered more prestigious. This has a number of consequences which impacts the number of readers of Galician literature and hence the visibility and social standing of Galician-language writing. On the one hand, the number of speakers of Galician is steadily decreasing (O’Rourke 2014). Furthermore, even those who speak or understand spoken Galician might struggle with reading it fluently. Spanish was the sole language of instruction at school up until the late 1970s (Beswick 2007). Even under democracy, Galician has not been fully integrated into the education system on an equal footing with Spanish 4

In sociolinguistics, diglossia refers to two languages being spoken by the same community, leading to hierarchical relationships between them.

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(Beswick 2007), which means that even the younger generations might choose the latter as their reading language of choice. The second reason is the relative precariousness of the Galician-language publishing industry, which only started to become professionalized in the 1980s, shortly after the end of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain (1939–1975). According to recent data in Galicia, less than 15% of the annual turnover from book sales comes from Galician-language books (Federación de Gremios de Editores de España 2015). Finally, Galician-language literature gets only limited coverage from Galician generalist newspapers and media (most of which use the Spanish language). These factors reduce the visibility and social significance of all Galician-language writers, men and women alike. Later on, I will discuss how some Galician-language women novelists have been more successful than other women for a variety of reasons. However, this does not mean that the gender gap does not exist or that Galician-language women novelists are as visible as we would expect in a normalized literary scene that does not suffer the abovediscussed issues of diglossia. Within Galicia-language literature, women writers, especially fiction, face specific issues. They were, first of all, relative latecomers. The foundational date of modern Galician-language literature is conventionally set in 1863 with the publication of Rosalía de Castro’s poetry collection in Galician Cantares Gallegos.5 In 1920, the first woman-authored novel, Francisca Herrera Garrido’s Néveda, was published, which 5

Owing to centralization at the hands of the Catholic Monarchs in the late fifteenth century, the Galician language remained practically unused for literary purposes throughout the modern era. De Castro was preceded by a number of poets publishing Galician-language poems in Spanish-language newspapers from the 1840s. De Castro indeed published novels in Spanish, but never in Galician. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, other Galician-born female writers earned notoriety writing fiction and non-fiction in Spanish (Concepción Arenal, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Sofía Casanova, etc.), but they have not typically been included in genealogies of Galician-language women writers precisely because of the criterio filolóxico.

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inserted itself into costumbrismo, a then-outdated literary current focusing on depicting rural traditions and customs. The first significant novels by women did not appear until the late years of Francoism with María Xosé Queizán’s A orella no buraco (1965) and Xohana Torres’s Adiós, María! (1971). In the 2000s, literary scholarship systematically started to interrogate the still-prevalent gender gap in fiction-writing. While the 1990s had seen a profound renovation in Galicianlanguage poetry—led to a great extent by younger women poets, and an increasing number of women authors of children’s literature, adult fiction was still overwhelmingly male. Out of 43 single-authored fiction books published in Galician in 1995, only 5 were written by women, and the figures have remained practically the same today (5 women out of 42 titles).6 Women were also drastically underrepresented in literary prizes. Before 2000, only two women had won the Xerais, Blanco Amor or García Barros novel prizes—typically considered the main ones in the genre.7 Throughout the 2000s, two articles by Kirsty Hooper (2003) and Vilavedra (2007), as well as several sections in Helena González’s Elas e o paraugas totalizador (2005),8 attempted to ascertain the reasons for this under representation. All three scholars discussed the lack of role models as one of the reasons which might have stopped Galician-language women from taking up fiction as their preferred genre. Out of the four possible models emerging from the literary production by the fiction writers mentioned in their 6

Figures are taken from the publishing reports compiled annually by the Centro Ramón Piñeiro, a research centre in Galician literature. Multi-author anthologies are not considered. 7 Prizes proliferated in Galician-language publishing from the 1980s onwards, and were seen (and still are) as a crucial mechanism to stimulate Galician-language writing and to make Galician literature and books more visible and saleable, as well as to canonize certain titles, authors or genres (Vilavedra 2000). 8 During this time, other contributions to the question of women’s fiction were also being made in non-academic literary journals, such as Grial and the feminist periodical Festa da palabra silenciada.

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brief historical account, they argued that De Castro, while being a powerful and unique authorial model, stopped writing in Galician before she could produce a novel (Hooper 2003)9 and that her writings and career were quickly and heavily instrumentalized by a patriarchal literary establishment (e.g. González 2005; Miguélez Carballeira 2013). Other potential models were similarly unsuitable. Herrera Garrido’s costumbrismo was too conservative to be appealing to younger women writers, while Torres’ withdrawal from public literary life made her inaccessible (Hooper 2011). Queizán was the only model remaining, but her explicitly feminist literature and activism limited at the time her overall visibility in the literary scene (González 2005). While Hooper, González and Vilavedra discuss the issue of models in general terms, without identifying specific younger writers who might have struggled to build their own literary projects because of it, the lack of female role models has repeatedly been discussed as one of the reasons for the gender gap in literature in other national contexts (Gilbert and Gubar 1979; Russ 1983). It is therefore plausible that this tendency would have had an influence in the Galician-language context. Nevertheless, we should acknowledge that, with authors and literary texts being increasingly mobile, women writers will not necessarily look for models within their own national literature. More relevantly, Hooper, González and Vilavedra point out that both the Galician-language literary system and past Galician literary scholarship had historically attempted to build a monolithic national discourse with little space for difference, including gender difference (Hooper 2003, 2011). To describe this, González (2005) introduced in Galician literary criticism the influential term “totalizing umbrella” (paraugas totalizador) (p. 19), originally coined by Radhakrishnan (1992) to conceptualize how, in post-colonial contexts, 9

De Castro announced in a letter to her husband in 1881, after receiving criticism for an article criticising sexual hospitality in Galicia, that she would never write in Galician again. By then, she had published two poetry collections in Galician. She died prematurely only 4 years later.

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Addressing Gender Gaps in Contemporary Galician-Language Fiction …

difference is hierarchized and subordinated to a uniform understanding of national identity. Although not named specifically by Hooper, Vilavedra or González, some other particularities of the Galician-language literary market might have also discouraged women writers. While writing fiction with broad market appeal has sometimes been a viable career option for women writers in widely spoken languages,10 this has never been the case in the Galicianlanguage scenes, because of its small local audiences and limited opportunities to access foreign markets via translation. Crucially, Hooper’s, González’s and Vilavedra’s were not merely historical studies but also attempts at engaging from a fundamentally optimistic position with their literary present, where women fiction writers were slowly but steadily conquering spaces in the Galician-language literary scenes (González 2005; Hooper 2003; Vilavedra 2007), with leading publisher Xerais launching the all-female anthology Narradoras in 2001,11 and Teresa Moure (2005) achieving unprecedented critical and commercial success with her novel Herba moura both of which identified as milestones by Vilavedra (2007). Almost 20 years after the first of these articles were published, we might evaluate the extent to which Hooper, González and Vilavedra were right to be optimistic. The situation is mixed. Women seem to be closing the gender gap to some extent with respect to the1980s and 1990s, but structural inequalities still persist. Women-authored novels are appearing at higher rates, although only 16% of Galician-language novels published in 2005 were authored by women. In 2010, it was close to 25% and in 2017 it had jumped to 33%.12 As is the case, for example, with the ‘feminine middlebrow novel’ in the 1920s to 1950s, written by women for women, reflecting and inspiring “shifts in middle-class opinion and ideology”, and “establishing and consolidating, but also [resisting], new class and gender identities” (Humble 2001, p. 3). 11 Narradoras compiled 25 stories by Galician-language women fiction writers, most of whom were starting their literary careers at the time of publication. 12 Figures taken from Centro Ramón Piñeiro reports (1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2017). 2017 is the date of the latest published report. 10

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We might regard this as considerable progress, but it remains to be seen whether it will reach 50%. Prizes show increasing numbers of female winners, but the gender gap has not been closed yet, as demonstrated by statistics recently produced by the feminist literary platform A Sega.13 Gender perspectives in the literary analysis have also become increasingly widespread, both in academia (Boguszewicz et al. 2020) and in book reviewing and cultural journalism. The abovementioned award-winning portal, A Sega, has been publishing solely feminist literary and cultural analysis since 2013, and other reviewers active in non-specialized media regularly integrate gender perspectives. At the same time, though, publishing is still overwhelmingly maledominated.14 In an article published in 2018, Vilavedra is cautious and argues that we cannot unambiguously speak of a ‘boom’ of women novelists. She argues, however, that the successive waves of novels by women published since 2000 have decisively contributed to renovating Galician fiction (Vilavedra 2018), and cites several women novelists (such as Rosa Aneiros, Inma López Silva, and María Reimóndez) who have managed to become reasonably visible in the Galician-language literary scene, via a A Sega compiled statistics for all fiction prizes awarded in 2018 and 2019 (A Sega 2020a and 2020b). There were 21 men and 16 women winners in 2018, and 32 men and 9 women winners in 2019. At a fundamental level, these statistics suggest that the gender gap has not been closed yet in the domain of prizes either. However, more research is needed to ascertain the current extent of the gender gap. A Sega’s statistics cover only 2 years, and a multi-year approach could offer more nuanced conclusions. Moreover, A Sega’s statistics do not discriminate between several types of fiction prizes: from the highly prestigious Xerais and Blanco Amor, which can have significant impact on a writer’s career, to smaller short story prizes. They also do not discriminate between prizes awarded to unpublished works (where writing is normally submitted anonymously and the gender of the author will not be known to the members of the jury) and prizes given to published novels. 14 At present, the Asociación Galega de Editores (Galician Society of Publishers) has 38 members, of which 34 edit solely or partly in the Galician language. Only one of these, Baía Edicións, is headed by a woman, while the newly founded Cuarto de Inverno is co-headed by one woman and one man. 13

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sustained rhythm of publications, prizes and, in some cases, a strong public image connected to feminist or political causes (Vilavedra 2018). Another consideration, which makes the situation complex, is the fact that not all women writers have benefitted equally from the partial advances discussed above. This question is tackled by López (2019) in her recent doctoral dissertation. She scrutinizes the literary trajectory of novelists Teresa Moure, Margarita Ledo Andión, Cris Pavón and Patricia A. Janeiro, who exist on the margin of the margin. In that, they are disadvantaged by virtue of their gender, like all other women writers in Galicia, but they have not managed to benefit from the relative advances of the last two decades in the same way as the more visible writers named above. López argues that a range of variables intersects here: choosing to write in the non-official reintegracionista norm, which is typically shunned by most actors in the Galician-language literary establishment (Moure)15; writing experimental, hybrid prose instead of more conventional fiction (Ledo Andión); writing genre fiction (Pavón); or dealing with political topics seen as taboo in Galician cultural and even political nationalism, such as pro-independence action (Janeiro). In this chapter, I propose to expand the research direction undertaken by López by focusing on three other women novelists who 15

With Galician becoming a co-official language in 1978, the need for a written standard or normativa—which did not exist thus far—was a pressing issue. Two distinct sides developed: the reintegracionistas (lit. reintegrationists) advocated for adopting spelling conventions from the Portuguese, arguing that both languages were indeed the same, whereas isolacionistas (lit. isolationists) favoured Spanish spellings, which were more familiar to the Galician population anyway because they would have learned to read and write in Spanish. Nowadays, the normativa isolacionista is the official one, endorsed by the Royal Galician Academy (Real Academia Galega) and public institutions. Most Galician-language publishers also follow isolacionismo, with only one publishing exclusively in reintegracionista (Através Editora). Moure wrote her successful novel Herba moura in the official normativa isolacionista and was for years one of the star authors of Xerais; after switching to normativa reintegracionista in the early 2010s, she moved to Através Editora and her subsequent novels have achieved considerably less visibility.

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have remained relatively invisible in the Galician context—even in critical scholarship written from a gender perspective16—despite the relative originality of their writing. Indeed, all three have dealt in innovative ways with themes that remained relatively little explored in Galician literature (such as sex (Heinze), labour and precarity (Dacosta) and illness (Bardelás)), and they have done so from gendered perspectives which are more obvious in the work of Heinze and Bardelás. Before I move into a more detailed discussion of these novelists’ careers and writing, I conclude this section by offering short profiles. Heinze was born in Cologne, Germany, and moved to Galicia in 1977. She learned Galician in adulthood and published widely in the language in the 1980s and 1990s. She took a break from prose after becoming the first woman to win the prestigious Blanco Amor novel prize in 1993 to focus on poetry, and returned to Galicianlanguage prose in 2015 with the memoir … e os domingos, un croissant (2015), followed by two novels, Pon un siquiatra na túa vida… e xa verás (2016) and Delirios de pracer (2018). Dacosta debuted with the short story collection Cascas de noz (2000). She then published two novels Precipicios (2002) and Contrato temporal (2004), the last of which won the Terra de Melide fiction award. Dacosta was also a contributor to the anthology Narradoras. Bardelás, has published two novels, As Médulas (2010) and Unha troita de pé (2011). The former achieved some recognition in the Galician-language literary scene after it was included in the translation rights catalogue New Spanish Books list (Galicia Aberta 2010).17 16

Bardelás (who only started publishing in 2010) is not named in Hooper (2011) nor (2018). Dacosta is named very briefly in Vilavedra (2007) and (2018). Heinze, as I will discuss later, is discussed somewhat more extensively by Hooper and Vilavedra. Publications that thoroughly focus on Heinze’s work have tended to come from lesser well-known or visible scholars, and had limited impact, such as García Fontes (2011) and Sosa Rubio (2013). 17 New Spanish Books is managed by ICEX (the Exports and Investments department of the Spanish Ministry for Industry, Commerce and Tourism) with the collaboration of the Spanish Publishers’ Association. The project aims

6

Addressing Gender Gaps in Contemporary Galician-Language Fiction …

In the next two sections, I first discuss the presence and persona of these three authors in the Galician-language literary scene and then move on to discuss their writing, as I believe the two combined suggest a number of reasons why the work of these three writers has remained relatively marginalized.

6.3

Absent Writers in a Fast-Moving Literary Scene

A commonality of these three novelists is that they have been absent from the Galicianlanguage publishing landscape for extended periods of time, which I will argue is one of the reasons why they have not received significant attention. Both Dacosta and Bardelás published rather intensely for short periods of time, but have remained unpublished ever since—Dacosta for 16 and Bardelás for 9 years. Ursula Heinze took a long hiatus from novel-writing after becoming the first woman to win the Blanco Amor prize in 1993. This did not go unnoticed among cultural commentators, with Vilavedra (2007) noting that Heinze’s silence was a form of resistance, which is a claim I will revisit later. Heinze published the teenage fiction novel Quérote and the essay Polas rúas de Padrón in 1994, but for the next 21 years, she focused exclusively on poetry, with … e os domingos un croissant being her return to prose and Pon un siquiatra na túa vida, her first novel in 23 years (Heinze 2017). Long-term absences, particularly from women writers such as De Castro, certainly abound in Galician literary history, and I would like to argue that these historical absences inform how the absences of modern writers are read and interpreted, even subconsciously. In an entry in her blog Das orixes de marzo, Helena González (2009) referred to “the three classical silences that still disturb the history of Galician literature” at identifying and showcasing works to be promoted in the international literary translation market. While As Médulas was included in the list for Germany, its rights were not sold.

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(para. 4) from De Castro, poet María Mariño,18 and Torres. Without explicitly naming these precedents, Vilavedra also tacitly situates Heinze —as well as her contemporaries Aleixandre and Queizán—as part of this lineage of ‘silent’ writers. According to Vilavedra (2018), Heinze, Aleixandre and Queizán stopped or minimized their fiction writing as a way of challenging the traditions and models imposed on them as women’s writers by the Galician-language literary scene, although this critic does not support such conclusions with statements from the writers themselves or with commentary of their writings. Vilavedra’s and González’s conceptualization of literary absences, though, is certainly appealing, as it reminds us of the multiple ways in which women writers can exert their agency even in a hostile milieu. Even remaining silent can be a way of saying something. However, neither of them engages with or critiques the very mechanisms and pressures that make literary absences significant. These mechanisms, as pointed out, can offer some form of agency to some women writers but might also disadvantage others. These mechanisms and pressures are those adopted by the modern Galician-language publishing industry since the 1980s. They are in turn modelled on those from larger literary traditions, demanding a quick turnover of titles and displaying a constant appetite for novelty. Earlier on, I spoke about the canonizing and normalizing functions of literary prizes in the Galicianlanguage literature scene. Another function of prizes in these contexts consists in generating short-term interest in certain books and authors. Recently, following trends that have been the norm elsewhere for decades (English 2004), some of these prizes have been spectacularized further through the streaming or live-tweeting of their award ceremonies. Most book reviewers similarly follow a short-term calendar, limiting themselves to recent launches (with titles 18

Mariño lived in the rural area of O Courel for most of her life, with little contact with Galician literary circles, and only published one book in 1963 at the insistence of her friend, poet Uxío Novoneyra.

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published by the two larger publishers, Galaxia and Xerais, typically attracting more attention than the rest). In this climate, authors who go a few years without publishing face going unnoticed. It must be noted that academic criticism is not immune to such biases. For example, in scholarly works written in the early-to-mid2000s, Dacosta, then a recently published author, was typically included as a name to watch (González 2005; Hooper 2003), but with her more recent work her appearances have been limited. Such concerns are certainly not exclusive to Galician-language literature or to women writers. However, the three authors under consideration here illustrate how these pressures, while benefitting some women writers able to write and publish steadily, might be detrimental to others. While I agree with Vilavedra and González that not publishing might sometimes be an expression of rebellion against the system, the reasons why women authors stop publishing are complex and they might not even be a decision of the writer herself. For example, Hooper (2003) has noted that Galician-language women writers used to publish with small publishers and not with the two larger ones in the last decades of the twentieth century. This not only means that their published books will get less exposure in a fastpaced, novelty-focused market, but it can also affect their chances to sustain a steady rhythm of publication in the first place. While some authors at the larger publishing houses might publish annually or bi-annually, this kind of arrangement is more challenging for smaller publishers, which typically do not have the capacity to launch more than four or five fiction titles a year. Smaller publishing houses have also typically been more vulnerable to economic instability, and many new publishers close after only a few years of operation. This was indeed the case with Bardelás’s and Dacosta’s publishers, Barbantesa and Francka Editora, respectively.19 On the other hand, having been published before (even by the major publishing houses) or having obtained 19

Dacosta published her short story book Cascas de noz with Galaxia before moving to Francka Editora.

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prizes offers no guarantee either that one’s work will be accepted for publication subsequently, as admitted by Heinze in her frank account of the difficulties she faced in publishing her more recent fiction.20 Apart from a steady flow of publications, another way in which authors might remain visible is through participation in book launches, juries, award ceremonies and other events that might facilitate interaction with the Galicianlanguage media, publishers and other writers. This might have also negatively impacted Dacosta and Bardelás, as residents living outside Galicia (the former in the Canary Islands, the latter in Madrid). Vilavedra (2018) advances similar arguments why Marina Mayoral and Ledo Andión (residents in Madrid and in Barcelona/Portugal, respectively) remained relatively invisible back in the 1980s and 1990s. What we might find striking, however, is that, even though travelling has generally become more accessible than it was back then and opportunities to keep in touch with the literary scene through social media have increased, living outside Galicia has remained a factor that keeps some women writers invisible. Gender is relevant here, as some male writers in similar situations have managed to keep an active presence in the Galician-language literary scene, such as Xavier Queipo (based in Brussels) and Vicente Araguas (based in Madrid). Heinze, on the other hand, has lived steadily in Galicia, but her status as a non-native writer (alófona) has also situated her, in Vilavedra’s (2018) words, in the same periphery as Mayoral and Ledo Andión. Hooper saluted in 2003 the presence of Heinze and other alófonos and alófonas as indicative that Galician literature was ready to accept more hybrid and diverse understandings of Galician identity than had been the 20

Heinze admitted that she found it more difficult to publish after the 2008 economic recession now as publishers “do not have money” (Ramos 2017, p. if this is a direct quote—page number needed). At a latter date, she admitted to having received a number of rejections of her erotic novel Delirios de pracer and had finally decided to publish with Aira, a newly established publisher (Regueira 2019).

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Addressing Gender Gaps in Contemporary Galician-Language Fiction …

case in the past, and there are indeed examples of alófonas who are nowadays relatively visible and well-respected, such as Aleixandre or Aurora Marco. However, Heinze’s case demonstrates that not all alófonas might be or feel equally integrated into the Galician-language literary scene. She has repeatedly claimed that she has felt marginalized, which she attributes mostly to the fact that she is not originally from Galicia (Regueira 2019; Vilavedra 2018). I argue, however, that this claim must be examined critically, taking into account other factors that might have kept Heinze less visible than others, including her long-term absence from Galician-language literature and some of the tropes and themes she has dealt with in her books, which will be examined subsequently.

6.4

Inside the Text

Analysis of the three authors’ published work and, in particular, how they have engaged (or failed to engage) with prevalent themes, tropes and approaches in women’s or feminist writing in the Galician-language context offers further nuance to the observations made above. In Elas e o paraugas totalizador, González (2005) notes that women writers in Galicia and elsewhere have always found themselves confronted with the decision whether to write (or not) literature that explicitly centres feminist or gender issues. Crucially, though, in a patriarchal system, neither of these decisions is unequivocally the right one, and both can result in further marginalization and invisibility, and intersect with other forms of invisibility in complex ways at different moments in time. For example, Miguélez-Carballeira (2008) has compared Moure’s Herba moura, published in 2005, with Queizán’s feminist fiction published in the 1980s and 1990s. MiguélezCarballeira (2008) argues that Moure’s gender perspectives were not radically new or original, yet she found greater acceptance and success than her colleague simply because her work found a context in 2005 that was more receptive to feminist writing than Queizán had found earlier. Therefore, similar decisions led to different

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outcomes for Queizán and Moure. On the other hand, not adopting an explicitly feminist or gender perspective is not a guarantee of visibility either, as patriarchal expectations of what a woman should write about also heavily influence the reception of a work (Otero Varela 2014). Such tensions gravitating specifically around gendered and feminist perspectives are clearest in the case of Heinze. Her return to prose, … e os domingos un croissant…, enjoyed significant attention in Galician literary circles in 2015. This is all the more remarkable given that it appeared with a small publisher specializing in poetry and academic and journalistic non-fiction, Alvarellos, and that it dealt with a topic (mental health) still considered taboo in Galician society. I argue that the book’s success, though, was partly motivated because Heinze managed to successfully situate it at the intersection of two recent trends in Galician-language literature. On the one hand, Heinze continues a recent tradition of successful memoirs that include, for example, Inma López Silva’s (2014) Maternosofía and Antonio Piñeiro’s (2015) A identidade fascinada. These books constituted a relative novelty within Galicianlanguage literature, which traditionally privileged autobiography. On the other hand, Heinze’s book was preceded by several recent novels centring on mental health, such as Vega’s (2012) Dark butterfly, Sumai’s (2013) A lúa da colleita and Seixas’s (2015) Interferencias. Interestingly, while both trends Heinze inserted herself into have been cultivated by male and female writers, it is the latter who have taken the lead, with López Silva’s and Sumai’s work, in particular, achieving considerable editorial success, and showcasing female experiences and characters (López Silva writes about her experience of motherhood, while Sumai’s novel has two female protagonists). In this context, Heinze’s practically unedited, unencumbered, somewhat fragmentary narration of her 2-month stay in a psychiatric hospital where she was being treated for depression thus stood out as a unique yet still recognizable literary artefact. The diary indeed starts matter-of-factly21: 21

Translations are mine.

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E. Moreda Rodríguez Thursday, 7th August 2014 I arrived at La Robleda [clinic] at 4.15pm. After I fill in my admission form at reception, Dr Ramos arrives. He quickly explains what expects me and tells me he will try to heal me, but he wants to make it clear that life at the Clinic is not real life and warns me that when I leave I will find the same world I am currently trying to escape from. I know this already and I don’t care. It’s been some time since I cannot stand the outside world. I need to regain strength and will (I don’t dare talking about illusion) to keep on living. I don’t know if it’s possible, I feel hopeless (Heinze 2015, p. 11).

The remainder of Heinze’s diary focuses on life at the sanatorium with a distinct focus on the conflict between the patients, or between the patients and staff, is presented in the same matterof-factly way and without hardly any commentary, which helps build a tone of immediacy: Fina knocks on the closed door with all of her strength, shouting something no one can understand. She wants to open the door, but she needs to wait until the time of the afternoon snack, says nursing assistant Lucio. She does not want to be reassured. “Leave, you are a son of a bitch leave me alone, it was you who locked the door on me”, she says with her face red of anger (Heinze 2015, p. 26). There are people who cry for a cigar early in the morning. These are formidable sobs, like a wounded animal’s (Heinze 2015, p. 43).

Heinze’s latest novel (2018), Delirios de pracer, was admittedly less successful and visible, which Heinze herself attributed to the fact that its protagonist is a 60-something-year-old woman who avails herself of the services of a younger male prostitute (Regueira 2019). This was indeed an unexplored topic in Galicianlanguage fiction, and it is remarkable that Heinze adopts here a similar style as used in her memoir, shunning the conventions of erotic fiction (in Galician-language literature and elsewhere) in favour of immediacy and clarity.22 However, despite the innovative approach, it is precisely From the scene of the protagonist’s first sexual encounter with a male prostitute: “Sara felt very uncomfortable in that situation. She looked at the bed, looked at the bag and looked at Cristian, who was starting to take his sweater out. “Take your clothes out, miss. What are you waiting for?”. “My knickers too?”. “Well, not for the moment, wait. Actually, take it out now. It won’t do you any harm. Don’t be afraid” (Heinze 2018, p. 13–14).

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the choice of genre that might have disadvantaged Heinze in this case. Indeed, even though several Galician-language publishers launched initiatives to promote erotic fiction, such as anthologies and an ad hoc fiction prize, Narrativas Quentes, the genre has not managed to thrive. Even those novels distinguished with the prize have typically enjoyed less visibility by other non-erotic novels by the same authors. Delirios de pracer thus attracted fewer reviews and attention than Heinze’s previous memoir simply by virtue of its genre. Moreover, with readers and critics themselves having less of an awareness of trends and traditions in Galicianlanguage erotic literature, they would have found it more difficult to situate Heinze’s novel in a genealogy and appreciate its innovative qualities. In the case of Bardelás and Dacosta, I argue that part of their invisibility stems from their relatively experimental narrative approach, which has already been partly studied by López (2019) as one of the factors that has kept some women on the margin of the margin. Another relevant example here is, again, Queizán. While Queizán’s debut A orella no buraco pioneered noveau roman techniques in Galician-language literature, Queizán is today celebrated not so much as a technical innovator, but rather as a pioneer in introducing feminist, lesbian and transgender themes into her subsequent novels (Rodríguez Rodríguez 2011; Thompson 2008), which are, however, more conventional from a technical point of view. Both of Bardelás’s novels, as well as Dacosta’s Contrato temporal, are polyphonic works of fiction in which the authors switch between multiple points of view to explore a multiplicity of subjectivities. In Contrato temporal, Dacosta alternates between short chapters narrated in the third person in a fast-paced, slightly surreal style, following various characters working at a factory in Vigo,23 and others in the first or second For example, “The boy-man-rubbish is used to limitedterm contracts, contracts that get renewed every two weeks. (…) It’s time already. One must leave. Something to eat. He fixes the night sandwich. He goes into his car. He lets the first stars of the night enter his dreams” (Dacosta 2004, p. 196).

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6

Addressing Gender Gaps in Contemporary Galician-Language Fiction …

person, reminiscent of the stream-ofconsciousness technique, which reveal how the workers’ very grasp of reality, use of language and relationships with the older generation (still haunted by Franco’s dictatorship) has been shaped by their experience of precarity and mechanization.24 The premise of Bardelás’s Unha troita de pé is the sudden paralyzing illness that overcomes middle-aged Xulio. Here, Bardelás alternates between long stream-ofconsciousness passages in the first person with others in the third person which, however, include elements of stream-of-consciousness too.25 Together, they not only reconstruct some of Xulio’s past for the reader but they also call attention to the fragmentary processes by which memory and the self are built, and how these might be affected by sudden illness. As a result, both Dacosta and Bardelás’s narratives are less linear and traditional than we tend to find in some of the most successful Galician-language women-authored novels of the last 20 years.

6.5

Conclusion

The reasons why some women novelists like Bardelás, Dacosta and Heinze (and many others) still remain invisible and marginalized in the Galician literary system, while steps are being taken to close the gender gap in other respects, are certainly not easy to pinpoint or define comprehensively. Still, three main themes emerge that manifest themselves under particular forms in the context at hand, but which are likely to be key as well in other literary scenes, particularly minoritized ones. Firstly, an author’s For example, “What are you talking about, grandpa! It’s the times, Pomba, the times that come back. After Sir Penco das Corredoiras, they forced the women-brooms to sweep the Alameda, every day until they cracked up, weaker, sicker and more dead by the hour.” (Dacosta 2004, p. 144). 25 For example, “He exits the Grand Hotel, that day, makes a summary of what he had thought about it, a grand hotel for nineteenth-century merchants. Funnily enough, it has something from the Wild West. Nonsense, air becomes him, it’s cool and revives his face, everything else is hot” (Bardelás 2011, p. 63). 24

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ability or otherwise to adapt to the fast-paced rhythm of the literary scene has lately benefitted a reduced number of women writers in Galicia, but it has also kept others unable to benefit to the same extent from the relative improvements to the gender gap that we have seen in the last two decades. Secondly, an author’s place of residence relative to the major centres of cultural production and literary life in Galicia must also be considered—with those living outside these centres showing signs of being disadvantaged. Thirdly, the two factors above (together with others) can contribute to keep a writer and her work in a state of relative invisibility, therefore preventing readers from fully understanding these works within literary traditions and trends, and from appreciating and making sense of innovative elements they bring into the Galicianlanguage literary scene. These themes would merit further detailed examination to see how they impact women novelists specifically in Galician-language literature, and whether any steps can be taken to rectify these. In examining and disentangling these, we might also come closer to understanding dynamics that keep other women writers elsewhere, or other authors in Galicianlanguage literature, in a state of invisibility. For example, a more thorough understanding of how some women authors might struggle to maintain a steady rhythm of publication and how this disadvantages them can also help reach broader conclusions on both fronts. In relation to women writers elsewhere, it can provide a background to research how these pressures and opportunities manifest themselves in unique ways in other contexts. While this chapter examines the barriers and difficulties that some women writers experience in becoming visible within Galicia, the gender gap also manifests itself in the challenges that Galician-language women writers face in making their writings known outside Galicia through translation flows. Both issues are intrinsically connected: critical or commercial success within Galicia often (but not always) makes a novel more likely to be translated, while at the same time translations into other languages can positively

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affect a writer’s reputation within Galicia. In the following chapter, Castro examines translation flows from Galician into Spanish and English from a gender perspective, analysing the extent to which those women writers who have achieved a modicum of success within Galicia might have benefitted from such flows and what barriers are still standing, and therefore further qualifying claims that there has been a “boom” of women novelists or that it has benefitted all women equally by discussing the challenges that women authors face in attempting to obtain recognition within Spain and internationally.

References A Sega (2020a) FalOcias. Desmontando as noticias falsas sobre os premios literarios V [blog entry]. https:// www.asega-critica.net/2020/01/falocias-desmontandoas-noticias-falsas.html A Sega (2020b) FalOcias. Desmontando as noticias falsas sobre os premios literarios II [blog entry]. https:// www.asega-critica.net/2019/12/falocias-desmontandoas-noticias-falsas_80.html Ayres B (2003) Silent voices: forgotten novels by Victorian women writers. Praeger Pub, Westport, CT Barbeiro I, Carneiro MIB (2006) Mujeres y literatura del Siglo de Oro: espacios profanos y espacios conventuales. Ediciones del Orto, Madrid, Spain Bardelás S (2010) As Médulas. Barbantesa, Cangas, Spain Bardelás S (2011) Unha troita de pé. Barbantesa, Cangas, Spain Beswick JE (2007) Regional nationalism in Spain: language use and ethnic identity in galicia. Multilingual Matters, Cleveland, Buffalo and Toronto Boguszewicz M, Garrido González A, Vilavedra Fernández D (eds) (2020) Identidade(s) e xénero(s) na cultura galega: unha achega interdisciplinaria. Instituto de Estudios Ibéricos e Iberoamericanos de la Universidad de Varsovia, Warsaw, Poland Busby M (ed) (1992) Daughters of Africa: an international anthology of words and writings by women of African descent from the ancient Egyptian to the present. Jonathan Cape, London, UK Centro Ramón Piñeiro (1995) Informe de literatura 1995. https://www.cirp.gal/rec2/informes/upload/ver/inf1995/ Informe_Literatura_1995.pdf Centro Ramón Piñeiro (2000) Informe de literature 2000. https://www.cirp.gal/rec2/informes/upload/ver/inf2000/ Informe_Literatura_2000.pdf Centro Ramón Piñeiro (2005) Informe de literatura 2005. https://www.cirp.gal/rec2/informes/upload/ver/inf2005/ InformedeLiteratura2005.pdf

E. Moreda Rodríguez Centro Ramón Piñeiro (2010) Informe de Literatura 2010. https://www.cirp.gal/rec2/informes/upload/ver/inf2010/ Informe_Literatura_2010.pdf Centro Ramón Piñeiro (2017) Informe de Literatura 2017. https://www.cirp.gal/rec2/informes/upload/ver/inf2017/ Informe_Literatura_2017.pdf Colmeiro X (2017) Peripheral visions/global sounds: from Galicia to the world. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, UK Dacosta B (2000) Cascas de noz. Galaxia, Vigo, Spain Dacosta B (2002) Precipicios. Francka Editora, Vigo, Spain Dacosta B (2004) Contrato temporal. Francka Editora, Vigo, Spain Davies CB (1994) Black women, writing and identity: migrations of the subject. Routledge, New York, NY de Castro R (1863) Cantares gallegos. Juan Compañel, Vigo, Spain English JF (2004) The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, awards, and the circulation of cultural value. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT Federación de Gremios de Editores de España (2015) Comercio interior del libro en España. 2014 [report]. https://www.federacioneditores.org/img/documentos/ Comercio_Interior_14.pdf Galicia Aberta (2010) As médulas, de Silvia Bardelás, será traducido ao alemán [press release]. https:// emigracion.xunta.gal/actualidade/nova/medulas-silviabardelas-sera-traducido-ao-aleman García Fontes A (2011) A mirada distante de Úrsula Heinze. Andaina: revista do Movimento Feminista Galego, 58, 40–43 Gilbert S, Gubar S (1979) The Madwoman in the attic: the woman writer and the nineteenth-century literacy imagination. Yale University Press, New Haven, NY González H (2005) Elas e o paraugas totalizador. Galaxia, Vigo, Spain González H (2009) Elas e a síndrome de Rimbaud [blog entry]. https://dasorixesdemarzo.wordpress.com/2009/ 01/26/167-elas-e-a-sindrome-de-rimbaud/ Heinze U (2015) … e os domingos un croissant. Alvarellos, Santiago de Compostela, Spain Heinze U (2017) Pon un psiquiatra na túa vida… e xa verás. Alvarellos, Santiago de Compostela, Spain Heinze U (2018) Delirios de pracer. Aira, Allariz, Spain Herrera Garrido F (1920) Néveda. Roel, A Coruña, Spain Hobby E (1988) Virtue of necessity: english women’s writing 1649–1688. Virago Press, London, UK Hooks B (1984) Feminist theory: from margin to center. South End Press, Boston, MA Hooper K (2003) Girl, interrupted: the distinctive history of Galician women’s narrative. Rom Stud 21(2):101–114 Hooper K (2011) Remapping Galician narrative for the twenty-first century. In Hooper K, and Puga Moruxa M (eds), Contemporary galician cultural studies: between the local and the global. Modern Languages Association, New York, NY, pp 272–288 Humble N (2001) The feminine middlebrow novel, 1920s to 1950s: class, domesticity, and bohemianism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK

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Liñeira M (2015) Something in between: galician literary studies beyond the linguistic criterion. Abriu 5:77–88 López L (2019) Dialogando coas marxes na narrativa galega de autoría feminina (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Bangor University, Wales López Silva I (2014) Maternosofía. Galaxia, Vigo, Spain Miguélez Carballeira H (2008) Inaugurar, reanudar, renovar. A escrita de Teresa Moure no contexto da narrativa feminista contemporánea. Anuario de estudos literarios galegos 2006:72–87 Miguélez Carballeira H (2013) Galicia, a sentimental nation: gender, culture and politics. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, UK O’Rourke B (2014) The Galician language in the twentyfirst century. In: Miguélez-Carballeira H (ed) A companion to Galician culture. Tamesis, Woodbridge, UK, pp 73–92 Otero Varela I (2014) A ficcionalización do eu: autoría e protagonismo das mulleres na literatura. Euseino, Vigo, Spain Piñeiro A (2015) A identidade fascinada. Xerais, Vigo, Spain Queizán MX (1965) A orella no buraco. Galaxia, Vigo, Spain Radhakrishnan R (1992) Nationalism, gender, and the narrative of identity. In: Parker A, Russo M, Sommer D, Yaeger P (eds) Nationalism, gender, and the narrative of identity. Routledge, New York, US, pp 77–95 Ramos A (2017) Sufro a vellez e non podo co pasado, lembra todo o que se perdeu [interview with Ursula Heinze]. https://praza.gal/cultura/lsufro-a-vellez-enon-podo-co-pasado-lembra-todo-o-que-se-perdeur Regueira M (2019) Teño máis de setenta libros publicados, pero nunca percibín un recoñecemento [interview with Ursula Heinze]. https://www.nosdiario.gal/articulo/ cultura/teno-mais-setenta-libros-publicados-nunca-percibinreconecemento/20190123173755075418.html Rodríguez Rodríguez M (2011) A busca de identidade: a relación entre sexo e xénero n’A semellanza de María Xose Queizán. Galicia 21:60–77

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Romero E (2012) Contemporary Galician culture in a global context: movable identities.Lanham, MD, Lexington Books Russ J (1983) How to suppress women’s writing. Austin, TX, University of Texas Seixas M (2015) Interferencias. Xerais, Vigo, Spain Smyth M (2017) Women writing fancy: authorship and autonomy from 1611 to 1812. Palgrave MacMillan, London, UK Sosa Rubio CJ (2013) La ausencia de una precursora: aproximación a la obra femenina en gallego de Úrsula Heinze. In: Arriga Flórez M, Bartolotta S, Martín Clavijo M (eds) Ausencias: escritoras en los márgenes de la cultura. Arcibel, Madrid, Spain, pp 1190–1203 Spender D (1986) Mothers of the Novel: 100 good women writers before Jane Austen. Pandora, London, UK Sumai A (2013) A lúa da colleita. Xerais, Vigo, Spain Thompson JP (2008) A tango of a lost democracy and women’s liberation: María Xose Queizán’s feminist vision in Amor de Tango. Bull Hisp Stud 85(3):336– 343 Torres X (1971) Adiós, María! Ediciones Galicia, Buenos Aires, Argentina Vega R (2012) Dark butterfly. Xerais, Vigo, Spain Vilavedra D (2000) Sobre narrativa galega contemporánea: estudios e críticas. Galaxia, Vigo, Spain Vilavedra D (2007) Unha achega ao discurso narrativo de autoría feminina. Madrygal 10:145–151 Vilavedra D (2018) Singularidades da articulación sociodiscursiva da narrativa galega de autoría feminina. In: Boguszewicz M, Garrido González A, Vilavedra Fernández D (eds) Identidade(s) e xénero(s) na cultura galega: unha achega interdisciplinaria. Instituto de Estudios Ibéricos e Iberoamericanos de la Universidad de Varsovia, Warsaw, Poland, pp 167–194

On the Margins and Beyond: The Translation of Contemporary Galician Women Fiction Writers in Multilingual Spain and the Anglosphere Olga Castro

literary field. Others, however, have achieved considerable success in recent times, often a precondition for their translation. Drawing on this, my aim is to analyse the challenges and opportunities Galician-language women fiction writers may be presented with when trying to get recognition and enter new literary markets via translation, both in multilingual Spain and in the Anglosphere. All in all, my chapter seeks to shed light on issues around gender, language, ethnicity and translation affecting contemporary Galician-language novelists, which also have implications for global audiences worldwide.

Abstract

A remarkable gender gap exists in literary translation, as a result of the well-documented tendency across time to translate fewer women writers than men writers. Given the role of translation as an activity of intercultural mediation and cross-border connectivity, this gender gap has far-reaching consequences not only for the silenced writers and their literatures, but also globally for society as a whole: it may prevent readers from accessing great foreign literature authored by women. Nevertheless, not all women writers are experiencing this gender gap in the same way, with some authors having their work translated into other languages and getting recognition abroad more easily than others. Among the obstacles hampering their cross-border dissemination, one factor stands out: writing literature in a minoritised language. This is precisely the case for Galician women fiction writers. As Eva Moreda Rodríguez has demonstrated (see Chap. 6), some Galician women novelists are marginalised in their own

7.1

Introduction

For most contemporary women novelists writing in Galician,1 gender and language–ethnicity are two intersecting social categories through which power operates in interlocking systems of oppression, creating asymmetries and leading to marginalisation both within Galicia and beyond.

1

Galician is a minoritised language spoken by approximately 3 million people worldwide, mainly in Galicia, migrant communities of Galicians in Spain and Latin America (Beswick 2007: 55). It holds co-official status O. Castro (&) with Spanish in Galicia, an Autonomous Community in University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Northwest Spain (for more details see footnote 1 in e-mail: [email protected] Chap. 6). © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 73 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_7

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Given this two-fold crossroads,2 Galicianlanguage women writers share with their male counterparts the challenges linked to the minoritised status of their language/literature,3 and they share with other women writers different challenges associated with gender. And yet, not all Galician women novelists experience ‘being on the margin’ in the same way or to the same extent. Besides the complex interaction with other intersectional categories, in Chap. 6 Eva Moreda Rodríguez argues that some women authors are ‘on the margin of the margin’ of Galician literature due to a combination of additional factors, including context-sensitive and unique circumstances specific to them. That proves to be the case for writers such as Ursula Heinze, Silvia Bardelás and Beatriz Dacosta, thoroughly studied in the previous chapter: despite the literary value of their writing projects, they have gone mostly unnoticed in the Galician literary field. And in Moreda Rodríguez’s words, barriers to visibility will be even greater in the worldwide literary market and in other literary fields in Spain. Some other authors, however, have achieved a certain degree of success and recognition within the Galician literary scene, generally measured in terms of literary awards, bestselling books and a fair coverage in cultural magazines and newspapers. Success in the source culture is often seen as a sine qua non condition for crossing borders and reaching new target audiences via translation. Complementing Moreda Rodríguez’s insights into the situation of those novelists who are ‘on 2

I have chosen to focus here on two of the categories defining the necessarily plural identity of Galicianlanguage women writers, i.e. gender and ethnicity/language. Other categories operating at other levels create unique experiences for these human beings, both as Galician-language writers and as women, therefore rejecting essentialist conception about them. The plural ‘women’ must also be understood beyond the normative binary and/or cisgender category. 3 Since different Galician written standards co-exist, as explained by Moreda Rodríguez, authors using the nonofficial normativa reintegracionista—as opposed to the official normativa isolacionista—would be facing an additional layer of discrimination (see footnote 15 in Chap. 6).

O. Castro

the margin of the margin’ of Galician literature, I will focus on novelists who have gone ‘beyond’ those margins, that is, writers who have both gained status and recognition within the Galician literary scene and experienced translation as a result of it—either actively becoming selftranslators of their own work, or seeing how their works became available in other languages. As anticipated in the previous chapter, these would include some of the writers that have contributed to renovating Galician fiction since 2000 and led some scholars to hypothesise about a ‘boom’ of women novelists (Vilavedra 2018). My aim is to examine the challenges and opportunities that these Galician-language women fiction writers may be presented with when trying to get recognition and enter new literary markets via translation, both in multilingual Spain and in the Anglosphere. When doing so, two contextualising factors will be considered. First, as numerous studies have already shown (see Castro 2017; Ríos and Palacios 2005), women writers are generally discriminated against in translation flows, with considerably fewer women writers being translated than men writers. Second, when it comes to translation, minoritised languages such as Galician frequently become less translated languages (Branchadell and West 2005), with all the constraints this entails. Translation flows in Galicia have received considerable scholarly attention in the last few decades, mainly in publications by members of the research group BITRAGA,4 who in 2004 launched the Digital Library of Galician Literary Translation available at https://bibliotraducion. uvigo.es.5 As these scholars demonstrate (Luna Alonso and Galanes Santos 2017), until 2017, Galician literature had been translated into 47 4

The research group BITRAGA (Biblioteca da Tradución Galega, lit. Catalogue of Galician Translations) is based at the University of Vigo and all publications by their members can be found on https://bitraga.gal/. 5 Other studies have focused on translation flows within the Iberian Peninsula context, including translations from and into Asturian, Aragonese, Aranese, Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish (see Gallén et al. 2010; Galanes Santos et al. 2016).

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On the Margins and Beyond …

cultural communities in 37 different languages. Half of these titles were translations published within multilingual Spain: Spanish was the main target language into which Galician fiction was rendered, followed by Catalan and Basque, the other two minoritised languages which, alongside Galician, were also granted co-official status in their territories by the 1978 Spanish Constitution.6 These are followed closely by other neighbouring target languages such as Portuguese, Italian and English.

7.2

The Case of Multilingual Spain

In view of the data above, the fact that half of the translations from Galician into other languages are published in Spanish, Catalan and Basque could seem to suggest that Galician novelists are indeed visible within Spain. However, general figures reveal that in absolute terms the number of translated titles is relatively low. Literature for children and young adults is the most popular genre, followed by fiction (Galanes Santos 2010; Montero Küpper 2012). To the best of my knowledge, no studies have specifically studied the production, circulation and reception of Galician women novelists in translation into the other official languages in Spain.7 To compensate for this, a careful examination of publications analysing translations flows into Spanish (Francí Ventosa 2016), Catalan (Comellas Casanova 2007, 2016) and Basque (Manterola Agirrezabalaga 2016, 2020) was carried out. The scrutiny of the three different target systems revealed that translation from Galician into these languages 6

Basque (euskera in the Basque language) is a co-official language in the Autonomous Communities (regions) of the Basque Country and Navarra, in Spain, and it is also spoken in three provinces of the French Basque Country. Catalan (català in Catalan) is a co-official language in the Autonomous Communities of Valencia, the Balearic Islands and Catalonia, in Spain, and it is the only official language in Andorra. 7 Other related topics researched so far include the role of women translators as initiators of translations into and from Galician (Luna Alonso 2017) and the translation of foreign women writers in the Galician book market (Buján Otero 2020).

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represents a very small part, with women fiction writers having an anecdotal presence. Two trends can be identified in translations from Galician into the other official languages in Spain. First, translation into Catalan and Basque is often originated in the target system and carried out by professional literary translators. Although these two language pairs (i.e. Galician into Catalan and Galician into Basque) may not significantly increase the authors’ visibility in the target systems, they do have great symbolic capital (Luna Alonso 2007). All exchanges between the three minoritised languages have the potential to help strengthen the three literary systems and improve the perceived prestige of their readers and speakers—indeed, the Basque-, Galician- and Catalan-speaking writers and publishers associations regularly hold Galeuscat meetings to think of common strategies to support their literatures. Second, translation into Spanish is often seen as a strategy with a twofold potential: (I) entering the Spanish-speaking literary market (both in Spain and in Latin America) and (ii) becoming a launchpad to literary agents and international publishers who could access the books in Spanish as a previous step before possibly translating them into other languages (Galanes Santos and Luna Alonso 2017).8 Being aware of this, and possibly induced by additional reasons (see Santoyo 2010), an increasing number of Galician writers are ‘incessantly’ (Dasilva 2009, p. 145) resorting to self-translating their own novels. In Spain, self-translation between languages and literatures of disparate status has become a very common practice, namely for bilingual authors who choose to write inminoritised languages and to subsequently make their work available into the hegemonic language (Grutman

8

Some critical voices have questioned whether Spanish should be invariably considered as ‘the’ intermediary language, claiming that other languages like Portuguese (more similar to Galician than Spanish) or English could also be considered.

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2013).9 Living in diglossic10 societies characterised by a sociolinguistic conflict between their working languages, ‘individual decisions become laden with political consequences’ (Castro et al. 2017, p. 8). Among the political dilemmas originated by the asymmetries between the two languages, I would emphasise the following: (a) the degree of visibility (López Gay 2010) of the source text requested by the authortranslator and/or allowed by the Spanish publisher (i.e. whether it is presented as an original or a translation); (b) the liberties taken to recreate the text in their privileged position as rewriters of their own work (Bassnett 2013; Tanqueiro 1999), including domesticating or foreignising their texts to make them more or less palatable to the target reader; and (c) the level of ‘competitiveness’ between the two texts in a diglossic society (Dasilva 2009). When confronting these dilemmas, some bilingual authors may end up reinforcing a ‘selfminorisation process’ (Castro et al. 2017, p. 12) inasmuch as they succumb to pressures from Spanish publishers, which often invite authors to produce an ‘opaque self-translation’ (Dasilva 2011, p. 45), that is, a target text in the hegemonic language with no evidence of the first original in the minoritised language, on the grounds that the book is going to sell better. Some other authors, however, may show greater awareness of the risks involved due to the

9

The Basque and Catalan contexts have been thoroughly studied by Elisabete Manterola Agirrezabalaga (2014) and Josep Ramis (2017), respectively. 10 In sociolinguistics, diglossia refers to the asymmetrical use of two languages by the same linguistic community, leading to a hierarchical relationship between. According to Donna Patrick (2010, p. 176), at the macrolevel, a minorised language lacks status, prestige, diffusion, standardisation and a normalised functional use, in favour of another normalised language; at the microlevel, a minorised language lacks recognition by speakers of the dominant language, with speakers of the minorised language generally conforming and ultimately adopting the dominant views.

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asymmetrical position of the languages and openly renounce to translate their own work, ‘saying NO to self-translation’ (Arrula-Ruiz and Manterola Agirrezabalaga 2019, p. 267 emphasis in the original). The ways Galician women fiction writers have recently faced these dilemmas vary. I have identified three main approaches, which I classify below as invisible self-translation, visible selftranslation and double originals. Each of them has different implications in terms of the visibility and recognition potentially gained beyond (and within) the Galician border. I illustrate them in relation to the self-translation practices of Teresa Moure, María Reimóndez and Inma López Silva, three prolific, renowned and awardwinning authors in Galicia, who openly claim to be feminists.

7.2.1 Invisible Self-Translation Herba Moura, by Teresa Moure (2005), quickly became one of the most awarded books in Galician literary history. Following its success, in 2006 the Catalan translation Herba d’enamorar (2006b) and the Spanish self-translation Hierba mora (2006a) were published. As analysed elsewhere (Castro 2011), Moure slightly ‘recreated’ some visible details of the source text in her Spanish version, e.g. changing the Galician name of the main character ‘Einés’ to the Spanish ‘Inés’, and deleting the final line of the text which located the plot in the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela. The self-translation published by Lumen (an imprint of the transnational publishing corporation Random Mondadori) does not give any evidence that the book is indeed the Spanish version of a book previously published in a different language, not even in the copyright page, where no mention of the original title can be found. When the Portuguese Erva-do-diabo (2007), the Italian Le tre donne di Cartesio (2008a) and the Dutch Nachtschade (2008b) translations were published, all of them acknowledged in their copyright pages that the Spanish ‘original’ had been taken as source text, despite having professionals who could have

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On the Margins and Beyond …

translated directly from Galician.11 Perhaps the most striking consequence of this was that Portuguese readers ended up reading a story that had been recreated for a Spanish audience instead of directly accessing the Galician text, which would have been closer to the Portuguese (example.g. keeping the Galician and Portuguese name ‘Einés’ rather than the Spanish ‘Inés’). Therefore, Moure’s (un)intentional domestication of her self-translation for the Spanish reader ultimately led to the cultural appropriation of her book, presented as Spanish literature both in Spain and abroad.

7.2.2 Visible Self-Translation María Reimóndez’s (2012) En vías de extinción was the author’s fourth novel and the only one she has self-translated into Spanish, despite her being a fully qualified professional translator and interpreter. Her self-translation En peligro de extinción (2014) is clearly ‘recreated’ too, but in a different way. She takes the responsibility for all interventions and gives priority to the Galician text to the extent that Spanish-language readers are asked to position themselves in relation to it. The Spanish text was the first novel ever published by KNS, a small Galician press specialising in books for dog training, mainly translations into Spanish (often by Reimóndez herself). Although the title in Galician could have been identical in Spanish (the term ‘vías’ exists in both languages), Reimóndez exerted her privileged position as author-translator to alter it, replacing ‘vías’ (lit. ‘ways’) by ‘peligro’ (lit. danger) so that the two books could be differentiated. The copyright page of En peligro de extinción visibly states the original title and provides twice, and separately, the name of the author and the translator. The book includes a translator’s preface raising awareness about the ‘Peligros’ or dangers of cultural appropriation that a dominant, colonial reading by a Spanish-language audience may pose. It also includes plenty of explanatory 11

The latest translation into English published by Small Stations in 2018 was done directly from the Galician text.

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translator’s footnotes that remind readers of the foreignness of the text and a final glossary with cultural terms. The titles of the chapters (all the names of trees) are kept in Galician, without further explanation. The same applies to directspeech dialogues in the text, which are kept in the source language when written in standard (that is, correct) Galician. However, when the author had used a dialectal variety of Galician in her original, the source text is followed by a ‘disruptive’ translation into Spanish, offered in smaller case and square brackets. On the author’s official website12 this self-translation is listed alongside all the other translations of her books. Thus, by intentionally publishing in a Galicia-based nonliterary small press, Reimóndez is implicitly accepting the limited scope of her textual and paratextual interventions.

7.2.3 Double Originals In February 2020a, b, López Silva announced the simultaneous publication of O libro da filla (in Galician) and El libro de la hija (in Spanish), the latter published by the already mentioned Lumen imprint (Random Mondadori), where she had also published one previous invisible selftranslation. Neither of the two publications is presented as the primary or first text.13 Instead, the copyright page presents both as simultaneously published and independent from one another. Information about the process of writing and re-writing the text(s) is not available yet and will hopefully be found in paratexts (such as interviews) in the future. On the author’s official website,14 all previously translated and selftranslated books are listed in the ‘Translations’ tab, both on the Galician and the Spanish sites. This double original, however, is announced as a Galician book in the Galician version of the site and as a Spanish book in the Spanish version. 12

See https://www.mariareimondez-escritora.com/. A forthcoming textual analysis of the two books will hopefully offer more insights into the kind of liberties the author may have or have not taken. 14 See https://www.inmalopezsilva.com/. 13

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O. Castro

Pictures of the different official launches of this novel shared in the author’s social media invariably show the two books: the larger dimension of the Spanish book is unquestionably a random fact; yet, it seems to anticipate the asymmetries between the two novels. Consequently, in wanting to reach a wider audience, López Silva’s simultaneously published Spanish self-translation can be seen as a primary text, coexisting and competing for readers with the Galician text in a diglossic society.

7.3

The Case of the Anglosphere

With or without a Spanish intermediary text available for increasing the chances of a subsequent translation at a global level, Galicianlanguage women fiction writers have struggled to see their work translated into other languages— not only because of the traditional lack of women writers in translation generally but also because of the difficulties associated with less translated languages, as already argued. That said, examining the current situation in relation to the Englishlanguage book market is particularly interesting and productive for two reasons that I will explain next: (a) the openness that the book industry has been lately experiencing towards translation and (b) the recent specific initiatives developed to promote the translation of women writers. The latest Literature across Frontiers report (Büchler and Trentacosti 2015) estimates that translations of creative writing into English are overcoming the infamous 3 per cent figure, to make up 4 or 5 per cent of all publications. The number of translations is growing significantly in absolute terms, proportionally to the increasing number of books published in general, and sales of foreign fiction are rising every year (Flood 2019). A renovated interest in European languages, including languages of small countries, has been identified, mainly by newly created micro or small independent publishers who are leading the translation business (Chitnis et al. 2020). Foreign women authors, however, are still facing barriers (see Carson 2019) that prevent them from being translated into English. Out of

that meagre 4 or 5 per cent of translated literature, less than one third of books in English translation are authored by women writers (see Radzinski 2014). To challenge this, different initiatives have been put in place over the last five years, commonly referred to as WIT (Women In Translation). Examples include the #WITMonth campaign on Twitter by @WIT_Read, the Women in Translation Tumblr, the review blog Translating Women, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, Project Plume, the Year of Publishing Women or the Translating Women conference in London (for a comprehensive description, see Castro and Vassallo 2020). Despite these two favourable trends, Galician women novelists are encountering numerous checkpoints and roadblocks.15 In 1999, María Xosé Queizán became the first woman fiction writer to have a book translated into English (A semellanza, originally published in 1988, in Peter Lang). Between 2000 and 2015, a total of 19 Galician translations were published in book format, but none of them authored by women. The situation started to change in 2017 with four women novelists having their books translated into English. The Bulgaria-based small press Small Stations published authors like Ledicia Costas (Un animal chamado néboa, published in 2015) and Anxos Sumai (Así nacen as baleas, published in 2007). One year later, in 2018, it published the already mentioned Teresa Moure (Herba moura, which had come out in Galician in 2005). All of them were part of the series Small Stations Fiction. The publisher, which sells its books online, specialises in literary translation from Galician to English. In fact, a total of 15 books authored by 10 men novelists have been published so far in this series, making titles by women account for a meagre 16.6 per cent of the total. The fourth Galician writer available in translation is Eva Moreda (A Veiga é como un tempo distinto, 2011), who had her work published in English in 2019 by the London-based independent (indie) publishing group, Francis Boutle Publishers. 15

For a full description of all the Galician women in English translation, see Castro (2020).

7

On the Margins and Beyond …

For indie publishers, ‘state, supranational and third-sector funding’ (Chitnis et al. 2017, p. 12) is vital. Some funding bodies provide grants in the target context, such as those awarded by the Welsh Books Council, Arts Council England or English PEN Award, the latter being granted to Moreda’s translation by Craig Patterson, which covered for up to 75 per cent of the translation expenses. Most commonly, translation support policies come from the source cultures. Publishers interested in Galician women novelists can apply to the grants by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture (which covers all coofficial languages in Spain) or the translation grants by the Xunta de Galicia regional government (see Castro and Linares 2019 for details). Small Stations regularly gets translation grants from the Xunta, often becoming the only foreign publisher that manages to successfully secure them for translating into English. This may help understand, for example, that the Bulgarian indie company published nine titles in 2016, ‘almost half of the books from Spain coming out that year in English translation’ (Post 2019a, n.p.), having ‘literally cornered the market on Galician literature’ in the Anglosphere (Post 2019b, n.p.). The fact that Small Stations successfully secures these grants is no panacea. They present numerous formal and practical issues that hinder the application process to new publishers interested in Galician fiction as it became evident in the questions posed by different stakeholders to the translation grants coordinator, during the Internationalization of Galician Literature in English Translation symposium (see Rubal 2019). In sum, if the administration is to truly promote the internationalisation of Galician writers generally, and women fiction writers, in particular, a number of action points are urgently needed. Among them, the creation of an online translation rights catalogue, in which both women and men writers are represented, displaying the ‘selling points’ of particular books to a foreign readership. This would hopefully lead to greater diversity in the type of publishers committed to Galician fiction. A second aspect would be setting up a cultural institution with competencies in translation decision-making processes, which

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could also offer support by representing Galician writers in book fairs. Besides specific measures to rethink the purpose and design of the translation grants detailed elsewhere and the way they are disseminated (Castro and Linares 2019), it would also be crucial that all decisions about which titles presented by publishers will be awarded a translation grant, funded by taxpayer’s money, are considered from a gender approach.

7.4

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have analysed the situation of Galician women fiction writers regarding their (in)visibility beyond the Galician literary field. In doing so, I have emphasised the power of translation as a tool for intercultural exchanges and cross-border connectivity. I hope to have demonstrated that discussions about (dis)closing the gender gap in literary translation have both local and global implications. At a local level, they concern about the marginalisation that women writers may be undergoing in their source cultures, as is the case in the Galician literary field, as thoroughly examined by Moreda Rodríguez in Chap. 6. At a global level, they concern about the consequences for audiences in different target cultures who may be denied access to great foreign literature simply because it is authored by women and/or originally written in a minoritised language. Given precisely their double affiliation as women and writers in a minoritised language, my aim was to shed light both on the barriers Galician women fiction writers may face when trying to widen their readership through translation and on the strategies put in place to overcome them. In order to do so, I drew on Moreda Rodríguez’s findings about the greater degree of marginalisation experienced by some Galician women novelists—uch as Bardelás, Dacosta and Heinze —subjected to a number of additional contextsensitive factors. This provided the necessary context to frame my research about translation within a different group of Galician women novelists, i.e. those who have achieved a certain degree of visibility in their source culture.

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Regarding translation within multilingual Spain, I have identified that Galician women fiction writers often try to overcome the alleged lack of interest coming from the target cultures (Basque, Catalan and Spanish) by resorting to self-translating their own works into Spanish. The different scenarios discussed in this chapter concerned acclaimed feminist writers for whom literature is a form of social activism, and as such, they all wanted to share their feminist messages with a wider audience. Negotiating their two-fold condition as feminist women authors and Galician-language writers proved to be challenging. The three tendencies discussed suggest that self-translation into the hegemonic language may end up having undesired consequences in a number of ways: some authors may reach higher visibility by publishing with established imprints (Lumen), but they do so at the expense of being ‘appropriated’ by the Spanish target culture (e.g. Moure and López Silva); while some other authors are consciously emphasising the cultural specificity of their projects, but they do so at the expense of having very limited dissemination by being published by a small non-literary press based in Galicia (e.g. Reimóndez). As regards to the translation of fiction books by Galician women writers into English, my study revealed an immense gap, despite the openness that the English-language book market is showing to translation and despite all the recent WIT initiatives in place. Following the first novel ever translated into English and published in the USA in 1999 (Queizán), three authors were published in Bulgaria in 2017 and 2018 (Costas, Sumai and Moure) and only one was published by a UK-based publisher in 2019 (Moreda). This overview contrasts with the considerably higher number of Galician men novelists in English translation, which suggests that the marginalisation suffered by women writers has more to do with their gender and not so much with the minoritised status of the language they write in. In these circumstances, and in line with Moreda Rodríguez’s conclusions in Chap. 6 about the Galician literary field, from a translation angle claims about a ‘boom’ of

O. Castro

women novelists must be also read with caution. It is therefore urgent to reassess the already deficient translation support policies funded by the Galician government so that a gender approach is implemented. For, if literary translation allows us to improve social understandings of diversity in our multilingual world, we must not forget that readers from around the globe deserve to also get access to writing by women from minoritised contexts.16

References Arrula-Ruiz G, Manterola Agirrezabalaga E (2019) Saying ‘NO’ to self-translation: reasons for renouncing to translate one’s work in the context of asymmetric relations between Spanish and Basque. In: Bujaldon L, Bistué B, Stocco M (eds) Literary self-translation in Hispanophone contexts. Palgrave, London, UK, pp 267–286 Bassnett S (2013) The self-translator as rewriter. In: Cordingley A (ed) Self-translation. brokering originality in hybrid culture. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK, pp 13–26 Beswick J (2007) Regional nationalism in Spain: language use and ethnic identity in Galician. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, UK Branchadell A, West LM (eds) (2005) Less translated languages. Benjamins, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Braun F (1997) Making men out of people: the MAN principle in translating genderless forms. In: Kotthoff H, Wodak R (eds) Communicating gender in context. Benjamins, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp 3–30 Büchler A, Trentacosti G (2015) Publishing translated literature in the United Kingdom and Ireland 1990– 2012 statistical report, Literature Across Frontiers. https://www.lit-across-frontiers.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2013/03/Translation-Statistics-Study_Update_ May2015.pdf

16

I would like to express my disagreement with the APA Citation Style that requires references to be listed under authors’ last names and initials (rather than full first names), which is known to erase women’s contributions to academic disciplines (see Braun 1997), as well as my disappointment with the lack flexibility shown by the publisher to challenge these patriarchal norms. I would also like to emphasise that research conducted for this chapter is mainly informed by other women’s previous research (36 women out of the total of 50 authors listed in my References section). Making this explicit is indeed a way of helping close the gender gap in the academy.

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On the Margins and Beyond …

Buján Otero P (2020) He aquí la vida de una mujer literata: Traducción y género en las políticas editoriales en Galicia (2011–2018). Transfer 15:31–51 Carson M (2019) Gender parity in translation: what are the barriers facing women writers. Other Words. Lit Transl 52:37–42 Castro O (2011) Apropiación cultural en las traducciones de una obra (autotraducida): la proyección exterior de Herba moura, de Teresa Moure. In: Dasilva XM (ed) Aproximaciones a la autotraducción. Academia del Hispanismo, Vigo, Spain, pp 23–43 Castro O (2017) Women writers’ work is getting lost in translation. The Conversation. https://theconversation. com/women-writers-work-is-getting-lost-in-translation79526. Accessed 21 June 2017 Castro O (2020) Por una geopolítica feminista de la traducción: escritoras (gallegas) traducidas en el mercado editorial británico. Transfer 15:52–92 Castro O, Mainer S, Page S (2017) Introduction: selftranslating, from minorisation to empowerment. In: Castro O, Mainer S, Page S (eds) Self-translation and power: negotiating identities in multilingual European contexts. Palgrave-MacMillan, London, UK, pp 1–22 Castro O, Linares L (2019) Conclusións e propostas de acción das xornadas: a internacionalización da literatura galega en tradución ao inglés: novas oportunidades perante un mercado editorial británico en apertura. https://consellodacultura.gal/mediateca/extras/CCG_pr_ 2019_Conclusions-e-Propostas-de-Accion-paraTraducion-Literatura-Galega-ao-Ingles.pdf Castro O, Vassallo H (2020) Women writers in translation in the UK: The ‘Year of Publishing Women’ (2018) as a platform for collective change? In: von Flotow L, Kamal H (eds) The Routledge handbook of translation, feminism and gender. Routledge, London, UK, pp 127–146 Chitnis R, Stougaard-Nielsen J, Atkin R, Milutinović Z (2017) Report: translating the literatures of smaller European nations: a picture from the UK, 2014–2016. https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/arts/research/ translating-lits-of-small-nations/Translating%20Smaller% 20European%20Literatures%20Report(3).pdf Chitnis R, Stougaard-Nielsen J, Atkin R, Milutinović Z (eds) (2020) Translating the literatures of small European nations. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, UK Comellas Casanova P (2007) La traducció del gallec al català i del català al gallec des de 1975: Símptoma d’unes relacions culturals? In: González Fernández H, Xesús Lama López M (Coords.) Actas VII AIEG. Mulleres en Galicia: Galicia e os outros pobos da península. Ediciós do Castro, Sada, Spain, pp 911–948 Comellas Casanova, P (2016) La traducción literaria en el ámbito catalán (y un apunte sobre el aranés). In I. Galanes Santos A, Luna Alonso S, Montero K, Rodríguez Fernández A (eds) La traducción literaria. Nuevas investigaciones. Comares, Granada, Spain, pp 133–152 Costas L (2015) Un animal chamado néboa. Xerais, Vigo, Spain

81 Costas L (2017) An animal called mist, [translated by Jonathan Dunne]. Small Stations, Sofia, Bulgaria Dasilva XM (2009) Autotraducirse en Galicia: ¿bilingüismo o diglosia? Quaderns 16:143–156 Dasilva XM (2011) La autotraducción transparente y la autotraducción opaca. In: Dasilva XM, Tanqueiro H (eds) Aproximaciones a la autotraducción. Academia del Hispanismo, Vigo, Spain, pp 45–68 Flood A (2019) Translated fiction enjoys sales boom as UK readers flock to European authors. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/06/ translated-fiction-enjoys-sales-boom-as-uk-readersflock-to-european-authors. Accessed 6 March 2019 Francí Ventosa C (2016) La traducción literaria en España 1980–2015. In: Galanes Santos I, Luna Alonso A, Montero Küpper S, Rodríguez Fernández A (eds) La traducción literaria: Nuevas investigaciones. Comares, Granada, Spain, pp 115–132 Galanes Santos I (2010) Panorama da literatura traducida en Galicia (1980–2008): fluxos literarios peninsulares. In: Gallén E, Lafarga F, Pegenaute L (eds) Traducción y autotraducción en las literaturas ibéricas. Peter Lang, Bern, Switzerland, pp 109–124 Galanes Santos I, Luna Alonso A, Küpper M, Rodríguez Fernández A (eds) (2016) La traducción literaria. Nuevas investigaciones. Comares, Granada, Spain Gallén E, Lafarga F, Pegenaute L (eds) (2010) Traducción y autotraducción en las literaturas ibéricas. Peter Lang, Bern, Switzerland Grutman R (2013) A sociological glance at self-translation and self-translators, in self-translation. In: Cordingley A (ed) Brokering originality in hybrid culture. Bloomsbury Academic, New York, NY, pp 63–80 López Gay PL (2010) Apuntes sobre la visibilidad en la autotraducción realizada a, o entre, lenguas ibéricas. In: Gallén E, Lafarga F, Pegenaute L (eds) Traducción y autotraducción en las literaturas ibéricas. Peter Lang, Bern, Switzerland, pp 281–294 López Silva I (2020a) El libro de la hija. Lumen, Barcelona, Spain López Silva I (2020b) O libro da filla. Galaxia, Vigo, Spain Luna Alonso A (2007) Imaxes e representación do Outro: a literatura galega cara ás linguas do Estado español. In: González Fernández H, Xesús Lama López M (eds) Actas VII AIEG. Mulleres en Galicia: Galicia e os outros pobos da península. Ediciós do Castro, Sada, Spain, pp 985–996 Luna Alonso A (2017) O papel da tradutora no campo literario galego. Madrygal. Revista De Estudios Gallegos 20:147–156 Luna Alonso A, Galanes Santos I (2017) A tradución entre as culturas minorizadas e a cultura galega. Intercambios contemporáneos. In: López T, Malingret L, Torres Feijó E (eds) Estudos literarios e campo cultural galego. En honra do profesor Antón Figueroa. Universidade de Santiago, Santiago, Chile, pp 181–204 Manterola Agirrezabalaga E (2014) La literatura vasca traducida. Peter Lang, Bern, Switzerland

82 Manterola Agirrezabalaga E (2016) La traducción literaria en el País Vasco. In: Galanes Santos I, Luna Alonso A, Montero Küpper S, Rodríguez Fernández A (eds) La traducción literaria. Nuevas investigaciones. Comares, Granada, Spain, pp 177–204 Manterola Agirrezabalaga E (2020) La interacción entre feminismo, traducción y lengua vasca. Transfer 15:142–167 Montero Küpper S (2012) De la literatura gallega a la literatura mundial: Las obras literarias gallegas traducidas después de 1980. In: Fernández Rodríguez A, Galanes Santos I, Luna Alonso A, Montero Küpper S (eds) Traducción de una cultura emergente: la literatura gallega en el exterior. Peter Lang, Bern, Switzerland, pp 109–129 Moreda E (2011) A Veiga é como un tempo distinto. Xerais, Vigo, Spain Moreda E (2019) Home is like a different time [translated by Craig Patterson]. Francis Boutle Publishers, London, UK Moure T (2005) Herba moura. Xerais, Vigo, Spain Moure T (2006a) Hierba mora. Lumen, Barcelona, Spain Moure T (2006b) Herba d’enamorar, [translated by Pere Comellas]. La Campana, Barcelona, Spain Moure T (2007) Erva-do-diabo, [translated by Jorge Fallorca]. Difel, Algés, Portugal Moure T (2008a) Le tre donne di Cartesio, [translated by Roberta Bovaia]. Corbaccio, Milan, Italy Moure T (2008b) Nachtschade, [translated by Dorotea ter Horst]. Signatuur, Utrecht, The Netherlands Moure T (2018) Black Nightshade, [translated by Philip Krummrich]. Small Stations, Sofia, Bulgaria Patrick D (2010) Language dominance and minorization. In: Ösma J, Verschueren J (eds) Society and language use. Benjamis, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp 166–191 Post C (2019a) Books from Spain [By the Numbers]. https://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/ threepercent/2019/01/02/books-from-spain-by-thenumbers/ Post C (2019b) Why are preview lists [Galician Literature + Positivity]. https://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/ threepercent/2019/01/22/why-are-preview-lists-galicianliterature-positivity/ Queizán MX (1988) A semellanza. Sotelo Blanco, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

O. Castro Queizán MX (1999) The Likeness, [trans. Ana María Spitzmesser]. Peter Lang, New York, NY Radzinski M (2014) Women in translation: the one with charts. https://biblibio.blogspot.com/2014/05/womenin-translation-one-with-charts.html Ramis J (2017) Autotraducció: de la teoría a la pràctica. Eumo, Vic, Spain Reimóndez M (2012) En vías de extinción. Xerais, Vigo, Spain Reimóndez M (2014) En peligro de extinción [translated by María Reimóndez]. KNS, Santiago de Compostela, Spain Ríos C, Palacios M (2005) Translation, Nationalism and Gender Bias. In: Santaemilia J (ed) Gender, sex and translation. The manipulation of identities. St. Jerome, Manchester, UK, pp 71–80 Rubal C (2019) As axudas á tradución e políticas de apoio á literatura galega en inglés, presented at Symposium The Internationalization of Galician Literature in English Translation: New Opportunities in a More Welcoming Irish/British Book Market, Consello da Cultura Galega, 17–19 June 2019. Santiago de Compostela, Spain. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=vmPcbQH3oXw Santoyo JC (2010) Autotraducciones intrapeninsulares: motivos históricos, razones actuales. In: Gallén E, Lafarga F, Pegenaute L (eds) Traducción y autotraducción en las literaturas ibéricas. Peter Lang, Bern, Switzerland, pp 365–379 Sumai A (2007) Así nacen as baleas. Galaxia, Vigo, Spain Sumai A (2017) That’s how whales are born [translated by Carys Evans-Corrales]. Small Stations, Sofia, Bulgaria Tanqueiro H (1999) Un Traductor Privilegiado: El Autotraductor. Quaderns 3:19–27 Vilavedra D (2018) Singularidades da articulación sociodiscursiva da narrativa galega de autoría feminina. In: Boguszewicz M, Garrido González A, Vilavedra Fernández D (eds) Identidade(s) e xénero(s) na cultura galega: unha achega interdisciplinaria. Warsaw University and Xunta de Galicia, Warsaw, Poland, pp 167–194

8

Color Me Color Struck: Colorism in Popular Culture Vis À Vis the Visual Canon of Lupita Nyong’o, Robin Rihanna Fenty, and Serena Williams Courtney C. Young

Abstract

This chapter investigates how colorism has troubled the star narratives of three of the biggest global celebrities of African descent: Oscar-winning actress Lupita Amondi Nyong’o, pop icon and beauty/fashion mogul Robin Rihanna Fenty, and tennis legend Serena Jameka Williams. In examining colorism in contemporary, American celebrity visual culture, as contextualized through the stardom of these three women, insights into how colorism coronates which Black female celebrities are seen as the most authentic, the most commercial, and the most valuable in the star system can be gleaned. Furthermore, this chapter explores how colorism functions for Black people working in predominantly “white spaces” (Anderson 2015, pp. 10–21) and the specific ways colorism exacerbates the gender gap (Reece 2020). This chapter pairs with Chapter 9, both working to elucidate a lengthy and layered history (Reece 2018, pp. 3–21), with the support of literary and visual texts, into how skin color has worked to determine the success, or lack thereof, of people of African descent, especially women. Chapter 9 offers historical context for colorism

C. C. Young (&) Lafayette, USA e-mail: [email protected]

through literary analysis, while this chapter examines the contemporary consequences of colorism on women of African descent with an emphasis on beauty, professional opportunities, and visibility in predominantly white spaces.

8.1

Introduction

August 26, 2016. After the annual MTV Video Music Awards, hip-hop producer and entrepreneur Swizz Beatz (née: Kasseem Dean) posted a photograph to his Instagram account1 that captured the attention of the global press and fans alike. Seated at a table in the posh New York pizzeria Pasquale Jones with hip-hop icon Jay-Z (née: Shawn Carter), music executive and entrepreneur Steve Stoute, rapper, producer, and fashion director Kanye West, and founder of Bad Boy Records, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, the wife or paramour of each musical giant stood behind him —Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Lauren Branche Stoute, Kim Kardashian-West, and R & B singer Cassie, respectively. The photograph instantly went viral, partly due to intersecting envy and wonder at the mega-watt, high-profile dinner where a couple of billion dollars in collective net worth dined; and partly because of frustration with the problematic gender politics inherent in the photograph as the wives/girlfriends (each successful 1

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJr01KcBxE0/.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_8

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in her own right) stood adoringly behind their husbands/partners who sat confidently and gleefully, most with a drink in hand. But a faction of social media, Black Twitter,2 in particular, called attention to the visual similarities among the women. Each wife/girlfriend, pale-skinned to the lightest brown, reflected a narrow prism of beauty. Though each woman varied in body type and ethnicity, they were all phenotypical doubles, initiating a conversation about colorism. A photograph worth a thousand words, it revealed that five of the most successful and influential men in music history chose partners who, more or less, share complementary physical characteristics, framing an argument for the primacy of women, especially though not exclusively in entertainment, who are closer in visual cues to whiteness both as love interests and as the ‘best’ representatives of their respective fields. Thus, if colorism, intersecting with other forms of marginalization (sexism, racism), widens the gender gap between Black male and female celebrities, what is the impact of this reality on the professional and personal lives of three, highly visible Black women—Lupita, Rihanna, and Serena?

8.2

Context

Per the African American lexicon, one of the oldest ways to signify a person participating in colorism is to call that person ‘color struck.’ This

colloquial term identifies a Black person with a strong personal preference for Blacks with lighter skin tones and, conversely, pronounced disfavor for darker skinned Blacks. By definition, colorism is a type of prejudice that awards (or removes) social (Hunter 2002, p. 175–193), educational (Hannon et al. 2013, p. 281–295), financial (Reece 2020), professional (Perkins 2014), romantic (Hill 2002, p. 77–91), legal (Viglione et al. 2011) and cultural (Matthews and Johnson 2015) capital based on an individual’s phenotypical proximity to whiteness or blackness, respectively. Margaret L. Hunter further clarifies that definition by remarking that: “Research demonstrates that light‐skinned people have clear advantages in these areas, even when controlling for other background variables. However, dark‐skinned people of color are typically regarded as more ethnically authentic or legitimate than light‐skinned people.” (Hunter 2007, p. 237). The origin of the term colorism is most often attributed to the Pulitzer Prizewinning author Alice Walker3 and, from an American context, its origins are a direct offshoot of slavery. To be sure, colorism is not a phenomenon exclusive to people of African descent; it exists prevalently in global (Saraswati 2012) communities of color (Quiros and Dawson 2013). In her book White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color, Ruby Hamad expounds on this: Too black or not black enough: colorism does not always directly involve black people, but at its core it is driven by anti-blackness, by the yearning to distance oneself from blackness in order to be included in whiteness. (Hamad 2020, p. 213)

2

Dr. Meredith D. Clark, a professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, defines “Black Twitter,” in an interview with the University of Virginia Daily, as “…a network of culturally connected communicators using the platform to draw attention to issues of concern to black communities. It’s the culture that we grew up with. It’s the culture that we experienced in our lives and school, in the workplace, with entertainment—and you see conversations coalesce around specific cultural moments. I always explain to people that Black Twitter doesn’t have a gateway, a secret knock. It’s not a separate platform. It’s all in the way that people use the platform to draw attention to issues of concern to black communities…It’s just realizing that blackness is at the center of what’s happening with these interactions and being OK with that.” https://news.virginia.edu/content/black-twitter-101what-it-where-did-it-originate-where-it-headed.

Moreover, through an academic lens, “some scholars even argue that colorism is the more legitimate form of prejudice to empirically investigate since skin tone is at least a visible and measurable attribute, whereas race is largely a social construct” (Russell-Cole et al. 2013, xv).

3

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/us/colorismamazon-skin-lightning-bleaching.html.

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8.3

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Stardom

This chapter is indebted to the decades of American and international scholarship examining the peculiar condition that is celebrity or the star system. The scholarship of Dr. Richard Dyer and Dr. Paul MacDonald is especially instructive for consideration of stardom as a commodity or brand functioning within a portmanteau of imagery, labor, and capital (MacDonald 2000). Dyer writes, By image...I do not understand an exclusively visual sign, but rather a complex configuration of visual, verbal and aural signs. This configuration may constitute the general image of stardom or of a particular star. It is manifest not only in films but in all kinds of media texts. (Macdonald 2000, p. 6)

Dyer’s research concludes that the economy of stardom for A-List celebrities, like Lupita, Serena, and Rihanna, is not just a function of the engine of her fame but a constellation of factors: the nature of the gossip surrounding her, how news is communicated about her, how she functions within the American imagination, etc.; thus, one can view stardom as a gumbo4 in which each ingredient builds off of one another, engaging each of the senses. Demographic markers such as race, color, gender, age, and nationality are like the seasoning to this dish in that they influence the ‘taste,’ said star has in the public consciousness. Dr. Paul McDonald writes: While the identities of stars are highly individuated, Dyer points out that a star is never wholly unique. The images of stars appear both ordinary and extraordinary. Through their images, stars appear ordinary and like other people in society. In this sense stars are not unique because they are typical. Stars are, however, also shown to be exceptional and somehow apart from society. The wealth and looks of stars set them apart from everyday people…The images of stars are open to

a range of meanings and readings but that range is inevitably limited. At one level, the meaning of star image is constrained by content of star texts. Jack Nicholson smiles in a particular way. He speaks with a certain rhythm. Opinions may differ over whether Jack Nicholson is charming or vulgar, menacing or sexy, but it seems unlikely that his image will be read as conveying innocence and moral purity. (Macdonald 2000, p. 7)

Bound by a set of ‘texts,’ (beauty texts, being the ‘first’ texts, adversity texts, etc.) some of which illuminate her power within the Hollywood system, others constraining or marginalizing it, the methods by which Rihanna, Lupita, and Serena negotiate this push and pull against the backdrop of colorism are worthy of deeper study.

8.4

White Spaces

The Trump Administration-led United States of America is a contemporary powder keg5 of civil, political, and social unrest. As overlapping crises (the COVID-19 pandemic, historic levels of unemployment, and the movement for Black Lives’ protests against the threat of ongoing brutality from police departments and vigilantes alike, etc.) threaten to shift America into new directions, the notion of Black bodies in white spaces is achieving particular attention. The theory of white and Black spaces, pioneered by Dr. Elijah Anderson,6 postulates that when Black bodies enter traditionally white spaces such as majority or exclusively white neighborhoods, businesses, professions, etc., the climate of that space shifts as the white authority begins the immediate process of locating the reason for that Black person’s presence, reflecting an inherent tension at play—(hyper) visibility versus

4

Gumbo is a native dish of Southern Louisiana, USA; it is a combination of influences born from West African, French, Spanish, and Native American cultures and usually includes chicken, sausage and/or seafood stew over a bed of rice. A brief history of the dish may be found here: https://www.eater.com/2020/1/13/21056973/ where-did-gumbo-originate-dish-history-new-orleans.

5

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/powder% 20keg. 6 https://sociology.yale.edu/people/elijah-anderson.

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invisibility, belonging versus exclusion, acceptance versus toleration. This process exists on a continuum ranging from microaggressions to potentially fatal encounters.7 Dr. Elijah Anderson writes: For black people in particular, white spaces vary in kind, but their most visible and distinctive feature is their overwhelming presence of white people and their absence of black people. When the anonymous black person enters the white space, others there immediately try to make sense of him or her—to figure out “who that is,” or to gain a sense of the nature of the person’s business and whether they need to be concerned. In the absence of routine social contact between blacks and whites, stereotypes can rule perceptions, creating a situation that estranges blacks. In these circumstances, almost any unknown black person can experience social distance… Strikingly, a black person’s deficit of credibility may be minimized or tentatively overcome by a performance, a negotiation, or what some blacks derisively refer to as a “dance,” through which individual blacks are required to show that the ghetto stereotypes do not apply to them; in effect, they perform to be accepted. This performance can be as deliberate as dressing well and speaking in an educated way or as simple as producing an ID or a driver’s license in situations in which this would never be demanded of whites. Depending on how well the black person performs or negotiates, he or she may “pass inspection,” gaining provisional acceptance from the immediate audience.” (Anderson 2015, p. 13)

Moreover, the history-making racial junkyard of 2020 was further heightened as several8 prominent American academics9 and professionals were outed for racial fraud, in the vein of Rachel Dolezal,10 (New York Times) by 7

In 2018, two African-American men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks for sitting down and not ordering anything after a Starbucks employee deemed them suspicious. This is just one of many instances where Black bodies entering into white spaces and are immediately challenged. See the following for more information about this specific incident: https://www.vox.com/ identities/2018/4/14/17238494/what-happened-atstarbucks-black-men-arrested-philadelphia. 8 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/ the-layered-deceptions-of-jessica-krug-the-black-studiesprofessor-who-hid-that-she-is-white. 9 https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/09/18/ fresno-state-pulls-cv-vitolo-haddads-job-offer. 10 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/racheldolezal-nbc-today-show.html.

masquerading as African American or AfroLatina when, in reality, they are white. Prominent cultural critic and author Ijeoma Oluo blames, in part, colorism, for the rising frequency of this ruse. She postulated on Twitter that the primacy of whiteness and light skin is so great that, given equality across talent, hard work, and intelligence, lighter skinned women are still preferred. With a higher proportion of multiracial and fairskinned women, compared to darker skinned Black women, in academia and other high-profile professional gigs, it creates an environment in which it is easier for white women to “passenoir11” in these settings. We absolutely must talk about the role that colorism plays in this issue that continues to happen and do real harm to Black people and to antiracism work and race studies when our society treats lighter skin as an academic achievement that somehow BETTER qualifies Black people to write & speak on issues of race instead of darker skinned people who struggle in the apex of systemic racism and anti-Blackness - we get Jessica Krug & Rachel Dolezal. And I’m absolutely aware that I’m talking about this as a light skinned Black woman, my success as a writer and speaker is not exempt from this conversation at all - and I am not exempt from responsibility in how I engage with my work, my success, or how much space I take up. Personally, this has me thinking - am I creating space or just taking it? If I’m not creating space, then I’m just benefiting from the same light skinned privilege that allows these scam artists to prosper. I need to think about what I’m creating with my work and in community. [@IjeomaOluo]. (2020, September, 3)

In addition, one of the best-selling books of 2020 is The Vanishing Half by award-winning author Brit Bennett, a dramatic tale of two African American twins who are light enough to “pass.” As they grow into adulthood, one twin decides to pass as white, while the other chooses to identify as African American, inevitably affecting the women and their families for generations to come. As America publicly contends with Blackness in white spaces, the question as to which Black bodies can negotiate this reality is of special interest. 11

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/ story/2020-10-08/when-scholars-and-activists-pretend-tobe-black-an-essay.

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8.5

Lupita

There’s a part of me that will always identify with being unattractive because I spent the first few years, my formative years, um, being, not seeing myself as beautiful. But I don’t think of it as being a burden…When I think about it, I’ve spent more time on this earth being considered beautiful than being considered not. (OWN, October 29, 2019).

Lupita Nyong’o uttered these words in a sitdown interview at Oprah Winfrey’s home for her eponymous channel OWN.12 Of all three stars considered in this chapter, Lupita has been the most outspoken about the role colorism has played in her life and career, thereby creating the most robust public and visual narrative with respect to colorism of the three. Lupita’s bona fide star status is singular in many respects—she is a global, A-List movie star building a dynamic career that portends longevity while simultaneously widening the gender gap for what is seen as both beautiful and bankable, a feat that, until this moment, has never been achieved by a darkskinned female film star of African descent on a global scale. When she won her Academy Award, Lupita became the first Kenyan, the first African, the first Mexican citizen,13 and the sixth Black woman to win Best Supporting Actress. Just a year after her win, Nyong’o graced the cover of People Magazine’s ‘Most Beautiful’ issue becoming only the third Black woman in 30 years to do so. This is significant because as Judith Thurman writes in The New Yorker, “… her beauty is classically African. Two ‘most beautiful’ stars of mixed African ethnicity, Halle Berry and Beyoncé, preceded Nyong’o, in 2003 and 2012, respectively. They are both notably lighter-skinned.”14 Lupita is also the first Black woman to be the face of the Lancôme beauty brand, the second African woman and ninth

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Black woman to land the cover of Vogue, and is the first Black woman to cover Vogue four times within a 3-year period. Her films have accumulated nearly $3.5 billion dollars in Box Office earnings in the United States and Canada15 alone, with several highly anticipated projects in the works including Americanah and 355. But Lupita’s journey to the top is repeatedly marred by the Hollywood text of ‘dark skin’ being incongruous with beauty, prestige, and bankability. Her image was notoriously photoshopped on the cover of the UK’s Grazia magazine in 2017, with the editors digitally changing her hair in the photo to appear less ‘Black’ in texture. In response to the controversy, she wrote on her Instagram16 feed: As I have made clear so often in the past with every fiber of my being, I embrace my natural heritage and despite having grown up thinking light skin and straight, silky hair were the standards of beauty, I now know that my dark skin and kinky, coily hair are beautiful too. Being featured on the cover of a magazine fulfills me as it is an opportunity to show other dark, kinky-haired people, and particularly our children, that they are beautiful just the way they are. I am disappointed that @graziauk invited me to be on their cover and then edited out and smoothed my hair to fit their notion of what beautiful hair looks like. Had I been consulted, I would have explained that I cannot support or condone the omission of what is my native heritage with the intention that they appreciate that there is still a very long way to go to combat the unconscious prejudice against black women’s complexion, hair style and texture.

Moreover, one year after Lupita’s Academy Award win, Vogue reported in its ‘Queen of Katwe’ profile that, In April 2014, a Hollywood magazine ran a shocking analysis of ‘post-Oscar Lupita,’ suggesting that her future prospects were complicated and her dark skin challenged an industry predisposed to light. ‘Would Beyoncé be who she is if she didn’t look like she does?’ asked a talent agent named Tracy Christian. “Being lighter-skinned, more people can look at her image and see themselves in her. In Lupita’s case I think she has twoand-half, three years. If she can find a franchise, a

12

OWN is an acronym for Oprah Winfrey’s company, which stands for Oprah Winfrey Network. See: https:// www.youtube.com/user/OWN. 13 Lupita was born in Mexico but is of Kenyan ancestry. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2014/03/ lupita-nyongo-ended-kenya-and-mexicos-mini-feud-overher-nationality/358766/. 14 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/ lupita-in-the-mirror.

15

https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm2143282/boxoffice. https://www.instagram.com/p/BbTCfXKDjc8/?utm_ source=ig_web_copy_link.

16

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C. C. Young big crossover film, or if she’s cast by a significant filmmaker, then she’s golden, she’ll have carved out a unique path for herself. (Rubin 2016)

In the aforementioned OWN interview with Oprah, Lupita further remarked that “There’s still a misunderstanding of dark skin. I recently had a white makeup artist tell me, oh, well, you know, your skin can take anything it’s so tough. And I have very sensitive skin” (OWN 2019). The notion of Black skin and Black hair being exceptionally tough is an ode to a long history positing the Black body and dark skin as uniquely able to ‘take’ more than white skin— more pain, more heat, more pressure (Villarosa 2019). Moreover, the beauty industry in Hollywood is known for a lack of practitioners who understand how to care for Black hair and Black skin. This lends itself to the ‘misunderstanding’ Lupita speaks of and constantly has to negotiate; her Black body exists in a white space that is unsure, unmotivated, and unprepared to adapt to her differing aesthetic needs. Reading from her recent children’s book Sulwe, a semi-autobiographical text in which the title character prays to God for lighter skin, Lupita became tearful in an NPR17 interview when recalling her performing the same action at the age of five (King 2019). Lupita, like Sulwe, intuitively understood the social capital inherent to having lighter skin, especially for women. Lupita’s struggle with colorism is most pronounced within the American Hollywood system because it is built on the idea of whiteness being normative, especially for women. Though Lupita is an A-List celebrity, she has still never been the sole headliner of a film—Us, Black Panther, and Little Monsters, her most recent films, were ensemble casts, as are all her previous works. The upcoming HBO production of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah will be her first headlining production. Lupita is poised to be the star of this generation who can expand the idea in both the American and global consciousness of what is 17

National Public Radio or NPR is a non-profit media organization that produces cultural and news programming. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. https:// www.npr.org/.

beautiful but there are significant obstacles—a paucity of complex roles for women in general and women of color specifically and an unmistakable bias against dark-skinned women as leads, in Blockbuster films, romantic or otherwise (Medvedeva et al. 2017). When comparing Lupita’s rise to that of Black male global stars, the gender gap is incredibly pronounced. Denzel Washington, Idris Elba, Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman, Michael B. Jordan, Samuel L. Jackson, and Daniel Kaluuya are just some of the most bankable, celebrated Black male stars of our contemporary moment. Though Black male stardom is in no way without its marginalization and complicated history, there is more room and generosity in the public consciousness for dark-skinned Black male heartthrobs. Lupita is virtually in her own lane. Lupita’s journey to Hollywood stardom is remarkable though it shouldn’t be. She’s a talented, intuitive, and intelligent actress whose skill on-screen and poise off-screen signifies that she is living a professional life that matches her gifts, brilliance, and work ethic. However, there is a reason why she is virtually the only person in history to achieve this particular feat—achieving global fame and recognition, headlining major films, and being considered an icon of beauty— all while having prototypical African features (very dark skin, short and kinky hair, and full lips). Colorism plays a primary role. Today, there are more leading actresses of African descent than ever, i.e., Kerry Washington, Viola Davis, Gabrielle Union, and Angela Bassett to name a few. But none of these women have managed to assume the unique mantle that Lupita has ascended to.

8.6

Rihanna

Of the many “texts” that frame Rihanna’s stardom, her beauty and sultriness are undeniable parts of that script. Of the three women profiled in this chapter, Rihanna is the most conventional beauty. In a recent interview with T Magazine of the New York Times, she explained her background that.

8

Color Me Color Struck: Colorism in Popular Culture … In my own household, my father is half black, half white. My mom is black from South America. I was seeing diversity. That’s all I knew. You’re going to be black wherever you go. And I don’t know if it’s unfortunate or fortunate because I love being black.18

Rihanna further stated that “Growing up, I wanted to be darker.” Akin to the ways in which dark skin is associated with diminishing attractiveness and social clout, lighter skin can be associated with inauthenticity and a presupposed ‘better than her dark-skinned compadres attitude’. Over 90% of the Bajan population is of African descent and that population is predominantly darker skinned.19 Rihanna’s complexion and phenotype would have stood out in this environment, perhaps arming her with clout from some of her peers while estranging her from others. For this reason, it is assumed that Rihanna most often speaks about her blackness and her pride in that to distance herself from the idea that she is white adjacent. Toi Derricotte, a poet, memoirist, and professor, is the author of The Black Notebooks, a searing memoir that recounts her life experiences as an African American person who can pass for white. She writes: ‘She think she white’ was one of the worst insults hurled from childhood, rasped nearly out of the subject’s hearing. Language and body have to contort themselves in order to embody the painful meanings of double consciousness. Often black people can only say in tone, in nuance, in the set of the mouth, or in the shifting of the eyes what language alone cannot say. Perhaps because of the ambivalence we feel about language, we must put the body itself to use…’She think she white’ implied: ‘Yes, we know that in our society it is better to be white, but we have to constantly monitor that desire. If not, we may threaten the very foundation of our community, our trust and dependence on each other.’ ‘She think she white’ is not the same as ‘She wants to be white.’ It means, she think she is white. It aims not only to make the hearer think that they have done something wrong, but to assault the very idea of the self, to deal a shattering blow to the center of all thought, the self as perception. Isn’t that racism’s greatest injury. (Derricotte 1997, pp. 167–168)

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Establishing her name in music, the majority of her wealth now comes from her beauty and fashion brands making Rihanna the wealthiest female musician on the planet (Aguirre 2019). Her beauty label Fenty is known for having 50 makeup shades that include the fairest of the fair to the deepest of the dark, a feat that was rarely accomplished in the beauty world until Rihanna created her line, highlighting something that she has said is very important to her—inclusivity and range. Fashion, the beauty industry, and the pop music space are notoriously white spaces. Visually, most models, most bodies, most sounds skew toward a White esthetic. Rihanna’s insistence on a wide range of sizes for her Savage Fenty lingerie line and fashion shows and a wide spectrum of shades for her makeup line shows her making deliberate choices against what is considered normative. She is creating space for all types of Black beauty in a traditionally white sphere. However, Rihanna’s movement within these spaces is not without its own specific challenges. In a recent interview, she states. ‘You know, when I started to experience the difference – or even have my race highlighted – it was mostly when I would do business deals.’ Business deals. Meaning that everyone’s cool with a young black woman singing, dancing, partying, and looking hot, but that when it comes time to negotiate, to broker a deal, she is suddenly made aware of her blackness. ‘And, you know, that never ends, by the way. It’s still a thing. And it’s the thing that makes me want to prove people wrong. It almost excites me; I know what they’re expecting and I can’t wait to show them that I’m here to exceed those expectations’20

Despite these ever-present challenges, there were also significant benefits to her light skin as she was moving up in the music industry. Discovered by music moguls Jay-Z and L.A. Reid, her fair-skinned, green-eyed beauty was considered as much of a draw as her talent (Witt 2018) when she signed with them.

18

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/t-magazine/ rihanna-race-black-women.html. 19 https://www.gov.bb/Visit-Barbados/demographics.

20

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/t-magazine/ rihanna-miranda-july-interview.html.

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8.7

Serena

This is in stark contrast to Serena Williams who, of the three, has experienced the most flagrant disrespect to her physicality in the public sphere. Though her athletic prowess has deemed her the greatest athlete of this generation, behind the accolades, substantial prize winnings, and global fame lies a simultaneous fascination and discomfort with the visual expression of her body. In 2014, Ian Crouch writing for The New Yorker Magazine says of Serena: The bodies of athletes, both male and female, are habitually on display, yet there has been something especially contentious and fraught about the ways in which Williams’s singular appearance—musculature both imposing and graceful—has been discussed. On Twitter, during the final, some people wrote admiringly about her obvious strength and fitness, but there were also observations about the size of her butt, her thighs, and suggestions that her toned arms made her look more like a male boxer or linebacker than like a women’s tennis player. Yet, while some fixate on what they see as Williams’s masculine traits, others seem to find fault in the parts of her that might be considered more feminine: her striking on-court outfits (and off-court interest in fashion) are criticized as flashy, unserious, and self-absorbed. No one, meanwhile, seems too upset by the beautiful mini-dresses worn by the likes of Maria Sharapova, and Federer’s Wimbledon cream-blazer frippery is admired as debonair.21

Voluptuous and strong, muscular and tall, Serena is a modern-day Amazon—tough, tactical, and elite. Yet the frequency with which she is compared to a man or beast is startling. In 2018, Serena was fined following an argument with the referee Carlos Ramos in the September 2018 U.S. Open. Serena openly disagreed with Ramos’s claim that she and her coach were cheating. She threw her racquet in frustration and was fined $17,00022 despite male tennis athletes having far worse outbursts and similar disagreements with referees and less severe consequences. Mark Knight (2018), of the Herald Sun,

an Australian newspaper, drew a deeply controversial cartoon23 of Serena Williams that laid bare the basest stereotypes of the Black female form. He exaggerated Serena’s features and hair, fattened her form, and caricatured her disagreement into a juvenile, violent tantrum. Though blatantly offensive, it was not a unique rendering of Serena. In her multiple award-winning booklength poem Citizen, Claudia Rankine devotes considerable space to the deep anxiety Serena’s physicality gives to the white populace: …on December 12, 2012, two weeks after Serena is named WTA Player of the Year, the Dane Caroline Wozniacki, a former number-one player, imitates Serena by stuffing towels in her top and shorts, all in good fun, at an exhibition match. Racist? CNN wants to know if outrage is the proper response. It’s then that Hennessy’s suggestions about ‘how to be a successful artist’ return to you: be ambiguous, be white…Wozniacki, it becomes clear, has finally enacted what was desired by many of Serena’s detractors, consciously or unconsciously, the moment the Compton girl first stepped on court. Wozniacki… finally gives the people what they have wanted all along by embodying Serena’s attributes while leaving Serena’s ‘angry nigger exterior’ behind. At last, in this real, and unreal, moment, we have Wozniacki’s image of smiling blond goodness posing as the best female tennis player of all time. (Rankine 2014, p. 35–36)

Thus, it’s Serena Williams who offers the most fraught visual texts in the public sphere. At once, the most powerful, accomplished athlete on the planet, she is also a divisive star, not because of anything she has done but because of what she represents. There is not one other woman in tennis, or for that matter sports, who has the physicality she does. She could beat most if not all the male and female players in her sport. She surpasses on a daily basis the arbitrarily imposed limitations for what women and Black people can accomplish on the world stage. And for this, she is simultaneously awarded and punished. Moreover, Serena Williams has achieved her success in the overwhelmingly white space of tennis. Prior to Serena and her sister Venus’ rise,

21

https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/ serena-williams-americas-greatest-athlete. 22 https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/serena-williams-fined17000-outburst-us-open/story?id=57708181.

23

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/heraldsun-backs-mark-knights-cartoon-on-serena-williams/ news-story/30c877e3937a510d64609d89ac521d9f.

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Color Me Color Struck: Colorism in Popular Culture …

there were only a handful of African American tennis stars—Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, and Ora Washington. Tennis remained largely segregated and overtly racist and sexist well past Jim Crow.24 As Raymond Arsenault writes in Arthur Ashe: A Life: The nature of the game reinforced its exclusivity. With no equivalent to sandlot baseball or impromptu football matches on vacant fields, tennis required special equipment and a special venue. Even so, with the introduction of low maintenance concrete courts at the turn of the century, the game soon spread to public parks, schools and colleges. The expanding popularity of the game over the next twenty years brought a measure of democratization, but much of this expansion was limited to recreational tennis. With few exceptions, the world of competitive tennis remained a bastion of upperclass, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. (Arsenault 2018, p. 21)

Tennis is a sport that was born from insularity —prioritizing maleness, upper classes, and not just whiteness but WASP-ness.25 Though its stars are becoming more diverse, it has a history of being one of the more resistant to inclusivity. As Serena and her sister Venus came up on the tennis courts in the 1990s, white adults would routinely make fun of their bodies, skin tones, and hairstyles; they were often mocked in the stands. Unlike Lupita and Rihanna, Serena was constantly and overtly made aware that she was a Black body encroaching into a white space from a young age. She was constantly told that she and her sister did not belong, that they were unwelcome. This trauma was exacerbated by their unique experience of being Black, dark-skinned, female, and coming from a working-class background in a world that had very few models for anyone from similar circumstances. Despite the threats, the mocking, and the unfair judgments made against her on the court, Serena blossomed into one of the most accomplished athletes, female or male, of all time.

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8.8

Conclusion

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing. — Toni Morrison26

Black women in the public sphere have a phenomenally unique, Herculean challenge to overcome. Normative beauty ideals most often elude them or are only operational at a specific time in her journey (i.e., youth, pre-motherhood, etc.). Outside of beauty, entering into a traditionally white space poses further challenges. This difficulty is, at the time of this article, being discussed in the public sphere in a most public, frank way. Storied editor of Vogue Magazine Anna Wintour, the New York Times recently wrote a memo to her staff “acknowledging that ‘it can’t be easy to be a Black employee at Vogue,’ and that the magazine had ‘not found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators’” (Bellafante 2020). Lupita, Rihanna, and Serena, women so accomplished they are known by one name only, navigate colorism in American popular culture in both similar and distinct ways. All three lay outside what whiteness dictates as acceptable though to varying degrees. Furthermore, their challenges vary in scale and degree from their Black male counterparts in large part due to gender. Their womanhood, hues, and nationalities are an inevitable part of how their stardom sits with the average consumer. As William Faulker is famously remembered as saying, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” So is the color line that creates a paradigm that Black women must constantly negotiate—not being Black enough or being too Black, not being beautiful, not being desirable,

24

https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-jim-crowlaws/. 25 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wasp.

26

https://www.mackenzian.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2014/07/Transcript_PortlandState_TMorrison.pdf.

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and the list goes on. It’s this constant negotiation on the world stage that is fascinating, depressing, and illustrative of a larger discourse on the particular vagaries of being a talented and gifted Black woman.

References Aguirre A (2019) Rihanna talks fenty, that long awaited album and President Trump. Retrieved from: https:// www.vogue.com/article/rihanna-cover-november-2019 Anderson E (2015) The white space. Soc Race Ethnicity 1 (1):10–21 Arsenault R (2018) Arthur Ashe: A life. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY Bellafonte G (2020) Can Anna Wintour survive the social justice movement?” The New York Times Bennett B (2020) The Vanishing Half. Riverhead, New York, NY Crouch I. (2014) Serena Williams is America’s greatest athlete. Retrieved from: https://www.newyorker.com/ sports/sporting-scene/serena-williams-americasgreatest-athlete Dean K [@therealswizzz] (2016) Family zone. [Status update]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/ BJr01KcBxE0/ Derricotte T (1997) The Black notebooks: an interior journey. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co Equal Justice Initiative. (n.d.). Jim Crow Laws. Retrieved December 7, 2020, from https://eji.org/news/historyracial-injustice-jim-crow-laws/ Flaherty C (2020) Fresno state pulls CV Vitolo-Haddad’s job offer. Retreieved from https://www. insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/09/18/fresnostate-pulls-cv-vitolo-haddads-job-offer Garcia S (2019) Rihanna on race. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/ t-magazine/rihanna-race-black-women.html Hamad R (2020) White tears/brown scars: how white feminism betrays women of color. Catapult, New York, NY Hannon L, DeFina R, Bruch S (2013) The relationship between skin tone and school suspension for African Americans. Race Soc Probl 5:281–295. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s12552-013-9104-z Hill ME (2002) Skin color and the perception of attractiveness among african-americans: Does gender make a difference? Soc Psychol. Quart 65(1):77–91 Hunter ML (2002) If you’re light you’re alright: Light skin color as social capital for women of color. Gend Soc 16(2):175–193 Hunter ML (2007) The persistent problem of colorism: Skin tone, status and inequality. Sociol Compass 1 (1):237–254 John A (2014) Lupita Nyong’o ended Kenya and Mexico’s mini-feud over her nationality. Retrieved

C. C. Young from. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/ 2014/03/lupita-nyongo-ended-kenya-and-mexicosmini-feud-over-her-nationality/358766/ Johnson K, Perez-Peña R, Eligon J (2015) Rachel Dolezal, in center of storm, is defiant: ‘I identify as black.’ The New York Times. Retrieved from. https:// www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/rachel-dolezal-nbctoday-show.html July M (2015) A very revealing conversation with Rihanna. The New York Times. Retrieved from. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/t-magazine/ rihanna-miranda-july-interview.html Kaplan E (2020) Opinion: what’s going on with all the white scholars who try to pass as black. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/ books/story/2020-10-08/when-scholars-and-activistspretend-to-be-black-an-essay King N (2019) Lupita Nyong’o on ‘Sulwe’. Retrieved from. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/17/770848643/ lupita-nyongo-on-sulwe Landor AM, Simons LG, Simons RL, Brody GH, Bryant CM, Gibbons FX, Granberg EM, Melby JN (2013) Exploring the impact of skin tone on family dynamics and race-related outcomes. J Family Psychol: JFP: J Div Family Psychol Am Psychol Associat (Div 43), 27(5):817–826. https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0033883 MacDonald P (2000) The star system: Hollywood’s production of popular identities. Wallflower Publishing Limited, London, UK Matthews T, Johnson GS (2015) Skin complexion in the Twenty-First century: The impact of colorism on african american women. Race Gender and Class. 22 (1–2):248–274 Medvedeva Y, Frisby C, Moore J (2017) Celebrity capital of actresses of color: A mixed methods study. Adv J Commun 5(3):183–203 Merriam-Webster (nd) Powder Keg. In: MerriamWebster.com dictionary. Retrieved December 7, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/powder%20keg Merriam-Webster (nd) WASP. In: Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved December 7, 2020, from https:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wasp Morrison T (1975) A humanist view. Retrieved from https://www.mackenzian.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2014/07/Transcript_PortlandState_TMorrison.pdf Norwood KJ (2015) If You is White, You’s Alright…: Stories About Colorism in America. Washington University Global Studies Law Review. Vol. 14 (Issue 4). Nyong’o, L (2019) Sulwe. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY Nyong’o L [@lupitanyongo] (2017) As I have made clear so often in the past with every fiber of my being, I embrace my natural heritage. [Status update]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/BbTCfXKDjc8/? utm_source=ig_web_copy_link Nyong’o L. Retrieved from. https://pro.imdb.com/name/ nm2143282/boxoffice

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Color Me Color Struck: Colorism in Popular Culture …

Oluo I [@IjeomaOluo] (2020) We absolutely must talk about the role that colorism plays in this issue that continues to happen and do real harm to Black people and to anti-racism work and race studies. [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/IjeomaOluo/status/ 1301611476428288000 OWN (2019) Oprah at Home with Lupita Nyong’o and Cynthia Erivo. Retrieved from. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=pDsE3p7PFUI&t=650s Perkins RM (2014) The influence of colorism and hair texture bias on the professional and social lives of black women student affairs professionals. LSU Doctoral Dissertation. Quiros L, Dawson BA (2013) The color paradigm: The impact of colorism on the racial identity and identification of Latinas. J Human Behav Soc Environ 23 (3):287–297 Rankine C (2014) Citizen: An American lyric. Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota Reece RL (2018) Genesis of U.S. colorism and skin tone stratification: Slavery, freedom and mulatto-black occupational inequality in the late 19th century. Rev Black Politic Econ 45(1):3–21 Reece RL (2020) The gender of colorism: Understanding the intersection of skin tone and gender inequality. J Econ, Race, Policy. Retrieved from. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s41996-020-00054-1.pdf Reid W (2018) Black twitter 101: What Is It? Where did it originate? Where is it headed?. Retrieved from. https:// news.virginia.edu/content/black-twitter-101-what-itwhere-did-it-originate-where-it-headed Rubin E (2016) Lupita Nyong’o: I want to create opportunities for people of color. Retrieved from. https://www.vogue.com/article/lupita-nyongooctober-cover-village-kenya-africa-queen-of-katwe Russell-Cole K, Wilson M, Hall RE (2013) The color complex: The politics of skin color in a new millennium, 2nd edn. Random House, New York, NY Saraswati LA (2012) Malu: Coloring shame and shaming the color of beauty in transnational Indonesia. Fem Stud 38(1):113–140

93 Staff Writer (2018) Herald sun backs Mark Knight's cartoon on Serena Williams. Retrieved from https:// www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/herald-sunbacks-mark-knights-cartoon-on-serena-williams/newsstory/30c877e3937a510d64609d89ac521d9f?utm_ campaign=EditorialSF&utm_content=SocialFlow &utm_source=HeraldSun&utm_medium=Twitter Stewart E (2018) Two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks for doing nothing. Retrieved from. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/4/14/ 17238494/what-happened-at-starbucks-black-menarrested-philadelphia Thurman J (2014) Lupita in the Mirror. Retrieved from. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/ lupita-in-the-mirror Viglione J, Hannon L, DeFina R (2011) The impact of light skin on prison time for black female offenders. Soc Sci J 48(1):250–258 Villarosa L (2019) Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery – and are still believed by doctors today. The New York Times. Retrieved from. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/ magazine/racial-differences-doctors.html?mtrref= www.google.com&gwh=80BE89F5267D3891FB2 E15203BB0B35F&gwt=pay&assetType=PAYWALL Wilderson F III (2020) Afropessimism. Livelight Publishing Corp, New York, NY Williams N. It starts with the roux: Behind every bowl of gumbo there’s a complex history. Retrieved from. https://www.eater.com/2020/1/13/21056973/wheredid-gumbo-originate-dish-history-new-orleans Witt A (2018) Colorism in the music industry and the women it privileges. University of Iowa Honors Thesis Zaru D, Hoyos J (2018) Serena Williams fined $17,000 for outburst at the US Open. Retrieved from https:// abcnews.go.com/Sports/serena-williams-fined-17000outburst-us-open/story?id=57708181

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(En)gendering Complexities: A Look at Colorism in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man Philathia Bolton

Abstract

This chapter examines how colorism influenced perceptions of self and agency for people of African descent during the Jim Crow era. I pay particular attention to the formerly enslaved woman’s experience in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, arguing that even though they share the experience of having been enslaved, they were not equally situated in those experiences. I offer an intra-racial, intersectional reading of the two, as I puzzle through possible differences in their decision-making due to colorism. Significant to my discussion is the way gender factors into their experiences. For the mother in Johnson’s novel, her proximity to whiteness allows her admittance into a society that configures whiteness within a patriarchal system. Subscription to that system, I argue, proves consequential for how she locates and wields power. My reading of Morrison’s Beloved, however, indicates that being rejected by such a system due to colorism does not necessarily lead to defeat. The character Baby Suggs challenges its dictates. Her reach for agency affords recently

P. Bolton (&) University of Akron, Akron, USA e-mail: [email protected]

enslaved people new possibilities for imagining self within a paradigm of freedom. The analysis I offer, here, ultimately argues that colorism exacerbates the gender divide by reinforcing a hierarchical, white patriarchal system of governance.

9.1

Introduction

Toni Morrison in a 1985 piece titled ‘A Knowing So Deep’, since republished1 in What Moves at the Margin, writes I think about us, black women, a lot. How many of us are battered and how many are champions. I note the strides that have replaced the tiptoe; I watch the new configurations we have given to personal relationships, wonder what shapes are forged and what merely bent (p. 31).

She goes on to say, “I think about the Black women who never landed who are still swimming open-eyed in the sea. I think about those of 1

Conventionally seen as starting with the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson case, the Jim Crow era is the time in the U.S. where racial segregation in the South was upheld as legal. This decision impacted housing, education, transportation, and civic duties. Jim Crow de facto was the rule in certain parts of the North, even though it was not legal. Redlining and other discriminatory practices existed to control and limit the presence of people of African descent. Jim Crow as a system of governance was not effectively challenged until Brown versus Board of Education in 1954. The case resulted in separate being ruled unequal, which ultimately led to segregation being deemed unconstitutional.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_9

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us who did land and see how their strategies for survival became our maneuvers for power” (p. 31). In this poignant meditation, Morrison celebrates the ways Black women have benefited from a legacy of strength traced to our maternal, ancestral roots. This reaching to the past for clarity or guidance occasioned the emergence of an entire genre of literature that would be termed the neo-slave narrative. Black women, primarily during the 1970s and 80s, would feature as their subjects our slave past—and through storytelling —come to terms with contemporary realities in the United States (U.S.). Whereas many of these narratives, such as Gayl Jones’s Corregidora (1975), Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day (1988), and of course Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), to name a few, nuance the enslaved woman’s experience, with varied attention to sexual violence and gender oppression, what has yet to be fully attended is an intersectional, intra-racial reading of the same. In this chapter, I argue that due to the particularities of colorism—defined as differences in treatment experienced by people of the same race because of skin color—the enslaved woman’s life can be interrogated in ways that reveal distinctions in experiences of oppression and privilege that customarily have separated the realities of Black women from those experienced by their white counterparts. In other words, even though intersectionality, as Kimberlé Crenshaw defines it,2 has been traditionally used to qualify differences between Black women and white women, a compelling argument can be made that this type of analysis could be applied intra-racially.3 Please see the upcoming section titled ‘Intersectionality’. For discussions on intersectionality and intra-racial dynamics, consider Leslie McCall’s (2005) “The Complexity of Intersectionality” and Gail Lewis’s (2013) “Unsafe Travel: Experiencing Intersectionality and Feminist Displacements.” The former, in part, exposes assumptions about the existence of stable categories of identity, on which intersectional analysis relies, arguing that certain groups belie neat categorization. For the purposes of my chapter, characters who pass as white but are considered black would fit such this “aberration.” Lewis’s piece underscores the significance of categories to understanding and employing intersectionality, as it relates to identifying which kinds of differences prove 2 3

P. Bolton

Offering close readings of the novels I have selected with attention to intersectionality has historical merit. In particular, an investigative stance of early experiences of colorism, before the term was coined as such by Alice Walker, provides a point of reference for probing contemporary iterations of the same. This is a focus taken in Chap. 8 by Courtney Young. Read in tandem, one is able to see the ways in which issues of power and access to status negotiated during antebellum and Jim Crow periods are of consequence even now. In essence, ideas connected to colorism that situate individuals within a certain sociopolitical hierarchy fundamentally may not have shifted much. Our chapters help facilitate thinking through the larger trajectory of experiences, then, related to colorism. We hope to offer for consideration answers to the following questions: What has changed? What remains the same? Most significant to this conversation is the role gender plays in distinguishing experiences had by men and women when it comes to colorism, a point I seek to make most apparent in my analyses of novels by James Weldon Johnson and Toni Morrison. What better way to give shape to this discussion than to go to stories? Narratives, the world over, have functioned to orient us and to direct what we think about self and the world. Feminist critic Barbara Christian would agree. In her famed piece The Race for Theory (1988) she argues “people of color have always theorized— but in forms quite different from the Western form of abstract logic” (p. 68). She goes on to state, “I am inclined to say that our theorizing (and I intentionally use the verb rather than the noun) is often in narrative forms, in the stories we create, in riddles and proverbs, in the play with language” (p. 68). The chapter I offer for a collection that probes continuing challenges tied to gender realities acknowledges this tradition. It asks readers to consider the ways in which storytelling by people of African descent can contribute significant insights to understanding most significant in judging experiences. Both Lewis’s and McCall’s articles interrogate the strengths and limitations of intersectionality as a methodological or theoretical tool.

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complex realities of people assigned various meanings due to their physical appearances. In addition, certain narratives in religious texts, history books, and legal documents have been employed historically to disenfranchise and subordinate people of African descent. The same maligned peoples have responded to such configurations and associated oppressive realities by creatively shaping and wielding narratives to contest these violence. Looking to stories by people of African descent, then, pays homage to African American discourses of resistance and modes of autonomy that sought agency through the writing and speaking impulse. Black women were at the forefront of these actions. The close readings ahead are informed by womanist and critical race theories. They aim to clarify the varied experiences had by women of African descent due to colorism and how these experiences are further distinguished when gender is factored. I argue the novels I have chosen for study demonstrate that women of African descent, regardless of their skin color or tone, have been denied certain degrees of agency primarily due to the way gender factors, particularly when one considers select characters’ lived experiences and perceptions of self. To anchor these readings, I will offer, first, a brief look at how I conceptually orient toward intersectionality, along with a contextual point on colorism that addresses the ways it is not U.S. specific, at least in praxis.

9.2

Intersectionality

Legal scholar and professor of law Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 and used it to speak, specifically, to the ways Black women contend with systems of racism and sexism simultaneously. Crenshaw argues, “because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated” (p. 140). Given this assertion, gendered and racial experiences should be understood with

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attention to the degrees of discrimination and privilege experienced by people based on the intersection of these social categorizations and the concomitant challenges they bring due to the experiences of interlocking systems of oppression. As such, the experience of sexism for a Black woman, for example, would be quite different than the experience of sexism for a white woman. Crenshaw’s theoretical contribution has advanced conversations outside of the fields of law and converses well with second and thirdwave feminisms that seek a more nuanced, inclusive perspective on the lived experiences of diverse women. Among those who have given shape to discourses that examine the complexities of women’s lives, Alice Walker stands prominently. In her famed edited collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983), she argues that “womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender” (p. xii), which is to a say feminism that goes beyond white, middle-class women’s concerns would—in effect—render a deeper, more saturated paradigm of understanding. A womanist, offers Walker, is “a Black feminist or feminist of color….[one] who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility….Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female” (p. xi), among other features. Both Walker’s and Crenshaw’s analyses aim to address what earlier modes of feminism omit or elide. Whereas Crenshaw seems to focus on extrinsic factors contributing to systems that impact perceptions of women, their treatment, and then their eventual expressions of agency, Walker underscores agency. She looks to selfdefinition and action from women as means to navigate these systems. Walker also provides for consideration additional layers through which to read a singular, non-monolithic group’s experience: one Black woman’s experience does not equate to all Black women’s experiences. With this in mind, I return to the stories of enslaved women. In the larger history of struggles faced by U.S. women of African descent, tracing from the slavery period dating back to

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1619 to our current year: What is the same? What is different? Particularly, what are the possibilities for a deeper understanding of Black women’s experiences, from the ‘point of origin’, if we bifurcate Morrison’s (1985) claim about a legacy left that reveals “strategies for power [that have become] maneuvers for power” (p. 31)? In attending to a comparative analysis of works that center stories involving enslaved women, or recent descendants of enslaved women, I hope to show is that the enslaved woman’s experience was not a flattened one.

9.3

Colorism in Context

I am fully aware a conversation like this one privileges colorism as linked to African, diasporic experiences—or to state it more precisely—postslavery and post-colonial realities where Africa is concerned. This centering is intentional. However, it is not meant to suggest that cultures across the globe have not experienced similar dynamics reminiscent of colorism. ‘Colorism’ as a term that explains privileges afforded or denied due to skin color takes its origin in the U.S. However, India contends with a tangible caste system reified along the lines of skin color, where generally darker complexioned individuals are disadvantaged. One sees the same in Latin American cultures; differences in treatment emerge between darker skinned, Indigenous groups and the majority group (see Chaps. 4 and 5 for discussions about these differences). The experiences of peoples in certain parts of Asia and in Africa also reveal how skin color within a singular race becomes consequential. In modern times, a fixation on being lighter in appearance has influenced beauty routines, including skin bleaching.4 The combined research of scholars such as Ronald Hall, William Darity, Jr., and Yaba Blay provide ample evidence on both the historical underpinnings of these sociocultural behaviors and the ways in which attention to skin tone yet proves consequential in our contemporary, 4

Works by Yaba Blay prove helpful, here. In particular, her book (1) Drop, Shifting the Lens on Blackness.

cultural moment, most notably, experiences of marriageability and employment. Hall, a sociologist and leading expert on colorism, in his essay titled The Globalization of Light Skin Colorism: From Critical Race to Critical Skin Theory (2018), traces the burden of skin color prejudices back to ideologies espoused by Great Britain when it was a colonizing force. “Among the perpetrators of Caucasian race world order, the British were regarded as arguably the most egregious” (p. 2134) states Hall. He goes on to argue that they depicted themselves as morally and culturally superior to all of humanity, which included nonBritish Caucasian race Europeans such as the French and the Spanish. Therefore, by the time that the British arrived in the New World, their beliefs in racial superiority as a world order had assumed a powerful force in the daily life of the British common man. (p. 2134)

These entrenched ideas of white superiority would influence attitudes toward groups of people in other parts of the world as Great Britain emerged as a global, imperial force. As time passed, such ideologies would impact the ways in which peoples under their rule, or influence, would begin to think about themselves. Although I connect point of origin for colorism to Africa, Hall’s assessment involving Great Britain is not too far from my own in that African peoples and their descendants historically have served as the antithesis of the white ‘ideal’. In other words, the significance that African people and their descendants take on in conversations about colorism exists, in part, due to narratives about Africanness and Blackness constructed, promulgated, and reinforced by the histories traced to Great Britain. Sociologists T. Jerome Utley Jr. and William Darity, Jr. (2016) would assert, then, that colorism emerges from systemic racism, which deepens an understanding of colorism as being something more than just preferential treatment or lack thereof. “Colorism is arguably distinct from racism,” they argue, “since it can operate both within and upon a racial group….Nevertheless, a definite connection exists between colorism and racism” (p. 130–131). Quoting in

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this same article from another piece written by Darity, along with D. Hamilton and A. Goldsmith, they go on to say that “colorism functions as a specific type of racism associated with the stigmatization of persons with darker skin and the privileging of those with lighter skin, [arguing that] colorism would likely not exist without racism, because colorism rests on the privilege of whiteness in terms of phenotype, aesthetics, and culture” (p. 131). Margaret Hunter (2005) adds to the conversation by elucidating the connection between this “stigmatization of persons of darker skin” (p. 131) and America’s slave past. “One of the most important characteristics of a slave system is its racial nature” (p. 20), she contends. She goes on to add, The racialization of Africans was the result of racist ideology employed by many European nations to justify the enslavement and inhuman treatment of African people. This European ideological position was the beginning of the colonial mentality adopted by whites in the United States. (p. 20)

Collectively, claims offered by the scholars I have referenced illustrate how colorism, as something that historically stems from racebased, systemic oppression, would seem to privilege not only physically looking as close to white as possible; but also, that colorism carries with a markedly anti-Black sentiment. These connections are important to the intersectional, intra-racial readings I will provide on Toni Morrison’s (1987) Beloved and James Weldon Johnson’s (1912) Autobiography of an ExColored Man. They will contextualize not only why certain characters speak a certain way about self and people within their communities but also how their awareness of society’s perception of their physical bodies proves of consequence for the decisions they make for either survival or claims to power.

9.4

What the Stories Say

I turn, now, to Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) to offer an

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intersectional, intra-racial reading of two enslaved women’s experiences. Morrison’s Beloved, a novel inspired by the real-life story of Margaret Garner, centers the story of a woman named Sethe who commits infanticide. She does this in order to keep her daughter from growing up in slavery. In a series of flashbacks, we see what drives Sethe to this decision, and we also come to see the ways in which she is haunted by this action after she is no longer enslaved. Sethe’s story involves those with whom she is in the community. One such person is a mother figure named Baby Suggs who is characterized as creating a semblance of home life for enslaved people. I take into consideration what Baby Suggs contributes to this conversation. In particular, distinctions in experiences related to the impact of gender and colorism on accessing agency come into focus when one considers Baby Suggs’ response to the effects of systemic oppression on the people in her community, in comparison to what we see from the unnamed narrator’s mother in The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man.

9.4.1 Color and Exclusion In the novel Beloved, Baby Suggs’ empowers by providing a new paradigm through which to see self to those who had been systematically stripped within slavery due to race. Baby Suggs, a former enslaved person who suffered through her children being sold off and who comes to be described as “an unchurched preacher” (p. 87), renders her heart to “every Black man, woman and child who could make it through” (p. 87) to the Clearing where she delivered powerful sermons. In these sermons, Baby Suggs, holy, encouraged them to reimagine their bodies in ways that would elicit joy, intimacy, and celebration, divesting from these same bodies the powerful effects of painful, past experiences. “Let your mothers hear you laugh” (p. 87) and “Let the grown men come…Let your wives and your children see you dance” (p. 87) she would cry. “Here…in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet

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in grass. Love it. Love it hard” (p. 88). And then, in a way that meticulously pieced together within a new narrative of meaning, parts that were once framed as subjects of taxonomy by the slave driver School teacher, Baby Suggs would go on to say, in part, O my people they do not love your hands. those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them….No, they don’t love your mouth. You go to love it. This flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms….they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all the inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. (p. 88)

These words freed those who listened to engage humanity stifled by a brutalizing system of slavery, one that would have a white slaveholder train another to view a person of African descent in ways that would have that person “put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right” (p. 193). Cynthia Dobbs (1998) concurs in her article Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Bodies Returned, Modernism Revisited, stating, Morrison never shies away from recognizing the insidious notion of these bodies as mere commodities and units of (re)production in nineteenthcentury America. Instead, she clearly depicts and condemns this view as represented by the slavedriver Schoolteacher’s pseudo-scientific ledgers, which transform feeling flesh into dead specimens of science and machines of (re)production (p. 564).

What Baby Suggs does, then, is work feeling back into that flesh by identifying a sense of agency in those who listen, arming them with what they need to counter debilitating hate. She does this by leading them to locate love in a communal way: The statement “they don’t love. …backs that need support; shoulders that need arms….your neck unnoosed and straight” (p. 88) is met with “all the inside parts…you got to love them” (p. 88). Perhaps she knew survival for some who listened meant acquiescing a part of one’s humanity ‘on the inside’, to numb oneself

P. Bolton

to certain emotions because of the experience of slavery and its aftermath. That was a trauma, itself, and it was communal. Floggings would occur in front of enslaved individuals as a warning to onlookers so that the actions of the one being beaten would not be repeated. In the post-antebellum period, lynched individuals would be left prominently displayed as a sign of terror for Black communities. Narratives about the ‘dark’ nature of Africans and their descendants that was used to justify slavery informed such violent actions. Body politics in this context, then, speak centrally to the dehumanizing, communal trauma Baby Suggs sought to address. In this light, her emphasis on “inside parts” being “dark, dark liver” to be loved along with the “beating heart” (p. 88) proves quite significant. I see it as a metonymic representation of the literal dark-skinned bodies, regardless of gender, made to work as chattel slaves, to be—in the words of Dobbs (1998)—“machines of (re)production” (p. 564) and not the real, living, breathing people that they were. What Morrison does with Baby Suggs’ sermon is show how the dehumanizing experience of colorism as a facet of racism can be confronted with a new system of relationships. I find it interesting that the catalyst for this maneuver of power seems to necessitate a complete rejection of the social, governing system that maligns. The ‘they’ versus ‘our’ and ‘my people’ diction is obvious. The juxtaposition shows clear acknowledgment of not belonging. There is no investment in being accepted by the ones who “do not love” (p. 88), and so it becomes incumbent upon the ones summarily rejected to do the loving, the reconstituting, the reimagining, etcetera, themselves. This moment that acknowledges painful rejection becomes paradoxically freeing. Ways to imagine self differently offered by Baby Suggs in the beginning of her sermon escape the bounds of race and color to speak to larger issues of selfidentification and awareness. It is there in the subtext: “Cry,” she told them. “For the living and the dead. Just cry.” And without covering their eyes the women let loose. It started that way: laughing

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(En)gendering Complexities … children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried (p. 88).

The interchangeable actions of men, women, and children—especially in light of the sermon Suggs will go on to deliver—suggest a tabula rasa, awakening of sorts. The freely expressed, interchangeable actions of the people in the Clearing deny ideas about there being inherent forms of existence, especially if one subscribes to the idea that concepts like race and gender are socially constructed. In particular, if an aspect of one’s identity, such as gender, depends on what can be observably recognized through performance (Butler 1990), freely exchanging actions traditionally assigned one gender with the other gender serves to show the fluidity of identity. The possibilities are revolutionary for people confined to servitude and inhumane treatment due to fixed ideas attached to their bodies. These people in the Clearing are nameless, faceless individuals. We do not get to follow their stories in the larger arc of Beloved. We do not know if they go on to get property, secure educations, or find their way into mainstream society. We do know, however, that Baby Suggs pointedly ushers them into a realm of existence that provides a language by which they can navigate a yet hostile society. We also can conclude that based on their experience of chattel slavery, these individuals are not positioned to capitalize on opportunities in the ways that other enslaved individuals might have. Here is where the ways in which Baby Suggs’ influence as a governing force differs from the mother of the unnamed narrator we encounter in the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. The way forward depends upon particular, intra-racial class dynamics within the system of slavery; these individuals are “classed” differently.

9.4.2 What Looks like Inclusion The novel by James Weldon Johnson, although legitimately framed as a Harlem Renaissance text, as it was reissued in 1927, was originally

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published in 1912 anonymously by the same author. It was intended to be read as a real autobiography of a person of African descent light enough to pass as white. Withholding the name of the writer worked well rhetorically to establish credibility, seeing as though anyone who would be racially passing would not want his or her true identity exposed. Considering this context, and given the fact the narrator offers the story in retrospect as an adult, it is easy to surmise that his mother grew up in the South during the antebellum period5 or very shortly thereafter. Additional context clues are given from him about her life in the South, and the fact that she was able to secure employment as a seamstress in the North, further suggests her past experience of slavery varied significantly from the enslaved persons we meet in Beloved. Brenda Stevenson (2013) in What’s Love Got to Do with It: Concubinage and Enslaved Women and Girls in the Antebellum South notes that stories, such as the one about Louisa Picquet, represent thousands of others about women experiencing concubinage in the antebellum South. In speaking of her story, she mentions that Piquet was born in the late 1820s to a mother named Elizabeth who was a seamstress for and of domestic help to the mistress of the plantation. Stevenson goes on to say “Elizabeth was the ‘quadroon’ concubine of her owner James Hunter Randolph, by night” (p. 99) and would go on to have a baby by him that would look white. In striking ways, Elizabeth’s story parallels the one we receive about the mother in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, a woman who worked as “the sewing girl of [his] father’s mother” (p. 818) and who is described as being almost brown. 5

Historians traditionally classify this time period as the years between the War of 1812 and the civil war. Considering slavery existed during British Colonial America, this distinction has become an important one. The proliferation of slavery due to the cotton industry, and the fact that generations of African-descended people were being born in the U.S. at this point instead of being brought from West Africa, also makes the distinction significant. Contextually, for the mother of the unnamed narrator, as a youth she would have known of or experienced a well-established, hierarchical system of slavery.

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In speaking of her past, the narrator of the novel is coy about directly identifying her as a formerly enslaved person. And this, in part, could be the result of how she raised him to not see himself as Black. The narrator finds out about his African ancestry in school when a teacher asks him to sit with other students of color after having initially stood with the white ones. The teacher knew of his mother’s African ancestry because she used her services as a seamstress.6 It is a watershed moment for him. When he questions his mother about his race, after she asks him if he is a nigger, she replies, ‘No, my darling, you are not a nigger.’ … ‘You are good as anybody; if anyone calls you a nigger, don’t notice them.’ …. He goes on to ask, ‘Well, mother, am I white? Are you white?’ She answered tremblingly: ‘No, I am not white, but you—your father is one of the greatest men in the country— the best blood of the South is in you—’ (p. 809).

In stark contrast to what Baby Suggs in Beloved does when faced with those who wrestle with their worth because of the way they have been raced, the mother—here—encourages her child to cash in on his whiteness instead of imagining his Blackness in positive ways. In so doing, she distances herself from him and locates him ironically within his father’s heritage to free him from the ‘stigma’ of having African ancestry. Colorism factors, here, as well. In this scene in which the narrator questions his mother, he concedes that he sees her different, now that he is aware of his African ancestry, “I had thought of her in a childish way only as the most beautiful woman in the world; now I looked at her searching for defects. I could see that her skin was almost brown” (p. 809). This new search for something different in his mother’s appearance only occurred because of the narrator’s 6

In the U.S., it became a legal reality during slavery and afterwards that a person need only have traceable African ancestry to be considered Black. It did not matter if one looked Black phenotypically; knowledge of family ties was all that was necessary to enforce the law. This was considered the one-drop of black blood rule. This law, during slavery, served to control ideas around identity classification and ownership of enslaved individuals. During Jim Crow, the law functioned to keep people of African descent disenfranchised.

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knowledge of his Blackness. Before this knowledge, any traces of his mother being browned seemed lost to him. In fact, as worded, the knowledge itself seems to push her toward being marked brown or of African descent physically; she is “almost (italicized) brown” (p. 809) To be interpreted differently, it would mean that her skin tone bears no hint of brown, that she is almost white in appearance. Readers later learn that the narrator’s mother was the “sewing girl of [his] father’s mother; [his father], an impetuous young man home from college; [the narrator], the child of this unsanctioned love” (p. 818). Even though she talked freely with him about “things directly touching her life and [his] and of things which had come down through the ‘old folks’” (p. 818), he is careful to not name those things that could be racially specific or to identify those ‘old folks’ as enslaved relatives. This detachment could have been fostered due to the vacuum created by his mother in her denying him access through storytelling to his African roots. She did so, arguably, to advance a desire she shared with his father to see him receive a good education and become a man of value. She shouldered, tactically, this burden alone, as his white father would send money to them and would go on to have a white family, leaving his loved child and mother behind. She also, before her child was ‘outed’, limited her time outside of the home, providing him more of a chance to be perceived racially as white and afforded all of the rights and privileges that would have been denied him had his African heritage been known. Sociologists Verna Keith and Cedric Herring (1991) provide historical context on situations like the one illustrated in this novel. This context demonstrates the way colorism privileged certain groups intra-racially. Conceding the controversial nature of E. Franklin Frazier’s (1957) study, Keith and Herring go on to summarize and include in their own essay titled Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community. They offer: Frazier (1957a) argued that mulattoes, blacks with white progenitors, led a more privileged existence when compared with their “pure black” counterparts. During slavery, these fair-skinned blacks

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(En)gendering Complexities … were at times emancipated by their white fathers. After slavery, their kinship ties to whites gave them an advantage over other blacks in obtaining education, higher-status occupations, and property. Because “the majority of prominent Negroes, who were themselves mulattoes, married mulattoes” (Frazier 1957a, p. 257), light-complexioned blacks passed advantages on to their light children. This process of advantage maintenance by mulattoes lasted well into the 20th century (Landry 1987). So one’s position in the community ultimately reflected the amounts of “white blood” (my emphasis) in his or her ancestry, and patterns of stratification in the black community included considerations of skin tone. (p. 762)

As these scholars point out, intra-racial dynamics reveal a reinforced, race-based hierarchy that privileged whiteness in ways that showed differences in the experience of oppression among people of African descent. For those in proximity to whiteness due to both exposure to acquiring skill sets (e.g., sewing and reading) and literal genetic ties, which provided a phenotypic presentation of whiteness, more was available to navigate an oppressive, racist society. But did this positioning for a materially better life actualize real power and a sense of well-being? When one returns to Baby Suggs’ sermon in the Clearing, we see clues for a possible response. The Du Boisian7 ‘us’ and ‘them’ language she uses makes evident the divide between her sociopolitical world and the one her oppressors locate. One could argue this exclusion forges a community bond in the re-constitution process for those deemed dark and undesirable. She—a Black woman—leads in this process. Perhaps this charge was out of necessity or for survival. However, as I argued earlier, what became possible through exclusion was a path for new ways of imagining self not dependent upon the confining narratives promulgated by those who did the rejecting. In contrast, ‘admittance’ to mainstream, white society seems possible, even if tenuous, for the narrator and his mother in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Having their particular skin 7

I refer to W.E.B. Du Bois (2003) here. He argues in The Souls of Black Folk that there exists two worlds, a black and a white one, and that this attention to the colorline would be a defining challenge of the twentieth century.

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tone (the narrator being perceived as white by classmates and others, unless told differently), while being legally recognized as Black people vexes the idea of a color line that neatly separates the “Black” and “white” worlds. It makes imaginable their being able to locate, as people of African descent, a position within a world experienced by white counterparts. No ‘us’ and ‘them’ language is used, here. In fact, the mother points to the narrator’s patrilineal legacy as a way to orient. Gender emerges as symbolically significant. Historically, the legal status of enslaved people in the U.S. was tied to mothers.8 If one’s mother was enslaved, it did not matter if one were born to a white father, the child at birth would be deemed property and not free. This law resulted in a system of skin tone variance within slavery but with the same legal status held by all. By moving North in the years following the manumission of slavery, and by essentially severing ties with her family, the mother of the narrator seeks to situate her son within her white father’s legacy—instead of hers—and therefore afford him freedom that would otherwise be denied him as someone of African descent with the history of slavery. Pointing to the father reinforces a white supremacist, patriarchal system that disadvantages people of African descent as a whole and penalizes Black women, in particular, tasked with shouldering the legal burden of their families’ oppression. Her son goes on to ‘racially pass’ at the end of the novel. He traverses society freely during the Jim Crow era as an accountant, has a white wife, and raises a family. As a white man of African descent, his gender affords him options his mother could not realize for herself. She, unlike her son, stayed hidden in the home as a seamstress and largely isolated from the larger community in the North. Even if she were markedly white, phenotypically, seeking to create a life for herself as an unmarried woman without a record 8

To ensure legal claims to progeny by enslaved mother, and therefore stabilize the enterprise of slavery, legislators passed an act in 1662 that guaranteed rights to any children born to an enslaved woman, regardless of the race or legal status of the father. Virginia Statutes: Act XIII (1662).

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of familial ties would hinder attempts at being situated well within ‘good’ society, especially during the Progressive era.9 In part due to the influence of the cult of true womanhood or domesticity, a woman’s virtue—particularly as it relates to white women—was much more contested than that of her male counterparts. Nonetheless, in comparison to someone like Baby Suggs and Sethe, the mother in this story does not live on the outskirts of society, even if she is hidden. She is able to access the capital gains of white society through an acquired skill, provide her child a good education and piano lessons, and keep a nice cottage. Her son as a youth, in fact, does not just believe he is White, until informed otherwise. Due to primarily class markers, he also sees himself as “a perfect little aristocrat” (p. 805). For all intents and purposes, their lives seem better than those of the formerly enslaved individuals in the Clearing who seek healing from Baby Suggs’s sermon.

9.4.3 Re-Thinking Skin-Color Privilege This comparative analysis fervently supports the idea that advantages had by light-skinned women outweigh those experienced by their darker skinned counterparts, especially when viewed through the prism of colorism. However, when returning to the communal experiences had by both women, this reading on advantages obtained due to colorism is complicated. The nature of lived advantages, especially when imagining strength to overcome as gained from a collective, depends upon the interconnectedness of self and group identification. I began the chapter by 9

This was a time in the U.S. (late 1800s–1920) is marked by industrialization and increased attention to the suffragist movement by upper middle-class white women, most of whom still resided in the home. Ideas of piety, domesticity, being submissive and being chaste were still promulgated as connected to true womanhood. The prevailing ideology for women of this class was that the woman’s place was still in the home. Outside of this prescription would be women who were working poor and or of color who could not afford to stay at home and not contribute income.

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drawing from Toni Morrison’s thoughts on Black women. She uses ‘we’ and ‘us’ throughout the passage, evoking a powerful rhetorical strategy of identification through the first-person plural. The effect is to cause Black women to see themselves as sharing a legacy tied to those who battled through and overcame, untold feats to survive and find power within an antagonistic society. Strength, as argued in the subtext of this meditation of sorts from Morrison, comes from the collective and from memory of the collective. However, to benefit from this, one must be located within the group. We see the power of this assumed location illustrated poignantly in the scene that shows Baby Suggs ministering to the enslaved individuals. For those figuratively and literally situated in Blackness, in the Clearing, they were able to draw strength from her words and their shared experiences. This communal moment opened possibilities for a reframing of Self that rejected the stigma of Blackness in search of healing and a positive racial sense of self. This racial ‘location’, then, shows itself as both a place of empowerment and oppression, for to participate in the acquisition of this particular iteration of strength, one must wholly accept the legacy of Blackness. Lighter complexioned Black women, those not necessarily classified as ‘mulatto’, forfeited any strength gained from the collective when making decisions to maximize benefits acquired through proximity to whiteness. For the unnamed narrator’s mother in Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, she—in effect—enters a tragic mulatto paradigm by severing ties with her African ancestry. She is not in contact with any of her Black relatives and does not recall—or remember—any of them freely with her son before he enquires about his race. After he reads Harriet Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he finds the courage to ask his mother about that side of their family. The lesson she wants to impart to him is that he is as “good as anybody” (p. 809). Contextually, this could be interpreted to mean as good as anyone who is white. By subscribing to a hegemonic, cultural narrative she passes to her son a chosen legacy of exclusion that makes assimilating his African ancestry difficult to near

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(En)gendering Complexities …

impossible. This choice, in part, is due to her proximity to whiteness, to not feeling as excluded from participating as fully as her darker skinned counterparts. As Audre Lorde (1984) suggests in The Master’s Tools, if one benefits from a system more than one is dissatisfied with it, that system will not be effectively contested. She argues, Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women….know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support (p. 3).

As this quote makes clear, navigating one’s reality in ways that fit ‘society’s definition’ of what proves ‘acceptable’, particularly if such definitions work to one’s detriment, ultimately will not prove most satisfying. Lorde (1984) argues such an acquiescence prohibits genuine change because it denies the co-existence of differences that authenticate the depth of our experience. This is where the dual ideas of ‘strategies for survival’ versus ‘maneuvers for power’ for people of African descent turn on their heads. Could one really be free within a system that denies a full expression of an imaged self? Even if, for example, the narrator lives a life unencumbered by the dictates of Jim Crow, denying a part of himself to do this complicates this obtainment of power. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man ends with the narrator reflecting on his love of music often raced as Negro in the U.S. and his decision to leave it and Black people behind. He ponders: My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage. (p. 883)

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His ambivalence about racially passing deepens when one considers the biblical allusion to the story of Jacob and Esau. Both were fraternal twins of Isaac. Esau should have received the birthright blessing from his father. However, Esau allowed Jacob to trick him out of it due to Esau’s hunger for stew. Perhaps in jest, he told Jacob he could have the birthright if Jacob would allow him the food. While Esau was away from their father, Jacob approaches their father, blind and dying, and convinces him that he, Jacob, is Esau. Jacob ends up receiving the blessing and is able to keep it, even after the trickery is discovered. The narrator’s use of this story could indicate that he believed he was tricked into seeing racial passing as affording the best life. And, like Esau, he struggled with his ultimate decision to satisfy ‘hunger’ at the expense of losing ties to a larger, cultural tradition.

9.5

The Consequence of Gender— Final Thoughts

These stories reinforce claims that experiences had by people of African descent are not monolithic. Differences in one’s treatment and how one conceptualizes what is possible are impacted by both colorism and gender. Skin color differences, in particular, elucidate the ways in which people of African descent are situated to negotiate power and a position within a white, patriarchal society. Because of the function of whiteness within the system of patriarchy, those of African descent who look most like the ruling class—when it comes to race —have historically benefited more materially. However, as this analysis confirms, gender shows that these benefits often do not transfer equally. To be a racially passing ‘white’ woman is quite different than being racially ‘white’ without this distinction. Certain white men could vote, own land, and secure careers that their white female counterparts could not. This becomes apparent in my analysis of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man when one

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considers options available to the narrator’s mother. She could be deemed a middle-class woman; however, her socioeconomic status is not sufficient enough to improve her options. Her treatment due to gender affords a different kind of second-class citizenry that, ironically, is made more apparent due to her proximity to whiteness. She is accustomed to middle-class mores in ways that many darker individuals of African descent are not. The gender gap is apparent, as we see her position her son to claim a life that she cannot for herself, a life beyond her reach not just due to race but also due to gender. Johnson easily could have chosen a daughter for her when writing the novel. However, he chose to give her son and have him tell his story. In so doing, readers are able to fully appreciate differences in agency and power, as two similarly situated individuals seek to grasp opportunities historically denied them both due to race. The mother moved North for a better life but essentially stayed hidden away in her cottage. Her son, in contrast, had what seemed to be the world available to him…but only as a ‘white’ man. In the final analysis, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, of the two novels entertained, provides the most compelling case for consequences of the gender gap. However, juxtaposing my reading of this novel with that of Beloved offers, perhaps, what could be seen as a response to that gap. Those individuals like Baby Suggs, Sethe, and other formerly enslaved individuals featured in Beloved lived on the outskirts of society and were not integrated into ways that the narrator and his mother were in the other novel. As a result, expectations were not present for what a mainstream, white patriarchal society would afford. One could argue that the gender gap, related to unequal opportunities, persists as such because women continue to seek power within the system as it structurally exists. As my reading of Suggs’ sermon indicates, life in the Clearing really does look like subversion. It looks like breaking things open and reconstituting them in ways that benefit all involved, not just a few. The fluidity of expression in the Clearing among those historically objectified signals what is possible when one turns from

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rejection, from being denied full participation, to claim a new existence. All were welcomed within such a configuration: woman, man, and child. It seemed to have taken—however—their being violently abandoned by a white patriarchal system to imagine such a reality. This type of societal abandonment, alas, was not the experience of the unnamed narrator and his mother in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Ultimately, these stories from Toni Morrison and James Weldon Johnson contend that what may appear to be a situation of power or privilege hinges on a person’s awareness of how authentic they can be in their lived experiences and on whether or not they feel connected to a community that can acknowledge, respect, and share in the multiplicity of their ways of being.

References Blay Y (2014) (1)Drop: shifting the lens on blackness. BLACKprint, Philadelphia Butler J (1990) Gender trouble. Routledge, New York, NY Christian B (1988) The race for theory. Fem Stud 14 (1):67–79 Crenshaw K (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, article 8, 139–167. https:// chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8/ Dobbs C (1998) Toni Morrison’s Beloved: bodies returned, modernism revisited. Afr Am Rev 32 (4):563–578 Du Bois WEB (2003) The souls of black folk: centennial edition. Modern Library, New York (Original work published 1903) Hall R (2018) The globalization of light skin colorism: from critical race to critical skin theory. Am Behav Scient 62(14):2133–2145 Hunter M (2005) Race, gender, and the politics of skin tone. Routledge, New York, NY Johnson JW (2004) The autobiography of an ex-colored man. In: Gates HL, Jr, McKay NY (Eds) The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2nd ed., pp 803–883. W.W. Norton and Company, New York (Original work published 1912) Jones G (1986) Corregidora. Beacon Press, Boston, MA (Original work published 1975) Keith VM, Herring C (1991) Skin tone and stratification in the Black community. Am J Sociol 9(3):760–778 Lewis G (2013) Unsafe travel: experiencing intersectionality and feminist displacements. Signs 38(4):869–892

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Lorde A (ed) (1984) The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, Berkley, CA McCall L (2005) The complexity of intersectionality. Signs 30(3):1771–1800 Morrison T (1987) Beloved. Knopf, New York, NY Morrison T (2008) A knowing so deep. In Denard CC (Ed.) What moves at the margin: Selected nonfiction. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson (Original work published 1985) Morrison T (2008) The nobel lecture in literature. In Denard CC (Ed) What moves at the margin: Selected

107 nonfiction. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, MS (Original speech published 1997, delivered in 1993) Naylor G (1988) Mama Day. Vintage Books, New York, NY Stevenson BE (2013) What’s love got to do with it? Concubinage and enslaved women and girls in the Antebellum South. J Afr Am Hist 98(1):99–125 Utley J Jr, Darity W Jr (2016) India’s color complex: one day’s worth of matrimonials. Rev Black Polit Econ 43:129–138 Walker A (1983) In search of our mothers’ gardens: womanist prose. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York

The Most Invisible Maternal Experience? Analysing How Maternal Regret Is Discussed in Finland

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Tiina Sihto and Armi Mustosmäki

Abstract

In Finland, becoming a mother is often constructed as an individual choice that ultimately leads to personal fulfilment and happiness, despite the occasional ‘negative’ feelings associated with motherhood such as exhaustion, frustration and tiredness. In this cultural atmosphere, maternal regret continues to be a subject that is hidden, forbidden and rarely scrutinised. It is perhaps surprising that in one of the world’s most gender egalitarian countries, which is also perceived to be one of the best countries in which to be a mother, women still testify that motherhood is limited to survival. We argue that, somewhat paradoxically, discussing the negative emotions of motherhood might be particularly difficult in a relatively gender egalitarian society, where family policies are (by international comparison) fairly comprehensive and where becoming a mother is strongly constructed as a ‘free choice’. These discourses often hide the fact that parenthood in Finland is still extremely gendered. Finland’s masculine work culture with long working hours, the tendency for mothers and fathers not to take equal parental leave periods, and the cuts to welfare state

T. Sihto (&)
A. Mustosmäki University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: tiina.sihto@jyu.fi

services for families all contribute to the gendered division of parenthood. What are rarely discussed in connection with the struggles of mothering are political demands to improve gender equality. This chapter analyses discussion of maternal regret on an anonymous Finnish online discussion board. In comments from regretful mothers, motherhood is constructed as all-consuming, draining work. Hiding regret, especially from children, is seen as essential, as these mothers fear that their lack of ‘correct’ feelings will have adverse effects on their children. In comments responding to these regretful mothers, disbelief is a recurring theme with commenters suggesting that regretful mothers have misrecognised self-inflicted exhaustion or postnatal depression as regret. Such individualising responses depoliticise regret, contributing to the maintenance of taboos around motherhood.

10.1

Introduction: Contemporary Cultural Ideals of Motherhood in Finland

In 2020, the World Economic Forum’s Global gender gap report rated Finland the third most gender egalitarian country in the world behind two other Nordic countries, Iceland and Norway (World Economic Forum 2020). Throughout the 2010s, Finland was also rated as one of the best

© The Author(s) 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_10

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countries in which to be a mother, again alongside other Nordic countries. By international comparison, Finland is a relatively wealthy society with low infant and maternal mortality rates as well as relatively low levels of maternal and childhood poverty (e.g. Save the Children 2015).1 Nordic welfare states aim for gender equality and strong welfare support for working parents, attracting international interest in and praise for these countries as ‘Nordic nirvanas’ (Lister 2009), particularly with regard to women and (working) mothers. The Finnish welfare state provides free maternity and child healthcare, and parental leave entitlements with job protection.2 In addition, children have a universal right to early childhood education, which is relatively affordable and of good quality. In part because of these relatively well-developed societal institutions and gender egalitarian policies, it is often thought that in Finland nobody ‘has to become’ a mother e.g. due to economic, societal or cultural reasons, and that motherhood is a ‘free choice’ for those who do eventually become mothers (e.g. Berg 2008; Sevón 2005). However, the everyday realities of parenthood in Finland are not so straightforward: the division of parenthood is still extremely gendered and the role of mothers as the main providers of care is much more prominent than in other Nordic countries. One example of this is the division of parental leave. After the birth of a child, the Finnish parental leave scheme allows parents to care for their child(ren) full-time until the youngest child is three. The scheme mostly consists of gender-neutral leave entitlements, so parents can share their leave equally or indeed the father can even take a larger share of leave than the mother (see e.g. Salmi et al. 2019). However, mothers take over 90% of parental leave (Social Insurance Institution of Finland 2019).3 Differences also emerge regarding how 1

The index used by Save the Children (2015) consists of indicators measuring mothers’ and children’s health as well as their educational, economic and political status. 2 For a detailed description of the wide range of family policies available, see Salmi et al. (2019). 3 One quarter (25%) of fathers do not take parental leave (not even the leave entitlements specifically earmarked for

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much time mothers and fathers invest in childcare and housework. Although new parents today in general spend more time with their children than did previous generations, mothers of young children still spend twice as much time on childcaring duties as fathers (Pääkkönen and Hanifi 2011).4 Cultural ideals regarding childrearing have changed in ways that particularly stress the role of the mother as practices of ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays 1996) have been on the rise during recent decades. These practices are characteristically time-consuming, child-centred, expertguided, emotionally absorbing, labour-intensive and financially expensive. In Finland, ideals that stem from attachment theory have reinforced the notion that women should be temporary homemakers during the first 3 years of a child’s life.5 This is also reflected in childcare preferences. Children’s participation rates in early childhood education are much lower in Finland compared with other Nordic countries (OECD 2019). Although Finnish mothers work full-time more often than their counterparts in other Nordic countries, Finns have relatively traditional attitudes and practices concerning the division of paid work and childcare. Compared with other Nordic populations, Finns are more likely to support the idea that men should be in charge of earning a livelihood for the family while women should take more responsibility for childcare (Salin et al. 2018). As a result, despite the strong welfare state, in many ways, Finland constitutes

them) and half of fathers only take the parental leave days that are available simultaneously with the mother’s leave (Eerola et al. 2019). 4 Mothers in families where the youngest child is under school age (i.e. under the age of seven) spend two hours and 44 min per day on childcare (excluding housework), whereas fathers spend one hour and 21 min (Pääkkönen and Hanifi 2011). 5 Attachment theory was popularised by psychiatrist John Bowlby in the 1950s. The theory suggests that a child needs the constant presence of a loving and responsive attachment figure—typically the mother. The presence or absence of this figure is seen as having lifelong consequences for the mental health of the child. For a deeper discussion and critique, see Lee et al. (2014).

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The Most Invisible Maternal Experience? Analysing …

a rather ‘traditional’ gender culture (PfauEffinger 1998). Consequently, the experience of contemporary motherhood in Finland is much more multifaceted and is embedded with much more gender inequality than might seem to be the case at first glance. Moreover, reducing the question of whether or not to become a mother to a matter of ‘free choice’ underestimates the role played by historical, cultural and social factors in women’s decisions about having children (see also Berg 2008; Donath 2015a). Therefore, the complexities of the maternal experience in Finland need further unpacking. In this chapter, we are interested in the experiences and emotions of Finnish women who regret motherhood. We analyse data gathered from an anonymous Finnish online discussion board. We are particularly interested in (i) descriptions of regret, (ii) how and why regret is kept hidden and (iii) what kinds of reactions arise when this invisible regret is made visible. We argue that an analysis of regretting motherhood helps us to understand not only the phenomenon itself but also motherhood in the Finnish context more broadly and deeply. In doing this, we hope to illuminate the blind spots in current debates concerning gender equality and motherhood and to analyse the limits of ‘acceptable’ maternal emotions.

10.2

Regretting Motherhood: A Hidden Experience

The ambivalence of motherhood has been extensively mapped in previous research.6 The mothering experience is paradoxical, characterised by contradictory emotions arising from the rewards, responsibilities and satisfactions that childrearing brings and their coexistence with boredom, hard work and pain (e.g. Miller 2005; Sevón 2009). In contemporary public discussions 6

For a more detailed discussion of structural ambivalence (i.e. incongruence between societal expectations and personal preferences) and psychological ambivalence (i.e. simultaneous emotions of love and hate), see Sevón (2009).

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too, ‘negative’ emotions evoked by motherhood are discussed relatively often. It has become increasingly acceptable to confess that motherhood is not always wonderful and emotionally and/or mentally fulfilling, but can at times be repetitive, tiring and exhausting. The ways of speaking about motherhood have become more diverse, and it has become more acceptable to question and ironise the normative picture of ‘good motherhood’, for example through confessions about being a ‘bad mother’ (Jensen 2013: Lehto 2019). Yet these discourses are often followed by descriptions of how, despite all the struggles, the loved one feels towards one’s child makes it all worthwhile. The socially shared norm regarding motherhood is that all mothers want to be mothers, and even those who struggle with the role will eventually grow into it and learn to enjoy motherhood. Consequently, the possibility of regret remained largely invisible in public discussions as well as in research until the mid-2010s when pioneering research on regretting motherhood by Israeli sociologist Orna Donath (2015a, b, 2017) was published. As noted in the following chapter by Heffernan and Stone (see Chap. 11), Donath’s research was groundbreaking not only academically but also for the public discussion of (regretting) motherhood as it shed light on a phenomenon that had previously remained largely hidden. In her research, Donath (2015a, b, 2017) interviewed 23 Israeli women who admitted to regretting motherhood. Donath distinguished regret from other conflictual emotions such as ambivalence. The women in her study self-identified as regretful mothers—mothers who, if given the choice again, would not choose to become mothers. As a feeling, regret is characterised as a negative moral emotion with strong personal choice and responsibility attached to it (Aronson and Fleming 2018; Gilovich and Medvec 1994). For example, grief or rage can be felt after something happens over which one has no control (for example, falling seriously ill), but regret is felt where one feels one could have acted differently but did not. Thus, regret presumes strong individual agency: actual choices have been made,

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and various options were available, but the road one eventually took was not the right one. Regret about parenting is often related to looking back and feeling that one was too absent from the lives of one’s offspring (Roese and Summerville 2005; see also Moore and Abetz 2019), and also— particularly for women—regret over the timing of having children and the opportunities one has missed outside one’s family roles (Aronson and Fleming 2018; DeGenova 1996). Consequently, the regrets people tend to have often involve inaction rather than action and, particularly, in the long run, people regret the chances they have missed and the roads they have not taken (e.g. Gilovich and Medvec 1994). This is often thought to be the case with (not) having children as well. The hegemonic cultural norm is that while not having children can be a source of regret, having children cannot be something one regrets, and especially not if one is a woman. Hence motherhood is socioculturally constructed as a ‘mythical nexus that lies outside and beyond the human terrain of regret’ (Donath 2015b, p. 347). Donath’s (2015a, b, 2017) research not only relates the experiences of regretful mothers but also illuminates the broader societal picture of contemporary motherhood. The cultural ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild 1979)7 surrounding motherhood do not allow us to question the emotional satisfaction gained from mothering, let alone to recognise that there may be deep-rooted feelings of regret in relation to the societal role of motherhood as such. Donath’s interviewees emphasised the love they felt towards their child (ren) while simultaneously describing how they did not enjoy the role of being a mother or felt that motherhood was in conflict with their identity. In this chapter, we relate our own research on regretting motherhood in Finland to the research that Donath conducted in Israel, a pro-natalist 7

According to Hochschild (1979), feeling rules are socially shared norms regarding how it is acceptable or desirable to feel in a given social situation. The feeling rules of motherhood concern, for example, how one ‘should’ feel in a given situation in relation to the child— e.g. after the birth, or when the child starts day care.

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state where motherhood is still constructed as an essential role for women. In Finland, having a child is constructed above all as a question of ‘free choice’ (Berg 2008; Sevón 2005). However, if one does become a mother, the cultural norms and ideals of motherhood appear to be very restrictive (e.g. Mustosmäki and Sihto 2019). We argue that in Finland, the discourse surrounding ‘free choice’ and the culture of intensive motherhood (Hays 1996) make it particularly challenging to discuss maternal regret. This also makes understanding and contesting hegemonic cultural norms surrounding motherhood difficult.

10.3

Data and Methods

In this chapter, we analyse a thread on the anonymous Finnish online discussion board vauva.fi, which focuses mostly on topics related to motherhood, pregnancy and family life (vauva is the Finnish word for ‘baby’). Vauva.fi is one of Finland’s most popular websites and is similar to websites such as Mumsnet in the United Kingdom. The title of the discussion thread analysed in this chapter can be loosely translated as ‘Those of you who regret having children: does the feeling ease off as the children grow up?’ There were a total of 754 messages, of which 61 were explicit confessions of regret.8 The other messages were of varying kinds, mostly worrying or moralising about the topic of maternal regret and giving advice to those who express such regret. The discussion appeared online in early 2017 and all the comments in the thread were posted within a span of one week. When we started our research, we decided to gather data from an anonymous discussion board for a variety of reasons. First, these boards offer rich sets of data where mothers confess their feelings. Previous research (Jensen 2013; Pedersen 2016; Pedersen and Lupton 2018) has identified the potential of anonymous discussion 8 The 61 ‘explicit confessions of regret’ were all messages where the commenters explicitly self-identify as regretful mothers (cf. Donath 2015a, b).

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boards for research on negative emotions about motherhood. On these discussion boards, the expression of emotions that are understood as negative, such as anxiety and anger, is seen as acceptable, but only to a certain extent. Additionally, in analyses of these discussion boards, the most forbidden maternal emotion—regret— has remained largely hidden (however, see Moore and Abetz 2019; Mustosmäki and Sihto 2019). Second, in her research on regretting motherhood in the Israeli context, Donath (2015a, b, 2017) described the difficulties she faced in recruiting interviewees, as people were often unwilling to discuss such a taboo topic face-to-face. Consequently, we decided to study an anonymous discussion board in order to get a glimpse into this relatively hidden phenomenon in Finland. As the discussion is anonymous, we have no way of knowing the background of the women in our data, such as their ages, places of residence, marital statuses or social classes. However, previous research (Jensen 2013; Pedersen and Lupton 2018; Pedersen 2016) has shown that often these commenters on anonymous discussion boards that focus on family life are relatively privileged, middle-class women. The majority of the commenters do not explicitly specify their family situations (numbers or ages of children), nor when or how they first realised that they had feelings of regret. However, it is possible to deduce from the comments that these women are from relatively varied backgrounds and life stages: some state that they have young children, while a few are mothers of adult children; some mention their (male) spouses and children’s fathers, while a few identify themselves as divorced or single mothers. A couple mentions having felt regret even before the birth of the child, while some write that their regrets emerged later. As in Donath’s (2015a, b, 2017) work, there seems to be no uniform path or life situation that leads to regret. Our analysis is based on data-driven thematisation. We separate utterances of regret from comments made by those who do not express regret themselves but participate in the discussion. We use the letter C to designate a comment,

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together with the number of the comment (e.g. ‘C323’). In the following analysis, we first focus on descriptions of regret. Next, we explore mothers’ motivations and strategies for keeping their regret hidden. In the last part of the analysis, we investigate the kinds of responses evoked in other discussants when this invisible regret is made visible.

10.4

Describing Regret

The regretful mothers in our data articulated a sense of being overwhelmed by how much their lives changed after they became mothers. They described being tired and exhausted as they felt that the role of being a mother is temporally, emotionally and mentally all-consuming. The following quote captures this sentiment. Today I went skating with my children, built them a skating rink, took time and encouraged them, went to the library with the kids to borrow books and then read them, danced with my daughter while we were cleaning, built Lego with the kids, played with my own and my neighbours’ kids outside, taking them to ‘prison’ to suffer their ‘punishment’, tickling, and we asked each other riddles in the sauna, like we always do. I’m just an ordinary mother. Yet deep down I have this feeling that I cannot bear family life. If I could make the choice now, I wouldn’t have children. I can’t bear the worrying, housework, constant fulfilling of needs, fighting, noise, lack of sleep, I basically cannot bear anything that is included in family life. Today was ok, but if I could freely choose, I would’ve done something completely different today from what I did. (C41)

The regretful mothers in our data seemed to be very attached to cultural ideals of good motherhood. They gave long lists of the activities in which they must engage in order to meet the standard of being ‘just an ordinary mother’. These women’s accounts of their everyday lives resonate strongly with ideals of intensive mothering (e.g. Hays 1996; Smyth and Craig 2017), where mothers are required to devote significant amounts of time and to be constantly emotionally present for their children. In addition, mothers described the amount of ‘cognitive labour’

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(Daminger 2019) that comes with raising children9: ‘one has to remember medical appointments, hobbies, to keep the fridge filled, to buy the appropriate clothes for the season in time, and the messaging with the school on top of that’ (C106). It is notable that these mothers described in great detail the responsibilities they shoulder, but the father’s role is rarely mentioned. Amid their hectic lives with the child(ren), regretful mothers miss the lives they lived before they had children, or dream of a childless life. They long for time for themselves, their relationships and/or their careers. Life without children is portrayed as careless, hedonistic and free where one is able to do things spontaneously, such as: ‘going to concerts, cafes, parks with friends (who are over 30 and childless, that’s how it is nowadays…), nap in the middle of the day, go away somewhere spontaneously. Focus on your career and relationship’ (C106). These narratives of freedom might reflect the centrality of the idea of free choice around reproductive decisions in Finland. It is possible to question the choice to have children when there appear to be more life trajectories available than the heteronormative linear life course. If women’s imaginations are colonised, as Donath (2017) suggests, they cannot imagine that any future other than motherhood is possible for themselves. Similarly, some mothers in this research confessed that they had their children because they thought that a heteronormative nuclear-family life would make them happiest. However, since having children, they realised that being a mother does not fit with their identity. For some, the longing for more time, space and tranquillity is a question of who they are, which is in contradiction with being a mother. For example, ‘after having my child, I realised

Cognitive labour involves the ‘orchestration of everyday life’, such as managing time, anticipating needs, acquiring information, comparing options, making decisions, and taking care of social relations, such as by remembering and organising birthdays and buying gifts. These are responsibilities that particularly fall to women, making them the ‘project managers’ in the family (Daminger 2019).

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that I am a person who needs a lot of time for myself, silence, space for my own thoughts, and rest’ (C87). In addition to the physical and cognitive labour that comes with childrearing, the emotional aspects of mothering also take their toll on mothers. Feelings of guilt tied to regret are a frequent theme in the data. Despite their own efforts, the regretful mothers lived with the anxiety that they had failed or somehow will fail at mothering. According to a study by Liss et al. (2013), guilt is related to fear of being evaluated as a bad parent, or of being unable to meet the norms of good parenting. In the online discussion, regret was tied to the heavy responsibility and constant guilt that accompany raising a child: I would have got along without this constant guilt, bad conscience and worry over the child and his happiness. Now, as the child has grown up and I am no longer responsible for another person’s life, I have less of these feelings, but still I feel that this phase of life with children at home took more than it gave. (C114)

Statements such as these, which articulate responsibilities, difficulties and consequent guilt, may be understood as signs that women recognise the norms of good motherhood and the elusiveness of those norms. Guilt is often understood as an essential part of mothering as it guides women towards ‘right’ ways to mother (Elvin-Nowak 1999). Guilt also weighed on the Israeli mothers in Donath’s (2015a, b, 2017) research. As in Donath’s research, many regretful mothers in our study were overwhelmed by the tasks, responsibilities and emotional burden that comes with mothering. For them, motherhood is an exhausting, all-consuming role that binds them, wears them down and pushes them to their limits. As one commenter explained ‘the constant demand to be the support person/cook/ entertainer/service troops etc. is lethal […]. My life has been all about survival for years’ (C236). It is possible to conclude—as Donath (2015b) does—that the experiences and feelings these mothers describe are not unique, but the conclusions they draw from them are. While many mothers find the demands of motherhood a strain, they evaluate the struggle as worthwhile

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or as incomparable to the joys and happiness that come along with motherhood, and they would still choose motherhood again. However, with statements such as ‘I wish I had known that I would feel that I have wasted my life’ (C110), regretful mothers draw the conclusion that motherhood has ultimately taken more than it has given.

10.5

Hiding Regret

One of the most pressing reasons for keeping such regret hidden is the fear of causing harm to the child. The regretful mothers express the fear that their child(ren) will ‘sense’ that they regret motherhood or do not enjoy it in the ways they are expected to, and that this will damage the child, even in cases where the mothers never voice their feelings of regret to anyone, let alone to their children. Consequently, the regretful mothers describe it as their maternal duty to protect their child(ren) from their feelings of regret and see these feelings as potentially dangerous to the child(ren). As noted in the first part of our analysis, many regretful mothers also seemed to be committed to the ideals of intensive motherhood and did not criticise those ideals openly. A few regretful mothers did reflect on whether it is necessary to strive towards these ideals, but even in these descriptions, their understanding of ‘good enough’ motherhood often seemed to be synonymous with intensive motherhood as expressed by the following respondent: Even though I regret my children, I want to be a good mother to them, and I feel that I have to do things which I otherwise wouldn’t do in my free time. For example, cooking, ice skating, cycling, driving the kids to their hobbies, watching their hobby performances, reading the same book for the 100th time etc. Even though I made a wrong choice when I had my children, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, but now I have to try to be a good enough mother. And I still emphasise that I’m not overdoing [motherhood] or always in a good mood, or I don’t do things that much with the children. But you just have to do things to some extent, because I don’t

115 want my children to suffer from my choices. (C242)

Earlier research has recognised that mothers adhere to the ideals of intensive motherhood and find it difficult to resist those ideals, even when following them entails unfavourable outcomes for the mothers themselves, such as limiting their autonomy (e.g. Smyth and Craig 2017). Even in cases where our commenters were negotiating the boundaries of what constitutes ‘good enough’ mothering, ensuring a ‘normal childhood’ for their child(ren) signified that mothers will engage in various time-consuming activities and hide their own feelings. Mothers seemed compelled to adhere to these norms because they do not want to risk their child(ren)’s future. These comments on mothers’ essential role in the future of their child(ren) reflect deterministic mothering. This notion is the idea that even the small, mundane choices one makes as a parent will have a direct influence on the child’s later social, educational and economic success (e.g. Furedi 2001). Consequently, it is feared that easing off on these standards will risk the child’s future. Deterministic mothering was reflected in the ways in which regretting mothers worry about how their negative feelings, or lack of ‘correct’ feelings, pose risks to the child and his/her future. In the commenters’ descriptions, this view of their own behaviour as a threat can sometimes make motherhood even more exhausting and thus an even bigger source of regret, a vicious circle that one commenter describes as a ‘vortex’. It’s a vortex: when it gets tough and you feel things are going the wrong way, you start to get anxiety about causing trauma for the children, trauma that you will have to mourn for the rest of their lives (and your own), and this causes more shitty feelings, so you cannot cope etc. (C37)

Consequently, not only is it the mother’s task to protect the child(ren) from risks from the outside world, but mothers themselves constitute a risk factor in their children’s lives. These deterministic ideas appeared to intensify the anxiety and guilt felt by mothers, forcing them to put their own needs aside so that their children

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will not suffer. Mothers hide their authentic feelings, hopes and desires, and do their best to manage the (emotion) work of mothering.10 However, the deterministic view lays particular responsibility on mothers, making the role of the mother intolerably burdensome (see also Furedi 2001). As one commenter puts it: ‘I’m suffering so that the children can live quite normal lives’ (C125). Thus, protecting the child from the mother’s inappropriate emotions is an unquestionable moral obligation that relegates the mother’s needs to secondary importance (e.g. Read et al. 2012), even if this entails feelings of suffering for the mother herself.

10.6

Facing Regret

As maternal regret has been mostly absent from public discussions in Finland, for many people the experience is unknown and difficult to comprehend. This is visible in our data as the majority of the comments were not about experiences of maternal regret, but rather were comments where others try to make sense of the experiences and feelings that the regretful mothers express. One kind of response was for other commenters to deny the existence of regret. Many shared the view that mothering was a challenging task that can lead to exhaustion. Some commenters were mothers themselves and related to the feelings expressed by the regretful mothers. However, the regretful mothers were seen as misrecognising their own feelings or misinterpreting other mental states as regret. Instead of ‘truly’ regretting, the regretful mothers were understood to be tired or suffering from (postnatal) depression: I have a child with special needs, who is really challenging. Right now, I’m really irritated with him/her, but I recognise that I’m just tired. Are you sure that this is not a case of being tired? If you are worried about your child, already that means that s/he is very special and dear to you. (C52) 10 Emotion work refers to ‘inducing or inhibiting feelings so as to render them “appropriate” to a situation’ (Hochschild 1979, p. 551).

Instead of having feelings of regret, the regretful mothers allegedly did not ‘truly’ understand their own feelings and mental states or the depth of love they feel towards their children. Some commenters suggested that the regretful mothers might develop a deeper understanding regarding how they ‘truly’ feel, which will lead them to realise that they do not ‘truly’ regret motherhood. However, there were also comments that do not straightforwardly deny the existence of regret but nevertheless located the problem in the emotional and psychological realm. In several comments, sharing and working through one’s emotions was seen to be important for the individual. These comments advised regretting mothers to take control of their emotional lives and manage their feelings of regret. Not sharing one’s emotions was equated with being stuck in the feeling of regret, whereas confessing and dealing with one’s emotions was seen as part of a growth process. The quote shared below explores this sentiment. …if a parent is truly stuck in regret and neglects the child, that is a completely different thing than regretting in your own mind and confessing it here. […] For some, processing their emotions and airing them can be just part of a growth process – a liminal stage before moving forward? (C312)

There seemed to be a firm belief that seeking medical and/or psychological support will help the regretful mothers. Some wrote of their own experiences, arguing that the regretful mothers will look back on all this later and understand that it was just a difficult temporary phase as the following commenter suggests. I fell into postnatal depression, and when my illness was at its worst, I cried and regretted that I had ever decided to have a child, I was so tired and low. Now that I have received the necessary treatment and help, and some six months have passed, I am doing great with my child and my husband. (C730)

Some commenters emphasised that mothers should accept their role as mothers and learn how to take better care of themselves in order to be able to take better care of their families. Along these lines, mothers who confessed feelings of regret were not seen as bad or immoral. Instead, they were ‘diagnosed’ as depressed and portrayed as

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temporarily tired good mothers who had lost their way rather than as being ‘truly’ regretful (see also Dubriwny 2010). These views conflating regret with postnatal depression align with Donath’s (2017) research. The ways in which such commenters direct attention away from regret and towards tiredness or depression reinforced the impression that it is socially very difficult to accept that a mother does not want to mother (also see Chap. 11 by Heffernan and Stone). In addition to comments that addressed emotional and psychological issues, there were also comments that point towards the cultural ideals that weigh on mothers. Yet instead of challenging those ideals, these comments blamed regretful mothers for taking them too seriously. In this view, mothers exhausted themselves by trying to meet impossible standards, and their exhaustion and regret could have been easily dealt with by simply doing less: ‘There are a lot of assumptions about what one MUST do with children, but is that really so?’ (C488). These comments advised mothers on how to live their everyday lives in a way that will enable them to carve out more space for themselves. They emphasised that children will not be damaged if a mother strives to be ‘less perfect’. However, it was always seen as the individual’s own responsibility to deal with hegemonic cultural ideals, to cope with the challenges of mothering and to strike a balance between perfect and bad mothering. Some commenters, as well as regretting mothers themselves, also feared that mothers will be unable to hide their regret. Consequently, their children will sense their regret and it will cause them harm. However, the fear here was not only about ruining an individual child’s life. Rather whole generations of mothers and children would supposedly be in danger if regret were to be discussed openly, which is represented in the quote below. I absolutely agree that taboos should be discussed and the myth of perfect motherhood should be broken down and that the negative emotions of parenthood should be discussed. But this kind of whining won’t do anything, we are just creating another extreme where mothers with good conscience can ruin their children’s lives. (C320)

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The idea presented here relies on a wider imaginary of moral corruption and contamination: dangerous ideas are contagious, like physical diseases, and they become equated with the prospect of moral corruption (see e.g. Wood 2018). These comments highlight that airing regret will give others permission to feel regret, making it normal and acceptable. If the boundary of acceptable maternal emotions were to be crossed and regret to be made visible, some commenters expected that this would lead to a proliferation of ‘bad mothers’. Some comments directly interpreted maternal regret as a sign of larger-scale societal destruction. This catastrophising is encapsulated in comments such as ‘Finland is on a road to ruin. Children are the future, and the future payers of your pensions’ (C569). This echoes the idea that mothers and nuclear families are the moral backbone of society as well as fear over the future funding of the Finnish welfare state.

10.7

Conclusions

In this chapter, we have analysed regretting motherhood in the context of Finland. We have focused on descriptions of regret, how and why regret is kept hidden, and what kinds of reactions arise when such regret is made visible. We have also related our findings to seminal research by Donath (2015a, b, 2017) on maternal regret in Israel. Although Finland and Israel constitute two very different country cases,11 the experiences of maternal regret in our study seem strikingly similar to those in Donath’s (2015a, b, 2017). These similarities between the experiences of Finnish and Israeli mothers point towards similarities in the maternal experience in general. No matter what the societal or cultural context, becoming a mother can lead to exhaustion, a loss of personal autonomy, and for some even a loss of identity. That is not to say that motherhood is 11

Israel’s pro-natalist culture (Perez-Vaisvidovsky 2019) is reflected in its total fertility rate, which in 2017 was 3.1 compared with Finland’s 1.35 (World Bank 2020). The fertility rate (the number of children women are expected to have during their life course) rapidly declined in Finland throughout the 2010s (Statistics Finland 2020).

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unbearable for the women in our data because of intensive or attachment parenting norms alone— mothering can be exhausting even without any external expectations—but the ideals of good mothering do seem to intensify mothers’ feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Regretful mothers engage in emotional work in order to hide their negative feelings, which in some cases further intensifies their feelings of regret. The emotions expressed by the regretful mothers in our data are similar to the ‘negative’ and ambivalent feelings of mothers that have been identified in previous research (e.g. Liss et al. 2013; Miller 2005; Sevón 2009). Motherhood is not only a source of love, joy and meaning in life but also entails feelings of inadequacy, guilt, frustration, entrapment and anger, among others. It is possible to conclude, as Donath (2015b) does, that the experiences and feelings these mothers describe are not unique, but the conclusions they draw from those experiences are. As in Donath’s research, the regretful mothers in our data draw the conclusion that motherhood has taken more than it has given. These women argue against the dominant narrative of motherhood, which claims that despite the trouble, motherhood is always worth it. Donath (2015b) briefly discusses how maternal regret has remained hidden, pointing out that regret is pathologised or seen as an individual’s personal failure to grow into motherhood. These lines of reasoning are also present in our data, particularly in the advice given to regretful mothers about ‘what is to be done’ in order to deal with regret. According to these responses, one should learn to resist toxic ideals related to mothering, learn how to parent, seek (medical/psychological) help and/or try to enjoy short blasts of hedonism, such as taking time for oneself and doing it ‘with a good conscience’. Although a public discussion of negative feelings is considered to be necessary in order to abolish the ‘myth of the perfect mother’, the open public discussion of regret is still seen as societally dangerous. These responses are apolitical, in the sense that although they point towards mothers’ overwork and gender inequality as sources of problems and they reject the mythology of the perfect mother, it is mainly seen as mothers’

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responsibility to cope with both the mundane and the mental challenges of parenting. One might ask why maternal regret has emerged in public discussions now. One point of view is that it is perhaps only now that there are genuine possibilities for women to imagine choices and lives outside motherhood. Many of the regretful mothers in our data consider that they could have had meaningful, happy lives as childless women. This option seems to be available and appealing, if only they could go back in time knowing what they know now. Even though we have no way of knowing the background of women in our data, it is likely that the data does not represent ‘all’ women or mothers, but that the voices heard in the data are mainly those of white, relatively privileged middle-class women (see also Jensen 2013; Pedersen and Lupton 2018; Pedersen 2016). The comments are filled with descriptions of possible or imaginary futures without children as full of options, activities and freedom, and as unrestricted by a lack of resources. In this discussion thread, poverty and difficulties in providing for the family’s basic needs do not emerge as a source of regret. It is perhaps surprising that in one of the world’s most gender egalitarian countries, which is also perceived to be one of the best countries in which to be a mother, women still testify that motherhood is limited to survival. We argue that, somewhat paradoxically, discussing the negative emotions of motherhood might be particularly difficult in a relatively gender egalitarian society, where family policies are (by international comparison) fairly comprehensive and where becoming a mother is strongly constructed as a ‘free choice’. These discourses often hide the fact that parenthood in Finland is still extremely gendered. Finland’s masculine work culture with long working hours, the tendency for mothers and fathers not to take equal parental leave periods, and the cuts to welfare state services for families all contribute to the gendered division of parenthood. What are rarely discussed in connection with the struggles of mothering are political demands to improve gender equality. During recent years, declining fertility has become a major topic of public discussion as birth

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rates have reached an all-time low in Finland (Statistics Finland 2020). The debate around possible explanations and solutions for this has been heated and has been coloured by worries about how to finance welfare state services for the ageing population in the future. One of the suggested causes of the low fertility rate is the damaged ‘brand’ of family life. The claim is that there has been too much talk about the negative aspects, which has given childless people of childbearing age an unrealistically pessimistic view of family life and has led them not to have children at all. To present the ‘rebranding’ of family life as a solution to the low fertility rate depoliticises wider problems associated with the institution of motherhood, glossing over its associated gender inequalities. In this sociopolitical atmosphere, the public discussion of mothers’ struggles becomes even more difficult, which acts to reconsolidate the taboo around maternal regret in Finland. As will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter (Chap. 11) by Heffernan and Stone, Donath’s research has received wide international attention in both old and new media. Newspapers have reported on the phenomenon and private individuals have participated in discussions on social media using the hashtag #regrettingmotherhood. Given this context, it is notable that in Finland there has been very little public response to Donath’s work or to the wider international discussion of regretting motherhood. There have been only a few short articles in the tabloids, translated from international news media. When Finland’s biggest national newspaper printed a story based on the country’s first published academic research article on maternal regret (Mustosmäki and Sihto 2019), there was a brief peak of interest in the national media, but the public discussion did not ‘explode’, as it did in the country cases analysed by Heffernan and Stone in the following chapter.

References Aronson P, Fleming M (2018) Tapping and assessing the concept of educational regret: Methodological techniques for opening up biographical reflection. Contemp Social Sci 14(3–4):1–13

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Berg K (2008) Äitiys kulttuurisina odotuksina (Väestöntutkimuslaitoksen julkaisusarja D 48). Väestöliitto, Helsinki Daminger A (2019) The cognitive dimension of household labor. Am Sociol Rev 84(4):609–633. https://doi. org/10.1177/0003122419859007 DeGenova MK (1996) Regrets in later life. J Women Aging 8(2):75–85 Donath O (2015a) Choosing motherhood? Agency and regret within reproduction and mothering retrospective accounts. Women’s Stud Int Forum 53:200–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.10.023 Donath O (2015b) Regretting motherhood: a sociopolitical analysis. Signs: J Women Culture Soc 40(2): 343– 367. https://doi.org/10.1086/678145 Donath O (2017) Regretting motherhood: a study. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA Dubriwny T (2010) Television news coverage of postpartum disorders and the politics of medicalization. Feminist Media Stud 10(3):285–303. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14680777.2010.493647 Eerola P, Lammi-Taskula J, O’Brien M, Hietamäki J, Räikkönen E (2019) Fathers’ leave take-up in Finland: Motivations and barriers in a complex Nordic leave scheme. Sage Open 9:4. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 2158244019885389 Elvin-Nowak Y (1999) The meaning of guilt: a phenomenological description of employed mothers’ experiences of guilt. Scand J Psychol 40(1):73–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9450.00100 Furedi F (2001) Paranoid parenting: Abandon your anxieties and be a good parent. Penguin, London Gilovich T, Medvec VH (1994) The temporal pattern to the experience of regret. J Pers Soc Psychol 67(3):357 Hays S (1996) The cultural contradictions of motherhood. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT Hochschild AR (1979) Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. Am J Sociol 85(3):551–575. https:// doi.org/10.1086/227049 Jensen T (2013) ‘Mumsnetiquette’: online affect within parenting culture. In Maxwell C, Aggleton P (Eds) Privilege, agency and affect (pp 127–145). Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. https://doi.org/10.1057/ 9781137292636_8 Lee E, Bristow J, Faircloth C, Macvarish J (2014) Parenting culture studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304612 Lehto M (2019) Bad is the new good: negotiating bad motherhood in Finnish mommy blogs. Feminist Media Stud, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019. 1642224 Liss M, Schiffrin HH, Rizzo KM (2013) Maternal guilt and shame: The role of self-discrepancy and fear of negative evaluation. J Child Fam Stud 22(8):1112– 1119. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-012-9673-2 Lister R (2009) A Nordic nirvana? Gender, citizenship, and social justice in the Nordic welfare states. Social Polit: Int Stud Gender, State Soc 16(2):242–278 Miller T (2005) Making sense of motherhood: a narrative approach. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

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Moore J, Abetz JS (2019) What do parents regret about having children? Communicating regrets online. J Fam Issues 40(3):390–412. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0192513x18811388 Mustosmäki A, Sihto T (2019) Äitiyden katuminen intensiivisen äitiyden kulttuurissa. Sosiologia 56 (2):157–173 OECD (2019) OECD family database [Data set]. http:// www.oecd.org/els/family/database.htm Pääkkönen H, Hanifi R (2011) Ajankäytön muutokset 2000-luvulla. Tilastokeskus, Helsinki Pedersen S (2016) The good, the bad and the ‘good enough’ mother on the UK parenting forum Mumsnet. Women Stud Int Forum 59:32–38. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.wsif.2016.09.004 Pedersen S, Lupton D (2018) ‘What are you feeling right now?’ Communities of maternal feeling on Mumsnet. Emotion, Space Soc 26:57–63. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.emospa.2016.05.001 Perez-Vaisvidovsky N (2019) Israel: leave policy, familialism and the neoliberal welfare state. In Moss P, Duvander AZ, Koslowski A (Eds) Parental leave and beyond: Recent international developments, current issues and future directions, pp 75–90. Policy Press, Bristol. https:// doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447338772.003.0005 Pfau‐Effinger B (1998). Gender cultures and the gender arrangement: A theoretical framework for cross‐national gender research. Innov Eur J Soc Sci Res 11(2): 147– 166. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.1998.9968559 Read DMY, Crockett J, Mason R (2012) ‘It was a horrible shock’: the experience of motherhood and women’s family size preferences. Women’s Stud Int Forum 35 (1):12–21 Roese NJ, Summerville A (2005) What we regret most… and why. Personal Soc Psychol Bull 31(9): 1273–1285 Salin M, Ylikännö M, Hakovirta M (2018) How to divide paid work and unpaid care between parents? Comparison of attitudes in 22 Western countries. Soc Sci 7 (10):188. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7100188 Salmi M, Närvi J, Lammi-Taskula J, Miettinen A (2019) Finland country note. In Koslowski A, Blum S,

Dobrotić I, Macht A, Moss P (Eds) International Review of Leave Policies and Research 2019, pp 1–22. International Network on Leave Policies & Research. http://www.leavenetwork.org/lp_and_r_reports/ Save the Children (2015) State of the world’s mothers 2015. https://www.savethechildren.org/content/dam/ usa/reports/advocacy/sowm/sowm-2015.pdf Sevón E (2005) Timing motherhood: Experiencing and narrating the choice to become a mother. Feminism Psychol 15(4):461–482. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353505057619 Sevón E (2009) Maternal responsibility and changing relationality at the beginning of motherhood (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research 365). University of Jyväskylä Smyth C, Craig L (2017) Conforming to intensive parenting ideals: Willingness, reluctance and social context. Fam Relat Soc 6(1):107–124. https://doi.org/ 10.1332/204674315x14393034138937 Social Insurance Institution of Finland (2019) Statistics on childcare benefits and their users. https://www.kela.fi/ documents/10180/1630873/Lapsiperhe_etuudet_ kuviot.pdf/1ce0ce45-d979-409d-a701-4e40bd2fa383 Statistics Finland (2020) Decrease in birth rate still continues. http://www.stat.fi/til/vamuu/2019/12/vamuu_2019_12_ 2020-01-23_tie_001_en.html Wood H (2018) The Magaluf girl: A public sex scandal and the digital class relations of social contagion. Fem Media Stud 18(4):626–642. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14680777.2018.1447352 World Bank (2020) Fertility rate, total (births per woman): Israel, Finland. https://data.worldbank.org/ indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=IL-FI&most_ recent_year_desc=false World Economic Forum (2020) Mind the 100 year gap. https://www.weforum.org/reports/gender-gap-2020report-100-years-pay-equality/country-top-10s#report-nav

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International Responses to Regretting Motherhood

11

Valerie Heffernan and Katherine Stone

Abstract

Recent debates about maternal regret, prompted by the publication of Israeli sociologist Orna Donath’s (2015) research with mothers who admit to regretting their motherhood, have manifested differently in different cultural contexts. This chapter situates Tiina Sihto and Armi Mustosmäki’s analysis of a discussion of regret among contributors to an online forum for mothers in Finland (see Chap. 10) within the international context by comparing the Finnish discussion to similar media debates in Spain and the Anglophone countries. Our analysis reveals that while the idea that a woman might regret her motherhood is more readily accepted in countries where institutional support for mothers is lacking, there is a general acceptance that the inordinate pressures placed on mothers in neoliberal societies to negotiate the competing demands of family and paid employment make it inevitable that some women will experience regret. Moreover, we find evidence that the open conversation about regret trig-

V. Heffernan (&) Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] K. Stone University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

gered by Donath’s research is perceived as a further step towards destabilizing traditional attitudes towards gender roles.

11.1

Introduction

The Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden—are consistently held up as standard-bearers when it comes to empowering women and promoting gender equality. Generous parental leave, high-quality, state-subsidized childcare, and employment protection for parents remove the burden of childcare from women, facilitating their participation in the workforce (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2018). However, policies aimed at closing the gaps between men and women in the workplace and at home do not automatically transform attitudes towards traditional gender roles. As French feminist philosopher Élisabeth Badinter (2011) argues, “Changing an ideal takes far longer to have effect than providing childcare” (p. 135). Tiina Sihto and Armi Mustosmäki’s chapter in this volume (see Chap. 10) underlines how deepseated expectations of women’s roles—including their own expectations of themselves—influence both how they judge their own behaviours and how others judge them. We argue that the debate about maternal regret that has emerged in a number of countries in recent years exposes cultural attitudes about mothers and mothering

© The Author(s) 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_11

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that undercut congratulatory narratives of progress in terms of gender equality. Sihto and Mustosmäki rightly emphasize the central importance of Israeli sociologist Orna Donath’s research to our evolving understanding of how and why a woman might regret her decision to become a mother. Donath’s (2015) research on maternal regret has provoked significant discussion, both in academic circles and in the public arena. Her pioneering study, based on interviews with 23 Israeli women who acknowledge that if they could go back, they would not choose again to become mothers, addresses a topic that many people find disconcerting, if not downright abhorrent. Donath’s contention that regret is just as legitimate an emotional stance towards maternity as any other, and her insistence that women who experience regret should be able to talk about this without fear of condemnation, was ground-breaking. Donath has made it possible to discuss motherhood in terms of regret; her research has opened the door for further examination of an issue that has tended to be ignored or suppressed in the public imaginary. The chapter by Sihto and Mustosmäki is one of the first studies to explore the implications of Donath’s research for other cultural contexts (e.g. Evertsson and Grunow 2016; Giesselmann et al. 2018; Llewellyn 2016; Moore and Abetz 2019; O’Reilly 2019; Volsche 2020). In comparison to the overtly pronatalist Israel at the heart of Donath’s study, in Finland motherhood is presented as an individual choice with numerous measures designed to allow parents to combine work and family life. Here, Sihto and Mustosmäki argue, the reason why regret is taboo is precisely because women are deemed to have such freedom of choice and because the socio-political infrastructure makes mothering so easy, relatively speaking. They contend that the taboo surrounding maternal regret suggests that Finnish attitudes towards motherhood remain more traditional than statistics about the gender gap and wellbeing of mothers might indicate. In fact, ideals of attachment are evident in various contributions to the discussion “Those of you who regret having children: does the feeling ease as the children grow?” on the online forum vauva.fi, which Sihto and

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Mustosmäki analyzed. This model of parenting also shapes the backlash against confessions of regret, with some commentators emphasizing the damage they may cause affected children. This belief likewise places pressure on women to repress feelings of regret. Other negative responses deny and downplay the existence of regret, conflating it with depression, ambivalence, or exhaustion, as well as displaying concern about the social consequences if regret were to receive cultural legitimation as an acceptable maternal emotion. At the other end of the spectrum, reflecting the rise of therapeutic culture, some commentators validate the importance of opening up about negative emotions. In this respect, online confessions of maternal regret belong to a wider trend of “talking back” in cultural representations of motherhood that deconstruct idealistic stereotypes of “good” motherhood (Podnieks 2012, p. 12). Our own work has explored the controversy that ensued in Germany after Donath’s (2015) research was featured in the daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in April 2015 (Göbel 2015).1 The debate in social media and the press lasted several months and the topic continues to resurface in broader discussions of maternal culture. Our analysis of the so-called #regrettingmotherhood debate in Germany shows how Donath’s initial (2015) research—a study among Israeli women published in English and in an American academic journal—was very quickly and effectively moulded to fit particularly German anxieties about motherhood. Many of the contributions to the media debate, whether positive or negative, focused on the pressures on German mothers, particularly working mothers, who must try to balance the competing demands of the home and workplace. The issue of worklife balance and the (lack of) structural supports available to mothers thus emerges much more strongly as a theme in the German context than in the Finnish conversations analyzed by Sihto and Mustosmäki. Moreover, the ideological battles that surfaced in German media and social media 1

The Süddeutsche Zeitung is one of Germany’s most prominent daily broadsheets, with an average readership of 1.28 million per issue (SZ Media, 2020).

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International Responses to Regretting Motherhood

contributions often reference ideas about the maternal role connected to the glorification of motherhood during the National Socialist era, as well as to differences in the cultural construction of motherhood between East and West during the period of division. While East German mothers were expected to contribute to the state through paid employment, which was facilitated through widespread provision of public childcare, West German tax and welfare regimes were based on a male breadwinner model, which made it difficult, if not outright prohibitive, for mothers to work. However, the East German model did not automatically lead to gender equality. On the contrary, some supports for working mothers, such as generous maternity leave and paid time off for housework, only served to reinforce the assumption that childcare and the home were a woman’s responsibility (Ferree 1993). In any case, since the unification of Germany in 1990, the West German model of motherhood has become the norm in both parts of the new Germany. The passionate reactions on both sides of the #regrettingmotherhood debate illustrate the incompatibility of Donath’s notion of regret with the way in which the maternal role tends to be idealized in contemporary Germany (Heffernan and Stone 2021). The distinct cases of Israel, Finland and Germany indicate that maternal regret is a complex, individualized phenomenon that is shaped by local policy and cultural narratives about mothering. In this chapter, we broaden out this discussion to explore how such factors also influence public discourse about maternal regret in other contexts. We, therefore, examine how Donath’s research and ensuing discussions about maternal regret were reported in the print media. Our rationale for a thematic analysis of newspaper articles is threefold. First, there is a multidirectional quality to discussions of maternal regret, with social media users often responding to or retweeting newspaper articles, on the one hand, and traditional media reacting to trending topics on social media, on the other. Second, discussions of maternal regret in print and online newspapers expose a more diverse readership to the topic than online forums, whether private or

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open, which tend to be organized according to topics, for instance, via hashtags or subforums. It is no surprise that the proliferation of online forums has helped to desacralize cultural narratives about motherhood: they provide a relatively sheltered, if not anonymous, outlet for confession. Yet the very reporting of a topic in the traditional media also implies a recognition on the part of agenda setters and gatekeepers that certain issues are relevant to wider society. Third, the articles we analyze reproduce confessions of maternal regret, report on the response, and provide commentary on the wider contexts for mothering in ways that illuminate emergent “structures of feeling” relating to the gender gap and how parenting is constructed and experienced in different cultural contexts (Williams 1977, p. 127). In choosing these contexts, we were guided by the Nexis database of newspaper articles relating to the search term ‘Orna Donath’, given the centrality of Donath’s work to public discussions of maternal regret. We then used Internet search engines to cast our nets more widely and capture articles about maternal regret where Donath is not an explicit point of reference. The German-, Spanish-, and English-language media had the most hits in the Nexis database (203, 64, and 38 respectively).2 Since we have analyzed the German response elsewhere (Heffernan and Stone 2021), the current discussion focuses on how maternal regret has been discussed in Spanishspeaking and English-speaking countries. The English-language corpus presents us with the so-called “Anglosphere problem” (Riley 2005, para. 8), i.e. the difficulty of dividing English-language online content along rigid national lines. Despite some regional restrictions on access to content, there are fewer borders in the consumption of online material. Some pieces included here appear with outlets that are published in several Anglosphere countries and refer to other English-speaking contexts. This cross2

Our analysis is limited by the linguistic restrictions of the Nexis database, which prevents closer engagement with other contexts where Donath’s study has been published in translation, notably Poland and Korea.

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referencing reflects the fact that, beyond historical links, “the Anglosphere broadly shares ideological and economic structures, and that the media systems within those countries share enough commonalities to be compared meaningfully” (Duffy and Knight 2019, p. 938). As Michaels and Kokanović (2018) explain, “the dominant cultures in Great Britain, Canada, the USA, and Australia share common parenting ideologies that take shape within similar economic structures” (p. 8). Drawn in broad strokes, Anglosphere countries are in fact “noninterventionist liberal”. with relatively low social spending. Private insurance schemes play an important role in welfare provision and state spending prioritizes those in most need. Though Spanishlanguage news stories are also often shared between media outlets in Spain and Latin America, all articles in our corpus except three items (two from Mexico and one from Chile) were published in Spain. We find little evidence that Donath’s research has generated significant interest to date in Latin America. For this reason, we focus our analysis of public debate about maternal regret on the Spanish context. The newspaper articles we analyze provide a snapshot of wider conversations about maternal regret and function as a barometer of shifting attitudes towards motherhood. Variations in the mediation and reception of Donath’s research reveal cultural differences in the social and ideological construction of motherhood. Finally, we examine the role that questions to do with gender inequality play in international conversations about maternal regret. It is noteworthy that our case studies manifest different approaches to family policy, falling into different clusters in Esping-Andersen’s (1990, 1999) model of capitalist welfare regimes, which groups countries depending on how universal, or alternatively status-dependent, social welfare is and the role that state or market plays in de-familialising caring responsibilities (see Chap. 3 for an indepth exploration of this construct). This chapter thus outlines our hypothesis that maternal regret is not contingent on social circumstances or perceived gender inequity, as some commentators speculate. Instead, the existence of regret

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across diverse contexts debunks the essentialist myth—still prevalent even in these progressive western contexts—that all women will ultimately find satisfaction in motherhood.

11.2

#Madresarrepentidas in Spain

The major role that the family plays in providing social welfare distinguishes Spain and other southern European nations even from welfare conservative countries such as Germany. Consequently, Pérez-Caramés (2014) argues, Mediterranean welfare regimes involve the most gender inequality, as they consider women primarily as in the role they have in their families— reproducing and caring, leaving them unprotected towards the market in the case of economic need, as they do not promote reconciliation between family roles and work roles (p. 177).

As Baizan (2016) further notes, as women’s participation in the labour market has increased, the caring capacity of families has been seriously weakened, undermining the foundations of familism. At the same time, men’s roles have changed only marginally, and adaptation of the welfare state to these new gender roles has been slow and partial (p. 197).

Indeed, Spain invests none of its GDP in childcare and offers only 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, below both the OECD (18.1 weeks) and EU average (22.1 weeks) (OECD, 2020a PF3.1; OECD, 2020a PF2.1). In Spain, moreover, fascism’s focus on pronatalism meant that, after the end of the dictatorship, many women began to turn away from motherhood. Against this backdrop, Spain’s birth rate has fallen sharply since the 1970s; its Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is amongst the lowest in the European Union (Eurostat 2020). Of course, Spain is not unique in experiencing a significant drop in fertility since the 1970s, as Eurostat figures document. However, in tracing the emergence of what they called “lowest-low” fertility in the 1990s, i.e. a TFR at or below 1.3 births per woman, Kohler et al. (2002, p. 641) pay special attention to Southern-European countries like Italy and Spain, where birth rates dropped

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International Responses to Regretting Motherhood

particularly rapidly. Analyzing the trend towards childlessness in contemporary Europe, Kreyenfeld and Konietzka (2017) note that though this phenomenon affects both men and women, conservative commentators often lay the blame at women’s feet, impugning them as selfish and individualistic for focussing on their careers instead of their families. There is evidence to suggest that anxiety about increasing numbers of childless women in Spain and the greying of the population has also permeated the public arena. For Barbara Zecchi (2005), public concern about the socioeconomic impact of the low birth rate led to a resurgence of pronatalist discourse and imagery in the media in the early 2000s. Commenting on this glorification of pregnancy and motherhood, Zecchi remarks that, “The new efforts to foster the birth rate have paradoxically granted motherhood almost the same place of honour it had during Franco’s regime” (p. 148). Her description of the media landscape in Spain accentuates women’s implication in what is perceived as a deeply problematic trend towards childlessness; it indicates a pointed effort to encourage a return to the “natural” roles of wife and mother. Given that the Spanish context reveals similar social and political anxieties about motherhood to those in contemporary Germany, it is perhaps not surprising that Donath’s research also resonated with the Spanish public—albeit to a somewhat lesser extent than in Germany. In September 2016, when Donath’s book was published, a new subtitle offered a hint of its provocative content: ‘Una mirada radical a la maternidad y sus falacias sociales’ [A radical look at motherhood and its social fallacies]. Even before Donath’s book appeared on bookshelves, the press began to report on its incendiary content. Reviewing the book for the liberal online newspaper El Confidencial, Daniel Arjona (2016) referred to the furore the study had provoked in Germany and confidently declared, “The last taboo has just fallen” (para. 4). Remarkably, this review was titled with an incomplete quotation from a participant in Donath’s (2017) study: “To lose my children would bring a certain relief” (Arjona 2016). The

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participant in question, Sophia, the mother of two children aged between 1 and 4, had in fact continued, “but there would be more pain than relief” (Donath 2017, p. 122). Even more remarkably, the Twitter link for the article automatically pulled this partial quotation as the headline and added the hashtag #madresarrependitas. Although these paratextual circumstances suggest an effort on the part of the editorial team to capitalize on the inflammatory content of Donath’s research, the retweets offer little evidence that readers were scandalized. On the contrary, most express interest in a topic that they perceive as illuminating and important. In general, the Spanish response to Donath’s book was quite positive, recognizing the provocative potential of her research while drawing attention to its importance. In the weeks following its publication, the main Spanish daily newspaper El País published two interviews with Donath, allowing her to explain her findings in her own words. Speaking to Lucía Lijtmaer (2016), Donath emphasizes that not all women’s experiences of motherhood are positive; while for some it provides a route to social integration, for others, it has been a heavy burden that has led to regret. Donath thus argues that it is important to listen to women from all walks of life and to speak of “motherhoods, not motherhood” (para. 15). The second interview, which appeared under the title ‘Maternal instinct does not exist’ (Carbajosa, 2016) offers a succinct and very perceptive summary of Donath’s research: “Although it is assumed that we decide freely to be mothers, the social pressure to have children is enormous and . . . the result is that some end up regretting it” (para. 1). Carbajosa discusses the international reception, remarking “Donath seems to have awoken a beast” (para. 2). In the interview, Donath offers an explanation for some of the backlash: “There is a perception that this debate is dangerous for the state and for the social order” (para. 6). Both interviewers stress the importance of Donath’s work, which Ana Palicio (2016), writing for the online parenting magazine Ser Padres, goes so far as to dub “a new feminist manifesto” (para. 5). The fact that Donath was invited to participated in a roundtable entitled ‘The Family Is

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Dead. Long Live the Family’ at the Kosmopolis literary festival evinces the extent to which her work was read in the light of Spanish anxieties about the erosion of traditional family models. She appeared alongside Catalan writer and feminist activist María Llopis, whose 2015 book Maternidades Subversivas [Subversive motherhoods] spotlights new forms of motherhood beyond traditional and heteronormative models; writer and anti-racist activist Brigitte Vasallo, whose novel PornoBurka (2013) foregrounds gender, sexuality, and Islamophobia; and Catalan writer and translator Bel Olid, whose 2017 book Feminisme de Butzaca. Kit de supervivència [Pocket Feminism. Survival kit] argues that feminism is more relevant than ever today, given the persistence of subtle forms of discrimination. The panel was reported in several Catalan newspapers and widely shared on social media. Moreover, several Spanish press articles relate Donath’s questioning of assumptions about motherhood to new feminist and subversive voices that challenge prevalent myths about mothers. Some commentators draw comparisons to the ‘Club de Malas Madres’ (Bad Mothers’ Club), founded by mommy blogger Laura Baena to support mothers, particularly working mothers, and encourage them to reject the myth of maternal perfection (Carasco 2017; Roca 2018; Pereda 2018). Growing out of a Twitter account @malasmadres associated with Baena’s blog, this club now has over 750,000 followers (Club de Malas Madres 2020), and Baena has become one of Spain’s foremost influencers, also on a political level. Under the banner #YoNoRenuncio [I’m not quitting], she has lobbied for equality and more flexibility in the workplace. Baena’s political impact demonstrates how feminists can harness the popularity of digital platforms to draw attention to the personal but no less important struggles mothers face (Ross and Fellers 2017). Overall, the Spanish newspaper articles examined here show that Donath’s research has been perceived as a contribution to a wider feminist revision of women’s roles in society— one seen as urgently necessary. Backlash against her participants’ confessions was minimal,

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especially compared to the furore in the German press and on social media. Instead, we find ample evidence that maternal regret is perceived as conceivable, even understandable, especially given the low level of state support for mothers, persistent gender inequality in the home, and the framing of childbearing as an individual choice (Alvarez 2018). Within a context that tends to relate the problems mothers face in negotiating the demands of family and the workplace to personal decisions, it is not difficult to understand Spanish readers’ willingness to accept that a woman might come to regret her decision to become a mother—and why a piece of research that illuminates this is viewed as an important contribution to contemporary discussions about gender equality.

11.3

Regretting Motherhood in Anglosphere Media

In the English-speaking world, Donath’s research and the #regrettingmotherhood debate were not viewed as catalysts for a new conversation about mothering but often understood as part of a “larger groundswell of maternal reckoning” reaching back to the mid-1970s, when advice columnist Ann Landers conducted a survey on parental regret with her North American readers (Kingston 2018, para. 13). Of 10,000 respondents, 70 per cent indicated regret (Landers 1976).3 Forty years later, Corinne Maier’s (2007) confession of occasional regret in No Kid: 40 raisons de ne pas avoir d’enfant [No Kid: 40 reasons not to have children], a bestseller in France and Canada, caused a furore in France that caught the attention of English-language newspapers. In 2011, British tabloid The Daily Mail published a confession by 50-year-old Jill Scott (pseudonym) (Scott 2011), who admitted that she regretted becoming a mother. Two years later, Isabella Dutton (2013) confessed her maternal regret in the same newspaper,

3

Donath (2009) has stated that this study reinforced her decision to research the topic of maternal regret.

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prompting 1838 comments. As Vice’s Jennifer Swann (2016) points out, the article also resonated with parents who identified with Dutton’s regret—and admired her honesty. A Google search of her name today reveals pages of blog posts, essays, and online forums from parents celebrating, defending, and pledging gratitude to Dutton for saying the previously unspeakable (para. 12).

Thus, Donath’s study provided scholarly framing and legitimacy for voices that had started to emerge in previous decades. As Kingston (2018) writes in high-profile Canadian news magazine Macleans, “Dutton and Maier are no longer freakish outliers; parental regret, or ‘the last parenting taboo’ as it’s dubbed in the media has been covered by everyone” (para. 4), including high-profile platforms spanning parenting and women’s magazines and mainstream news outlets like the BBC and The Guardian (Compton 2018; Otte 2016). This existing discursive platform might explain why there was relatively little backlash against Donath’s research in the English-language press, though there were some exceptions. In The Toronto Star, King (2016) suggests that only those regretful mothers who suffer psychological problems or experienced difficult childhood deserve any empathy. Ultimately, she sees the conversation about maternal regret as a sign that “the human potential for selfishness is vast, ugly and limitless” (para. 9), especially because she deems selflessness a defining characteristic of maternity. Writing for the New Zealand site MercatorNet, as well as the U.S. Intellectual Takeout, Moynihan (2016) disputes claims that “women are still burdened by cultural expectations that their fulfilment lies in motherhood” (para. 8), referring to the growing number who opt not to have children, a trend she describes as anti-natalist. In the Washington Examiner, Last (2016) likewise dismisses Donath’s study. He sees her qualitative interviews not as data but as “life-style justification anecdata” (para. 10) that do nothing to revise the general trend that “people who have children still seem happy with their decision” (para. 11). This claim has, of course, been refuted by numerous studies (Glass et al. 2016).

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Elsewhere, journalistic commentators do not downplay the significance of Donath’s findings, nor do they attenuate the radical stance of regret by conflating it with ambivalence, as was common in the German and Finnish discussions. Overall, discussion is measured, even when considering the potential impact of confessions of maternal regret on children. In the forum discussion analyzed by Sihto and Mustosmäki in Chap. 10, women repeatedly cited this concern as a reason for not publicly speaking about their feelings of regret, suggesting the potency of cultural narratives about deterministic mothering. Rather than catastrophise, Anglosphere commentators frequently highlight the benefits of open conversation, even between parents and children. The Guardian’s Marsh (2017) speaks to Morgane, the daughter of Victoria Elder (2016), whose highly viewed reply to the Quora question ‘What is it like to regret having children?’ was syndicated on the American parenting site Fatherly. Morgane criticizes the reaction to her mother: “There were a bunch of people calling her a liar and a horrible mum, which really made me upset, because I know what she’s really like” (para. 18). Journalists demonstrate the wider relevance of Donath’s research by interviewing others who regret becoming mothers (Kingston 2018; Swann 2016; Treleaven 2016; Yasa 2017), as well as quoting from online forums in which parents admit their regret (Reddit 2017; Mumsnet 2009). The Facebook community ‘I regret having children’ has garnered more than 17,000 followers since it was started in July 2012 (see Blott 2016; Wilson 2017). The reasons for regret echo those identified by Sihto and Mustosmäki in the Finnish context: self-abnegation; deterioration of relationships; exhaustion; frustration and boredom with the monotony of parenting; feelings of being overwhelmed by the cognitive burden of mothering; and missed opportunities, especially professional. Of these detailed engagements with maternal regret, Yasa’s (2017) article, published in numerous Australian newspapers, generated the most discussion. Gray (2017) wrote a follow-up, syndicated piece describing the “mixed” reaction to Yasa’s piece, evident also in published reader

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letters. Gray asks why “reaction to women who regret becoming mothers immediately shifts into concern for their children” (p. 18), which she interprets as “a telling sign we won’t focus on the structural forces that make women resent the job” (p. 18). In line with this conviction, journalists also emphasize the links between maternal regret and women’s decisions not to have children (see Kingston 2018; Treleaven 2016). Many English-language commentaries are indeed meta-discursive in character (see Marsh 2017). Some consider why the issue particularly resonated in Germany (Moran 2016; Strauss 2016). The Guardian’s Otte (2016) links the backlash to #regrettingmotherhood there to social narratives constructing motherhood as culturally vital. Marie Claire’s Treleaven (2016) describes the issues in Germany as symptomatic of broader phenomena: “For many countries, raising a family still constitutes a vast landscape of unpaid work that falls almost wholly on women’s shoulders” (para. 22). Many commentators interrogate the ‘mommy myths’ that underpin pronatalist societies (see Kingston 2018; Treleaven 2016), one that idealizes motherhood as the key to female happiness and propagates intensive parenting, a highly privileged practice that places unrealistic pressures on mothers (Marsh 2017; Moran 2016; Swann 2016; Treleaven 2016). These articles contain a critical stance on ideologies of intensive and attachment parenting that permeate the confessions analyzed by Sihto and Mustosmäki and that contribute to mothers’ feelings of guilt and desire to hide their stance of regret. The gender gap is a recurring frame for English-language discussions. According to Sullivan (2013), “a modified breadwinner model, in which most women are employed but are still expected to fulfil the major domestic caring role, is dominant” (p. 78) across countries in the Anglosphere; “parents generally have to rely on market‐based child‐care solutions to work‐family conflicts, either through employers or through child‐care services” (p. 78). Compared to the other nations discussed in this chapter, the cost of childcare as a proportion of the average wage is relatively high in Anglosphere countries (OECD

V. Heffernan and K. Stone

2020a, PF3.4A). The United States is the most explicitly antistatist, with no universal healthcare or national approach to paid parental leave, and generally “does very little to provide for the needs of women and children” (Bolzendahl and Olafsdottir 2008, p. 286). Guo and Gilbert (2007) observe that the gap between social democratic and other countries has lessened since 1990; the latter now invest an increasing proportion of GDP in family benefits. Nonetheless, gender equality remains “strikingly absent as an explicit design feature and goal of the Anglophone parental leave policies” (Baird and O’Brien 2015, p. 200).4 Writing about maternal regret for Vice, Swann (2016) refers to a study on the 7 per cent per child “wage penalty for motherhood” (Budig and England 2001, p. 220) in the United States. Other studies ascertain no similar fatherhood penalty (Loh 1996); Lundberg and Rose (2000) even note a small wage increase after the birth of a man’s first child. Treleaven (2016) cites Bianchi et al. (2012) who show that in the twenty-first century U.S. women have spent nearly 14 hours per week on childcare, significantly higher than the amount recorded by time-diary data for previous decades, which registered a low of 7.3 hours in 1975. For fathers, the figure was approximately 7.2 hours per week in 2009–2010, compared to 2.6 in 1965. Synthesizing a range of research in this area, Bianchi and Milkie (2010) note that Almost all studies of housework provided evidence on a limited number of causal explanations for men’s relatively low contribution—the time availability explanation, the relative resources account, or some variant of the gender perspective that emphasized either the role of gender ideology or the idea of housework as “doing gender.” Despite the large number of studies, there emerged no dominant consensus on the most persuasive 4

According to OECD data (2021, PF2.1), since 2000, Finland has increased its leave offering for fathers from 3 to 9 weeks; 6 of those weeks allow for parental and homecare that goes beyond paternity leave. Germany has also introduced leave for fathers, which is currently 8.7 weeks. While Spain has offered limited leave for fathers since 1970 s, today only 4.3 weeks are paid. Australia and the UK both allow 2 weeks of paternity leave, whereas Canada, New Zealand, and the US provide no paid leave of any kind.

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International Responses to Regretting Motherhood explanation for the persistence of the gender division of labour in the home (p. 708).

Kane (2018) additionally adds that “Parenting labour is gender-differentiated not only in minutes and hours, but in type and accompanying stress levels” (p. 397). Macleans’ journalist Kingston (2018) references a similar study to connect gender asymmetries, maternal regret, and the increasing dominance of the ideology of attachment parenting that is evident in the discussions of maternal regret evaluated by Sihto and Mustosmäki in Chap. 10.

11.4

Conclusion

This chapter situates the Finnish experiences analyzed by Sihto and Mustosmäki in the previous chapter in an international framework. Across the contexts we have analyzed, several threads emerge. First, there are perceived links between maternal regret and class-based ideologies of attachment and intensive parenting, which dictate that the best mothers personally manage all aspects of their children’s upbringing, which inevitably leads to maternal stress and exhaustion, especially if infrastructural and institutional supports are deficient. Second, sympathetic strands of the discussion contend that speaking up about maternal regret is not only important for women’s wellbeing, and perhaps even for the relationship with their children, but that it is also a necessary part of the project to expand cultural discourses about mothering and its role in women’s lives. Third, backlash discourses frequently pathologized feelings of regret as symptomatic of depression or trivialized perceived feelings of regret. According to this line of argument, regret is a useless emotion at odds with the neoliberal imperatives of western culture. The most moralistic contributions to the international discussion depict regretful mothers as the ultimate bad mothers, mistaking the object of regret by confusing a stance of regret towards motherhood with a lack of love for the children. In spite of these similarities, especially in the reasons that mothers give for their stance of

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regret, differences have emerged in the public discourses around the topic in Israel, Finland, Spain, Germany, and the Anglosphere, particularly regarding the audibility and tone of discussions. In the Spanish media, the issue dovetailed with broader calls to desacralize the country’s maternal ideology. Donath’s research was framed as a feminist antidote to pronatalist imperatives that have long constructed motherhood as an inevitable step in a woman’s biography. In the Anglosphere, discussion centred on the reasons why Donath’s research generated such controversy in Germany but also viewed the backlash as characteristic of phenomena in ‘more developed’ countries, where mothers are increasingly called on to combine careers with caring duties. In this respect, commentators interpret maternal regret as a radical expression of a persistent and universal sense that gender equity has not yet been achieved, especially as it relates to unpaid care and domestic work and cultural narratives about parenting. It is noteworthy that the discussion in the media has lacked a consistently intersectional dimension, one that will be fundamental for providing a deeper understanding of parental regret in the future. It is likewise remarkable that the articles focus almost entirely on mothers. In her commentary for Ozy.com, Moran (2016) draws on a recent German survey that found that, out of 1,228 parents in total, 19 per cent of mothers and 20 per cent of fathers would choose not to become parents if they could go back in time (YouGov 2016). While the survey finds that regret is equally likely for mothers and fathers, the reasons diverge. Twice as many mothers as fathers perceive parenthood as having had a negative impact on their careers. Less clear are the reasons why more fathers than mothers regret their parenthood. Consequently, Christoph Geissler, head of the YouGov research institute, is planning a follow-up with the male respondents. In an interview with the Israeli ATMag, Donath clarifies that she had originally spoken with ten men who regretted becoming fathers. However, she continues, “in the end, I decided there was no place for them. Men who do not want to be

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fathers are not completely exempt from society’s judgment. But they also don’t have the same level of expectations as women, as part of their identity” (Bashan, 2017, para. 25; see also Gray 2017). Elsewhere, Donath notes that women in her study were often “threatened by divorce” if they did not change their minds about not wanting to become parents, whereas this threat did not seem to hover over reluctant fathers (Kingston 2018, para. 20). Likewise speaking to Kingston (2018), maternal scholar Andrea O’Reilly suggests two reasons for the relative silence of men in the conversation about paternal regret. On the one hand, it is still culturally and legally easier for men to “walk away” (para. 20). On the other, Men’s identity is never collapsed into their parental one; if you’re a bad mother, you’re a bad woman. If a father is late at day-care, it’s ‘Poor thing, he’s busy.’ A mother who’s late is viewed as selfish and irresponsible (Kingston, 2018, para. 20; see also Richler, 2017).

Drawing meaningful conclusions about the relationship between maternal regret and gender inequality would require a greater number of case studies and more detailed empirical research. A springboard for such inquiries might be offered by recent discussions of the gender gap in relation to shifting fertility rates and attitudes to family life. After all, some of the conversations we analyze posit links between maternal regret and wider fertility trends, including voluntary childlessness. Yet developments in the TFR do not map neatly on to standard benchmarks for assessing gender equality. By way of illustration, Esping-Andersen and Billari (2015) summarize a body of scholarship linking gender equality, and especially gender equity, that is “perceptions of fairness and opportunities” (p. 6), with higher fertility levels. There is no clear correlation between fertility trends and macro-level analyses such as those contained in the Global Gender Gap Report (World Economic Forum, 2019), which considers economic participation, educational attainment, and political involvement (Mills 2010). While Finland, Germany, Spain, and New Zealand score in the top ten countries, the UK and

V. Heffernan and K. Stone

Canada rank at 19 and 21 respectively, with Australia 44th and the US 53rd, reflecting the fact that both place in the bottom 50 in terms of political empowerment. It seems especially paradoxical that Finland, third overall in the Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum (2019), has a TFR that has dropped below the European average of 1.59 births per woman and the OECD average of 1.7 births per woman. Women in these ‘more developed’ countries are having fewer children for a wide range of reasons, some of which may relate to gender equality in the domestic sphere and perceived inequity in terms of support offered to parents in combining work and family, increasingly relevant as more and more women join the work force. We should also not underestimate the impact of more nebulous forms of inequity relating to cultural expectations of mothers. In previous research, we note that such issues also feed into discussions of maternal regret in Germany (Heffernan and Stone 2021). Donath would, however, propose caution in the face of temptations to posit a simplistic correlation between maternal regret and gender inequality. Instead of seeing regret as inherently tied to the social infrastructure that eases or constrains parenting, Donath (2017) believes that the existence of maternal regret also exposes the “a binary that leaves no room for women to consider themselves and be considered by others to be human beings with the ability to determine what is meaningful in their lives on their own” (p. 206). Acknowledgments The preliminary research for this chapter was supported by the Irish Research Council (RPG2013-1/Starter RPG). This project has also received funding through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952366.

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Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics: Challenging Current Narratives on Pain and Health

12

Irina Poleshchuk

Abstract

This chapter aims to articulate new ethical possibilities made apparent during experiences of chronic pain, and suggest an ethics of temporality apparent in the mother–child relation. I also aim to bring an understanding of the complexity and diversity of subjectivities in pain and its impact on its social, intersubjective environment. The narratives of mothers who have experienced chronic pain for more than three months help articulate a gap found in the Western model of medical knowledge. I hope to shift attention from the perspective of a patient understood as an objectified object of pain and from pain as a separate object of study to a study of the concrete embodied experiences of mothers in chronic pain. Chronic pain poses a problem both for understanding its medical source but on a more personal level it challenges the very sociality and ethical becoming of subjectivity. The focus in phenomenological approaches to the personal intersubjective dimensions of mothers in pain is usually not considered by

I. Poleshchuk (&) University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: [email protected] European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania

the neurobiological model; however, the vulnerability of maternal subjectivity opens a wide range of questions that can target existing gendered gaps in medical sciences and partly in the humanities. Chronic pain in maternal subjectivities illuminates the traumas of not being with- and for-the-child, and the loss of responsibility in modes of diachronic temporality. Mothers are condemned to isolating guilt and shame, but also to their continuous attempts to restore and to hold onto their own ethical becoming, whatever the cost. To address the gender gap is to bring the pain of maternal subjectivity into a common inter-affective dimension, and to accentuate a social organization of affective space. With the help of phenomenology, I aim to reveal a horizon where the gender gap exists—in this case, the complexity of ethical situations that mothers with chronic pain experience, where moral responsibility and the ethical locus of self are questioned, which has been ignored in philosophical and medical knowledge and practice. I draw on the phenomenological methods employed in the works of Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Henry, Arthur Frank, and Cheryl Mattingly to shape the way we understand the meaning of pain. To further support the discussion about the normativity of ethical situation in this chapter, Chapter 13 concentrates on ethical deficiencies of maternal subjectivity as constructed by Western socio-political life.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_12

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12.1

I. Poleshchuk

Introduction

In the history of European culture, pain was described in terms of one’s passions and not as a separate physiological, somatic, and/or mental phenomenon. Pain demonstrated the imperfection or punishment of human beings as part of a bigger world integrated into larger religious and mythological systems. Until the seventeenth century, pain was still regarded as a possible form of evil and sin that befell human beings.1 It wasn’t until the mid-seventeenth century that pain became an object of medical studies and a medical term. From a biological point of view, pain was naturally imbedded into human life, and in theology it was a necessary component of human nature, a productive force on the way towards spiritual development.2 Descartes (1633) took one of the most innovative steps in the study of human nature in publishing De Homine. Leaving the soul to theology, he liberated the body for medical science., and thus distinguishing pain as an object of medical studies. It is important, however, to mention a radical critique of knowledge undertaken by Foucault (1963/2003) in The Birth of Clinic: Archeology of Medical Perception. He describes an ill body as the main focus of investigation in the medical sciences without a discussion of what makes for a healthy body. Following Foucault’s (1963/2003) line of reflection, only through the ill body and its classifications of disease does Western medicine develop as a knowledge and practice. Western European knowledge does not give a clear explanation of what it means to be healthy; however, norms of being ill are well defined and described. Often, instead of ‘How are you?’ we 1

Subjectivity is understood as a genesis of the relation between the self, the other, and the world (see Zahavi 2008). 2 In this paper, I focus primarily on chronic pain since its long-lasting period challenges the ways subjectivity unfolds itself in the lifeworld. The mothers, whose written narratives are taken here as testimonies, are between 35– 55 years old and in most cases are from different areas of the United States and Western Europe, mirroring, thus, a Western medical paradigm.

are asked ‘Do you have pain? Where do you have pain?’ We localize pain in a particular area of the body and often ignore the complexity of its experience. Foucault (1963/2003) acknowledges that medicine is never an interpretation of disease or pain. For medical knowledge, both disease and pain are not discussed as an experience but they are often defined as deprivation. The medical practice was always preoccupied with the human being’s way ‘towards death’ as shown within the medical context when we ask, ‘when does the human being die?’ and the reason for a cure is to prevent death. Thus, medical knowledge is, first of all, a principal of investigation and an articulation of disease. The époque after Descartes has marked the beginning of studies that examine pain as a result of pure mechanical stimuli-response reactions. However, this approach was unable to address or treat pain that was not associated with mechanical injury, or which remains even after the cause of injury has been removed. In the twentieth century, the phenomenon of chronic pain gradually gained attention in medical studies. In 1968, Ronald Melzack and Kenneth Casey gave an extensive analysis of chronic pain. They theorized temporality, affectivity, and intensities of pain, which are not merely explained by the magnitude but also by cognitive activities and the formation of perception. The American Pain Society (1983) and The International Association for the Study of Pain (1973) note that pain that remains more than three months is no longer seen as a symptom but is classified as an illness. Chronic forms of pain displace subjectivity and lead one to question their life’s activities in a constant state of altered mobility, disordered sleep, in their sexual life, parental life, with the development of low self-esteem, loss of the self and individuality, and negative perceptions. Almost all contemporary approaches to pain treatment, such as somato-technical (Vrancken 1989), dualistic body oriented (Duncan 2000), behaviorist, and consciousness approaches (Ehde et al. 2014), concentrate on the affected area of the body and cure well acute pain. However, these approaches fail to recognize the composite psychosomatic, lived-body phenomenon apparent in

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Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics: Challenging …

chronic forms of pain. The traumatizing totality of chronic pain befalls life’s situation, and occurs independently of tissue and organ damage. As an individual experience, chronic pain contains the sum of physical, psychological, cultural, and social factors that are inherent to a living subjectivity and which cannot be ignored from its analysis. The complexity of chronic forms of pain is well illustrated by the narrative turn in medicine. The defined practices of modern medicine, from building curricula to classifying categories, did not include patients’ experiences post-illness, their pain dairies and stories which would help to build new relations to their experiences and create new meaning-structures. The new era of postmodern experience draws attention to peoples’ stories, recognizing that there is always something more involved in being ill and the experience of constant pain that the official medical story cannot tell. Postmodern studies of experiences with chronic pain (Kleinman et al. 1978) begin when ill people recognize that there is always more involved in their experiences than the medical story tells. They acknowledge that pain can also remap the whole life horizon and give a voice to women’s stories where pain is experienced in states that remain beyond a physical illness. In the époque of modernity, women tended to see medicine as taking their individual voices away (Frank 2013). An impersonal voice imposed on them the meaning of their pain and so their searches for new paths that may be relevant to their personal lives were silenced. The important turn in postmodern studies is on temporality and the urgent need to listen to the voice, i.e., the voice recognized as ‘mine’ and not a voice emanating from universal classifications of disease. Frank (2013) in Wounded Storyteller writes, Illness elicits more than fitting the body into traditional community expectations or surrendering the body to professional medicine, though both community traditions and professional medicine remain. Postmodern illness is an experience, a reflection on body, self, and the destination that life’s map leads to (p. 7).

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The systematization and anonymity, but also necessity, to cure brought about by modernity remains a part of the medical procedure; however, postmodernity recognizes and legitimizes one’s own voice in pain which is often deconstructive, chaotic, sometimes unarticulated, trembling, and shouting. This need for a personal voice and hearing embodied stories of individual experiences also demands rhetorical tools that are accessible and legitimates questioning cultural and social norms as well as traditional moral judgments. Pain that is chronic is a constant living process, which affects the intimate sphere of subjectivity and their social environment, which can now be heard from the personal experience of motherhood. The particular existential formation of pain experienced by mothers always influences dimensions of relationality with a child; however, it seems to have been forgotten and very often disregarded in the history of philosophy and especially in medical science. The postmodern turn in philosophy, and especially phenomenology, addresses people’s narratives no longer as secondary material but accentuates their primary importance. Thus, the main aim of the next section is to investigate the temporality of chronic pain with respect to female subjectivity, to question its ethical modalities (such as being for the other person, being responsible, feeling guilty, and being ashamed) and to bring forward a discussion of chronic pain as shared between temporalizing, intersubjective relations.

12.2

Sensing Pain: Temporality and Affection

One of the main foundational principals of phenomenology says that all relations between a subject and its objects occur in the formation of meaning-structures, which take place in a temporalizing consciousness (Husserl 2019). Each experience happens in a particular temporal flow. Sensory experiences can then be explained as something that affects consciousness which then

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processes cognitively this affect into a sensation of something: we always tend to give meaning to what we feel, to something unexpected, and to the foreign object that strikes our perception.3 The process of perception always happens in time, and thanks to this on-going temporal flow we are able to hold on onto our experience so that the object perceived is presented as a whole object with a given meaning. The generative force of the affect of something perceived engages the subject in an active response, which constructs their life world and intersubjective relationships (Rodemeyer 2003). In sensory experience, we are each not only giving meaning to the affect by connecting it to our individual past but we also primarily project its meaning to the future. The temporalities of sensuous affective experiences do not only relate to objects but also to other subjects, and forms the foundational principle for any intersubjective relation. Moreover, our temporality of perception comprises an embodied self-sensing self, as a center of orientation, and it is through affection, in being affected by other objects and subjects, that subjectivity is linked with all lived experiences (Schües, 2011). Experiences of chronic pain also unfold in this stream of time that constructs subjective meanings of the life world of each who engage inter-subjectively with others. Pain is generally seen as an affective experience that unfolds in time that helps conceptualize meaning-structures of our world and relations (De Haro 2012). In pleasurable experiences, the subject certainly deals with a conscious experience of an affective sensation with content. 3

Phenomenology explains consciousness as a temporalizing flow that manifests as a duration and is structured as a threshold perceptual organism: retention, protention and urimpression. Urimpression is the first sensory experience, the ability of the mind to discern one sensory experience from another as well as from other background noises. The urimpression corresponds to the experience of the present moment, of ‘now’. One urimpression is followed by another. There arises a certain connection in the row of urimpressions: the first sensory experience has already disappeared but still exists in consciousness, and is retained. Every now-moment points to a connection with a future moment. Retentional consciousness makes possible the prospect of expectation called protention (Husserl 2019).

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However, an experience of pain differs from an experience of joy or pleasure in one significant way. In the article ‘Is pain an intentional experience?’, De Haro (2011) states that the experience of pain and its affectivity are not directed to the future and are not necessarily connected with meaning-structures of our future horizon. In other words, the content-giving activity, for which consciousness is standing for, is absent in chronic pain. This temporal dimension of pain, which is arranged in this affective state, is the pure present and the moment of now that is not necessarily connected to the future moment to come. In one of the narratives used here as data for philosophical reflection, a woman who experienced chronic pain wrote: Feeling like giving up today cancer as well as CFS, yes, the dishes piling up, the dog needing a walk, the pain and the aloneness. Even someone to make a cup of tea would be nice.

Here the pain is thematized in the social environment. It brings not only loneliness but also a feeling of despair. Pain is not just an automatic response to the stimuli made by an injury, but is seen as a genesis of meanings. One distinct feature of the experience of chronic pain is that in many cases we are well aware of it and can localize it in a specific part of our body. Scheler (1963) describes pain as the most conscious embodied experience and at the same time the most conscious of all corporeal phenomena. Following Scheler’s (1963) view, affective states of pain deploy meaningstructures. Often the meaning of an experience of pain is visible in metaphorical descriptions. One of the most common examples is to be ‘blinded by pain’ when the body and mind are fully overwhelmed by the affects of pain. In the book The Body in Pain, Scarry (1985) defines pain as a totality: Pain begins by “being not oneself” and ends by having eliminated all that is “not itself.” At first occurring only as an appalling but limited internal fact, it eventually occupies the entire body and spills out into the realm beyond body, takes over all that is inside and outside, makes the two

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Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics: Challenging … obscenely indistinguishable, and systematically destroying anything like language or world extension that is alien to itself and threatening to its claim. Terrifying for its narrowness, it nevertheless exhausts and displaces all else until it seems to become the single broad and omnipresent fact of existence (p. 55).

The difficulty is that in metaphoric descriptions of pain, both in life stories and narratives, it is almost impossible to detach the sensation of pain from the very subjective experience of how it feels to be in pain. The facticity of pain opens new horizons of understanding to the diverse forms of suffering but it also challenges the desire for universality in our social norms and meanings. It is well captured in the following commonly used phrases: You Nailed It; It’s Something New Every Day!!; Pain Sucks!!; It Gets So Bad!!; Crying Doesn’t Help!; But When It Hurts!!; It Hurts!!; Can’t Walk!; Trying Is So Painful!!; But I Will Keep Praying!; And Trying!! The multitude forms of pain lead Artaud (1958) to write in The Theatre and Its Double that pain reduces the subject to the limit of the self, “as it intensifies and deepens, multiplies its resources and means of access at the very level of sensibility” (p. 23). The radicality of chronic pain does not only shatter the self but also has a positive side of being fully in the world, feeling the body and being aware of the self, even if it is traumatized. The affect of pain sets a so-called disciplined body-self, going beyond basic needs and desires, beyond pleasure and displeasure. There is always an experience of ‘too much’ and ‘too unbearable’ that accompanies subjectivity and overtakes the embodied self. This notion of ‘too much’ creates a discontinuity of subjectivity when it is impossible to get rid of one’s own being in pain and to remain with oneself. Many of the narratives collected to inform this chapter address pain as a totality of body and mind and not just a localized sensation of one particular spot as the following two quotes illustrate. It’s really getting me down aching from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night, there’s no let up.

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Sorry but the only thing I can write is “HELP” because I get so depressed due to all my pains from the different parts of my body.

Often the sensation of pain is already intertwined with meaning-structures of pain. When there is pain, meaning is habitually ascribed to its affection. However, the force of the affection strikes subjectivity and paralyzes its life horizon, and eventually captures the subject in passivity and condemns it to a continuous present. No one can give a reasonable response to the affection of chronic pain. In The History of Pain, Rey (1995) adds that “this physical pain which takes over the entire being liberates being from any earthy ties should in consequence make him more compassionate, in term’s true sense, towards others and more lucid about himself” (p. 318). In a similar description, Scheler (1963) adds that pain can then become a bridge toward existential growth and change. Such growth leads to the very edge of one’s lived horizon and moves toward the dimension where subjectivity is fully exposed to its edge (Scheler 1963). What I have tackled so far is the experience of chronic pain as an event of destroyed meaningstructures that strikes subjectivity. Chronic pain is always rooted in the embodied self that senses and so influences its present in a given social environment. Chronic pain can be read as pure affectivity which generates a diversity of existential modalities for subjectivity. For example, annihilation of the self, suffering as transgression, and going beyond the self, which is seen in the following quote from one of the narratives leading to guilt and despair: And it hurts. More than any pain could physically. All I can see is the dirty dishes. I look at the laundry piling high. I push through the struggle of work. All I can feel is the despair that my daughter and husband deserve so much more. And yet...it is a lie. It doesn't feel like it is. My brain and heart believe that I am worthless but like a shaft of light piercing a storm, I know deeper than even that it is a lie. So I smile. I laugh. I cry. I live.

The despair expressed in the narrative problematizes many sides of an ethical maternal subjectivity. Being not able to accomplish

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responsibility, which is often measured by norms of our society, leads to a mothers’ experiencing guilt. These traumatic modes of mothers in chronic pain can help to articulate the meaning of ethical becoming as illustrated in the mother–child relation, especially in terms of the on-going present. The goal is to discuss how the affectivity of pain eliminates the future of an embodied self and of being for the child. For this goal, in the following section, I will inquire into whether mother has a common shared present or alternatively whether the impossibility of being responsible in a given moment-of-now leads to traumatized experiences of despair where the present is shared between two and the meaning structure of the future in the intersubjective relation are distrusted. A discussion of these ethical concerns that are made apparent in experiences of chronic pain can reveal the gendered gap that currently exists in medical science and ethics.

12.3

Disrupted Maternity

Narratives of chronic pain address a unique individual story and attend not only to an institutionalized patient but to the subjectivity of each with the complexity of their life world. Continuous chronic pain displaces people and takes them from everyday life routines to extraordinary situations. Chronic pain disturbs a temporal continuum; however, what is disturbed by the affect of pain is not only the temporal flow of perception and on-going meaning-structures, but also the construct of memory that gives a coherent sense of self and one’s life horizon. As Carr (1986) notices even in experiences of a healthy person “the narrative coherence [of] events and actions [is never] simply a ‘given’ for us. Rather it is a constant task, sometimes a struggle, and when it succeeds it is an achievement” (p. 96). Pain intensifies the experience of a disrupted memory that breaks connections between past, present, and future. Disrupted memory and temporality eventually bears down on ethical problems (Frank 2013).

Strategies of healing that have dominated various fields of medical knowledge traditionally ignore forms of temporality and ethics that are present in motherhood. Outside the phenomenology of psychopathology, narrative phenomenology, and also sociology of medicine the subject of pain is comprehended as a neurophysiological system. Personhood as a livedbody experience is not a primary objective in finding a medical cure. To think of the person only in binary frameworks, such as healthy and not healthy, normal and abnormal, functional and not functional, a great number of disillusions are created as the following narrative illustrates. Please don’t say I’m ill, cos I’m not ill I’m just in pain. And there is a big difference, so people expect me to be ill so when I walk up to church and I look you know, good, ...I can imagine people looking and thinking “I thought she wasn’t very well.” It’s a problem that is. I know it sounds stupid but it is. It’s not that I want sympathy off anyone I don’t but I don’t want people to think I’m lying.

The narrative in the chronic experience of pain is always personal. The measurement of intensities of pain often relies on subjective descriptions such that my experience of pain is not accessible to anyone else except me. In one of the narratives, a woman explains: I know that the girls (physiotherapists) here are great and they will help you all they can but ...she thinks it’s all muscular you see, so she gave me these exercises, and I’m doing ’em, doing all these exercises faithfully and yet I’m still getting worse not better. And how do you explain to people what pain is? Or the extent of the pain? Like my one to ten might be different from his one to ten, and you can’t explain pain can you?... And it’s getting worse. I think these girls are great, they’re smashing they are, but you can’t explain to people what the pain is.

Mattingly (1998) writes that “narrative constitutes a mode of thought and representation especially suited to considering life in time, shifting temporal shapes, and the human path of becoming where death is never far away” (p. 1). The facticity of suffering constitutes a demand for a narrative. Often, we want to tell a story and to search for meanings while still in a traumatic situation and/or in an emergency. Many of the

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Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics: Challenging …

narratives collected from mothers emphasize, however, also the invisibility of their chronic pain. This invisibility mirrors a traumatized sensibility that always stands behind the expected social normality of the person. Most narratives witness a disrupted maternal subjectivity that experience a lapse of time, loss of time, unstructured instants, and de-phases. I believe that the philosophy of ethics elaborated by Levinas (2004) will help to disclose a disrupted form of ethical subjectivity that is apparent in maternal relations taken not only as a metaphor but also as example of an unconditioned responsibility for the other person.4 This kind of responsibility and ethical becoming are always expected and present in motherhood and are what is at stake if they experience chronic pain. Before addressing the relation between chronic pain and the ethical formation of maternal subjectivity, I want to mention some aspects of how a women’s temporality is socially understood. In Women’s Time, Kristeva (1986) reflects upon a dominating social structure of time as linear and problematizes this structure in terms of female subjectivity. Motherhood makes apparent a new type of social relation that often unlocks a traumatized but also responsible subjectivity, which in many cases stays invisible, theoretically underestimated, and is not described enough by contemporary philosophical practices (Kristeva 1986). Often behind disciplinary control, there is indifference to a woman’s lost time in her need to handle multiple dramas. Traditionally, these 4 In works by Emmanuel Levinas ‘woman’ is linked to the feminine and to maternity. The feminine is read as hospitality and receptivity which are primordial modalities of ethical relation with the other. The feminine stands for the Eros, the otherness of the beloved one, carnality, erotic embodiment, but also welcome and dwelling. It is an intermediate category which creates foundation for the ethical relation. Another aspect found in woman but does not define her identity is maternity. Maternity discloses a pre-original sensibility and unconditioned being-for-the other. Maternity is both, an empirical experience and a metaphor that discloses ethical subjectivity: “And the other whose presence is discretely an absence, with which is accomplished the primary hospitable welcome which describes the field of intimacy, is the Woman. The woman is the condition of recollection, the interiority of the Home, and inhabitation” (Levinas 2004, p. 155).

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temporal experiences in motherhood are thought of as repetitions of structures in linear time (Stone 2012). Kristeva (1986) shows that liner temporality is built upon memories of an archaic past, and I find that these memories are not just those which are regulated by conceptual structures of our language and history but also involve, often subconsciously, emotional, affective, and sensible intersubjective experiences common in the embodied lives of a mother–child relation (Stone 2012). The linear time of maternal subjectivity is always unfolding around the present and structured as a memory of archaic past that regulates the meaning of the present. This view frames responsible subjectivity according to dominating social norms and expectations (see Ermath 1989). In the attempt to map a new ethical horizon, Kristeva (1986) sees the main task of critical feminism as situating woman’s temporality beyond social and generational memories. Going back to the discussion of chronic pain and ethics of maternity, I argue that her experience of chronic pain is forced to function in terms of linear temporality. My task for the remainder of this chapter then is to illuminate how different types of temporality can exist in the mother–child relation: (1) discontinuous diachronical maternal temporality5; (2) ethical temporality of the mother–child relation; and (3) temporality initiated by chronic pain. One of my goals is to disclose the way chronic pain engenders a disrupted subjectivity and how the accomplishment of responsibility in the future can suddenly turn into feelings of guilt, shame, and despair.

12.4

Pain, Responsibility, and Modes of Temporality

The metaphorical example of unconditional responsibility is well developed in the philosophical heritage of Emmanuel Levinas (2006). The relation of maternal subjectivity to the child stands as a radical example of responsibility as such because maternal subjectivity means to be 5

In Levinas’s (2006) ethics, intersubjective temporality is characterized by diachronical time, which is a rupture in linear time initiated by the address of the other.

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one for the other person and literally, but also symbolically, motherhood is being already marked by the demand of the child (Levinas 2006). Maternal subjectivity literally feels the other in the self. The formation of responsibility in maternity has a clear structure of temporality, in that to be for the child is to respond to their appeal not only at the present but also in the future. This being responsible in the future restructures the continuity of her present. The birth and care of the child break through the continuous time of subjectivity. The new, ethical temporality brought by the mother–child relation is described by Levinas (2004) as “my own and non-mine, a possibility of myself but also a possibility of the other” (p. 267). As a parent, the subject moves from always being with itself and from repeating itself in different life projects toward ethical diachronical time meaning that my time is restructured by the needs of the child at the moment of now and projected into the future. Levinas (2004) explains that to have a child is not to reclaim one’s lost opportunities but the possibility to go beyond the limits of one’s own concepts and predeterminations in being responsible for another. Torn up from being oneself, maternal responsible subjectivity, as Levinas (2006) writes, is “being less than nothing, a rejection into negative, behind nothingness; it is maternity, gestation of the other in the same” (p. 75). It is a reverse sensibility because carrying a child means “being affected by a non-phenomenon, a being put in question by the alterity of the other, before the intervention of a cause, before the appearing of the other” (Levinas 2006, p. 75). There is immediacy in her embodied sensations when the mother constantly feels the child in her everyday modes of being. The subject is affected by the address of the other without necessarily being able to immediately grasp the meaningstructure of this affect. Thus, maternity is a balance between being and transcendence, and is the constant formation of ethical subjectivity as becoming one-for-the-other. As such, maternal subjectivity has a complex temporality (Levinas 2006). Linear temporality is replaced by diachronical time when the moment of now and

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the future are conditioned by a mother’s responsibility and the child’s need. Moreover, maternal temporality is formatted, as Levinas (2006) argues, in a pre-ontological past. The birth and appeal of a child break temporal continuity and affect subjectivity before it is aware of its responsibility (Levinas 2006). In maternity, being the one for the child involves denunciating oneself in a gesture of giving and welcoming. It is a gift of my body and my food to the other, it is a termless welcome before my free will as captured below in this quote from Levinas (2006): sensible experience as an obsession by the other, or a maternity, is already corporeality. …The corporeality of one’s own body signifies, as sensibility itself, a knot or a denouement of being. … one-for-the-other, which signifies in giving, when giving offers not the superfluxion of the superfluous, but the bread taken from one’s mouth (p. 77).

This formation of an ethically responsible subjectivity in being the one-for-the-other is halted; however, by the affectivity of chronic pain. The Levinasian model of a radical responsibility that is apparent in the maternal relation is transformed. The affect of pain as an absolute and totalizing experience sets subjectivity into passivity while erasing the ethical diachrony of time. The abruptness of pain alienates maternal subjectivity and delays its capacity for becoming responsible. One testimony drawn from the narratives accentuates this alienation: Whereas Sam (youngest son) has been used to it, Jimmy (eldest son) has seen the good side and Sam has known no different but then again I feel awful for Sam he has missed out, where I used to play football and that with Jimmy and other games, other rough games, we used to play. I can’t do those now. I can play simple games with them but I can’t toss them into the air like I used to.

This narrative does not only demonstrate a formal talk but it also illustrates an ethical, aesthetic, and moral message that lies behind clinical definitions and the normativity of our moral actions. This narrative shows that subjectivity is ‘already accused’ when the one who takes responsibility for the other cannot be present. The overwhelming tenseness of pain annihilates

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Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics: Challenging …

what is traditionally considered ‘mine’. Torn inside out by chronic pain, her subjectivity does not dare allow becoming the responsible one. The temporal disruption felt by a subjectivity in pain erases her ability to act and her existential feeling of being ‘at home’. To give birth to a child is to overcome borders of one’s own body and constantly to maintain an ethical response to the other human. However, maternal subjectivity in chronic pain is thrown back upon itself and locked in repetition. The affect of long-lasting pain destroys a sense of responsibility that is projected into the future and creates an effect of de-phasement, which is when maternal subjectivity is late, loses time, or experiences a temporal gap. Often in testimonies, women report that chronic pain challenges their integration into a community as shown in this following quote, for example, And the children are more worried than anything. I feel as if I am depriving them of a normal childhood. It’s slipping away. It’s not right for a five year old.

In pain, Levinas (1985) describes oneself as “itself enchained overwhelmed, and in some way passive” (p. 71). It is marked by solitude and the elimination of any common shared temporality. A resistance to accept any form of shared life world marks its responsiveness. This impossibility of being-with increases feelings of guilt as this narrative from a mother clearly states. One of the worst things I experience through this pain is guilt. I feel guilty when I don’t interact with family. I get on edge when the pain is bad and I just want to be left alone, I feel guilt when I lay down, because it means I’m not doing housework which equates to me not pulling my weight around the house and since I gave my job up I’m not bringing any money in the house […] And even when my daughter comes home from work, she picks her daughter up from nursery and she comes to our house for her lunch and sometimes the pain is so bad I can’t speak to her (tearful) because I can’t bear to talk to anybody I just want to be on my own. And then I feel so guilty that you know I’m not being a proper mother.

The core of any of these narratives is a reconciliation of chaos, diversity of crisis, suffering, and the confusion brought about by chronic pain.

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Suffering from pain calls upon a need, expressed that addresses another and that aims to find a balance in a disrupted body. Reflective of a different ontology, chronic pain resists any objectification. Scarry (1985) writes, though indisputably real to the sufferer, it is, unless accompanied by visible body damage or disease label, unreal to others. This profound ontological split is a doubling of pain’s annihilating power: the lack of acknowledgment and recognition (which if present could act as a form of self-extension) becomes a second form of negation and rejection, the social equivalent of the physical aversiveness (p. 56).

This social aversiveness is well illustrated in the following narrative, where the mother explains her petulance while being with kids: That’s why I’m, well, with all these pains, whatever, its not just a lame excuse but that’s why I’m so terrible with the kids...It’s when I get on my own I think about it, why, why am I so nasty with these children?

Ontological split is cause by nonconformity of unconditioned responsibility and affectivity of pain. Resulting from totality of chronic pain, the social aversiveness gradually crushes residues of the ethical self.

12.5

Conclusion

In making a final remark, I address Paul Ricoeur (1990) who discusses the narrative as a foundation for the self. Selfhood is always unfolding in a particular time flow and this temporality manifests in our life stories (Ricoeur 1990). Time receives its narrated extension by becoming articulated in different symbolic mediations. The narratives used to inform this chapter do not only open a door to existential modalities of the self, but the identity and narratively structured life results in selfhood (Ricoeur 1990). Thus, in our everyday life an abstract notion of identity is replaced by the narrated identity encountered in stories of chronic pain. This narrative-identity constantly alters in life events and obviously it refers to others, calling forth the social environment, which helps to approach self-understanding. However, the

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identity formed and expressed though narrative often goes through severe mutations. The participation in community and in maternal relations is the creation of one’s life history and so the very creation of oneself. Chronic pain wipes out these historical and communal meanings with which the individual life story is interwoven. To create the self through narrative is not simply to tell a story but also to keep responsibility for one’s actions in the past and in the future, regardless of how much the self-narrative might change. The narrative of selfhood must be complemented with a perspective of ethical responsibility, which is not always heard. I’m newly diagnosed this year with a horrible skin condition where I can’t be in the sun, at all. My family wants to go on our usual spring break vacation this time to Hawaii. I don’t know how I’m going to do this but as my husband says, “why make us all suffer?” Do I go anyway? It is not just sun. It’s extremes in temperature too. I can’t exert myself. I can’t eat at restaurants; extremely limited diet. I can’t drink. Everything fun about what a vacation used to be for me is gone. Anywhere. My condition has really made my family pull away from me, as there’s not much I can do with them anymore.

The traumatic situation described in this narrative captures not only the impossibility of social life with family and disrupted maternal subjectivity, but reveals that the listeners to the stories of chronic pain are often absent. The sense of responsibility present in the expression of chronic pain is always bound to suffering, and so it opens an interpersonal dimension. Levinas (1988) refers to it as meaningless, useless, suffering ‘for nothing’. It “is intrinsically meaningless and condemned to itself without exit, a beyond takes shape in the interhuman” (Levinas 1988, p. 158). This useless form of suffering in chronic pain is called ‘unassumable’ because one’s subjectivity cannot give it any meaning. However, the address from another subjectivity in pain creates a new dimension, where it ‘solicits me and calls me’ makes me suffer for the other’s suffering. Thus, my suffering for the suffering other acquires meaning of listening and attention, which is what Levinas (1988) calls “the very

I. Poleshchuk

bond of human subjectivity, even to the point of being raised to a supreme ethical principle” (p. 159). The pain loses its useless character since the original ‘unassumable’ suffering calls for a shared and ethical intersubjective dimension. Chronic pain poses a problem both for understanding its medical source but on a more personal level it challenges the very sociality and ethical becoming of subjectivity. The focus in phenomenological approaches to the personal intersubjective dimensions of mothers in pain, which I address above, is usually not considered by the neurobiological model, however, the vulnerability of maternal subjectivity opens a wide range of questions that can target existing gendered gaps in medical sciences and partly in the humanities. Chronic pain in maternal subjectivities illuminates the traumas of not being with- and for-the-child, and the loss of responsibility in modes of diachronic temporality. Mothers are condemned to isolating guilt and shame, but also to their continuous attempts to restore and to hold onto their own ethical becoming, whatever the cost. To address the gender gap is to bring the pain of maternal subjectivity into a common inter-affective dimension, and to accentuate a social organization of affective space. Many normative sides of the pain experience in maternity are left for further consideration. As a continuation of this discussion, Giovanini in Chapter 13 sharpens the focus even more so on the traumatic experiences of pre-natal and maternal subjectivity. Through her chapter, she explores questions, such as: What are the possibilities which open horizon of ethical becoming of subjectivity in pain?; and What is responsibility of maternal subjectivity beyond identity widely accepted by social and political institutions of our Western discourse? In responding to these provocative questions, Giovanini not only adheres to the radical phenomenology of ethics as presented by Emmanuel Levinas but goes on to reveal transitional and transformative modes of subjectivity in pain loaded by the inevitable pre-ontological condition of being for the other.

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Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics: Challenging …

References Artaud A (1958) The theatre and its double. Grove, New York, NY Carr D (1986) Time, narrative, and history. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN De Haro AS (2011) Is pain an intentional experience? In: Copoeru I, Kontos P, De Haro AS (eds) Selected essays from the Euro-Mediterranean area. Zeta Books, Budapest, pp 386–395 De Haro AS (2012) New and old approaches to the phenomenology of pain. Studia Phaenomenologia 12(1):227–237 Duncan G (2000) Mind-body dualism and the biopsychosocial model of pain: what did Descartes really say? J Med Philos 25(4):485–513 Ehde DM, Dillworth TM, Turner JA (2014) Cognitivebehavioral therapy for individuals with chronic pain: efficacy, innovations, and directions for research. Am Psychol 69(2):153–166 Ermath ED (1989) The solitude of woman and social time. In: Forman E, Sowton C (eds) Taking our time: feminist perspective on temporality. Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK, pp 37–46 Foucault M (1963/2003) The birth of clinic: archeology of medical perception. Oxon Routledge Classics Frank AW (2013) The wounded storyteller. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL Henry M (2008) Material phenomenology. Fordham University Press, New York, NY Husserl E (1966) Analysis zur passive Synthesis: Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918– 1926. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, The Netherlands Husserl E (2019) The phenomenology of internal time consciousness. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN Kleinman A, Eisenberg L, Good B (1978) Culture, illness, and care: clinical lessons from anthropologic and cross-cultural research. Ann Intern Med 88:251–258 Kristeva J (1986) Woman’s time. In: Moi T (ed) The kristeva reader. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, UK, pp 187–213 Levinas E (1985) Time and the other. Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA

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Levinas E (1988) Useless suffering. In: Bernasconi R, Wood D (eds) The provocation of Levinas: rethinking the other. Routledge, London, UK, pp 156–167 Levinas E (2004) Totality and infinity. Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA Levinas E (2006) Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA Lingis A (1986) Sensuality and sensitivity. In: Cohen RA (ed) Face to face with Levinas. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, pp 219–230 Mattingly C (1998) Healing dramas and clinical plots: The narrative structure of experience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Rey R (1995) The history of pain. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA Ricoeur P (1998) Philosophy of the will and action. Scholars Press, Atlanta, GA Ricoeur P (1990) Time and narrative, vol 1. University of Chicago, Chicago Rodemeyer LM (2003) Developments in the theory of time-consciousness: An analysis of protention. In: Welton D (ed) The new Husserl: a critical reader. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, pp 125– 154 Scarry E (1985) The body in pain: the making and unmaking of the world. Oxford University Press, New York, NY Scheler M (1963) Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre in Gesammelte Werke. Francke Verlag, Bern/München Schües C (2011) The power of time: temporal experiences and a-temporal thinking. In C. Schües, D.E. Oklowski, & H.A. Fieldings (Eds.). Time in feminist phenomenology. (pp 60–78). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press Stone A (2012) Feminism, psychoanalysis, and maternal subjectivity. Routledge, Oxon Vrancken MAE (1989) Schools of thought on pain. Soc Sci Med 29(3):435–444 Zahavi D (2008) Subjectivity and selfhood: investigating the first-person perspective. MIT Press, Cambridge

The Subversive Act of Navel Gazing: How Maternal Experiences Are Lost from the History of Philosophy to the Gender Gap and a Subsequent Lesson from Maternal Subjectivities

13

Valerie Oved Giovanini

Abstract

A survey of the history of philosophy reveals a preoccupation with death to contend with life’s meaning and moral obligations. But what of another type of universal experience that can provide similarly important existential and ethical lessons, such as the birth of oneself from another? In the first section, I show deficiencies in traditional political, moral, and existential philosophical discourses and turn to pre-natal and maternal life for insights on relational identity formations and its ethical possibilities. Discourses by Hannah Arendt, Julia Kristeva, and Lisa Baraitser on split forms of identity ground my discussion on maternal subjectivities and their ethical responsiveness before I turn to Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics. His ethic illustrates an interrupted form of maternal subjectivity and sense of time despite the gender gap that exists in the philosophical literature on maternal experiences. I will conclude with a glance at recent literature on matrescence as an existential condition that creates ambivalence in a caretaker, which if occluded increases cases of what is believed to be post-partum depression. As a way of readdressing this gender gap in

V. O. Giovanini (&) California State University, Northridge, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

philosophical literature, I offer a final recommendation to re-evaluate traditional values that do not address maternal experiences or the preontological relationality that they illustrate.

13.1

Our Agenda

Poleshchuk’s chapter (see Chap. 12) in this collection introduces the ways in which pain has been treated in various fields of knowledge. Moving into the modern era with Descartes’ dualism and insufficient explanation of a type of pain “not associated with a mechanical injury, or which remains even after the cause of the injury has been treated” (p. xx of this collection), we land at the beginning of the twentieth century. The new century has made one main contribution to the study of pain, namely in the distinction between acute and chronic forms of pain. According to Poleshchuk, chronic pain begins to address symptoms that remain up to months or years after the disease or wound has healed and when care is given to the meaning structures of the person who experiences its symptoms. What previous and most contemporary biomedical accounts still miss, however, is the complex relation between the subjective unfolding in the meaning of one’s lifeworld and how chronic pain challenges what is usually experienced as a streamlined, unified, and harmonious timeline of events.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 A. Fitzgerald (ed.), Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap, Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_13

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At the same time that Poleshchuk finds chronic pain as a useful paradoxical site to question the possibility of an ethical relation while a mother experiences chronic pain, through this chapter I extend the possibility that maternal life, especially during pregnancy, is a paradigmatic example for subjectivity, as such, of being marked by the other in an ethical relation before any cognitive choice is made. Pain in maternity is an event under which subjectivity realizes its own being and its preontological obligation to another. With the inauguration of an infant’s cry, there is no deliberation before one feels an urge to respond. After a short introduction on how maternal subjectivity has been occluded from certain Western philosophical traditions, with the help of a mother’s tweet and its popularity, I show how maternal subjectivity can be a paradigmatic site of ethical relationality that provides a constructive alternative to traditional moralities.1 A disproportionate amount of guilt is produced in women when maternal subjectivity cannot engage traditional values given their physical and demanding conditions until there is an active social, re-evaluation of moral norms that uphold relationality over independence, and an ethics of interruption and care over rational decision-making. A trending and humorous tweet-gone-viral by a mother illustrates a widespread acknowledgement of caretaking as another kind of ethical engagement, but with a quick disavowal by her and others about how her engagement is even possible. The chapter will end by considering how in relational approaches to self each is left morally deficient when the 1

Maternal subjectivity is a paradigmatic example for all subjectivities that are at their core relational. A body pregnant with another is the most empirically obvious condition of one’s body that is used for the needs of another, the condition of radical dependence. The last section of the paper will open the maternal to the parental condition. While the pregnant body is empirically most interrelated, any sexed, gendered, abled, racial, or genetically-un/related body is also ontologically related to others and so ethical subjectivity remains a panhuman capacity. See Mao Naka’s (2016) The Otherness of Reproduction: Passivity and Control for more on the difference between empirical and ontological perspectives on intersubjectivity.

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other’s cries of pain are systematically erased as projects like 1619 by The New York Times (see Footnote 5 for further details) are beginning to uncover, especially when the ignorance is justified through systemic discrimination against certain populations, such as women, people of color, Indigenous populations, and migrant workers.

13.2

The Pre-natal and Maternal Gap: Deficiencies in the Western Philosophical Traditions on Identity Formation and Its Ethical Possibilities

Natural processes such as pregnancy, birth, postpartum life, and maternity are matters largely ignored in the history of Western philosophy, even though it is a matter as existentially certain and empirically ubiquitous as death. Ancient philosopher and moderate Hedonist Epicurus (270 BC) wrote on the displeasure that the uncertainty of death produces in our lives. His moral imperative then is to avoid worry or concern about where the sensations of life are not. Socrates also famously relates between truth and death in Plato’s Phaedo. Before his execution, he urged his students to contemplate, “The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death” (Plato 1997, 64a; 3–4). Echoes of the relation between the search for truth and one’s limited life span remain to this day when we imagine ourselves on our death bed, and naturally ask ourselves whether we have lived a meaningful life. In the twentieth century, German philosopher Martin Heidegger famously wrote in Being and Time (1927/1962) on a humanity where each being is faced toward its own death. Able to contemplate his finitude, Heidegger’s phenomenology included the various types of anxiety that are produced from this fact and how to live authentically in death’s shadow. In the endless repetition of death’s topic between these two epochs, Critchley (2009) more recently wrote about the ways in which numerous

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philosophers met their death, accompanied with each philosopher’s musings about the topic while they were still alive. The end, rather than the beginning of life, has dominated philosophical inquiry largely because it is being written by those who could reflect on the end rather than on its beginning, which is an absent experience in each person’s life and a process that is available to those largely excluded from philosophical musings. In keeping with reflections on what the meaning of an individual life is worth in the face of its own finitude, modernists contemplated what man is like in his individualized nature. Rousseau (1762), Hobbes (1651), and Locke (1690), for example, continued to imagine this isolated and individualized life to contemplate what are his moral and political obligations. The famous question wondered about by these three social theorists was whether man is innately noble to others, requires a powerful sovereign to keep each from war with the other, or thirdly whether the participation of each in certain laws of nature, like those supplied by reason, safeguards the most basic, self-interested human needs. These reflections, however, never imagine the relationships within which each life begins, as Held (2006) observes in the following quote from the Ethics of Care. … to construct a morality as if we were Robinson Crusoes, or, to use Hobbes’s image, mushrooms sprung from nowhere, is misleading. As Eva Kittay writes, this conception fosters the illusion that society is composed of free, equal, and independent individuals who can choose to associate with one another or not. It obscures the very real facts of dependency for everyone when they are young, for most people at various periods in their lives when they are ill or old and infirm, for some who are disabled, and for all those engaged in unpaid ‘dependency work’. And it obscures the innumerable ways persons and groups are interdependent in the modern world (p. 14).

As Held (2006) points out, what is curiously absent from these tomes of knowledge about human beings from the ancient to the modern and into contemporary philosophical reflections on existence, ethics, and political life is the empirical fact and phenomenon of dependency,

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connectivity, and relationality. Birth rather than one’s death offers this point for reflection but remains as a marker of the gender gap along with women’s dependent forms of life. Only with work like Arendt’s (1958) reflection on natality and its holding of all human life’s potential-action has maternity became a topic in the more traditional discourses of philosophic reflection. In The Human Condition, Arendt (1958) writes, “since action is the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality may be the central category of political, as distinguished from metaphysical, thought” (p. 9). The ideas Arendt presents in this work turn out to be fundamental to the future of feminist philosophy, to projects that are like Poleshchuk’s, and to the essays collected in Phenomenology of Pregnancy (Bornemark and Smith 2016). Beauvoir (1956), Rich (1995), and Young (2005) are a few others that like Arendt explore the fundamental fact that all human life begins with interdependence.2 Kristeva’s (1991) work in psychoanalysis on women’s experiences also articulates a real rather than an ideal image of womanhood and motherhood. Kristeva (1991) characterizes the self that is based on a woman’s being in the world as split subjectivity (p. 187) rather than the isolated, individualized, and self-interested one that is articulated through masculine ideals in the philosophical tradition. Young (2005) expands Kristeva’s psychoanalytic approach to the decentered self to confirm a kind of body that is “myself in the mode of not being myself” (p. 49). A most recent attempt to see what kind of ethical and political imaginary can come from this type of embodied relationality can be found in Judith Butler’s (2020) work, The Force of Nonviolence. Through this book, the reader is provoked to envision a new imaginary where humanity does not spring up in nature free from all relations like mushrooms, but on the contrary, each starts from this position of one forged through relations of radical interdependency on others. This inquiry ultimately aims to illustrate the consequences of 2

See bibliography in Phenomenology of Pregnancy (Bornemark and Smith 2016) for a fuller reference list.

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violence when the self depends on the articulation of the other. In this new egalitarian imaginary where each is constituted through relations of interdependence, Butler (2020) writes, “Violence against the other, is in this sense, violence against oneself, something that becomes clear when we recognize that violence assaults the living interdependency that is, or should be, our social world” (p. 24–25). The literature on this most ubiquitous phenomenon–birth and everyone’s radical dependence on another–however, is still mostly lacking in traditional discourses. What has led to this obvious gender gap in Western philosophy? Given concepts of self that past thinkers like Rousseau, Hobbes, and Locke offered it may be the challenge that this condition of radical connectivity and dependency poses to accounts of individual autonomy and freedom. Might a contributing factor to the eraser of natality and maternal sensibilities also lie in the inability to assimilate into traditional values of self-sufficiency the fact that mothers are valorized when they lose control to another, and become vulnerable to host the demanding needs of another? Experiences in motherhood reflect a space where self-direction or healing cannot be given. The demanding cry of another for attention acutely illustrates an interruption of the self’s unfolding in time, and the damage her isolation creates to her self-worth illuminates a relational ethics that is different from what has traditionally been worked out. Paired with a view of this demanding relational subjectivity, chronic pain as a malady in the complex meaningstructure of one’s lifeworld is a useful wedge that can help question these traditional demands that require isolation to heal and the unique guilt produced for mothers who do not have the time or space for such isolation. Along with ethical and political standards, today’s neo-liberal accounts of self are generally under sharp critique among critical theorists because of an increased visible precarity in global economic and ecological conditions. These are critiques which this work aims to contribute by closing the gender gap in traditional philosophies. Any form of pain in the medical model, whether acute or chronic, is considered an

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individual sickness to be cured (Ehrenberg, 2009). For privileged bodies, pain, illness, and disability are deficiencies rather than qualities to heed about the human condition.3 Maternal pain, on the other hand, is uniquely valorized and seen as a triumph. Maternal subjectivity, therefore, can help understand this condition that points to a situation or complex lifeworld that need not be ignored or rid of but seen as useful to understand the necessary pain that comes with connectedness and relational existence. After all, these certain bodies are expected to relish in the fact while they go through their experience of maternity. Rather than take these demands of the other as impeded by chronic pain, this chapter along with the aims of Baraitser (2009) in her work Maternal Encounters find, as resonating in the following quote, that. … the overtones of these experiences are those of embarrassment, discomfort, exhaustion, shock, surprise, blankness, uncanniness, bewilderment, oddness, terror, frustration and absurdity. Yet, by thinking through these experiences, something we might call maternal subjectivity may emerge – characterized not by fluidity, hybridity or flow, but by physical viscosity, heightened sentience, a renewed awareness of objects, of one’s own emotional range and emotional points of weakness, an engagement with the built environment and street furniture, a renewed temporal awareness where the present is elongated and the past and future no longer felt to be so tangible, and a renewed sense of oneself as a speaking subject. The mother emerges from these investigations not only as a subject of interruption, encumbered, viscous, impeded, but also re-sensitized to sound, smell, emotions, sentient awareness, language, love (p. 4).

Poleshchuk’s chapter (Chap. 12) also fills the gap in this knowledge about subjectivities created in the disruption of time and the ethical challenges that chronic pain poses for certain forms of human activity that are presumed to develop in linear time. With close reflection, however, I want to add how the situation of interrupted time goes beyond maternal lives and 3

The condition of marginalized communities whose pain is not taken seriously, considered hysterical, or wholly ignored by social structures due to migrant status will be addressed in the last section of this chapter.

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is applicable to all who are embedded and created through social relations as the trace of each one’s navel reminds us and stubbornly points to our constitutive relationality. These reflections, therefore, are relevant to more than maternal subjectivities. They are relevant to anyone who exists with others and whose meaning structures are created along with others. The chapter will now go on to consider new ethical horizons found in what is traditionally accepted as individuated suffering as Levinas (1982) urges in the following quote, But one can go further – and doubtless thus arrive at the essential facts of pure pain - by evoking the ‘pain-illnesses’ of beings who are psychically deprived, backward, handicapped, in their relational life and in their relationships to the Other, relationships where suffering, without losing anything of its savage malignancy, no longer covers up the totality of the mental and comes across novel lights within new horizons (p. 158).

What might be these new horizons where pain can debilitate one’s hearing or being heard? First, it is necessary to ask how precarious are social norms that demand these relations. Are there cultural clues for a different normative sensibility, and can those who share these experiences be relieved of guilt, and even relieved of chronic pain when the demands for individuality are quieted in the structure of one’s meaning and values? These questions will be addressed in the next section on new normative possibilities that emerge when we conceive of a relational form of intersubjectivity.

13.3

Individual Relatedness to the Other as Paradigmatically Shown in Maternity

I have 3 kids and people love to say to me, “You have your hands full I don’t know how you do it” and I’m like, “Well I don’t know either, Karen, but I know that if I don’t my kids will fucking die so I don’t really have a choice. (Tweet shared as a Facebook picture from @Fiveoclockmommy, 1,819 likes, 415 comments, and 2,648 shares 7 hours after posting on Facebook)

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Three issues can be teased from this mother’s posting that I will develop, respectively, in the following section and that can help to make sense of the gender gap. Her tweet is not meant to prove the truth of any argument but make legible a common cultural experience. This method adheres to Mann’s (2018) work in feminist phenomenology that persuasively argues that for the possibility of justice to those who come from marginalized viewpoints, an individual’s particular experience must ground the phenomenological account. The tweet above, first, proves there is public acknowledgement from others of a mother’s efforts, secondly, there is a ubiquitous inability to know exactly how she is able to manage the demands of three children, and third and finally, her own acknowledgement of the dire stakes at hand, which is the survival of children as well as her own sense of moral deficiency if she fails them. The stakes for this work on maternal lives is that the constant relationality through which ethical subjectivity is created can help explain, and possibly go on to relieve chronic pain and post-partum depression that so many women seem to suffer from in the early stages of motherhood, and which will later be understood as cases of matrescence. Trauma and pain are doubled when their experiences of suffering are erased, misunderstood, or cannot be shared with others. To open the possibility of understanding women who go through debilitating isolation in their pain can at the same time work to reduce those symptoms. How ethical relations are still possible or challenged after this close analysis of isolation in chronic pain can then extend and broaden investigations on new forms of sensibilities that emerge with temporal disruption, and the interruption of one’s goals for their consideration of another. These works can shed light on larger symptoms and sources of chronic pain in others due to unnatural demands of isolation and selfsufficiency. One potential that lies beyond this work is how to relieve oneself of traditional values and demands in order to reduce forms of guilt that double down on the complex causes of chronic pain. These works already begin to form an ethical relation toward those who suffer from this condition.

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13.3.1 Public Acknowledgement of Her Efforts by Others: She Doesn’t Conform to Masculine Ideals of Self-Sufficiency and Independence To give birth to another is to physically break the boundaries of one’s body. To constantly leak one’s self-enclosed space is necessary in order to feed a vulnerable infant, but to experience chronic pain or the voice of strong normative demands for self-sufficiency as she deals with these maternal calls, she is tragically pulled back to the confines of a personal repetition in herself. Given the embeddedness of a lifeworld with other subjects, maternal life is always caught between the socially accepted, normative view of an isolated subject on the one hand, and the contrasting demand placed on her physical labor to attend to others. The stark dichotomy between maternal demands and her individual interests elucidates discontinuous and disrupted temporalities.4 Subjective conditions like a vulnerability to the other, the fluctuation of time for a self that is rooted in another, and inherent passivity to those relations that can withhold or enable ethical possibilities are made so painfully clear in the paradigmatic relation between mother and child. Can we find these universal conditions applicable to all human beings? Beyond just the sensible experience that chronic pain or other environmental stressors create for female subjectivity in the demands of their work, Emmanuel Levinas’s view of the ethical dimension of intersubjectivity, a subjectivity constituted through face-to-face relations with a single and burdening other (Levinas 1987), is often enlisted in feminist literature. The other who is disruptive but also constitutive of the self is a notion later developed as a transsubjectivity that emphasizes the matrixial and interwoven nature of any two subjects (Ettinger 2006), also as the condition of a-subjectivity that 4

Personal testimonies in Poleshchuk’s essay (Chapter 12) by mothers who suffer from chronic pain and the guilt they feel illustrate the dichotomy of these demands well.

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develops between a constituted mother and yetto-be subject (fetus) in utero (Bornemark 2016), or a form of infant intersubjectivity in neuroscientific studies’ discovery of “mirror neurons” (p. 171) in the subcortical system of neonates (Raphael-Leff 2016). Whichever direction is taken, each of these subjectivities dissolves the idea of a unitary subject for an incarnate, relational self that is always situated with its others. In view of a more intersubjective and relational form of self, the meaning is, therefore, handed down through learned systems of normality. Furthermore, shared meaning systems imply that if they are sufficiently communally challenged, then those norms can change (Oksala 2006). Levinas’s (1998) ideas further help to cast a view of a form of an interrupted subjectivity by the demands of another as the place from which ethical responsibility can emerge but also possibly become bulwarked by remaining enclosed in concerns for oneself. Levinas’s (1998) model of a disrupted ethical subject is explicitly based on the mother–child relation. In this relation, one can never be only for oneself, but is always already affected by the needs of the other, where the other is literally found in the same qualities of oneself. This relation does not subsume or assimilate the uniqueness of each, which is why ethical becoming and transformative intersubjectivity reflects a radical form of subjectivity that simply cannot stay immersed in their selfinterest. Even more so, for Levinas the temporality of experience by a dependent form of intersubject (or any of its various forms developed above) contains the future of oneself in the radical difference of any other. Acknowledgement of a mother’s work in public of her efforts, and the tweet’s humorous reference to ‘Karen’ as the judging-peer created by social norms, reflect a pervasive notion of this interruption by the other. A problem arises when it is only women who are expected to labor in this way, in the shadows of more prevalent norms. The mother–child relation breaks narcissistic investment by her constant attention to invest in the unknown future-potential of another, even before they are born or capable to return her any favor. The investment does not aim to recuperate

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The Subversive Act of Navel Gazing: How Maternal Experiences …

‘lost’ opportunities of one’s own discontinuity in the face of one’s own death. For example, in pregnancy one gives food to another before there is any rational calculation about punishment, rewards, and before there is free choice in the matter. Also, taking care of another can never recuperate the unique opportunities she lost through the course of her life, such as in her career. In the act of that radical giving, a time is formed of transcendence toward a future-other in the immanence of a mother’s present moment. Her split identity and constant concern for another despite their rude demand to her interests contribute to the sense of awe and wonder when other people in public marvel at her capacity to care for three children. The ubiquitous awe and wonder, however, indicate a far more sinister reality. Awe and wonder come where knowledge do not, and their attention is quickly foreclosed when the social norms for an individual’s selfsufficiency returns to rule the day again, often moments later, only to erase her experience again. The tweet shows how even she is ignorant of the source for her work. I ask next whether this ignorance must remain.

13.3.2 How Does She Manage? Another Sensibility of Time for An Ethical Relation In order to re-evaluate long entrenched values, I begin this section with the task of understanding the false dichotomy between senses of time experienced by men or as understood by masculine norms from women’s experiences and obligations. Under the lens of a constitutive intersubjectivity, temporality is not just cyclical as opposed to linear, as it is in the chapter “Women’s Time” in The Kristeva Reader (1986). Kristeva’s sense of time is often used along with Levinas’ (1987) work as an auxiliary to speak of female temporality not as linear, rational, or viewed through social norms that aim to generate and perpetuate masculine notions of the nationstate. Instead, female temporality situates itself within cyclical and marginalized movements

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(Baraitser 2009, Naka 2016). The presumed unity and harmony for any subjectivity whether linear or cyclical is suspect, however, so Levinas’s (1987) development of ethical intersubjectivity helps move the rational and linear subject beyond Kristeva’s (1986) bifurcation of cyclical as opposed to linear temporalities into the site of its discontinuity. Baraitser (2009), for example, like Poleshchuk aims to overcome the false dichotomy or bifurcation of either linear or cyclical temporalities to include a sense of time that is a demanding interruption from another, experienced as chopped and discontinuous. There is a rupture of one’s privative time that follows from an inter-relation. Baraitser (2009) usefully suggests that perhaps what is required is a shift in perspective. Rather than see the latter as preventative of the ethical relation, interrupted time can give positive value to the maternal capacity to respond immediately in the face of an infant’s tantrum, for example, that diverts her attention from whatever important task she is in the midst of accomplishing and to which she must eventually return literally anew. Baraitser (2009) writes that in maternal time, she finds herself embedded in certain durational experiences from which she is disturbed. This disturbance, which I am arguing structures maternal subjectivity, can be experienced as depleting, exhausting, disabling, and controlling, but also seems to have the potential to be an enlivening and productive encounter, one that forces a mother to access a kind of thinking and feeling outside of her usual repertoire, pushes her to a state of being ‘beside herself’ with all the overtones this brings of intensity, exhilaration and excitation as well as anxiety and despair (p. 75).

A disruption from durational experiences can have a positive value, such as one’s ability to engage and maintain many tasks at once. One repeated task that she has as shown in the tweet is to sustain the very life of another who is most vulnerable during one’s own, often vulnerable life. While the possibility of relations of this kind is available to any parent, the possibility to transcend and forge a new self after being touched by the other, to respond to another’s needs and their demands is paradigmatically figured in

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the maternal body, and especially in the maternal body plagued with chronic pain. For Levinas (1998), it is these forms of interruptions, of feeling that the other is ‘under one’s skin,’ where the very possibility for ethical engagement arises. The conclusion may then be that in maternity where one suffers chronic pain there is a heightened sense of ethical engagement rather than a fortification of its impossibility. The other who is in oneself, and the considerations that arise from hosting them in hospitality without subsuming their otherness and in the attempt to help realize their unique temporal potentialities was never meant to be a fixed image of how one should always be. Levinas (1987) dedicates one of his first works Time and the Other exactly to this movement between self and other that creates time for ethical subjectivity in its wake. In order to respond to the question “how does she manage?”, we can look at Baraitser’s (2009) interpretation of Levinas’s (1998) developed concept of time that understands there is an inherent ambivalence in one’s relation to the other. According to Baraitser (2009), time in Levinas’s (1998) self are those moments forged when the self is totally changed, lost, and reformed by the radical alterity of the other after the ethical relation. The unbearable or impossible relation that Poleshchuk highlights in Chap. 12 between mother and child that can be prevented in chronic pain results from the explosion of self in an ethical relation when it does not colonize the other but rather successfully responds to their demanding needs. One cannot remain in this state constantly in relation to the other, but Levinas (1998) highlights it as a ‘preontological condition’ beyond any ontology of being or representation, thought, or idea. The ethical relation then comes from what is otherwise than being, and is constantly available especially for a mother whose social demands expose her most to the other as a child, “an exposure that entails the beginning with responsibility for that other, but one that gives rise to maternal subjectivity in that process” (Baraitser 2009, p. 39). It is important to note that the preontological condition is available to any ethical subjectivity as an ethics of alterity, but is paradigmatically and empirically found in

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the embodiment of maternal life and so can begin as ‘the ethics of maternal substitution’ (Levinas 1998).5 For this reason, Levinas’s assumption of a preontological claim has more to do with the constant possibility of returning to a consideration for the other’s needs despite the obsession one can have with oneself as articulated throughout traditional philosophical discourses. Levinas’s (1998) sense of responsibility challenges the presumptions of a moral egoistic tradition, which seems to be recapitulated in what the maternal body experiences often in those debilitating forms of chronic pain, guilt, and seen in the next section labeled falsely as post-partum depression. A characteristic of ethical subjectivity that runs through all these experiences is how the maternal body’s asymmetrical relation to the fetus/child leads to guilt when the mother feels that she is not temporally unified to accomplish goals and carry the weight of her ‘pre-destined’ labor. See Chaps. 10 and 11 for details about the increased shame and social silencing these mothers experience when they express maternal regret. Then add the aspect of pain that is to necessarily withdrawal of oneself into oneself, that is precisely not to be for the other ‘under one’s skin’, which is an illustrative way to envision Levinas’s view of a preontological condition for ethical subjectivity before any choice is made. Chronic pain as a totalizing experience (see Poleshchuk Chap. 12) that affects subjectivity as such is the most extreme way to understand subjectivity as non-ethical. I wonder, however, and welcome further reflection on whether there is a false dichotomy here? It may not just be that her ethical subjectivity becomes impossible in chronic pain or given concerns for individuality, but rather that given her body’s embeddedness she has the opportunity to create ethical time more often, if she re-evaluates the value of interrupted isolation and when she inevitably manages to answer the other’s call. Here her lifeworld can offer an example and 5

See Lisa Guenther’s (2006) essay Like a Maternal Body: Emmanuel Levinas and the Motherhood of Moses for more on the maternal body as paradigmatic of any possible ethical relation (p. 130–131).

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lesson to masculine norms that have long preserved the gender gap.

13.3.3 Dire Stakes: Survival Through an Existential Form of Vulnerability to the Other’s Demands The significance of this account of an intersubjectivity constituted through a time that stands always in relation to another is that first any sensible contact subordinates one to the other with whom contact is made. See the mother’s frustration as well as how others marvel at her capacity to respond to the needs of three children. Her curse-word seems out of place for a mother who receives praise for her work. The curseword, however, recalls the unbearable but her necessary subordination to the other’s needs. All it takes for each to realize the universal truth of this radical interdependency, and the simultaneous ability to occlude its truth, is to gaze at one’s navel as the trace of separation. Each potential life begins in the confines and under the hospice of someone else. One also always must host in hospitality an unknown other to begin another’s life. The caesura marked by this hole mimics our civilized tradition that is plagued with a desire to forget this relation, and we can properly understand how navel gazing receives the derogatory and mocked posture of excessive contemplation of self. The gaping hole, however, also has the possibility to take us back to the radical alterity of a non-represented other in the maternal body that presupposes a radical openness of each individuated subject’s needs to its exteriority. The radical openness of each to that which is external to it implies an existential form of vulnerability to which strong defensive responses are subsequently formed. See the frustration illustrated through testimonies in Poleshchuk’s essay about an inability to respond to the other’s needs, whether it be a mother, hostess, or wife (Chap. 12). The enclosure of oneself in themselves in response to experiences of chronic pain, or to the demanding and inopportune needs of the other, are just a few forms of these defenses

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to the responsibility of feeling too much of the world, or too much of the other’s world penetrating into the self’s meaning structures. The maternal relation most clearly illustrates this disruption of an idea of a self that is enclosed in themselves. In pregnancy, one has the other literally, metaphorically, and paradigmatically ‘under one’s skin’. Chronic pain as a totalizing experience, that affects one and values its enclosure, is also the most extreme way to understand how one can be kept from an ethical relation that makes one vulnerable, exposed, and given to the other’s needs. The empirical disruption of one’s body as sharing its resources, health, and leaking itself in post-partum care can lead to a necessary reflection on the appropriateness of an ontological definition of oneself as independent and self-sufficient that ‘plagues’ half the embodied condition of the human population. Naka (2016) effectively describes this conversation between the empirical condition of pregnancy and the ontological assumption of its self-enclosure in the following paragraph, Once involved in the process of reproduction, the experience breaks into the way of being of the subject and undermines its integrality or unity. It turns the integral subject into a split one by including the Other at the core of itself. The situation does not end there but leads us to an ontological reflection on the subject. From this point of view, it would be argued that the subject is not constituted independently, but already in relation with the Other, which exists beyond and before the subject. On an empirical level, reproduction recalls us to that ontological fact and brings us back to the origin of the subject: a subject is that which is born, bears offspring, and dies, leaving something to the next generation. In this sense, the subject is essentially split, rather than integral, through the relation with the Other. [….] It is mainly this last point that lies behind Levinas’s reflection on the otherness of reproduction – or “fecundity,” is his preferred term – in his attempt to reveal that the dualistic split way of being of the subject is more fundamental than its unified way of being (p. 120–121).

Personal testimonies by mothers of an incapacity to play with the youngest child due to the ailments that come with her increased age or the inability to jovially host a friend due to chronic pain illustrate both the presupposed kinds of

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engagement one has in the world and with others, while they also point to those who are withdrawn and alienated from it (see Chap. 12 for further insights). As the mother in the tweet shows, the dire stakes here for infants and children who rely on their maternal, or parental figure, is their physical survival any which way a fetus, toddler, infant, child, or adolescent is abled, gendered, sexed, racially, or nationally profiled. Let us take care, however, not to duplicate the tendency to leave the mother’s survivability in the abyss of traditional gender gaps. The dire stakes for her if she does not care for her infant are an increase of guilt, diminished moral worth, and a worsened fragmentation of self. If the ways in which she operates to attend to the needs of others is always unknown, suffered in silence, and not valued under traditional and normative morals, then the rest of humankind may not gain valuable insights on how to cope with their own constitutive and often difficult relation to others.

13.4

Concluding Remarks: Social and Historical Contexts of Motherhood, Parenthood, and Deficiencies to Hear the Call of the Other

Historically, values that cherish self-sufficiency and self-fulfillment, leading to achievements supplied by innate rational capacities with the autonomy to decide one’s will, privileges only a fraction of society. These entrenched values have ignored very real conditions of social precarity and vulnerability that affect minority and marginalized populations, like women who have been nurtured to think that their nature is emotionally irrational, and a priori lacks the capacity to be autonomous or self-sufficient. In addition to the embodied lives of women who are crossculturally defined as incapable in these ways that are so important to an entrenched value system, her experiences are kept from topics of philosophical contemplation or significant consideration from sociopolitical life and whatever fruitful moral, political, and existential possibilities that may be gained from these experiences.

First, I would like to address the disproportionate rate at which women in marginalized communities suffer this fate. Under archaic medical standards, doctors are still taught to racially profile black and brown bodies as less capable of feeling pain.6 Testimonies that come from women who suffer from chronic and acute forms of pain are not heeded, and directly contribute to the higher mortality rates they suffer in Western medical institutions. In addition to shedding light on the ignore-ance of their physical/existential ailments that are not objectively measurable where racial gaps are paired with gender ones, I hope that this paper has shown how a self that is constituted intersubjectively increases the amount of suffering when that acute pain is coupled with an erasure and lack of recognition by those to whom they stand in relation. Migrant workers in their transient abodes and Indigenous women who are marginalized by colonizing structures are additional populations that suffer the same fate when excluded from institutions that regulate local health care (see Chaps. 3 and 5 in this collection for more detail on the marginalization of migrant workers and Indigenous women, respectively). The structural alienation created by prevailing social norms that expect self-sufficiency and the assumption of responsibility for one’s actions also helps to explain why women who express regret for motherhood in these societies experience the most shame (see Chap. 11 for an understanding of women’s reluctance to admit their regret of motherhood7). Second and finally, I would like to emphasize that the maternal relation is empirically the clearest case of having another ‘under one’s skin’ and the ethical demands this imposes on her body. My main argument, however, is that this 6

See the 1619 project initiated by The New York Times on the history of medical experiments conducted on American slave populations. https://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-differences-doctors. html. 7 Their subsequent shame is insightfully attributed to larger social norms that cannot distinguish a woman’s destiny for motherhood and any loss of possibilities she feels as an individual person.

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kind of demanding relation constitutes any parental figure, caretaker, or human being who has a relation to others.8 Psychologist Alexandra Sacks (2019) has worked through anthropological studies to understand why many women claim to have post-partum depression when they do not exhibit the appropriate medical symptoms. Sacks (2019) uncovered the phenomenon of ‘matrescence,’ a term Dana Raphael coined in 1976 but that has remained absent from subsequent medical vocabulary. Matrescence marks a hormonal shift in the human animal that gives birth and must care for a particularly dependent baby. Oxytocin is a hormone released during this shift to motherhood, in childbirth as well as through skin-to-skin contact. The hormone helps the human brain zoom and pull attention in so that baby is at the center of her world. Sacks (2019) also describes the emotional roller coaster of push-and-pull created in mothers when at the same time, the human brain pushes her away from the child because she remembers other parts of her identity such as her personal interests, career, spiritual needs, or her need for exercise and privacy. Sacks advises that the more people know that it is hard to live in this push-and-pull relation with a child and accept the ambivalence that matrescence creates, the more women can feel normal. They would feel less alone, less stigmatized, and reduce rates of ‘post-partum depression’ because the condition would seize to be confused with matrescence. What I find interesting and relevant to this paper is how the experience of matrescence offers a heightened epistemic sense, which is hormonally made available to mothers in delivery. More importantly the hormone for this heightened sense is also released in skin-to skin contact. The inter-relation then is not limited to mothers and their biological children as it would be if Oxytocin was only released during labor and delivery. The hormone is released even if one did not give birth to the baby, but for those who care through contact 8

https://www.ted.com/talks/alexandra_sacks_a_new_ way_to_think_about_the_transition_to_motherhood? language=en#t-231757.

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with a vulnerable other. The hormonal release at the level of skin-to-skin contact can validate the ubiquitous phenomenon of care taking for fathers, adoptive or foster parents, and LGBTQ + parents. All these can experience the same emotional push-and-pull. As Guenther (2006) succinctly puts it, In this sense, maternity becomes more than a social role or fixed biological destiny, either of which would bind the identity of women to childbirth and child rearing. By understanding maternity ethically as the embodied response to an Other whom I may or may not have ‘conceived and given birth to,’ we recognize maternity as a locus of responsibility, without expecting women to bear that responsibility alone (p. 132).

To name the heightened sense of awareness ‘matrescence,’ however, is to perpetuate the same gender discrimination that traditionally limits women to be caretakers and prevents others from this task if they chose. When it is described as ‘matrescence,’ we can also understand why it is found in the dustbin of medical vocabulary. After all, and as the tweet shows, we still wonder ‘How does she do it?’ I would describe this push-andpull as an existential ambivalence created by social norms that value independence, while also demand from women that they forfeit their individuality for motherhood. I suggest that we release these values, shift them, understand them, re-evaluate them, and create new ones for others to share these responsibilities. If the different kinds of acute, chronic, and emotional forms of pain are created from those demands made of women and their silence is sustained by social values that sidestep their interrupted forms of self and time, then not only do we condemn half the population to erasure but when their cries are not heard, as intersubjective selves, we also condemn the individuated aspects of ourselves to egregious moral deficiencies.

References Arendt H (1958) The human condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL Baraitser L (2009) Maternal encounters: the ethics of interruption. Routledge, New York, NY

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