Reframing Civil Society from Gender Perspectives: A Model of a Multi-layered Seamless World

Abstract

This article aims to reconceptualize civil society with a particular focus on gender perspectives. Civil society, an arena of social interaction often presumed capable of fostering the empowerment of citizens, is recognized as the basis for democratic politics. To feminists, however, civil society does not necessarily have such positive connotations. Although women have been actively involved in social movements and other kinds of voluntary activities, feminist scholars have paid little attention to these activities in the context of civil society. Some feminist theorists are explicitly critical of civil society. First of all, this article examines feminist criticisms of civil society. Feminists oppose clear-cut boundaries dividing the lifeworld into the private sphere, civil society, and the state. By highlighting the problems associated with these boundaries, I attempt to reframe the concept of civil society. My approach follows the work of Iris Young, who conceptualizes civil society as a collection of three porous, overlapping associative activities—private, civic, and political associations. Young's work not only transcends the problem of boundaries, but also addresses the ongoing debates between liberal and critical theorists. However, it leaves room for further examination: Should any of these boundaries be dissolved? Specifically, the question remains as to whether the family is divided from civil society. In addressing the question, I posit an alternative model comprising the family, the three associative activities, and state political institutions. These elements are intertwined such that their boundaries are effectively seamless. The proposed model offers a wider approach to civil society, shedding light on the interplay between civil society and everyday life as well as state political institutions. Throughout the article, I argue that gender perspectives contribute to how civil society should be conceptualized.

Keywords:

• Civil society
• feminist criticism
• associative activities
• the family
• the state
• overlapping boundaries

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (FY2003–2006) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and a scholarship of the Bilateral Agreement on Scientific Exchange between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the JSPS (FY 2010). I give my special thanks to Daniel Matthews for his proofreading of my English. I am also grateful to Atsushi Sugita, Hiroshi Watanabe, Henrik Berglund, Maria Wendt, Maria Jansson, Drude Dahlerup, and three anonymous reviewers of this article for their comments.

Notes

The public sphere to which Habermas refers, according to Held (1990, p. 260), is ‘a realm of social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed’, ‘citizens can confer in an unrestricted fashion—that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions—about matters of general interest’, and ‘political life can be discussed openly’.

Regarding the proportion of women representatives around the world, see Women in National Parliaments on the IPU website (http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm).

Carole Pateman (1988) demonstrates that the public–private dichotomy was a concept created by the seventeenth-century social contract theorist John Locke. Locke's opposition to the Restoration of the monarchy was not disconnected from his distinction between the political and domestic spheres within civil society. Locke argued that political power is derived from the legitimacy in the public (political) sphere rather than the royal descent in the domestic (private) sphere.

Such cut-backs as public assistance expenditures on low-income families—including cash benefits, child benefits, and housing—resulted in the feminization of poverty as women's livelihoods are generally more difficult to sustain than those of men.

Locke does not necessarily differentiate civil society from the state. However, his idea of ‘state of nature’—as ‘a pre- or non-political realm’ which emerged with economic development in the eighteenth century (Taylor, 2003, p. 49)—is similar to the notion of civil society that we understand today (Femia, 2001, p. 132).

Dryzek uses the terms ‘civil society’ and ‘the public sphere’ interchangeably. However, in his usage with regard to deliberation (Dryzek, 2000, p. 100), he makes a slight differentiation between the two, arguing that a terrorist group seeking to distract the state ‘may be part of civil society, but it is not part of the public sphere’.

See Pateman, 1970.

Spatial language is the most common metaphor for contemporary scholars’ conceptualization of civil society. Mark Jensen (2006), however, points out two other classical concepts of civil society, that is, the Scottish and Lockean concepts: While the former expresses a moral dimension of civil society, the latter presents that of nature or conditions.

Anheier's (2004) ‘civil society diamond’ (CSD) is somewhat close to Young's associative approach. The CSD seeks to grasp not only complexity and diversity of civil society but also its relationship with the market, the state, and the family, through ‘a method of presenting and interpreting information about civil society in a systematic and structured way’, and such systemic information is used ‘to “tell a story”’ (Anheier, 2004, p. 14).

Nordic women's movements, for instance, have been deeply involved in party politics: The movements approach political parties to realize their political demands, while political parties nominate woman electoral candidates to gain more woman supporters (e.g. Christensen, 1999; Sainsbury, 1993, 2005). In such circumstances, Nordic feminists are confident that political parties belong to civil society (Drude Dahlerup, Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University, personal communication, 25 May 2010).

In my field research, I discovered a similar case: Oxfam, a leading global NGO based in Oxford, UK, which works to provide international aid for countries suffering from poverty, has been involved in political campaigns for improving international aid policies since the 1990s. Oxfam continuously engages in practical aid activities, at the same time putting pressure on both the British government and the United Nations to increase assistance expenditures (Ben Phillips, Education Campaigner of Oxfam, personal communication, 20 August 2003).

This description is inspired by Mary Dietz's (1998, pp. 56–61) criticism of maternal citizenship.

A Japanese case exemplifies the family as the gateway to social awareness and political activism (see Eto, 2008, p. 119). In the 1960s, when the Japanese government began construction of an international airport in Narita, outside Tokyo, several farmer families who were coerced to turn over their lands for the airport stood up to oppose the project. The government's plan caused these families to reconsider the irreplaceability of their lands and made them realize the coercive power of the state. Their actions, in time, gained sympathy from people who were anxious about environmental destruction and the government's heavy-handed attitude, and these families became the key players in an anti-airport construction movement.