The Appearance of Women's Equal Opportunities in the Conservative Political Discourse of the Countries of Statist Feminism

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• The Appearance of Women's Equal Opportunities in
  the Conservative Political Discourse of the
  Countries of Statist Feminism
• Dr. habil. Andrea Petopetoand_at_axelero.hu

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• The quota is not good. I find it humiliating
  that somebody will get to somewhere because she
  is a woman. Do use equal measures. But from two
  equally good candidates choose the woman, because
  positive discrimination is needed. Also it is not
  sure that so many women want to make politics.
  interview 12.

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Aims to analyse in countries of statist feminist
heritage

• Problems of implementation of womens equal
  opportunity
• Policy mobilisational potential of womens equal
  opportunity policy for conservative political
  discourse
• Transitional character of conservative political
  discourse on womens difference

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Research method

• life story narrative interview with 24 Hungarian
  active conservative female politicians combined
  with a thematic questionnaire
• methodological problems arising from researching
  a "politically resistant community"

• using the method of description to represent
  the different standpoints
• symbolic forms (Geertz) functioning as models
  for their behaviour as political actors

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Political mobilisation by gender

• Recent surveys show that women are
  disproportional voting for conservative parties
• Anti-EU sentiments are stronger among women than
  men
• The recent mass mobilisation of women for street
  demonstration and public gatherings make a
  political imperative to analyse this phenomenon
• number of womens NGOs with conservative agenda
  increasing

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Equal opportunity policies and its opponents
1. Legal issues

• The objectives of equal opportunities can be
  enacted in three ways by modifying the
  Constitution, through the so-called equal
  opportunities law, or trough other laws and
  provisions. BUT
• Opposing normative concept of law
• belief that the problem of equal opportunities is
  solved, as it is de facto regulated by the law,
  and they do not approve of differentiating
  womens rights and human rights
• there are naturally existing inequalities between
  people, regarding their abilities and talent, and
  thus the principle of equal opportunities builds
  upon natural inequalities, and does not eliminate
  them indeed, it enlarges them.

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Equal opportunity policies and its opponents
2. Implementation

• Heritage of the statist feminist period
• Top down implementation
• role of the state
• womens employment as a site of policy
  implementation
• lack of pressure groups (NGOs) and political
  practices

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Equal opportunity policies and its opponents
3. Policy related

• Equal opportunity politics as a policy
• wide scope
• cross cutting the logic of state admin.
• Non-implementation strategies due to the absence
  of the political legitimisation of equal
  opportunities politics, as well as its weak
  institutionalisation and poorly funded system

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Rhetoric Question of Womens Political
Mobilisation and equal opportunities. A Missing
Link

• Right wing discourse
• attempt to restore a value system which did not
  exist for 40 years
• unavoidable consequences of statist feminist
  period 1. paternalistic practice of communist
  womens politics, 2. Failure of the single
  issue mobilisation so new connection in family
  mobilisation frame

• Left wing discourse
• historical product of womens employment
• construction of identity of employed-women

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Rhetoric Question of Womens Political
Mobilisation and Equal Opportunity Policies A
Missing Link Womens employment

• Left wing discourse
• womens employment as a necessity and the only
  value
• EU Lisbon strategy supported
• strategy of integration

• Right wing discourse
• womens employment as a choice and exercising
  agency
• EU scepticism
• strategy of separation

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Equal opportunity policy as a tool for
formulating women as a group indetity

• Right wing discourse
• as a source of pride, self-confidence, hope and
  superiority
• active, offensive
• messianistic and socialisational role
• women are defined and marked as different by
  their participation in reproduction, and by the
  experiences gained from this. Julia Kristeva
  new truth
• aim gaining power from the fact that because of
  the decades of statist feminism, womens identity
  has not been linked with concepts of power
  before.

• Left wing discourse
• womens difference is a source of inferiority
  in the world of men, compared to men, in mens
  words
• defensive, proactive
• it is a series of deficiencies.
• Thus, the formulation of womens difference as
  defensive

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womens interest based on difference and equal
opportunities

• Leftist discourse
• traditionally political representation of
  womanly characteristics

• Rightist discourse
• in the framework of motherhood morality of care
  (Chodorow)
• Family as the model of the heterosexual,
  bourgeois, nuclear family, which has never had a
  historical existence, only as the idea of an
  imagined tradition
• womens interests are articulated and represented
  here!

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Cult of Normative Motherhood

• aims not only to strengthen the nation but
• regulates the social order in the relationship
  between the two sexes.

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• Conservative womens discourses
• 1. Traditional religious
• 2. Emancipated Conservative
• 3. Spiritual Conservative

• Issues
• Understanding of discrimination (consciousness)
• Quota as a policy tool

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• TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS
• We are different by nature. We are family
  centred by our creation. 8.
• I am expecting from men, what men from women. I
  think women worth more than men. They handle both
  job and family. Women are better. 11
• SPIRITUAL CONSERVATIVE
• It is important to stay in our world a woman. I
  am doing womens politics in order to protect
  men. I do not think they are directing me. I am
  not a person who can be directed. 14.
• The quota is bad. It acknowledges the
  superiority of men, that they are giving
  something to us. 10

• EMANCIPATED CONSERVATIVE
• There is a need for quota of 50. 9
• The mentality needs to be changed. There is a
  need for the quota at the beginning to change
  mentality. That is needed at the beginning when
  we adapt the EU Directives. Then abilities will
  decide who is capable. 1
• I do not consider quota good. If women are not
  well prepared they should not be there just to
  say that they there 15
• Women do not start with equal opps. Neither in
  workplaces nor in education. They are under
  represented in politics others decide instead of
  them. 12

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More on this see

• Peto, Andrea, "Hungarian Women in Politics" in
  Transitions, Environments, Translations The
  Meanings of Feminism in Contemporary Politics
  eds. Joan Scott, Cora Kaplan, Debra Keats, New
  York, Routledge, 1997. pp. 153161.
• Peto Andrea, Napasszonyok és Holdkisasszonyok. A
  mai magyar konzervatív noi politizálás alaktana,
  (Women of Sun and Girls of Moon. Morphology of
  Contemporary Hungarian Women Doing Politics)
  Budapest, Balassi, 2003.
• Peto, Andrea Angebot ohne Nachfrage. Ungarische
  Frauen als Bürgerinnen eines EU-Beitrittslandes,
  in Silke Roth/Ingrid Miethe (Hg.), Europas
  Töchter. Traditionen, Erwartungen und Strategien
  von Frauenbewegungen in Europa, Opladen 2003, pp.
  183-203.
• Peto, Andrea European Intergration Politics of
  Opportunity for Hungarian Women? in European
  Integration Studies 2003, 22, pp. 81-86.
• Liebhart, Karin, Andrea Peto, Annemarie
  Schiffbänker, Rumaian Stoilova,
  Familienpolitische Maßnahmen in Österreich,
  Bulgarien und Ungarn in Österreichische
  Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 2003. 4, pp.
  417-427.