Women and Politics in the Third World

ANALYSING WOMEN IN THIRD WORLD POLITICS 19
doing things in the name of motherhood and womanhood using very
‘unfeminine methods’ (Waylen 1992).
Deniz Kandiyoti (1988) has supplied a potentially more useful way of
explaining and analysing the apparently contradictory reasons for and strategies
behind women’s political activities in defence of the status quo, in the form of the
patriarchal bargain. According to Kandiyoti, ‘different systems may represent
different kinds of “patriarchal bargain” for women with different rules of the
game and differing strategies for maximising security and optimising their life
options’ (Kandiyoti 1988: 277). Kandiyoti believes that this formulation helps to
explain why women act in certain ways which may superficially seem to be in
conflict with their long-term interests. Women pay the price of a particular
bargain and in return get a degree of protection. If a particular bargain looks as if
it might be breaking down, women may mobilise to hold on to rules which
appear to worsen their situation, because it is part of a strategy of maximising
security by gaining and keeping the protection of men. This is likely to occur in
the absence of other more empowering alternatives for women. Kandiyoti cites
the case of the United States where one response to some men opting out from
the breadwinner role has been attempts to bolster the family in order to reinstate
the patriarchal bargain in a society which has very little to offer women on their
own. Other examples might be female support for arranged marriages and women
binding the feet of their daughters. This notion of the patriarchal bargain can
provide a framework with which to analyse, for example, the activities of middleclass
women on behalf of the right against Popular Unity in Chile in the face of
their elevation of women’s ‘traditional’ roles and the apparent attempts of the left
to undermine them (Waylen 1992).
The most documented form of activity undertaken by women’s movements is
oppositional. There is great diversity in those movements and activities which can
be seen as oppositional and which attempt to alter the status quo. First, there are
those activities which attempt to influence the state and political parties, and
therefore interact with the conventional political arena. This can be through
protest or lobbying, e.g. the human rights campaigns of the Madres of the Plaza
de Mayo. The demands made can either be specifically concerning women, e.g.
abortion, or more general demands relevant to their roles as household managers,
e.g. food subsidies and prices. Second, there are autonomous activities which do
not attempt to pressurise the state, e.g. autonomous women’s organisations and
community organisations organising around economic survival.
Important questions therefore arise: first, how can they be disaggregated, e.g. in
terms of the sorts of women involved and the aims and objectives of the
movements; second, what are the links between different types of women’s
movement, particularly between feminist and other women’s movements; and
third, the relationship of these movements to other oppositional movements. One
way of disaggregating these questions is to use Maxine Molyneux’s (1985) notion
of practical and strategic gender interests. According to Molyneux, ‘women’s