Beyond Interests in Politics: A Comment on Virginia Sapiro's "When Are Interests Interesting?

The Problem of Political Representation of Women" Author(s): Irene Diamond and Nancy Hartsock Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 717-721 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1960963 . Accessed: 03/12/2013 10:46
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Beyond Interests in Politics: A Comment on Virginia Sapiro's "When Are Interests Interesting? The Problem of Political Representation of Women"
IRENE DIAMOND
Purdue University

NANCY HARTSOCK
Johns Hopkins University

In "When Are Interests Interesting?" Virginia Sapiro makes a number of stimulating and important arguments. Her article is particularly useful because it both suggests new research directions and serves as an example of the difficulties of approaching the study of women and politics within the conventional categories of political analysis. We disagree with Sapiro on a number of points, but rather than addressing these here, we hope to expand the discussion by focusing on the ways in which Sapiro's arguments illuminate the problems created by attempting to make do with the conventional categories.' Recent developments in feminist theory have begun to uncover fundamental weaknesses in the categories of political analysis themselves, thus forcing researchers to move beyond the positions Sapiro has taken.2

'Among our specific points of disagreement with Sapiro are her claim that women have accepted a denial of equality as in their interest, that separatism is best understood as related to self-help and involving selfcontained services to other women, that the major goal of the women's movement has more than anything else been to put women in positions of influence, and that women developed as political persons and women's roles became policy questions in the context of the twentieth-century expansion of social welfare. We hold instead that there is a centuries-old tradition of female resistance to inequality, that separatism must be understood as more strategy and philosophy than as delivery of services to other women, that important parts of the women's movement have as their goal the creation of a just society for all human beings rather than the installation of women in powerful positions, and finally, that women's roles have been policy questions in political theorizing at least as far back as Plato's Republic. 2A representative selection of the work most central to the study of politics would include Bunch et al., Chodorow, Daly, Dinnerstein, Eisenstein, Elshtain, Ferguson, Griffin, Harding and Hintikka, Hartsock, Okin, Sargent, Young. For a more comprehensive discussion, see the two review essays by Berenice Carroll (1979, 1980).

Sapiro's treatment of women's representation underscores the major problem her article presents: on the one hand, she holds that women are an interest group, but on the other, she states that conflict over the issues raised by including women in politics "tears at the most basic structures and conceptions of society." If women are simply another interest group, however seriously one may take their interests, they remain a special interest group not fundamentally different from others, and in discussing their concerns one need raise no important new political or methodological questions. But if the inclusion of women in politics threatens the most basic structures of society, one cannot fit their concerns into the framework of interests. These inconsistent positions are an inevitable consequence of trying to work within the conventional categories of political analysis. Here we will point to the new directions which research can take if one follows the implications raised by the question of women's political representation. If women have common interests, as both we and Sapiro believe they do, any attempt to ascertain these interests involves one in the difficult problem of understanding objective social situations and their relevance to political interests. In addition, one must recognize that the different objective situations of the sexes may not necessarily be clearly reflected in women's consciousness of these differences. While Sapiro understands these things, she is vague about which characteristics are most salient and how they relate to women's objective interests.3

3Thereare two importantdifficultieswith Sapiro's description of whatit meansto sharecommoninterests. First, her definition of what it means to (objectively) sharean interestis so vaguethat it cannoteven differentiatethe interestsof labor from capital. Second, she fails to addressthe severalimportantmethodological problemspresentedby the concept of objectiveinterests. An adequate commonintergroundfor attributing ests to a group must addressissuessuch as (1) control

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maintain in any simple way the distinction Freud saw as central to human existence-the clear disjunction between me and not-me (1961, pp. 1213). And the social circumstance that typically women, but not men, nurture the young has meant that the child's task of differentiating from the mother follows different patterns in each sex; this differentiation reinforces boundary confusion in female egos and boundary strengthening in males.4 Psychoanalytic evidence suggests that as a result of these early experiences, women tend to define and experience themselves relationally, while men are more likely to form a sense of self as separate and disconnected from the world (Chodorow, 1978, p. 198). We hypothesize that these different psychic experiences both grow out of and in turn reinforce the sexual division of labor. And different male and female life-activity leads toward profoundly different social understandings. For men, "masculinity" can only be attained by means of opposition to the concrete world of daily life, by escaping from contact with the "female" world of the household into the "masculine" world of public life, and at least in the polis, politics. This experience of two worlds-one considered valuable, if largely attainable, the other considered useless and demeaning, if concrete and necessary-organizes what might be termed phallocentric social existence. In contrast, women's relationally defined existence, as constructed through the sexual division of labor, results in a social understanding in which dichotomies are less foreign, everyday life is more valued, and a sense of connectedness and continuity with other persons and the natural world is central. Our argument is that female experience not only inverts that of the male but also forms a basis on which to expose the traditional conceptions of masculine existence and the political community men have constructed as both partial and fundamentally flawed (Hartsock, 1981, Ch. 10, discusses this in more depth). Throughout Western history the life-activities most important to survival-motherwork, housework, and, until the rise of capitalism, any work necessary to basic subsistence or survival-have been held to be unworthy of those who are fully human. One result of these "reversals" of the proper for conover the politicalagenda,(2) latentpossibilities flict as well as observableconflict, (3) the relationof order of things, perhaps the most devastating of held interests,(4) the relationof all, is illustrated by the Western cultural preoccu"real" to subjectively of pation with violence and death. In both philosoand desiresto humanneeds.The attribution interests of human phy and practice one finds the pervasive belief commoninterestsrequiresan understanding acwhich can satisfactorily natureand social structure count for the systematic failure of large groups to perceiveand act on politicsfrom which, arguably,they 4We have not failed to notice that recently some would benefit. Whetheror not one finds the Marxian account of politicaland economicdominationpersua- fathers have begun to participatemore fully in childfor rearing.The small scale on which this has so far ocsive, it does at least meet these formalrequirements curred,however,does not vitiate our generalpoint. of objectiveinterests. an attribution Instead of a consideration of these issues-all of them presenting complicated problems for research-Sapiro's essay offers a mixed list of factors and social indicators which may be politically relevant, and some references to the few significant differences between women's and men's attitudes as these emerge from public opinion data. The attribution of common concerns to women needs a firmer institutional foundation than this. If women's issues have been defined by the division of labor in private life, as Sapiro and others have suggested, why not base an account of women's common concerns on a more thoroughgoing analysis of this division of labor? We hold that despite the real differences among women, there are commonalities which grow from women's life activity of producing and sustaining human beings. At the level of grand theory, it may be fruitful to proceed on the basis of the radicalfeminist hypothesis that all forms of oppression and domination are modeled on male/ female oppression. However, the power relations of race and class which mediate this common female experience remain important for middle-level theory and empirical accounts; failure to take account of them will lead to errors and may even undermine the legitimacy of feminist scholarship. In schematic and simplified terms, "women's work" occurs in a context characterized by concrete involvement with the necessities of life rather than abstraction from them, a context in which the specific qualities of individuals and objects are central, and in which the unification of mind and body, of mental and manual labor, is inherent in the activities performed. In this context, relations with others take a variety of forms which transcend instrumental cooperation for the attainment of joint ends. Feminist theorists have pointed out that the depth and variety of a woman's relations with others grows both from her socialization as a female human being and from the biological fact of living in a female body (e.g., Rich, 1976, p. 63; Chodorow, 1978, p. 59). In the face of menstruation, coitus, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation-all challenges to bodily bounds-a female cannot

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that it is the ability to deliberately risk one's life, to seek with Achilles a short life but a glorious one, which sets human beings above animals. From Homeric times to our own, this belief has carried such power that even a feminist theorist such as Simone de Beauvoir held that combat, whether against nature in the form of hunting or fishing, or against men in the form of war, is essential to the affirmation of "spirit" as against mere life. Thus she argued that "the worst cause that was laid upon woman was that she should be excluded from these warlike forays. For it is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills" (1961, p. 58). A systematic examination of the psychic and institutional consequences of the sexual division of labor could provide the necessary base for the attribution of common interests to women. The processes which both create and reinforce the sexual division of labor and translate its psychic and institutional consequences into hierarchical relations of power would need to be specified. Clearly this is no small task. Yet pursuing this line of inquiry becomes even more compelling when one recognizes that while the meanings of "public" and "private" have changed over time, women as a group have remained excluded from public authority. What feminist theorist Mary Daly (1979, pp. 14, 233) has labeled "gynephobia" may be inherent in the very construction of state societies in the West. Attention to the sexual division of labor also calls into question the appropriateness of the language of interests for understanding political life. As Christian Bay has remarked, this language fails to assign priorities to human wants, needs, objectives, and purposes, and in so doing implicitly supports the "right of the strong to prevail in every contest" (Bay, 1980, p. 332). We should remember that the language of interests emerged along with the changes in the division of labor in production and reflected society's understanding of itself as dominated by rational economic men seeking to maximize their satisfactions. But human beings are moved by more than interests. The reduction of all human emotions to interests and interests to the rational search for gain reduces the human community to an instrumental, arbitrary, and deeply unstable alliance, one which rests on the private desires of isolated individuals. An account of social life such as this is clearly partial: certainly a mother's characteristically nurturing relationship to her child is difficult to describe in terms of instrumental interests in individual gain. Close attention to women's activity rather than men's and the consequent thoroughgoing focus on whole human beings necessitates the de-

velopment of more encompassingcategories of analysisfor politicallife. A focus on the expansionof rightsfor women leads to similarquestions. But here too Sapiro's discussion of the circumstanceswhere political systems have respondedto the expansionof the rights previouslydenied women in comparison with men does not go far enough. By focusingthe discussion as she does, Sapiro perpetuatesthe seekingto catch belief that women are primarily up with men; insteadshe should addressthe fact that much of what women want and need is not the same as what men want and need. Reproductive freedomand access to abortionare perhaps the most prominentexamples. Perhapsthe best way to determinewhethera public issue is concerned with advancing the representationof womenis to establishwhetherit merelyadvocates for men, or extendingto womenrightsestablished whetherthe discussionmoves into new territory. Our outline of the sexualdivisionof labor points of life on the reproduction to why issuescentering cannotbe coveredby agendaswhichtake account only of the demands appropriate to male individuals. The problemsfeminismposes for the conventional understandingof individual rights can, ironically, be found in their shared intellectual and eighteenthcenturies: roots in the seventeenth not only has feminismused the theoryas far back as the eighteenthcentury, where feminism was based on the conception of the independent and autonomousself, but also at the same time it of womenas a sexual has arguedfor a recognition class. (Eisenstein,1981,pp. 3-173, tracesthis history.) More recently feminist theory has challenged the use of the rights frameworkon the issue of abortion and forced sterilization.For example,while liberal,pro-choiceactivistsin the the need for abortionin termsof U.S. articulated rights, recentwork arguesthat the achievements impacts, of this strugglehave had contradictory to the inand that failuresare partlyattributable of the languageof rightsand the appropriateness problematicnature of communitiesconstructed aroundrights(see Petchesky, 1980). Sapiro'simplicitadherenceto the languageof interestsand rightsand the assumptionsof individualismwhich this languagecarriesmakes her discussionof the conditionsthat permitwomento controlthe qualityof theirlives less usefulthan it mightbe. Her discussionis both too comprehensive and too narrow,since we are offered a bibat a varietyof levelsof liographyof explanations analysis with no suggestion about their relative Sapiro'sunwillimportanceor interrelationships. of any group, ingnessto focus on the importance femaleor otherwise,leads her to ignorethe influence of three of the most significantfactorsthat

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structure social relations-sex, race, and class. This blank in the midst of comprehensiveness grows from her failure to make a clean break with the assumptions of the interest group framework. Though Sapiro clearly holds that the state is not neutral vis-a-vis women, her conceptual tools do not permit her to develop this insight. Where can she put her own recognition of the important ways in which gender differentiation and stratification structure human life? Indeed, her very use of the term "responsiveness" carries with it the hidden and untested assumption that women's demands can be integrated into political systems. Before one accepts this assumption, or the counter-claim of the inherent impenetrability of political life, one must have more precise empirical specification of the dynamics of representation, the tensions which emerge in response to demands, and the contradictions which accompany policy success. Marxists have long argued that state policy is intimately linked to the social divisions deriving from productive activity. We are suggesting, with Sapiro, that this concept should be expanded to recognize the profound implications of the social divisions deriving from reproductive activity. The task at hand is to begin to take seriously the full complexity of state power and state policies. Within ongoing states, the entire policy processfrom identifying legitimate needs to implementing specific policies that affect the lives of women-is shaped by a social fabric in which hierarchies based on gender, class and race are heavily intertwined. Empirical work needs to dissect the changing character of these interconnections, and thus we propose more systematic investigations both of the different phases of the policy process and the survival strategies of women of different classes and races. Once issues have been defined and political coalitions have been mobilized, the votes of female and male legislators do not differ substantially. Men seem to be able in these circumstances, to represent and "act for" women. Our hypothesis, however, is that the ability of men to act for women varies considerably through the different phases of the policy process: only women can "act for" women in identifying "invisible" problems affecting the lives of large numbers of women. At the same time, women's ability to "act for" women must be understood in the context of the survival strategies women have created in response to their powerlessness. Thus, in dealing with policy changes made without the agitation of women, such as the Married Women's Property Acts, one must recognize that this advance was of little material consequence for the survival of the vast majority of women in nineteenth-century America. In contrast, the current attention public officials are giving to the

abuse of women in the family is a direct outcome of women's collective action on "invisible" problems. A focus on women's survival strategies which takes account of women's lack of access to resources and information would also be useful for understanding how differences in consciousness among women develop during periods of change, and why women's own actions sometimes conflict with their own welfare and survival. For instance, early pregnancy among black teenage girls lacking job opportunities might be examined as their way of achieving adult status and a sense of self-worth. In a somewhat different vein, women's participation in right-wing political activities concerning the family and sexual issues might be better viewed as efforts to achieve human dignity in the face of change: these women's opposition to the routine assaults on female sexuality in the contemporary news and entertainment media has taken the form of banning sex education in public schools, and their response to the socioeconomic changes undermining survival strategies appropriate to family-based patriarchy has been to attack feminism. The most fundamental question to be addressed, one which has been only hinted at in our discussion thus far, is the extent to which inclusion of questions regarding reproduction and sexuality may change the political process itself. We believe that taking women's lives seriously would have far-reaching and profound consequences, and that the very concepts of what is political and what is public may be threatened by the inclusion of women's concerns in political life. From women's perspective, one sees the intimate interconnections between the purportedly separate private and public realms. Yet the origins of Western politics in the Greek city-states provides a forceful reminder of the extent to which politics has been structured by the exclusion of women's concerns. In ancient Greece the public, political world was constructed as an arena in which participants were freed of the constraints of necessary labor, and political power rested on courage in war and courage in speech. Women, slaves, and all the concerns associated with the household and the world of necessity were excluded from the public world. This public world of course in reality depended on and could not have existed without the private world of household production. Yet this dependence was rarely recognized by political thinkers. While the content of the public world has changed, and the formal barriers between the spheres have been removed, the refracted impact of the ancient dualities still structures much of our thinking about politics. That the ancient understanding of the citizen as warrior is still with us is illustrated by the depth of opposition in the United States to authorizing women

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to serve in combat. Civic personality is not yet separate from military capacity, but the need to re-think the relationship between war and politics is made more urgent by the present technological possibilities for total destruction. In sum, we are not saying, as Sapiro does, that recent scholarship in women's studies can show that political science has been studying the actions of only half of humanity, and that the subject matter of political science should be expanded. Instead, we are suggesting that the focus on the activity of only half of humanity is fundamental to what has been understood as political life for the last 2500 years. To include women's concerns, to represent women in the public life of our society might well lead to a profound redefinition of the nature of public life itself.

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