Meyers (2001) comments that the choice of whether or not to have children has the most profound impact on women’s lives. Such choices impact centrally on women’s identity (see also McMahon, 1995) as either mothers or non-mothers. They condition people’s judgements about oneself. They involve legal and social ties. And ‘Through motherhood decisions. . . women assume an indelible moral identity and incur or disavow various caregiving obligations’ (2001: 735). Meyers illustrates how feminist concerns around motherhood and abortion have focused on women’s right to choice through rhetoric that portrays decisions as highly voluntaristic. Meyers’ analysis seeks to illustrate how ‘autonomous people have well-developed, well-coordinated repertories of agentic skills and call on them routinely as they reflect on themselves and their lives and as they reach decisions about how best to go on’
(ibid.: 742). In addition, Meyers’ starting point for such a subject is ‘the socially situated, divided self… an evolving subject — a subject who is in charge of her life within the limits of imperfect introspective decipherability and welcome, though in some ways intrusive (or downright harmful), social relations’ (ibid.: 744). Meyers’ methodological approach is through an analysis of maternalist discourses and a review of previously published empirical research.
Meyers’ principal concerns are to set out and argue for the development of the skills that she believes are central to an analysis and exercise of autonomy. Meyers argues that any assessment of an individual’s autonomy requires an accurate analysis of their adeptness at using agentic skills. These are introspection, communication, memory/ recall, imagination, analysis/reasoning, volition and interpersonal skills. A key concept that Meyers uses in her analysis is that of matrigyno — idolatory. By this Meyers is referring to celebratory, pro-natalist discourses that promote imperatives of procreation as the key/only route to womanhood and femininity. Such discourses could be summed up in terms that state ‘A woman is not a woman until she has had a child’. Here Meyers notes that, given that some women actually do reject motherhood, it would be ‘misleading to claim that this discourse determines women’s choices’ (ibid.: 762). Rather, her point is that such a discourse stifles ‘women’s voices by insinuating pronatalist imperatives into their self-portraits and self-narratives’ (ibid.: 763). For example, it is virtually impossible to extol the benefits of non-motherhood and those women who reject motherhood speak defensively or aggressively about their decisions because they are put in such a counter-discursive position (see, for example, Letherby, 2001).
Although her focus is on skill development, Meyers’ response to the overwhelming impact of matrigyno-idolatory discourses on autonomous subjectivity bears some strong similarities to those who argue for the development of critical literacies (see for example, Davies, 1997a; Hughes, 2002; Searle, 1998; Young, 1997). Meyers argues that what is necessary is the concerted development of autonomy skills through pedagogic methods. Thus, Meyers comments:
To democratize women’s autonomy, caregivers and educators must modify their practices and actively promote skills that enable women to discern the detrimental impact of matrigynist figurations on their lives, to envisage dissident figurations, and to entrust their lives to those figurations that augment their fulfilment and enhance their self-esteem. (ibid.: 767-8)
Summary
I have explored two conceptualizations of choice in this chapter. The first is rational choice theory that is both the most everyday understanding of choice and the one that underpins much economic theory. The second conceptualization draws on poststructural theorizing and is referred to as the choosing subject. I have framed these conceptualizations of choice within debates about agency and structure. Feminist economists have illustrated how rational choice theory puts too much weight on issues of agency and autonomy and too little weight on the structural issues associated with life chances and choices. Poststructuralist accounts seek to avoid the ‘choice’ of either agentic or structural accounts by holding both agency and structure in simultaneous relation.
FURTHER READING
Becker, G. (1991) A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. There is no better way to gain an understanding of rational choice theory and the implications of arguing for a framework of atomistic exchange behaviour as the most significant basis for understanding social relations. It might be salutary to remember the accord given to Becker’s work as Nobel Prize Winner of Economics in 1992. Who said we were in a post-feminist age?
Gardiner, J. (1997) Gender, Care and Economics. Basingstoke: Macmillan. An excellent review of neo-classical, political economy and feminist perspectives.
Hewitson, G. (1999) Feminist Economics: Interrogating the Masculinity of Rational Economic Man. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. The Becker reading should be immediately followed by Gillian Hewitson’s text. Hewitson takes feminist economics fully into poststructural perspectives.
The meaning of care is usually taken as given and often presented as comprehensive in its coverage of caring activity, when in fact the concepts of care employed are partial representations, or segments, of the totality of caring. Definitions of care are constructed such that boundaries are differentially drawn around what constitutes care, with the effect of excluding or including sets of social relations in definitions of caring relationships. In particular, concepts of care tend to be presented as generic when they are actually specific to, and within, either the private or the public domain.
(Thomas, 1993: 649)
|
T |
homas (1993) questions whether care is a theoretical category or whether care should be primarily understood in terms of empirical entities that require analysis in terms of other theoretical categories. Her comments highlight the variety of meanings of care which are quite often divided into its physical and emotional aspects. Thomas’s analysis here illustrates some important technical concerns. This is the translation of a term into a series of indicators and variables. Indeed, there appears to be little debate within the feminist literature in terms of which indicators might be appropriately included or excluded as constituting care. These empirical categories include cooking, cleaning, shopping, building and maintaining relationships, feeling concern, and so forth. The domains within which analyses of care have been located are similarly diverse. Although these domains are commonly divided into public and private spheres, they include the family, the office, the hospital and the community home.
Thomas’s point about the status of care as a theoretical category is also an important one because it draws attention to the frameworks that are drawn upon to give meaning to a particular concept. In this respect she comments: ‘Within different social relations of production, care takes on a variety of forms. . . ‘‘care’’ is an empirical category, not a theoretical one. Forms of care, and the relationship between them,
remain to be theorised in terms of other theoretical categories’ (ibid.: 666, 668). Certainly, research into care has drawn on a range of theoretical frameworks within sociology, psychology and philosophy. This has included Marxist analyses of production and reproduction, dual systems theorizing of patriarchal relations within capitalism, poststructural analyses of identity, psychological frameworks of the development of the self and justice frameworks of morality.
I begin by setting out three frameworks that illustrate something of the range of issues that are associated with the term ‘care’. The first of these is that of Tronto (1993) who offers four meanings of care. Her analysis is significant because she draws attention to the values associated with care and the gendered hierarchies within which care is conducted. I next turn to an analysis by F. Williams (1993). Williams is primarily concerned with community care. However, the issues she highlights apply to all the spheres within which care is carried out. In addition, Williams signals how analyses of care include issues of feelings, motivation and social mores. I finally outline Thomas’s (1993) seven key variables that she suggests are applicable to all analyses of care.
Although there is a diversity of meanings, indicators and variables associated with care, there are two areas where there has been some greater consistency in respect of the issue of care. The first of these has been in terms of feminist analyses of the gendered identity of those who are primary care givers. Although of course there are variations, research in this field has made explicit that it is women who undertake and are perceived to be mainly responsible for the physical and emotional work of care giving. This statement applies to all institutional settings from the diverse forms of family to the international corporation (see, for example, Corti et al., 1994; Cotterill, 1994; Hochschild, 1983; Lewis et al., 1992). The second area of consistency within sociological theorizing has been the naming of care as work.
In respect of these two issues, the second section of this chapter illustrates how meaning is derived from particular theoretical frameworks. Specifically I focus on how conceptualizations of care as work have drawn attention to its economic character that has particular implications for women. The economic character of care has been portrayed through analyses that focused on its unpaid and paid nature. These analyses have indicated how, for example, although unpaid, women’s care of family members has important economic effects in terms of its contribution to the reproduction and maintenance of the labour force. The inter-connections and the structuring effects of women’s responsibilities for care, in both the family and the labour force, have also been the foci of research and have indicated the cumulative economic disadvantages that women face. The discussion in this section also focuses on feminist responses to these issues in respect of linking issues of care to rights campaigns.
I continue to give attention to the contextualization of meaning through an analysis of what Connolly (1993) terms cluster concepts. My purpose here is to illustrate two issues. The first is how the meanings of care are drawn from other concepts that are invoked in its analysis. Indeed, as I illustrate, in the case of care, it is clear that there are chains of concepts and so chains of meaning that are involved. The second point is to indicate the domain-specificity of some meanings. Thus, although one of the predominant understandings of care in the family has been its oppressive qualities within the sphere of employment, some forms of care have been viewed as liberatory and progressive.
Overall, care holds a contradictory and ambiguous place in feminist theorizing. For example, it is both posited as a hallmark of woman’s difference and it is viewed as an entrapment of subservience from which woman must escape. Ethics of care feminists argue that care is a higher order trait that should be celebrated and nurtured. This is because care offers an alternative to the hegemonies of individualism and atomism. Nonetheless, ethics of care feminists are critiqued not only for their perceived propensity to essentialism but also for the ways in which they offer rather sanitized conceptualizations of the connection and relatedness that lie at the heart of care (Flax, 1997). In the final section of this chapter I turn to the conceptualization of care as an ethical value. The discussion here indicates that, despite critiques, care is conceptualized as a higher order trait based in the relationality of womanhood. Specifically, ethics of care feminists argue that ethical reasoning based on care offers a useful alternative to rights-based justice discourses and policies.