Essays On Gender And Governance - United Nations Development ...

Locating Gender in the Governance Discourse
the very definition of governance needs to be engendered before
we can embark upon the project of engendering governance itself.
This implies a recognition of the fact that, through their emphasis
upon public institutions of authority, current definitions reinforce
the public-private divide, and make little or no attempt to recognize
the private sphere as an arena of governance – e.g., the family – or
as an arena influencing the exercise of social power and modes of
governance. The interaction of public and private arenas of
governance is important because the ways in which these spheres
are distinguished and constructed affects women profoundly. Is it
then unreasonable to expect the idea of governance to explain or
interrogate the mutually reinforcing relationship between what
Sylvia Walby has called public and private patriarchies? 2 Standard
conceptions of governance are arguably also less than attentive to
arenas of resistance, traditional methods of self-governance, or even
alternative models, such as informal institutions for the collective
management of natural resources.
Secondly, the project of engendering governance should be
viewed in terms more exacting than simply placing women at the
higher echelons of governance – of the state, the private sector and
NGOs. This may be an important objective, but it is no guarantee
of genuine participation or equal voice in decision-making.
Historically, early feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft had invoked
essentially liberal notions of equality and universal individual rights
to buttress the claim of women to equal rights of citizenship. Today,
almost a century after female suffrage was first granted, it is clear
that franchise alone had a limited potential to transform women’s
lives, leading ‘second-wave’ feminists to question the apparent
gender-neutrality of the liberal conception of the individual citizen
(Voet,1998). This concept has been found wanting precisely on
account of its universalism, which precludes it from recognising
the importance of difference, one response to which deficiency has
been Iris Marion Young’s argument for group-differentiated
citizenship (Young, 1990).
In the same way, while engendering the uppermost echelons
2
“Private patriarchy is based upon household production as the main site of women’s
oppression. Public patriarchy is based principally in public sites such as employment and
the state.” (Walby, 1990:24)
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