Author: Andre Coleman

When in a society people agree that there exists a condition that threatens the quality of their lives and their most cherished values, and they also agree that something should be done to remedy it, sociologists say that society has defined that state of affairs as a social problem. Sociologists ask questions about how the problem effects the collectivity rather than the individual aspects of a problem. The main sociological approaches to the study of social problems are the functionalist and conflict perspectives.

Functionalism aims at analysing the social and cultural phenomenon in terms of the functions they perform. From this perspective, the main reason for the existence of social problems is that societies are always changing and the failure to adapt successfully to change leads to social problems. Functionalist analysis was prominent in the work of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, two of the founding fathers of this discipline and was further developed and refined by Emile Durkheim and more recently by Talcott Parsons. Durkheim is the most important sociological forerunner of modern day functionalism. His description of organic solidarity focussed on the interdependence of roles and lack of self-sufficiency that held people together.

According to the functionalist perspective, each part of society is interconnected and contributes to society performing as a whole. If all goes well, the diverse parts of society produce order, equilibrium and performance. If all does not go well, then the different parts of society must adapt themselves to re-establish a new balance, equilibrium and performance. For example, during a financial recession and consequent high rates of unemployment and inflation, state spending on social programs is reduced or eliminated, Schools offer fewer educational programmes and families spend less, so a new social order, steadfastness and productivity occurs.

The conflict perspective, which originated primarily out of Karl Marx’s writings on class conflicts, presents a picture of society in a different light from the functionalist perspective. While the functionalist perspective focuses on the positive aspects of society that contribute to its stability, the conflict perspective focuses on the antagonistic, disharmonized and ever-changing nature of society. Conflict theorists challenge the existing state of affairs, strenghten social change (even when this means social revolution) and believe affluent and authoritarian people force social order on the destitute and the weak.

Capitalism, the economic system which dominates the world today, is based on private ownership of the means of production (manufacturing industry, the raw materials and resources needed for industry and even the seeds necessary for food production) and exploitation of the labour of the working-class. The working-class, with no land or substantial inherited wealth, have no means of supporting themselves and are forced to sell their labour to survive. Capitalists buy this labour power, then get their money back and make profits by selling necessities and other products to the working-class and other classes in society.

Critics of the conflict perspective point to its exceedingly negative outlook of society. The theory ultimately accredits charitable efforts, benevolence, democracy, civil rights, and other positive aspects of society to capitalistic motives meant to control the masses, and not to fundamental interests in sustaining society and social order.

For generations before the establishment of a welfare state, most poor people who did not earn a living somehow managed to cope. Relying on family and, if necessary, on local charities, they pooled together the resources necessary to maintain a dwelling and prevent starvation. The term Poverty has many definitions and it is often defined as a state of deprivation relative to those standards of living enjoyed by others within the same society e.g. income or consumption poverty, social preclusion, lack of basic needs and relative hardship.

The extensive sociological literature on poverty overlaps with that on race, ethnicity, subcultures, the underclass and stratification. The study of poverty is central to any examinations of social inequality, including an analysis of who is destitute and the reasons for their poverty. Although the poor have often been blamed for their poverty, which is seen as the consequence of some form of personal inadequacy such as idleness, most studies attribute the existence of poverty in terms of the social and economic structures of industrialised societies.

The Functionalist belief on poverty is based on the assumption that poverty serves a constructive use for society since functionalism is interested in large scale fundamental justifications of social life. Therefore, poverty is studied on a macro level on the basis of the benefits it provides to society as a whole, rather than for the persons who are in poverty. The most influential writer on this aspect is Herbert J. Gans (1971) who suggests that poverty benefits the rich and powerful, who have a statutory interest in preserving poverty.

According to Gans, poverty ensures there is always someone in society who needs to perform physically dangerous, temporary, undignified and underpaid work for low wages, which is ultimately better than destitution. Furthermore, without the underpaid in society, many enterprises would be unable to operate as they rely upon under paid workers to ensure their dividend and success. The very existence of poverty provides the rest of society with benchmark against which society can measure itself.

In Britain, Peter Townsend played a leading role between 1950, and 1970s in making the public aware of the continuing existence of poverty. According to Townsend individuals, families and groups can be said to be in poverty when they lack the means to obtain the types of food, participate in the activities and have basic living conditions and facilities which are recognized, or at least widely sanctioned or approved, in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those required by the average person or family that they are, in effect, excluded from everyday living ways, customs and activities. In Poverty in the United Kingdom Townsend claims that the existence of class division is the major factor causing poverty; but he also acknowledges that poverty is related to lifestyles.

From a conflict perspective, poverty is imposed, reflecting unequal power among social groups, and it will continue to be imposed until those harmed by it manage to force a change. Conflict

theory argues that the explanations offered by functionalism theory is part of what sustains poverty, as they conceal its true origins and encourage the poor to accept social arrangements rather than organize to combat them. Marxism attributes poverty to the existence of class divisions in society. Poverty helps to maintain the domination of the bourgeoisie.

In the 19th century the recognized explanation of poverty came from Malthus’s Essay on Population (1798). Malthus affirmed that population grows faster than production. Increasing poverty is therefore unavoidable; any increase in the standard of living of the poorest classes simply leads to an increase in births or decrease in death rates and the population again ‘presses on’ food supply. Marx held the Malthusian theory in great disdain. Under capitalism, production grows very rapidly because of continual innovation and the ‘surplus’ population – a group of unemployed living in poverty – is not the result of natural population increase, but of the dislocation of workers by labour-saving machinery. The surplus population could all work if the length of the working day were reduced. But employers don’t want this, for various reasons.

Marxists believe that the capitalist society is constucted by the economy, and this structure needs to be completely reconfigured to be able to eliminate poverty. This would include a revolutionary eradication of capitalism because eventually the situation will progress to a small minority of the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and a pool of cheap labour. Marxists illustrated this by suggesting that institutions in the superstructure, such as the media, abuse of the proletariat, keeping them poor. A fragileness to the Marxists point of view is that it fails to explain why some groups are more inclined to poverty than others, e.g. women and the disabled. According to Marxists, the welfare system is an instrument of the state, which helps to maintain absolute lack of balance of prosperity that see some people living in privation with little possibility of ever really escaping from it.

Absolute poverty, also known as subsistence poverty, is the idea that it is possible to create an absolute minimum standard of living required for physical health, this is often called the poverty line. This concept is used in Drewnowski and Scott’s ‘level of living index’ where nutrition is defined in terms of calories and protein, shelter in terms of quality of dwelling and degrees of overcrowding, and health in terms of infant mortality and the quality of available medical facilities. Some sociologists attempt to include measures of education, security, leisure and recreation as basic cultural needs to be added to the notion of subsistence.

The theory of relative poverty has mainly replaced that of absolute poverty in sociological research. Relative poverty is measured in terms of judgements by members of a particular society of what is considered as a reasonable and acceptable standard of living. This definition of poverty suggests that the poor in any given society are, in part, defined by their opposite, the rich. A society has a distinctive set of cultural values, and any definition of poverty must include the choices and interests that individuals have in their society.

Researchers have linked poverty to several key issues of child welfare. Children from families in poverty experience more emotional and behaviour problems than children from middle and upper class families. Although all children go to school, the background of some puts them academically behind their peers from the beginning. Impoverished students are far more likely to enter school a disadvantaged because they have not had experiences that promote literacy and reading readiness.

More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. In total, 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day. Poverty in the developing world, however, goes far beyond income poverty. This entails having to walk more than one mile everyday to collect water and firewood; it means suffering diseases that were annihilated from rich countries decades ago. Every year eleven million children (mostly under the age of five) die from malnutrition and more than six million from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia. A total of 114 million children do not get access to a basic education and 584 million women are illiterate.

Social protection systems in Europe are among the most highly developed in the world but still, 16% of Europe’s population amounting to 79 million people live below the poverty line (set at 60% of their country’s median income) with one European in ten living in a household where nobody has an employment. Children, are more exposed to poverty with 19% amounting to 19 million children living under the threat of poverty. For this reason the European Union has proclaimed 2010 as the European Year For Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion with four main objectives:

The fundamental right of persons experiencing poverty and social exclusion to live in dignity and to take an active part in society;

Foster commitment by all public and private actors to combat poverty and social exclusion;

Encourage cohesion;

Promote commitment and practical action of the EU and its Member States to combat poverty and social exclusion, and involve all levels of authority in the pursuit of that aim.

Malta does not live in a vacuum and new forms of poverty brought about by social progress as a result of new lifestyles have been very actual. A large number of families are living through difficult times, with children being the innocent victims of their parents and guardians, the authorities or the community at large. Problems created by gambling, usury, alcohol, drug abuse and mental health. The report by the National Family Commission states that relative poverty exits not just financially but also in cases of stigmatised illness, domestic violence and cases where a husband chooses not to work so that he can default on paying maintenance to wife and dependants.

More and more international efforts have been organized in recent decades to address the problems of the poorest among us. However, while the world has certainly seen an overall improvement in rates of poverty and poverty-related issues, success has been uneven and hampered by serious setbacks. One devastating disease, such as AIDS, can obliterate the economy of a low-income country and one violent conflict can crush any human development advances that might have been achieved.

Can we envisage a society without absolute poverty and relative poverty? In a society without absolute poverty everyone that could work would be employed, there would be little crime, just a great place to live. In a society without relative poverty people would all have the same wealth and there would be no competition to be better then anyone else. This type of society is only possible in the imagination. Poverty survives because it is useful to our society. Society’s dirty work could still be carried out without poverty by paying the “dirty workers” decent wages. If the poor were more affluent they would make less willing clients for upper-class philanthropy. Poverty will only be eliminated when the poor can obtain enough power to make a change in today’s society.

“The existence of ‘races’ in a given society presupposes the presence of racism, for without racism, physical characteristics are devoid of social significance” (Van den Berghe, 1978, p.11).

This represents a tension, explored within this essay, between the inability to categorise human beings into separate ‘races’ on the basis of physical difference (Peoples and Bailey, 2011) and the fact that such categorisation occurs, based on the misconception that socially constructed concepts of racial difference are an objective reality (Barak et al., 2010). As the existence of ‘race’ relies fundamentally upon its construction within society (Marger, 2011), it appears, within this essay, as ‘race’. In examining the existence of racism in contemporary Britain, a number of definitions will be explored, however, a commonality among them is their dependence on the definition of ‘race’, demonstrating, I would argue, the equally, socially, constructed, nature of racism (Capdevila and Callaghan, 2007).

By examining Immigration and Asylum policy, this essay will analyse how differing definitions of racism, explain its continued existence, within a seemingly tolerant society (Wemyss, 2009). It also considers how immigrants and asylum seekers are perceived and treated within society, because in addition to occurring at policy level, racism is a lived experience (Lentin, 2011). I do not consider the definitions examined, namely biological, new, institutional and cultural racism, to be an exhaustive list and recognise that considering its existence from other constructs, may give a different picture of contemporary Britain, further demonstrating the need for a critical approach to concepts of racism and its existence within society (Zamudio et al., 2011). I will conclude by exploring whether accurately defining racism, impacts its prevalence, or whether pursuing the eradication of negative life chances, for minority ethnic groups, is not more beneficial than the categorisation of discrimination.

Although it is now commonly recognised that there are no biological differences, by which ‘races’ can be categorised (Nanda and Warms, 2010), this concept continues to create the foundation for biological racism and associates such difference with a behavioural hierarchy in terms of morals and intellect (Smedley and Smedley, 2005). This concept of hierarchy, I would argue, is integral to racism, in that the ‘self’ is constructed as superior and the ‘other’ as inferior (Rivers, 2008). Having proven the non-existence of ‘race’, this form of racism could be considered outdated and irrelevant, however, I would argue that its prevalence is still apparent within scientific discourse and public opinion (Lentin, 2011). In recent political debate, for example, around reducing the spread of HIV within the UK, by providing free treatment to foreign nationals (HAUK Select Committee, 2011), objectors have argued that this will increase immigration, out of a desire for free medical treatment (Department of Health, 2005). Whilst I would not deny the greater prevalence of HIV in some parts of the world, and therefore some ethnic groups, associating this with the motivation for immigration, within such ethnic groups, being to take advantage of free resources, I would argue, has biologically racist undertones. In addition, there is no evidence that the provision of free HIV treatment would create such ‘health tourism’ (NAT., 2008).

With racism being legislated against (Race Relations Act, 1976), racist undertones are now more common than overt racism, when taking a biologically racist perspective (Jiwani and Richardson, 2011) and the denial of racism within Immigration and Asylum policy, arguing that “it’s not racist to impose limits on immigration” (Conservative Party, 2005), is unsurprising. Whilst immigration rules, by their nature, discriminate between those who have, and do not have, the right to remain in the UK, I would argue that this discrimination is only biologically racist, if decisions are made on the basis of physical difference. As such, it could be argued that the Conservative discourse is justified, in that some criterion are required for immigration control, but that such rules do not refer to particular ‘racial’ groups having characteristics determining their suitability for immigration (Sriskandarajah, 2006). Whilst this argument does not necessarily prove the lack of racism within Immigration Policy, it demonstrates how one definition of racism, in this case biological, can be used to deny its existence, whereas, as this essay will demonstrate, constructing alternative definitions highlights greater prevalence of racism within Immigration and Asylum policy.

A combination of factors, including legislation, scientific rationale behind the non-existence of ‘race’ and eugenics movements, have resulted in traditional forms of racism being constructed as socially unacceptable, causing a reduction, although not eradication, in overt, racist behaviour and a denial of racist intent (Romm, 2010). If my understanding of racism, therefore, were restricted to a biological definition, I might argue that its existence within contemporary Britain has reduced. By redefining racism, however, in the light of its social unacceptability, to subtler, indirect forms, the existence of racism, I would argue, in both Immigration and Asylum policy and wider British society, can still be seen. This subtler definition, known as New Racism (Collins and Solomos, 2010), argues that the same belief in racial superiority underpins many current discourses, but that new language is used to represent these traditional beliefs, for example, substituting ‘race’ with immigrant or asylum seeker (Kimber, 2010).

Returning to the Conservative Manifesto (2005), if no inference of racism exists within policy proposals, then why is there a need for rhetoric which defends a non-racist position? The powerful use of language is evident in this kind of discourse, because in addition to denying racist intent, arguments are constructed, such that, accusations of racism are deemed irrational, making any covert or indirect forms of racism difficult to challenge (Goodman and Burke, 2011). In Conservative leader, Michael Howard’s election campaign (2005), for example, the need for stricter immigration control is argued to be based on common sense, rather than racist principles. Mr. Howard categorises immigrants as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with those being different and not encompassing British values, deemed ‘bad’ (Btihaj, 2006). Being a child of immigrants, he classifies himself a ‘good’ immigrant, for whom racism is unacceptable because he is ‘one of them’, however, Michael is white, and therefore does not look ‘different’ and his immigrant Father is Romanian, a Christian, European country whose values and cultures are more in line with “Britishness” than perhaps, ‘non-white’, ‘non-Christian’ countries, making conforming to the image of ‘good’ immigrant, much easier for him (Capdevila and Callaghan, 2007). In this way, I would argue that, although new language is used, racist beliefs underpin this discourse, in describing acceptable immigrants as ‘white’, with similar culture and values, and conversely less acceptable immigrants, as ‘non-white’ individuals, refusing to conform to ‘our culture and values’. A biological definition would deny racism within this speech, whereas, a new racism definition highlights underlying racist discourse, which may result in the implementation of racist immigration policies. I would argue that this further demonstrates the contested and constructed nature of racism, which can be made to exist, or not, on the basis of its definition.

This coded use of language can also be seen in wider public attitudes, within the UK. Where terms like lazy, stupid and unprincipled were historically used to describe ‘racial’ groups, they are now connected with immigrants and asylum seekers (Craig, 2007). Similarly, Finney and Peach (2006) found that although discriminatory views have shifted from ‘race’ to immigrants and asylum seekers, similar language, and reasons for feelings of animosity, are used in describing both groups. A biologically racist perspective, could argue that attitudes toward ethnic minorities have improved within the UK, but I would argue that, considering a new racism definition, although language and focus have changed, racist attitudes still prevail within contemporary British society.

Another perspective in understanding racism, is to consider how policies, decision making and institutional practices create and define racism, rather than individual belief systems. This institutional definition of racism, argues that, policies are constructed to both subordinate, and maintain control over, particular racial groups (Carmichael and Hamilton, 1969). In this way, racism is the creation of inferiority through the implementation of organisational policies and procedures (Better, 2008) and is rooted in the processes of established and respected forces within society, which I would argue makes them less likely to be challenged than individual acts of racism (Carmichael and Hamilton, 1969). Institutional racism can occur unintentionally, by unwitting prejudice and racial stereotyping creating policies and cultural practices which disadvantage ethnic minorities (Macpherson, 1999). The complexity of institutional racism is that, organisations cannot make decisions or policies, without the presence of individuals and therefore questions whether an institution can be racist, or whether racism results from the influence of individuals within that institution (Roush, 2008).

The UK Border Agency, in working predominantly with immigrants and asylum seekers, in my view, holds significant potential for institutional racism. Whether such racism is intentional is contested, but irrespectively, I would argue that, some immigration policies disproportionately disadvantage certain ethnic minorities. Recent changes to work permit policies, for example, mean that restaurants employing chefs from outside the EU, must find applicants with at least 5 years’ experience and graduate-level qualifications, paying them at least ?28,260 a year (Home Office, 2011). Although this policy is applied to all restaurants and its implementation aims to prioritise jobs for British citizens, I would argue that restaurants providing cuisine originating outside Europe, are likely to be disproportionately impacted by this policy and that such businesses are likely to be owned by, and employing individuals of, ethnic minorities (Khaleeli, 2012). In this way, whether intentionally or not, I would argue that these immigration changes are institutionally racist, in that their negative impact, upon ethnic minorities, is unjustifiably disproportionate. This again demonstrates, I would argue, how the definition of racism taken, can significantly impact its perceived existence within contemporary British society. A biological definition, for example, would argue that decisions are not being made on the basis of physical difference, as all individuals are receiving the same treatment, and therefore the policy is not racist. Similarly, new racism, by examining the language used, could still conclude that the intention of this policy, is not to favour any particular racial group. The difference, I would argue, with institutional racism, is that intent is less important than impact and therefore, racism can be deemed to exist if the outcomes for ethnic minorities are disproportionately worse than the general population, which in regard to this policy, I would argue, could be the case.

The final perspective being explored, cultural racism, is argued by some to simply be an extension of new racism (Jacobson, 2008). Within immigration and asylum discourse, however, I would argue, the language of culture so frequently replaces that of ‘race’, as to make a distinct exploration of cultural racism beneficial (Diller, 2010). Cultural racism relates to the belief that less dominant cultures are dysfunctional, maladaptive or even deviant, emphasising individual failings, rather than a societal failure to accommodate difference (Williams, 2007). Although it could be argued that this moves too far from a valid definition of racism, this depends upon how ‘race’ is defined and if there are no biological differences by which ‘races’ can be categorised, then the socially constructed differences which create racism, may also be cultural differences (Pon, 2009). In this way cultural racism is both the negatively, differential treatment on the basis of cultural difference (Hill, 2008) and the denial of opportunity to express one’s culture (Ford, 2005).

Muslims are frequently constructed, for example, as a homogenous group, when in reality the diversity of individuals classifying themselves as Muslim, is too vast to validate a single identity (Al-Azmeh, 2007). Despite this, the term Muslim has become a way of describing ethnicity, both in politics and public opinion (Wilson, 2007). This process of homogenisation, I would argue, has caused ideas of fundamentalism, and terrorist intent, to be attributed to the Muslim identity, constructing them, in some respects, as an enemy of British society (Todorov and Brown, 2010). This is not only a discriminatory and inaccurate portrayal of a diverse group, but also culturally racist in the way such beliefs are played out in the implementation of policy and treatment of Muslims within British society (Qasmiyeh, 2010). This can be seen in proposed legislative changes, following the terrorist attacks of September 2001, where Prime Minister, Tony Blair, argued a need for increased ability to exclude and remove those suspected of terrorism and those seeking to abuse the asylum system (Hansard, 2001). In addition, in describing the attacks, Mr. Blair highlighted the terrorists’ motivation as a religious obligation set out in the Islamic Holy text, the Koran (ibid). This demonstrates, I would argue, an underlying discourse associating both Muslims and asylum seekers with terrorism (Huysmans and Alessandra, 2008). Further political statements in the subsequent decade, I would argue, cemented this construction of Muslims as the enemy (Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009). In 2006, for example, a report on countering terrorism (Cabinet Office, 2006) concluded that the most prominent threat came from Islamist extremists. Furthermore John Denham, as Home Office minister, suggested that behind a minority group of terrorists, sat a wider Islamic community, who considered terrorism to be a legitimate response to current concerns (Denham, 2007).

A consequence of this negative construction of Muslims, I would argue, is the discriminatory treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers who identify as Muslim (Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009). Risk-profiling computers, for example, determining on entry to the UK who should be scanned, searched and questioned, have been found to focus upon Muslim-specific behaviours, categorising practising Muslims as ‘high risk’ (Webber, 2012). This is a clear demonstration, I would argue, of cultural racism, in determining negatively, differential treatment on the basis of cultural identity, further highlighting how the existence of racism, is very much dependent upon the way in which it is defined. Biological racism, for example, would argue that the range of ethnic diversity within Islam, indicates that any discriminatory treatment toward Muslims, cannot be racist, as underlying, discriminatory, motivations are not based upon biological difference. Similarly, although much of the discrimination explored, occurs at an institutional level, Institutional Racism is based on the impact of policies and practices upon ‘racial’, not cultural or religious, groups and so would not consider the matters explored to prove the existence of racism, within contemporary British society.

Having considered varying definitions of racism, I would conclude that its existence, within contemporary British society, is complex and can be argued to be both prevalent and a thing of the past (Rattansi, 2007). By taking a biological perspective, this essay has considered that, although racist undertones may exist in some immigration and asylum discourse, its prevalence within British society is decreasing (Day, 2011). Alternatively, by taking an institutional view, where it is not intent but impact which is measured, the existence of racism has been highlighted, through some UK policies and institutions disproportionately, disadvantaging ethnic minorities. Similarly, by considering racism from the perspective of new language being used in place of traditionally racist terms, the prevalence of racism increases significantly, specifically, as this essay had demonstrated, within Immigration and Asylum policy. Finally, by extending this new racism definition to the replacement of ‘racialised’ language, with that of culture, this essay has demonstrated how specific groups continue to experience significant levels of racism within British society, both in terms of policy construction and public attitude (Allen, 2010). Reflecting upon these various constructions of racism, I would argue that its perceived existence is highly dependent upon the definition used.

Whilst this analysis has examined the existence of racism, it could be said that it does not explain its existence. Why is it that some groups consider it appropriate to negatively treat others, on the basis of their ‘race’? I would argue that the answer to this, is power. With biological racism, it is seen in the superiority and inferiority of ‘racial’ groups, on the premise that biological difference creates a ‘natural hierarchy’. With new racism, it is seen in powerful discourses which paint racist ideologies as rational and in the best interests of Britain, whilst in reality maintaining the authoritative position of the powerful (Capedevila and Callaghan, 2007). With institutional racism, it is seen in those with the power to create policy and organisational procedures, constructing these to maximise the benefits for themselves and maintain their position of authority. Finally, with cultural racism, it is seen in the view that inferior and less developed cultures should be discarded and individuals from such cultural groups assimilated into the dominant culture, accepting the superiority of these cultural norms.

In light of this, I would argue, that if the existence of racism is determined by its definition and the ‘purpose’ of racism is to maintain power, then a critical understanding of the constructed nature of racism, is paramount in assessing the discourses and policy proposals of those with such power. This reflection has also caused me to question the extent to which an academic pursuit of categorising behaviours, policies and ideologies as racist, is beneficial and if instead, it is deflecting the focus from challenging negative discrimination, faced by certain groups, irrespective of their experience fitting our socially constructed definition of racism. In conclusion, however, I would argue that, as racism is now considered both legally and morally wrong, if it can be accurately defined and its existence proved and highlighted, then work can be achieved towards its eradication (Cole, 2009).

“When a son is born, let him sleep on the bed, clothe him with fine clothes, and give him jade to playaˆ¦when a daughter is born, let her sleep on the ground, her in common wrappings, and give her broken tiles to play.” This Chinese song written 1000 years ago, still rings true today in China as it did in the past. For generation after generation, females in China have been seen has inferior to men. Quite clearly shown from the traditional feet binding that men consider ‘beautiful’, where a woman has to break her feet and bound them to make them only 3 inches long; or the fact that the emperors always had a whole harem of concubines ready for him to ‘enjoy’. But as times have changed, many past ideals and views have changed with it. Including a woman’s worth in society; the problem is whether or not women have obtained the same rights both in society and in law. The reality is that though there has been major improvement in gender equality in China, discrimination against women remains prevalent in rural areas, evident through gender imbalance, traditional views of a woman’s role in society, and education and job opportunities.

One of the most apparent evidence that women in China are not seen as equal importance to men is from the severe gender imbalance taking place. This is caused by various different reasons, for instance the one child policy. In 1979 China enforced the one child policy, changing the fertility rate drastically, but what it did not change, was the son preference. The National Census Bureau established in 1990 made it clear that China’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) was male biased – reflecting on the discrimination towards girls. But ever since then, not only has the gender imbalance remained, in fact the numbers of sons kept rising. In 1970, before the one child policy there were 106 boys per 100 girls, when the one child policy took effect the ratio became 111 boys per 100 girls, then gradually 114 boys, by year 2000 there were 117 boys per 100 girls! From here, the statistics don’t seem so horrifying, but when you multiply that ratio with the population of China, the results of shocking, for this is the cause of over 4 million girls ‘missing’. Experts estimate, that if this trend continues, in 10 years China will have approximately 40 to 60 million girls missing. As to why the one child policy was able to tip the gender imbalance even more, was because since only one child is allowed, many people wanted sons over daughters, and the technology now a days, makes the gender selection of a child an easy thing to do.

Technology plays a great part in this is because with the improvement of technology, things such as ultrasounds allow parents expecting babies to find out the gender of their child. Which causes a lot of female child abortions and infanticide, for often the case is: if the child is a girl, the family will abort the baby. As a respond to these issues, in 1994 China banned the use of ultrasounds for the use of sex selection, but in an interview from BBC with an ultrasound technician, he claimed that “peopleaˆ¦offer me money to tell them [the sex of their baby].” According to the studies of a Sociology professor in Northridge University, Wendy Wang, shows that “parents with son preference value consider their daughters to be less valuable and therefore provide inferior care to daughters in terms of food allocation, prevention of disease and accidents, and treatment of sick children,” another main cause of the dramatic decrease in female infants. Through this, it is clear that females are not seen as the same value as sons; even in the process of giving birth to the child is an evident case of female inferiority and discrimination. For instance, there are many mothers in China who do not want to give up their girls, but their husbands ‘encourage’ them to. Xinran Xue, a former radio host, had received hundreds of letters from women who felt that they were pressured and forced to abort their daughters; one woman wrote “I would rather suffer this dark hole inside me ifaˆ¦ [my daughter] can have a better life.” This being the case, there are thousands of couples in China who have girls, abandon them; resulting more than 160,000 girls in orphanages across the whole country. To top it off, the lack of girls in China has affected the ways of society so much, that people are so desperate that the United Nations stated that there were about 250,000 Chinese women and children kidnapped in 2003, sold to people as wives.

Another factor to the gender imbalance in China is the indifference of the people towards the situation. Being an issue discussed worldwide, many Chinese are definitely aware of the situation, but they seem to turn a blind eye. For the parents want sons, and therefore discriminate girls, causing the SRB to become more and more male biased instead. What they might have not predicted, was that since most everyone wanted a boy, how would there be enough girls for the boys to ‘hitch’. An estimate by Zhai Zhenwia, a professor at People’s university in Beijing, shows that there are “already about 20 million boys who will never be able to marry, because there aren’t enough women.” Things have gone so desperate, that some guys even put ads on the newspaper in search of a wife. But there are also people who couldn’t care less about the situation, “Am I worried I won’t find a wife? No, because the world is so big.” The Chinese government is finding ways to improve the situation such has making the year 2004 the “Year of the Girl” – promoting the idea “girls are as good as boys!” or offering some parts of the country better housing, lower school fees and pensions for elderly parents who don’t have boys- if they would give birth to a girl. The goal was set to settle the situation of gender imbalance by 2010 (this year), but it is quite evident it hasn’t exactly been as affective as the government hoped. Most likely is because son preference is a traditional value that has been implanted in the Chinese so strongly, that is has even brought gender imbalance to places like the United States. Generally speaking in the States, the ratio of more boys being born than girls is 1.05 to 1, which seems pretty much okay. The problem is when it comes to American-Chinese, Korean or Indian families. Since there is no one child policy in the U.S, families can have all the babies they want, therefore causing the like hood of having a boy if the first child was a girl to increase to 1.17 to 1; if both the children are girls, the ratio of the third child to be male was 1.51 to 1, in other words 50% greater chance. This is an especially big problem in New York where about every 1000 births, there are 558 boys born, as opposed to the typical account of 515 boys. Even doctors from fertility and sex-selection clinics have noticed this trend; like Dr. Norbert Gleicher, medical director of the Center for Human Reproduction stated that from what he knows from experience, is that most people want girls, except for Asians and Middle Easterners. Thus the indifference people have towards the gender imbalance is emphasized by the fact that the statistics still aren’t changing. Which shows that women aren’t exactly considered highly important in Chinese society other than being baby-making machines.

Other than being the role of a housewife, mother, and sex objects for men, women in pre-revolutionary China had no status in their family or society. Till now in rural China, these traditional beliefs of a woman’s role have not changed much. In order to fully understand the situation of why couples in especially rural China, have such a strong preference to sons, is to first understand what were the traditional ideals of a perfect Chinese family. First of all it was best to have 4 generations living together, with of course as many males as possible; because men were the dominant ones in the family. They were responsible of taking care of the family’s financial source, traditional customs and rituals, and to add on top of that the family lineage is only allowed to be continued by a male child. Therefore the males are expected to maintain financial and social ties to household for life. Whereas daughters in a traditional ideal Chinese family are taught to be good housewives; basically translates to being obedient, and “to place their happiness on the goodness of their husbands”. Another reason daughters are not considered a good ‘thing’ to invest in for living expenses, education, is because once they get married, daughters are no longer considered to be part of the family, instead she becomes part of her husband’s family. Therefore parents don’t see the point in investing much to raise their daughter(s), when they will gain no benefits from her in the future. Adding on to all that tradition, even the most respected man in Chinese history, Confucius, stated that “one of the three grave unfilial acts is to fail to have a son”; which in pre-revolutionary times, if a wife was to fail to have a son, she could get kicked out of the household.

As to why ‘rural China’ and ‘urban China’ tends to be separated when discussing the discrimination towards girls, is because when it comes to son preference, and traditional views, the urban and rural Chinese are quite different. In a research conducted by Wendy Wang, a professor in sociology claims that a parent’s income and education level influences their values toward their child’s gender. In urban families, there is none or hardly any gender bias, this is because parents have higher education, and therefore more open minded, also since the parents have a better income, and the one child policy is strictly practiced in urban areas, therefore they only need to provide/invest one child with better educational and living conditions, they also don’t need to worry about who will take care of them when they grow old because there is retirement funds, and their amount of income is able to support them in the future. Whereas parents in rural areas, 2 children are allowed, therefore parents would provide more favorable conditions to boys. Also there are no retirement pension programs, nor are the income or jobs of parents from rural areas, as high and good as parents from urban areas, and therefore they need to have someone to look after, and provide for them when they are old. This now comes in a full circle on how traditional beliefs fit into this cycle of women discrimination, because due to traditional family values, the sons are the one expected to maintain financial and social ties to household, meaning they are expected to take care of their parents. Girls on the other hand who are expected to become part of her husband’s household; the parents believe is not beneficial to invest in daughters for they, according to tradition, will not provide for them, also daughters are typically viewed as weak, and obedient, with no use except for being a housewife. Theses discriminations towards girls, and the stereotypical view of how girls are to a family of traditional Chinese values, is proof that females in present China still are not looked as equals with men. And it therefore constricts females from getting equal opportunities as guys, which includes preventing girls to have the education and job opportunities that they deserve.

When it comes down to the opportunities, chances, the male population in China still has an upper hand. Due to family conditions and traditional values, many girls aren’t able to receive the same benefits guys have, especially in their level of education and job employment. As stated before, families in urban areas and in rural areas, tend to have different views due to their living conditions. So when it comes to education, girls in urban areas have more equal education to guys than girls in rural areas. First of all, like when it come to gender preference of their child, parents of urban areas, show none or hardly any gender bias because of their higher education, and better higher income. Therefore they can provide for themselves, and therefore do not need to depend on child (son), so they are fine with whom they invest money in to educate: girl or guy. Also the because of the strictly practiced one child policy in urban areas, the parents only need to provide one child, no matter the gender, with better educational opportunities. This being the case, girls in rural areas have significantly worse education opportunities than the sons. In 1990 census showed that on average rural females only complete about 4.74 years of elementary. (urban females complete about 7.64 years). This is because in rural areas 2 children are allowed; therefore parents would provide more favorable conditions to boys because the parent’s investment in a child’s education is based on the future returns. Since men are offered better employment opportunities and higher income; therefore the son is given the better education. Also there is no retirement pension program, and the income for parents in rural areas are not as high as parents from urban areas, and opposite of parents from urban area, they need to have someone to look after, and provide for them when they are old, therefore the role of the sons to maintain financial and social ties to household is crucial to them. So for girls, who are expected to become part of her husband’s household, they believe is not beneficial to invest in daughter’s education. Like a popular expression in China “Raising a daughter is like watering someone else’s garden.”

One of the reasons that some parents choose to invest in their son than their daughter’s education, is because sons have better employment and higher income – even if the girl has better qualities. Here, no longer is discrimination against girls only towards girls from rural areas, but most all of China. Urban girls have lower employment rate than guys and rural girls, because jobs they apply for, are given first priority to the males, the only way they could win a job over from a male, is if she is very overly achieved; even if a girl qualifies for the job a bit more than a guy applicant, the job would still be given to the male. The bit that stands out though, is that girls in rural areas have higher employment rate, from this it seems like it means that rural girls seem to be fairly equal to men, but that is not actually the case. Girls in rural areas, from ages 15-19 year old have a higher employment rate then boys, because those girls are not provided to go to school, whereas most teenage boys are still being educated. So the girls are forced to go and work to help support the family instead of receiving an education. The problem is that with the development of China, many jobs require at least secondary school education, whereas most women in rural areas only have education up to elementary level, suggesting that in the near future, these jobs these women have may be gone. Although many women across China urban and rural are employed, but they have a lower salary than guys in the same job, and their jobs are mostly lower positions. For women in rural areas, it’s mostly all labor work. Another point to pick out is that males have first priority before the girls when applying for jobs, not only that but they receive higher income than females, and their positions tend to be much higher than women.

The gender biased in employment is also caused by the fact that women are traditionally, viewed as weak, venerable, naA?ve, and therefore cannot do work as well as males. There is even a saying among hiring agencies and employers, that “No one wants a female except when one want a wife” though it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the main point is true: employers do not want women in their company as much as they want men. Comments on a bank’s application for women says it all, for it had comments from employers such as: “appearance – a little ugly; height – 1.56 M, too short” or “appearance – four eyes; height – 1.63 M, Ok; weight 105kg – too fat”. This helps create even more prejudice against female children, and affects the treatment they receive at home and the education opportunities they get to receive because their parents don’t find it worth it. This type of biased and stereotype of thinking is evident from China’s government itself; only 21% of 3000 delegates in the National’s people congress are women, and less than 8% of the China’s ruling Communist party is women. To add on to that no woman has ever been selected to be part of the Politburo, the group of nine people who hold ultimate power in China. Even statistics show that women now make up more than 60% of the agricultural labor in China, while in the Chinese parliament there are less than 20% of women.

Regarding incidents where women have been repeating pushed down because of their gender are far too many to count, but during Professor Wendy Wang’s research she had a chance to interview some people, and got to know their story. One of them was a pretty well known story. It was about a student Zhang Yuan, who was accepted to Zhongshan University, one of the tops schools. As Zhang Yuan was interviewed and he stated that his younger sister, who was one grade lower than him, had outstanding academic achievement that she even managed to skip to his grade. But because his parents only wanted to invest on his education, she was sent to a poor high school. At the year of the exams for college she ended up getting the top score among the entire country! But his parents shocked many people by making her apply for “Train and Railroad College”. People of the same village had the same thoughts about investing money on daughters as Zhang Yuan’s parents, stating “Why should I invest in my daughter’s education? aˆ¦All she needs is basic reading and writing that she can learn in elementary school. When she gets married she will be a mother and housewife, and her husband will not need a lot of opinion and knowledge from her.” This is probably one of the strongest examples of how females in society are put down to such an extent that they lose even the most basic chances to shine, and are bound to chains of traditional beliefs that should have long ago been renewed.

This is a dilemma that should be taken seriously, for women play a great role not only in China, but everywhere; like Mao Zedong once said “women hold up half the sky”. Discrimination towards girls are not only unjust to girls that deserve the same opportunities guys have, discrimination also brings down a country as a whole, for women are a big, powerful force everywhere. Therefore, gender equality has definitely not been achieved yet in China, despite the slow and gradual improvement, for there is still heavy discrimination against women, apparent through son preference, the traditional role of women, and the difference between education and job opportunities for male and female. These are clear evidences that women in China are not seen as equal importance to men, and are still overall considered more inferior.

Many feminists concentrate on gender inequality, particularly inequality in paid employment. Postmodernists place little emphasis on paid work, but both Marxist feminist and liberal feminists see employment opportunities as crucial to understanding gender inequalities. Liberal feminists have argued that a combination of legislation and changed attitudes can open up economic opportunities for women.

Equal opportunity legislation –

In 1970 the Equal Pay Act legislated that women should be paid the same as men for doing the same or broadly similar work. In 1984 an amendment stipulated that women should get equal pay for work of equal value. The 1975 Sex Discrimination Act made discrimination on the grounds of sex illegal in employment, education and the provision of goods and services. Legislation was further strengthened by the 2006 Equality Act required all public bodies to take an active role in removing illegal discrimination against women.

Despite these changes in the law, and considerable increases in recent years in the proportion of women who work in Britain, women remain disadvantaged at work:

The proportion of the labour force who are female has risen considerably. In 1971 92% of men of working age were employed and 56% of women. By 2005 80% of men were employed and 70% of women (Social Trends 2006, p.52).

In 2005 42% of women were part-time workers and 10% of men. In 2004 67% of women with dependent children worked (Social Trends 2006, p.54).

Gender and earnings –

Women continue to be less well paid than men. In 1970 women working full-time earned 63% of the average full-time male wage; by 2005 they were still only getting 82% of the average male wage (EOC, 1997, 2002a; New Earnings Survey 2005).

Horizontal segregation – where men and women tend to have different types of job – also continues. Women tend to be employed in areas such as personal services, administration, hotels and restaurants. Most routine clerical and secretarial workers are women, as are most primary teachers. Men tend to dominate in areas such as manufacturing, construction and transport. The proportion of women managers and professionals has increased recently. The Women and Work Commission (2006) found 75% of pharmacists, 40% of accountants, almost 50% of lawyers and over 30% of doctors were women.

The Equal Opportunities Report (2006) reveals the absence of women in elite positions across a number of occupations, and comments that at the present rate of progress it would 50 years before half of top directors were women and 200 years before women were equally represented in the House of Commons, whereby as many female MP’s as male MP’s.

Vertical segregation continues – i.e. men predominate in higher paid jobs whilst women predominate in lower paid ones. For example, in 2005 83% of directors and chief executives were men, 74% of waiting staff were women. Men predominate in all the higher paid lobs except personnel, training and industrial relations managers; while women predominate in all the lower-paid jobs except sports and leisure assistants, where the number of men and women are equal.

Generally, the more senior the position, the lower the proportion of women. According to the Equal Opportunities Commission report Sex and Power: Who Runs Britain? (EOC, 2006), women are under-represented in elite positions. In 2004 only 9% of senior judges, 10% of senior police officers and 13% of national newspaper editors were women. Women held only 10.5% of the directorships of the FTSE 100 companies and 19.7% of MPs and 27.3% of cabinet ministers were female. Although most teachers are female, in 2004 only 31.8% of head teachers were women. In 2005, less than 1% of senior ranks in the armed forces and only 10.2% of senior police officers were female. The report notes some improvements in the representation of women but calculates that at current rates of change it would take 40% before 50% of top directors were female, and 200 years before there were as many female as male MPs.

LINK SOCIAL WORK TO ABOVE.+REPHRASE MUCH OF ABOVE/SUMMARISE/CUT+CARE SECTOR STATISTICS

Explanations for gender inequalities

Textbook pp. 124-131

Functionalism –

Human capital theory suggests that women are less valuable to employers than men because they are less committed to work and more likely to take career breaks to raise children. This gives employers less incentive to promote women and invest in their training. However, a study by Peter Sloane (1994) found that gender continued to influence pay even when qualifications and experience were taken into account.

Catherine Hakim – preference theory –

Hakim (2004) argues that women now have more choice, and inequality stems from personal preference. Women have better labour market opportunities than ever before due to amongst others the contraceptive revolution from about 1965. The equal opportunities revolution and the expansion of white collar occupations as well as the expansion of jobs for secondary earners.

This has led, according to Hakim, to the emergence of three types of women:

Adaptive women who combine both paid work and family. This group is about two thirds of women who seek flexible or part-time work. Another type is described as work-centred women, these women are a minority who focus on career and fit family life around it, this group is less than 20% of women, so men will continue to dominate the workplace. Finally, home-centred women are women who prefer not to work. This group is about 20% of women, including some who are well qualified.

Crompton (1996), however, found no evidence of clear-cut categories among women working in banking and pharmacy in Britain and France. Houston & Marks (2003) found many factors other than personal preference influenced women’s attitude towards paid employment. Abbott et al (2005) criticize Hakim for ignoring structural constraints which limit and shape women’s choices.

***CONTINUE FROM HERE – -P126 (P121-130)

The dual labour market theory –

The dual labour market theory developed by Barron & Norris (1976) distinguishes between:

The primary labour market of well-paid, fairly secure jobs with prospects;

The secondary labour market of poorly paid, insecure jobs with few prospects.

Employers try hard to attract and retain primary workers, who are seen as key to the success of their enterprises, but secondary workers are seen as easily replaced. It is difficult to transfer from the secondary to the primary labour market, and women tend to be concentrated in the secondary sector. This is due in part to employer sexism but also to factors such as lack of unionization.

Beechey (1986) sees women as a cheap reserve army of labour, brought in during economic booms but thrown out during slumps. This creates flexibility for capitalists and depresses overall wage levels. Women tend to be in the reserve army because: they are often not in unions; they may be prepared to work for less if their wage is a second income; they are seen as combining work with domestic responsibilities.

However, this theory cannot explain horizontal segregation. Also, the continued growth of female employment suggests that women are not being used purely as a temporary, reserve army of workers.

McDowell (1992) applies post-Fordist theory to female employment. Post-Fordism suggests that there has been a move away from mass production to more flexible production of specialist products. Businesses keep a core of highly skilled workers, but most other workers are temporary or part-time, or work is contracted out to other firms. Women tend to be concentrated in the more flexible jobs, particularly part-time work, although some have benefited from gaining core jobs.

Research by Lovering (1994) found evidence to support this theory in some companies but not in others, suggesting that post-Fordist trends affect only some workers.

Some feminists stress the role of male trade unionists in restricting women’s opportunities. Walby (1986) argues that in some areas (for example, engineering) trade unions have used exclusion to disadvantage women, while in industries such as textiles, women have been disadvantaged by confinement to certain lower-paid areas of work. Low-paid work ensures that women are more likely to take on domestic responsibilities than men.

Radical feminists see patriarchy rather than capitalism as the main cause of female disadvantage. Stanko (1988) argues that sexual harassment in the workplace is used to keep women in their place. Men use their power in the workplace to protect their position. Women in jobs such as bar work and secretarial work are sexualized, and are not taken as seriously as workers or considered for promotion.

Adkins (1995) goes further, arguing that sexual work has become integral to many women’s jobs. In service sector jobs where women have contact with men they are expected to engage in sexual servicing: looking attractive, engaging in sexual banter, tolerating sexual innuendo and so on.

The Women and Work Commission (2006) argues that reform, legislation and tackling sexist socialization can solve the problem of unequal pay. They argue that:

Gender stereotyping in schools, in careers advice, and in work experience programmes, is based on traditional roles. This results in the concentration of women in lower-paid occupations. The Commission pointed out that the media could challenge these cultural expectations – two thirds of forensic science students are now women.

Combining work and family life leads to women taking career breaks and working part-time. Gosling (2005) found a single year working part-time before returning to full-time work led to a 10-15% reduction in pay, largely due to the quality of the part-time work available.

Women need more opportunities for lifelong training.

Workplace practices often disadvantage women. Job evaluations which rank male-dominated jobs more highly than female ones, even though these jobs have a similar skill level, need to be challenged.

1302

ADD GENDER ROLE AND STEREOTYPES AS PROHIBETER OF SEXES CROSS OVER TO DOMINENT SEX CAREER ROLES.

1605-1626

The conceptual framework of feminism, as a reactionary ideology, basically consists of ‘power,’ ‘woman,’ ‘rights,’ and ‘equality’. The same can be said of African feminism, which has on its priority list such goals as self-determination, which have economic overtones sewn on a materialistic metaphysic. African womanism, despite its pretensions to seeking co-operation or its advocacy for interdependency between men and women, uses a model of conscientisation of women that is foreign to Africa, and runs the risks of obscurantism, vulgarism, inauthenticity, and irrelevance. To put it cryptically, African womanism ‘can’t want and can’t not want’ men at the same time. Although gender has made tremendous strides in conscientising women about their plight vis-a-vis male-dominance, its future in Africa demands that it re-position itself appropriately. At least it must re-think three theories, that is, the labour theory, economic theory, and social theory.

Africa’s contemporary socio-political scene depicts theoretical and practical confusion of gender with feminism or, for that matter, gender with broad emancipatory movements, such as African womanism, which nonetheless use gender theory as an intellectual tool for critical analysis for the supposedly discriminatory social, religious and political organisational structures. Feminist thinkers loathe these structures because they see in them deliberate mechanisms for oppressing or marginalising women. This oppression of women characterises the present economic inegalitarianism in a male-dominated status quo. Consequently, it is argued that these male-founded and male-dominated structures can only be changed so as to render them balanced or equitable if and only if revolutionary measures are employed. The usual elements of such arguers form a class of people called feminist ideologues. Feminist ideologues are those people, male and female, minority or majority in one country, who share the ideas or beliefs or attitudes of male-dominance over women. They tend to look at society in one way; they are certainly unhappy, dissatisfied and critical of what they see around them as compared to what they would like to see. The rational justification of their discontent and critical attitude is quite another thing. Insofar as feminism comprises people, who share one set of ideas or Where is the Foundation of African Gender?

beliefs or attitudes as a group or community and who are (radically) organised, feminism is an ideology,1 which is posited to displace the prevailing male-dominated ideology. It is the core of an ideology or the ideological core, which is the most difficult part to change because it is the worldview of the people. The ideological core consists of the core ideas, core beliefs, or core attitudes of a people. By implication, if the core ideas, beliefs, or attitudes are purged out then the people’s practical reality is annihilated. The revolutionary spirit is germane to any feminist ideologue because he or she believes that lasting and effective change must be moral and intellectual. These detested moral and intellectual values are in-built in society so that their removal or reduction calls for a drastic revolutionary overhaul of the whole social fabric. This drastic revolutionary overhaul of society must be no less than a critique of the prevailing ideology because it purports to subject to intellectual scrutiny, and eventually refute or reject prevailing ideas, beliefs, or attitudes, which are rationally unjustified or prejudicial to the position of women in society. And then feminist ideology purports to create its own better ideas, beliefs, or attitudes. In other words, feminist ideology creates its own counter-consciousness, and eventually its own counterculture. This counterculture comprises a new set of beliefs and a new style of life that is intended or hoped to challenge and eventually expose the inadequacy of the prevailing culture. Only when the ideological core of the prevailing culture is removed and replaced by a new ideological core can lasting and effective change occur. Any change less than that involving the ideological core is superficial or transitory.

In a nutshell, feminism challenges the prevailing status quo and develops a counter-ideology that questions the prevailing status quo and then attempts to modify it. Feminism advocates change rather than order. It criticises the regime in power and existing social and economic arrangements. It advances schemes for restructuring and reordering society. It generates political movements in the form of women’s movements in order to gain enough power and influence to effect the changes it advocates. Feminism is an ideology of action for it motivates people to demand changes in their lifestyles and to modify the existing social, religious, political, and economic relations. It also mobilises its followers and adherents to preserve what they value.2 Ultimately, feminism is political and revolutionary. The revolutionary tinge of feminism has historically at times sanctioned the use of violence,3 which has not precluded bloodshed.

Gender thinking adopts this feminist stance, with little or no modification or retouching and with few or no disclaimers, so that it is conventional gender thinking to posit men as the perpetrators of female-oppression and discrimination in a society which is viewed as male-dominated, a society in which this sad scenario is ingrained in the fabric of the prevailing political regimes, and where the social, religious, political and economic relations and structures are arranged so as to embrace and promote inequality between men and women. The result is that the gender paradigm centrally addresses the problems of equality and liberty rights, more or less zeroing on a variant of welfare-state ideology. Gender thinkers see no need to take caution in distinguishing gender-ism from feminism. Feminism is taken for granted as the appropriate seed and vehicle of gender. In contemporary literary circles, the philosophical presuppositions of gender thinking and practice are not put to a litmus test because testing gender implies testing feminism, which, in any case, has withstood many a crucial test as evidenced by its record of persistence and triumph especially in Europe, Great Britain, America, Canada, and Australia. This being the case, the cogency of popular gender-isms can only be tested, or critiqued, against cross-cultural objectivity. This paper argues that the lack of demarcation between gender and feminism leads to confusion of western feminism with gender. By grounding itself in feminist ideology, gender inherits most of the weaknesses and shortfalls of western feminism. Gender finds its impetus and modes of expression in western feminism. Therefore, Africa needs to rethink a specific gender, which is appropriate to the African situation in this new millennium.

Conceptual analysis of gender and feminism becomes a problem for a start because there is a plethora of such offers on the contemporary intellectual and political scenes. Below, only extant literature is reviewed on the question of gender and feminism in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa. In the case of Malawi, only a few representative papers are considered. Any other contributions outside these papers are nonetheless worthwhile but very likely to be implicitly implicated and/or critiqued in one or more of the representative papers. The choice of the papers is free and deliberate: social philosophy, education, religion, and environment, i.e., unarguably, some of the hottest beds of gender debates and activism.

At this juncture, it should be appreciated that African intellectuals have for some time tried to conceptualise gender and feminism in their own situation. As far as philosophical writing is concerned in Malawi, Hermes Chidam’modzi was

116 Where is the Foundation of African Gender?

the first to notice and then critique this confusion between gender and feminism in the mid-nineties.

Feminism is a consecration of the moral and intellectual and hence universal values of equality purportedly denied of women by the dominance of males over women and the sacrosanct ideologies developed in society to legitimatise and perpetuate male-dominance. Thus conceived, feminism as a western reactionary and sacrosanct ideology is not African in origin and development so that the contemporary gender idiom is not a full theoretical framework and expression of the paradigm of African gender. This construing of gender invokes three important thoughts: (1) Gender does not mean and is not women. (2) Gender emerges in a specific situation depicting inegalitarianism embedded in social structures where one sex (male or female) is on the losing side. (3) Gender is a social construct of sets of behaviours, dispositions, ideas, beliefs, values, and attitudes of man and woman. (4) Gender has a strong materialistic tendency, for it grounds women’s qualities or modes of action in women’s daily lives in a spatio-temporal-specific resource base presumably conditioned by a sexual division of labour. Insofar as it is situationally embedded in the society’s power relations, gender is a reaction to constructed, i.e. real or imagined, male- dominance and female subordination. Gender thus conceived becomes an outgrowth from feminism.

28 The history of feminism is marked by two goals: equality and rights. Pioneer American feminists like Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton had to battle it out with men for their right to vote as equals with men by dint of creation. In the days of old, liberalism provided the initial momentum toward the release of women from social bondage. To women’s disappointment, many a revolution (like the American Revolution in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789) and nationalism did not specifically rescue them from subjugation by men. Social inequalities continued to prevail in the ‘new and independent’ states. Britain, America and the Continent of Europe clearly illustrate the sluggish pace of women liberation progress; Switzerland is the last European democracy to grant women suffrage in 1971.

Despite the universality of female subordination and male domination, the African woman’s situation is bound to make her suspicious of western feminist discourse, which is mostly the experience of the twentieth century middle-class woman in an industrial sexual division of labour. For the western woman of that era it was only natural for her to cry for balance of power. The feminist fight was a fight for power. She made lots of gains; her emancipatory efforts bore her more equality with men, more rights, and easier access to resources, increase in opportunities or incentives, especially in the public sphere.

The yardstick was always her ‘more privileged’ male counterpart in the already privileged middle-class. In labour, this historicity of western feminism has led to the misconception that women were solely fighting for the ‘soft’ or ‘top’ jobs such as company executive, manager, prime minister, parliamentarian, physician, news editor, professor, pilot; surprisingly, the women never zealously fought for ‘rough’ jobs such as undertaker, trench-digger, dockyard worker, heavy industrial worker, soldier,30 or night-guards.

In its counter-critique, western feminism penetrated the ‘rough’ jobs; eventually, the west saw more women engineers, women soldiers, and policewomen, thus virtually transforming western society into a ‘unisex’ club. In the inter-war period, and much more vehemently after W.W.II, feminist thinkers zeroed on marriage as the champion of female subordination, and so they strongly argued that the demolition of the marriage institution would automatically lead to total women liberation. It was then a normal spectacle for a woman feminist to be decidedly non-married, although she could be attached and have children. Domesticity, child rearing, or whatever family life stands for, was looked upon as an impediment to women involvement and participation in public life, especially to public employment. The feminist propaganda so narrowly construed was reduced to a feminist fight for space and time in the public spheres of life especially the workplace, which was supposed as a predominantly male territory. Two concepts dominated and still dominate the western conceptual framework.

Western gender categories dismally fail to provide a gender conceptual framework for the African woman. For instance, the category of ‘power’ cannot be used to conceptualise gender in Africa. To argue that a certain normative concept like ‘power’ has a gender meaning is to claim that its social usage, at least in part, is not what it ought to be for reasons that have to do with gender To claim further that the usage does not command universality and objectivity, due to considerations of differing hermeneutics, i.e. interpretation as grounded in historicity and context is not to advocate gender scepticism. Although the empirical realities of women world-wide are different, this paper argues for the abandonment of gender exclusivity in the face of equally competing, urgent and appealing discourses of, say, ethnicity, racism, and ‘class’.

In western traditional masculinist literature, power is viewed as repressive, poured from a leviathan above to his subjects below. The subjects are said to need the powerful leviathan because without him, they lack security, peace and well-being. In that western literary world, power is evidently and firmly associated with the male and masculinity, like virility, thus evoking the physicality of power. The correlate of man, woman, is therefore powerless.

So when feminists wrote about ‘power over our bodies’ and ‘power of our lives’ they were using the very same concept of power, which pervaded traditional masculinist discourses on power. They affirmed the male conceptualisation of power rather than providing an alternative. It comes to us as no surprise that contemporary gender thinkers mimic the same masculinist notion of power in theorising gender. They are not wary of historical, social and political situation of knowledge-claims.32 Trapped in their own ideological cocoon, the western feminist women still think that western rationality is the only rationality; that western science is superior to other forms of rationality (if any), so that in regard to, say, family planning strategy, African women have to be ‘helped’ by their more scientific counterparts from the west.

African women, so claim the western women, need to be conscientised because it is feared that the African women have internalised the oppression or suffering and therefore are in desperate need of awareness campaigns by women animators from the west. The western feminists already fall prey to the yet another ideology of dominance they vehemently fight in their own backyard.

Western feminists are totally oblivious to the reality of subject-object relations in research; the reality the helper and the helped are equals as they each experience the other from the viewpoint of their own situations and background knowledge and cultures. Each one (the helper and the helped) is the object of experience of the other so that objectivity is somehow tainted with subjectivity.

31 Oshadi Mangena argues likewise that if one is attentive to differences of ethnic origin, sexual orientation and class, the notion of gender disintegrates into fragments and cannot anymore be employed as a useful category. See K. Lennon and M. Witford, Knowing the difference: feminist perspectives in epistemology, London: Routeldge and Kegan Paul, 1994, pp. 275-282.

32 Annette Fitzsimons and Susan Strickland, Ibid. pp. 124; 265.

129 Nordic Journal of African Studies

That the helper enjoys the exclusive right to the objectification of knowledge of the Other is an ingrained feature of western cross-cultural research, after all the helper has scientific skills or rational advantage over the helped, and this ontological arrangement make the helped redundant in the objectification of knowledge of the Other. The only danger though is that the consequent helpers’ knowledge is partial or fragmentary. The implication is that western feminists cannot emancipate the supposedly un-conscientised African women.

2.2.2 Woman

Just as the concept of ‘human’, as narrowly presented in western literature, fails to command objectivity, the same literature fails to define ‘woman’. ‘Woman’ is amenable to many different things; it is shrouded by ambiguities about its ontological status. It can evoke intrinsic characteristics, like caring and love, but this smacks of essentialism, which does not have many adherents in gender mainstreams. It can also evoke familial relationships as the non-male member. Both of these evocations partially conceive ‘woman’ for they are normative since they are descriptive of a set of social facts or relations. As such, woman has no characterizable content and hence the challenge from postmodernist thought that ‘woman’ is not descriptively adequate since, it is observed, ‘woman’ is cross-culturally different.

According to postmodernists, ‘woman’ imposes unity over empirical reality.33 Postmodernism rejects the Enlightenment and the humanist presumptions of wonders of reason. The Enlightenment is rejected because of its veneration of masculine reason at the expense of sensuality; humanism is rejected because of its appeals to universal subjectivity or the human condition. Instead of seeking ‘sameness’ postmodernism celebrates ‘difference,’ partiality and multiplicity. It detests the search for coherence and hankering after the ‘right’ (or Platonic or Kantian) solution.

Postmodernist feminism equally opposes a hermeneutic parochialism of the present over the past or vice versa–of searching for a single given goal, a single representation of reality. This new brand of feminism transcends the historicist recognition of the inevitable peculiarity and contextuality of human thought and practice and hence it advocates the continuity of dialogue between interlocutors, between text and interpreter, and between subject and object, with no advantage, marked goal or reality. This postmodernist re-orientation of feminism is a deliberate step away from essentialism and universalism: marginalisation and exclusion of the Other.34 It puts emphasis on particularity and multiplicity with due attention to difference, diversity and locale. But postmodernists also impose a tough demand on gender thinkers: why should the absence of facts for

33 See Alessandra Tanesini, Ibid. pp. 211-212.

34 See Susan Strickland, Ibid. pp. 266-7.

130 Where is the Foundation of African Gender?

description of woman precludes the claim for the notion of woman, even where the possession of the notion may not warrant the description or analysis of the same?

Even the points of convergence of feminism and postmodernism are not adequate grounds for their formulation of their purported common aims because their concept-lingualities are different. For example, their meanings of a concept like ‘difference’ are different. In postmodernism, ‘difference’ is acknowledged as typical of human experience worldwide; it is at the same time evaded as a threat to dominant perspectives of understanding or interpreting reality. It is consistent within postmodernism to demonstrate that ‘woman’ was all along acknowledged as different but was included in universal humanity in name only by the dominating men. Feminists believe that the ‘dominant ideology’ in world history is the root cause of the subjection of women by men. In Rousseau’s language of ‘right,’ the emancipation of western woman, albeit noticeably incomplete as we enter the third millennium, began as late as mid nineteenth century.

However, feminism does not argue for the mere acknowledgement of ‘difference’; women’s experience and perspectives should be noticed and heard along with dominant male experience and perspectives. Feminists complain bitterly that that the dominant perspectives are exclusive of women because they are ideological and hence false, since they are interested and distorted. Feminists are not content with their inclusion in or numerical addition to universal humanity as read in liberal or Marxist theories. Whereas postmodernism stops at the recognition of ‘difference’, feminism posits ‘difference’ as a challenge, a paradigm of its critical dialogue with its situation, past, present and future.

The concept ‘woman’ is thrown into serious doubt because the notion of gender itself is slowly moulding due to its exclusiveness. What is being advocated instead of gender is a multiplicity of identities; for instance, if one widens one’s horizon, one cannot fail to realise that differences of ethnic origin and class, sexual orientation (gays and lesbians), should be priority items on the liberation agenda. In spite of its usefulness in certain emancipatory projects, ‘woman’ as a gender category stands to question now because it has dawned on contemporary gender thinkers that ‘woman’ is essentially embedded in misogynist literature and that it is conducive to, and promotes, exclusionary practices.

In short, a feminist survey of western languages shows that the meaning of some words, such as ‘power,’ ‘woman,’ ‘human,’ ‘reason,’ depicts gender bias against women; the words are not universal. The concept-lingual sources of western rightist discourses, like feminism, are liberalism or Marxism in their vicious attack of their respective archrivals, authoritarianism, and capitalism. Ironically, Karl Marx did not directly address the specific situation of women. He presumed that his communism would provide liberation for women just as it would for all the exploited masses and underprivileged minorities, male and female.

131 Nordic Journal of African Studies

Friedrich Engels (Marx’s lifetime friend, economic guardian, co-author, and Marx’s editor) also narrowly attributed women subjugation to property relationships of the conjugal family only in capitalist societies; he remained mute on the reality of their ‘enslavement’ in non-capitalist societies including communism and matriarchal societies. Marxism and capitalism cannot be plausible concept-lingual sources for the gender movement in the new millennium since both of them are ideologies of conflict: they pit man against man; the state exploits the proletariat-worker in the former, whereas the capitalist boss exploits the labourer in the latter.

The importance of authentic concepts of gender needs to be stressed. More importantly, the crucial concept of ‘power’ needs to be unambiguously stipulated in contemporary gender thought and practice.

The feminism of the 1970’s and 1980’s correctly revealed that the concepts that are presented to us as universal and trans-historically valid actually embody male biases. For example, normative concepts such as ‘reason,’ ‘science’ and ‘knowledge’ fail to pass the gender universalisation test, so to say. Even if these normative concepts embody ideals and express values, they nonetheless prescribe and evaluate behaviour in male-perspectives and so the values they express and ideals they embody are far from universal.

Normative concepts function as descriptions of the endorsements of a specific society, and are faithful to past usage. Hence the complaint that feminism has taken the experience, i.e. marginalisation, of white middle class women to be representative of all women. The glaring weakness of these normative concepts is that they leave little or no room for disagreement or difference within a situation like a community. Conformity is the order of the day since they are treated as truth-conditions, instead of being emendations of current thought and action. These contemporary feminists fear that these values and ideals are codifications of norms regulating masculinity, where the woman’s ‘normal’ is locus of the domesticity of the family, i.e. the private sphere of life. What current gender thought needs is the evolution of ongoing social practice. It should engage in evaluation of these concepts and influence the evolution of social practice in regard to concept-usage.

3. GENDER AND FEMINISM: THE AFRICAN SCENARIO

The argument that African women cannot identify with doctrinaire western feminism comes with cogent force because the knowledge and experience of African women have been ignored or marginalised by a feminism that reflects only the perspectives of white western middle-class women; that it indulges in false universalism and lacks critical awareness of its situation are simple inferences drawn from the argument. Its conception of ‘woman’ remains problematic and therefore vacuous because its ‘woman’ is intended to deny self-evident differences between woman and woman in situation and experience,

132 Where is the Foundation of African Gender?

privilege and power. It is apologetic of the peculiarities of ‘woman’ since it misconceives them as functional and not as formal differences (from ‘man’).

As a result, its content and purpose are not based on actual commonalties between women but on the experience and interests of some women who have the position and ability to impose upon ‘other’ women their own idiosyncrasies, terms and definitions, i.e. what they mean for themselves and others. For instance, when western feminism seeks to balance or reverse the social scales, it employs conceptual polarities such as nature-culture, strong-weak, reason-intuition, public-private, male-female-neuter sexual division of labour. To explain the position of women, it says women are closer to nature; they are more intuitive; they are more private or secretive, etc, not knowing that it simply endorses masculinist (and hence exploitable) viewpoints about ‘woman’.

Indeed feminism lacks a critical awareness of its situation. Feminism is not in dialogue with its context, past and present, and therefore cannot be used to forge emendations to any society, which cries for transformation of social relations. Feminism is engaged in a monologue, which mistakes its own ventriloquism for effectiveness since it is falsely generalising and insufficiently attentive to historical and cultural diversity.

Another unwelcome feature of western feminism is that, although it borrows critical tools from other emancipatory theories like Reformation, liberalism and Marxism, it does not put itself forward to challenging other forms of subordination like slavery, colonialism, racism, and their accompanying prejudices and complexes, which affect women as well. Its exclusiveness to the western middle-class woman’s experience undermines its universality and objectivity, and therefore puts to serious doubt its relevance to the African woman of the same era.35 Worse still, its silence could easily be interpreted as its assent to slavery, colonialism and racism, experiences that western middle-class men caused on both African women and men.

Though not unique, the situation of the African feminist and that of the Western feminist would not replicate. An African woman generally finds herself in a social setting where ‘power’ might not be the paradigm of interpersonal life. Jobs are just as hard to get for a female as they are for her male counterpart. In a marital situation, for example, she may dispense with the battle of balancing it out with her allegedly dominant male partner in terms of sexual division of labour, involving child-care and domestic chores due to the scenario of dependency, a creation of the extended family. Dependants fill in as auxiliary or surrogate mothers or fathers and as unofficial maids or cooks, etc. Even if dependants were not around, hiring domestic staff would be more affordable in her society than it would be in the west. As is well known, in the west, it is almost impossible to hire domestic staff.

3.1 TRADITION VERSUS MODERNITY: SOCIO-POLITICS IN

CONTEMPORARY AFRICA

Transformation is a rare occurrence in Africa. Perhaps devolution, rather than evolution or revolution, is the modus operandi for social transformation in Africa. The interface of the past and the present may not be conducive to the development of radical gender even among urban or elite women. Past attitudes and values tend to phase out far too slowly under the weight of new attitudes and values. The usual conceptualisation of ‘woman’ both among the rural and urban folk might have more conservative undertones than radical gender theorists wish. In Malawi, for instance, even after the legal repeal of the ‘indecent dress code,’ the woman in trousers or mini-skirt risks categorisation as a champion or promoter of moral turpitude. The continuing scenario of stripping off mini-skirted city women by vendors is testimonial enough of these slow-dying conservative undertones even in the urban or modernised areas of Malawi. Radical gender might be undaunted by this current negative public reception of trousers and mini-skirts in Malawi, dismissing it as a primary reaction of a bunch of male savages. Time alone will heal this negative attitude; gender activists console themselves. At this stage though, these attitudes should be of great concern because it is not unusual for radical gender women lobbyists to experience opposition and ‘disapproval’ from fellow women.

Another reality that might prevent replication of western gender in Africa is the social history of Africa. It is difficult to identify the dominant ideology for African societies outside Africa’s recent experience of slave trade, colonialism, and nationalism. However, anthropology and archaeology, which pretend to dig deeper into Africa’s past, and re-construct the Antique Africa antedating the three recent experiences of Africa, reveal to us that there are matrilineal and patrilineal societies in Africa. In the patrilineal societies, for example, Ngoni, Tumbuka, Sena, Ngonde in Malawi, males are dominant. However, broadly speaking, in matrilineal societies women are more ‘powerful’ than men, an issue that is accentuated by the husbands’ settling in their wives’ villages upon marriage. One would expect that in a setting where land is the most valuable property, due to reliance on agriculture, a landowner would command a lot of power and influence. Husbands, as co-opted landowners, will in principle and practice have less power and influence than their wives. Therefore, if the western gender’s ‘power paradigm’ is anything to go by, the matrilineal society depicts a reversal of the western gender model. In Malawi, Chewa, Yao, Mang’anja and Lomwe societies are largely matrilineal in principle. The Tonga of the northern shore of Lake Malawi can be included in gender-wise peculiar ethnic groups although the Tonga are bi-lineal.

In these ethnic groups, one must distinguish the formal from informal power structures and modes of social organisation; in the formal power setting, that is the traditional chieftaincy, chiefs hold only symbolic power since what they execute in public is largely the consensus, or the communis sensus, of the ruling

134 Where is the Foundation of African Gender?

Unlike feminist scholarship in the West, feminist theory and scholarship in Africa have formed neither a neatly

delineated field, nor one firmly rooted in theoretically-inflected politics. With the consolidation of Western

feminisms between 1960 and the early 1980s and the growth of the so-called second wave, clear political and

intellectual traditions were formed around radical, liberal and Marxist/socialist feminisms. Subsequent feminisms

drew on or deviated from these positions to engage increasingly with theories and politics emerging in the

nineties. African theories and women’s movements have taken very different paths.

In certain ways, African theories and women’s movements have been closely linked to politics, although this

politic

To what extent is feminism a coherent and distinctive approach to legal theory? Feminist jurisprudence is a broad church and reflects different strands of feminist thought but the unifying theme is that society and in particular, the legal system is patriarchal. Thus, feminist legal theorists have maintained their quest for a specifically feminist jurisprudence, aiming to make moral and legal philosophy more receptive to women. The dichotomy between the public and private is very much at the core of feminist legal theory. Notwithstanding the gains in formal equality and legal access to the public realm, feminists have argued that women remain subordinate to men. Catharine Mackinnon, a leading scholar in feminist jurisprudence, claims that the foundations on which jurisprudence lie are profoundly instilled with a masculine perspective, and women are denied full involvement in society. In contrast, there have been competing claims by Carol Gilligan that women are not necessarily considered inferior to men, but instead they simply reason differently. In an attempt to determine how coherent and distinctive a feminist approach to legal theory is, key concepts proposed by the above documented academics amongst others will be explored; the ways in which they have considered sex, sexuality, and gender to comprehend and criticise the legal system and its norms will be investigated.

Catharine Mackinnon, a law professor and legal scholar, is considered the most influential of all radical feminists theorising in the discipline of law. She contributed largely to the field of feminist jurisprudence in the early 1980’s, providing the theoretical rationality for her later pieces of work. Inequalities between men and women were at the core of her work, and she has continued to support constructive measures that challenge such inequalities. In her 1982 article, Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory, Mackinnon constructed a theory of women’s oppression where she recognised sex to be the central issue that constitutes such oppression.

In 1988, Mackinnon took a distinct approach to the issue of gender inequality in her publication entitled Feminism Unmodified, where she revealed a picture of collective oppression at the hands of men. She claimed that pornography demonstrates way in which male dominance is sustained in America’s patriarchal society. Traditionally, pornography has been defended on the grounds of the first amendment’s right to free speech doctrine. According to Mackinnon however, pornography should be outlawed on the basis that it is not an example of speech, but is essentially ‘a violation of civil rights and thus legally actionable sex discrimination’. She claimed that the concept of a freedom to speech simply allowed the more dominant speaker to silence the weaker one, stating ‘the free so-called speech of men silences the free speech of women’. According to Mackinnon, pornography goes beyond its content as it eroticises hierarchy, sexualises inequality, and portrays women to enjoy such abuse, but in reality, women do not enjoy the male dominance and are forced to accept this superiority. She argued that pornography is the clearest example of male dominance, claiming that ‘male power makes authoritative a way of seeing and treating women that when a man looks at a pornographic picture … the viewing is an act of male supremacy’.

Mackinnon’s stance on pornography is consistent with her stance on society, where she considers males to dominate the society and accordingly force women to change their identity. She highlights that pornography essentially ‘hurts men’s capacity to relate to women’ and consequently, men overlook the need for males and females to work together and instead consider it fundamental to have dominance. Mackinnon proposed a legal remedy for the injustices surrounding pornography, suggesting a movement away from the current masculine definition towards one that includes women. She argued for a new legal policy that made ‘visible a conflict of rights between the equality guaranteed to all women andaˆ¦the right of the pornographers to make and sell’ such material. Cass Sustein, an American legal scholar, upheld Mackinnon’s claims and stated that pornography could harm women as it enhances the extent of violence against them; accordingly, he proposed that the Government should ‘enact narrowly drawn restrictions on materials that combine sex with violence or coercion’.

Mackinnon’s claims of pornography have garnered criticisms as her approach is considered too extreme. Feminists have claimed that although some women experience the negative effects of pornography, there are nonetheless some women that find it pleasurable, liberating and to some extent, educating. It can also be argued that if pornography were to be banned, it would simply underpin the notion that particular sexual desires between two compliant adults are demeaning and immoral. On the Contrary, if Mackinnon’s work were given serious legal consideration, society would benefit from tougher policies. Although her approach may be radical, her underlying concepts of pornography and its affiliation with the male hierarchy are credible in some aspects to feminist legal theory. Men who approve of pornography and are unable to distinguish how it serves the male dominance, often force women into submissive positions in movies and even society; in this respect, pornography increases men’s need to dominate and tolerates such dominance. Furthermore, Mackinnon’s definition goes as far as to state that pornographic material would be justifiable if it portrayed both sexes evenly, and if this was achieved, the male desire to view pornography would significantly decrease and women could befit the power structure on their own terms.

Mackinnon studied the legal doctrine concerning rape to accentuate the extent of gender inequality within the law and male dominance amongst the sexes. She presented an argument criticising the concept that ‘rape is illegitimate because it is sex to which the victim has not consented’. Mackinnon argued that consent fundamentally failed in two ways: Firstly, women consenting to sex are in effect consenting to be dominated, involving an unacceptable level of domination; Secondly, women that actually consent to sex only do so because they have been taught to enjoy their inferiority. Natasha Walter, a British feminist writer, identified that in Britain, between twenty to forty percent of women claimed that they had been raped, while only three percent of men claimed that they had forced a woman into a sexual act. This suggests Mackinnon’s views on the notion of consent are indeed accurate, and women are not agreeing out of freewill. Consent could be invoked to disguise what had in fact been an act of force, and consent could have been used in trials as a way of legalising such an act.

Furthermore, MacKinnon used ‘the parallel between men’s inability to differentiate between rape and intercourse and the law’s inability to so’ to demonstrate the gender inequality. Considering the difficulties women were challenged with when having to prove rape, Mackinnon construed the legal principles of rape as a creation of male ideology. She stated that ‘rape and intercourse are not separated by any difference between the physical acts or amount of force involved, but only legally, by a standard that centres on the man’s interpretation of the encounter’. A man would only be culpable of rape if he had a guilty intent; accordingly, if he did not consider his act to be anything other than just sex, then under the eyes of the law, it was just sex and the woman had not been violated. Mackinnon fundamentally argued that men used the legal doctrine of rape to hold women in a position of inferiority, and the standard of impartiality in the legal system made it extremely difficult for women to succeed with rape cases. Carol Smart rightly noted that ‘Mackinnon is able to elaborate a complex argument which shows that only from a woman’s point of view is rape an injury’.

Friedrich Engels, a notorious scholar and philosopher that worked closely alongside Karl Marx, adopted a Marxist approach to account for the subordination of women and the patriarchal society, of which Mackinnon overtly critiqued. He argued that women’s status and the division of power between the sexes became an issue after the rise of the family, private property, and the state. According to Engels, the law could not provide a solution for women’s oppression as the root causes of such oppression were social inequities and class power. He claimed that ‘formal legal equality could not bring an end to patriarchal relations, and that paper equality could do little to eradicate inequalities that were embedded in social and economic conditions’. Nevertheless, in his 1972 publication, he upheld that legal equality was still imperative, stating that ‘real social equality between the two, will be brought out into full relief only when both are completely equal before the law’. To Mackinnon, Engels’s theory appeared a characteristic male bias; it was not reasonable that during a time when men accumulated property and made it private, women gave up their ‘economic power and sexual freedom, preferring monogamy in privatised families’.

Traditional liberal legal theory has offered two divergent ways in which women are able to achieve equality, known as the “sameness” approach and the “different” approach. The “sameness” branch of the theory proposes that individuals that are the same ought to be treated the same; women should reason that women are no different from men, and they should therefore have access to what men can access. The “difference” approach suggests individuals that are different ought to be treated differently; women who feel different to men should stress their differences. Mackinnon has overtly opposed the sameness/different debate, claiming that both approaches abide by a male dominance. She has argued that under the “sameness” approach, women were measured according to their correspondence with men; under the “difference” approach, women were judged according to their distance from men.

Despite the sameness/difference debate in feminist discourse, men and women remained in a sex-based hierarchical relationship, and consequently, the neutrality of the law upheld male privileges whilst claiming that legal policy was gender impartial. The “difference” aspect appears complex; if feminists were to command the law to acknowledge the different needs of women, they would be opposed with the impediment that any variation from the neutral rules of law would equate to special treatment; to treat people the same that were in fact different would be breaching the concept of equality. Thus, the sameness/difference axis is flawed as it permits individuals who are different to be subordinated and considered inferior. Moreover, the “sameness” stance suggests that for women to be regarded as equal to men, they should obtain this equality by being like men. It can be argued that this approach is heavily male-biased; the stance promotes a picture of masculinity which women are required to emulate, which in turns gives rise to an anti-women society.

Katherine Bartlett, a renowned A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law, pioneered three underlying elements that were designed to serve as the foundation for the future development of feminist legal theory. The first of these elements is “Asking the woman question” which ‘is designed to identify the gender implications of rules and practices which might otherwise appear to be neutral or objective’. Bartlett claimed that the legal barriers allied with being a female were so obvious, that the question was more ‘whether the omission was justified by women’s different roles and characteristics’. The question essentially seeks to challenge the particular aspects of existing legal standards that have disadvantaged women. The second element is “Feminist practical reasoning” which ‘combines some aspects of a classic Aristotelian model of practical deliberation with a feminist focus on identifying the perspectives of the excluded’. Bartlett highlighted that although the approach does not always offer a clear-cut means for solving legal conflicts, it does build upon the practical in specific dilemmas caused by human conflicts ‘focusing on the real rather than the abstract’. The final element is “consciousness-raising”, which is ‘an interactive and collaborative process of articulating one’s experiences and making meaning of them with others who also articulate their experiences’. Leslie Bender states that consciousness-raising produces knowledge by exploring the collective experiences of women through a shared telling of individual life events.

Bartlett’s work appears to be highly credible and offers extensive direction to feminist jurisprudence and legal theory. Bartlett’s concept of “asking the woman question” allows the neutrality of the law to be questioned, and expose areas that may disadvantage women. By acquiring an answer and knowledge form this question, feminists can demand for an application of legal rules that no longer sustain the subordination of women. Furthermore, the voices and experiences of women must be heard in order to establish a climate for change, and consciousness-raising allows just this. It provides an opportunity for women to express their opinions, other experiences can be shared which may have otherwise remained unspoken. It has however been claimed that consciousness-raising alone will not eliminate male domination, but it is an important gateway and first-step which provokes wider institutional changes, particularly when challenging the law.

According to Mackinnon, the method of consciousness-raising is utterly fundamental to feminism, claiming that it comes to know different things as politics essentially in a different way. Mackinnon accentuates that feminist consciousness-raising is the ‘collective critical reconstruction of the meaning of women’s social experience, as women live through it’ and it is therefore paramount to the progression of feminist theory. Mackinnon’s classification of consciousness-raising has drawn great criticisms. Ruth Colker claimed that ‘we can only engage in consciousness raising with a limited number of people; thus, we can never be fully exposed to all the possibilities for ourselves’. Anne Bottomley et al similarly state that consciousness raising cannot be the only methodology, arguing that ‘if we are right that patriarchy is constituted in more than the sum of individual lives, then the response to it must be more than the sum of articulated individual experience’.

Carol Gilligan, an American feminist and developmental psychologist, presented a complete ‘new angle to the argument that law is male’. Gilligan based her work upon the notion of difference feminism. In her 1982 publication, In A Different Voice, she theorised that men and women tackle moral problems in a different manner to each other, and consequently she defined two ethics. It is important to note that she did not claim that the two forms of reasoning strictly related to gender, nor did she affirm that all men or all women speak in the moral voices stated. According to Gilligan, men embraced an ethic of justice, making decisions in a legalistic way using impartial principles, ‘they presume that the autonomy of individuals is paramount value and employ a rule-like mechanism to decide among the “rights” of those individuals’. Alternatively, Gilligan claimed that women maintain an ethic of care wherein preventing harm and taking care of others is crucial, and they seek to preserve relationships involved in situations. She primarily reasoned that women could gain personal autonomy once they looked past this ethic of care. Many of Gilligan’s critics have posed the question of whether valuing female characteristics and classing them as positive ‘will really change consequences and harms of perpetuating gender-based discrimination’.

As a developmental psychologist, Gilligan embarked upon her work by studying how boys and girls reason differently, as opposed to the underlying factors for why they reason so differently. This aspect of Gilligan’s work has been subject to immense criticism. Catharine Mackinnon disregards the concept of difference, stating that ‘Women value care because men have valued us according to the care we give them. Women think in relational terms because our existence is defined in relation to (men)’. Similarly, Carol Smart has argued that ‘using terms like ethic of caring Gilligan inevitably reaffirms that women are naturally caring – even though this may not be their intention’. She further highlights that Gilligan’s account of how women reason could ultimately lead to them being eliminated ‘from the corridors of justice’ as it is an unacceptable mode of reasoning. It seems that both ethics identified by Gilligan are essentially part of one inclusive system, with the ethic of care operating as an essential foundation for the ethic of justice. In addition, it appears that women were held responsible to both ethics, and as the two ethics often conflicted, women were frequently in a moral double bind. Although her work has been influential in the discipline of psychology as it has helped to include girls and women in studies and theories, its value to feminist jurisprudence should be questioned, as it appears to offer little direction with feminist legal theory.

Luce Irigaray, a leading author in contemporary French feminism, has been dynamically engaged in the feminist movement in Italy. In her publication, entitled Democracy Begins Between Two, she offered arguments for the formation of sex-based legal rights, stating that the ‘necessity of sexed rights thus belongs in the wider sphere of juridical reform’. She based her theory of sexed rights on the idea of differences between men and women. According to Irigaray, women are ‘different but equal’, and therefore the notion of equality is flawed as it enforces a standard that presumes sameness between both sexes, as opposed to an adjustment of women’s specific skills and abilities. She claims that gender and sexual identity has been embodied with a masculine perspective, and unsexed rights of traditional liberal values are heavily influenced by a masculine perception of human needs. The beliefs and needs of a woman were dismissed due to the lack of respect for females, a lack of respect for feminine genealogy, and a lack a of respect for women in a social or civil life.

Irigaray highlighted the importance of women determining a sexuality that is not centred upon serving the male, and appealed for a radical re-examination of the relationship between sex and democracy. She theorised that if individuals were to be considered wholly democratic, then primarily a complete recognition must be granted to both sexes that contributes to the functioning of a society. This recognition ‘is founded on two different identities, proof that we are living men and living women and not individuals in the abstract, impersonal, rather like robots or strange beings beyond the reach of death’. Irigaray’s work raised some strong, justifiable arguments. Gender equality cannot be achieved if the yardstick for such equality is the masculine figure. Furthermore, to attain gender equality, some elemental philosophical conceptions, predominantly sexed rights, require thorough reconsideration. It is fundamental to implement sex-based rights; society must, at a legal level, implement specific civil rights assuring women of a distinct civil identity, equivalent to such that is benefited by men.

Many feminists have criticised the concept of a private, non-political sphere where state intervention is utterly unacceptable. A key aspect to this debate is the potentially unfavourable consequences on a women’s career if she opts to start a family, which then results in her financial dependence on the male. Feminist Susan Okin highlighted the issue of unequal distribution of unpaid domestic labour between males and females, claiming the problem should be ‘given greater public recognition’. In her publication, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory, Carole Pateman stated that injustices, which occurred within the private realm, could only be confronted by political actions. In Towards a Feminist Theory of the State, Mackinnon argued that the right to privacy essentially emphasised the division between public and private, which ‘keeps the private beyond public redress and depoliticises women’s subjection within it’. Mackinnon held that the traditional liberal division between the public and private spheres enhanced male dominance, and that ‘the legal concept of privacy can and has shielded the place of battery, marital rape, and women’s exploited labour’. She argues the private sphere is a place where the law disregards such injustices, and rather than resolve them, legal principles perpetuate them.

These feminists are seeking for amendments of the public/private distinction, where a woman’s individual right to privacy is not considered only within the context of her involvement with the family, but is given overall greater concern. They were not necessarily criticising the public/private distinction, or the necessity for boundaries of state intervention, but were rather aiming to redefine specific aspects, i.e. childcare, in an attempt to amplify their importance in liberal political theory. If acknowledgment is given to those family responsibilities of a woman, then there must be a change in cultural practices in addition to a political reconsideration. This is could ultimately lead to greater consideration being given to private and public constituents of the family, and traditional gender roles associated with the family could be amended, consistent with the liberal appreciation of privacy and equality. From this angle, feminism can be beneficial to liberalism, as it demonstrates to individuals that the private sphere is not clear of political involvement.

Feminist jurisprudence has proved to be a highly contentious area of legal studies; nonetheless, its rapid evolution, and legal enhancement within society makes it one with considerable weight. Feminists such as MacKinnon have incessantly argued that men have more power than women do and consequently, male power perpetuates male dominance. Although contemporary society may not embrace the changes Mackinnon has proposed, and her critics have deemed her theories as excessively radical, her underlying claims are still worthwhile. She was deliberately provocative in proving that the American male power structure dominates women and must be changed. Establishing sexual equity in this power structure would be a key step in the struggle for gender equality within society. Bartlett’s feminist methodologies can be employed as a measuring rod to illustrate how, and the extent to which, the law favours males and excludes women, and in this respect, his work offers great assistance to feminists striving for gender-based legal equality. Irrespective of such debates and competing arguments, feminist jurisprudence has made enormous strides over the years. It has succeeded in pushing the boundaries of law and legal language, to the extent where the law now recognises that women were previously in a radically different social relation to the law than men. It essentially highlighted that women’s experiences and expectations were not adequately acknowledged by the definitions of law which traditional jurisprudence offered, and thus, it is reasonable to argue that feminism has offered a highly distinctive and coherent approach to legal theory.

In this essay, we will be explaining and giving the definitions of prejudice and discrimination. Also, we will go in depth and elaborate about the various kinds of discrimination in today’s society such as gender, disability, size, looks, monetary, status, education, sexual and racial discrimination. After which, we will give solutions and ways to reduce racial discrimination in Singapore. Finally we will end with a round up of conclusion.

Prejudice and discrimination is a rising issue in today’s society. According to Dictionary.com, prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason. Discrimination is the treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.

To be prejudiced is to have a cultural mindset and that is relied on negative or unpleasant stereotypes about individuals or groups because of their ethnic, religious, racial or cultural background. To discriminate is to have an active denial of desired goal from a certain group of people. The group can be based on sex, ethnicity, nationality, religion, language, or even class. More recently, disadvantaged groups now also include those based on gender, age, and physical disabilities.

Prejudice and discrimination are very common at both the individual and societal levels. Any attempt to eradicate or solve the problem of prejudice and discrimination must thus deal with prevailing beliefs or ideologies, and social structure.

Gender-

There are many types of discrimination. Gender discrimination, also known as sexism is very common. In most societies, women have been viewed as the ‘weaker sex’ who is in constant need of protection from the rough world. Women are more delicate by nature compared to men, and are often victims of physical, emotional and psychological abuse. Gender discrimination does not only apply in communities and sometimes families but also a lot of times in workplaces. In Chinese Culture, boys are more wanted than girls as they can pass down the family name. According to BBC news, around a million girl fetuses are aborted and tens of thousands of girl babies are abandoned in China, every year. A boy will bring status and he will also continue the family line. Families also throw big celebrations for baby boys while neglecting the less-wanted girls. The preference for boys is tied up in the Confucian belief that male heirs are necessary to carry on the family name and take care of the family spirits. A Chinese family worries that if there is no son no one will look after them and keep them company in the afterlife. Confucius once said, “There are three ways of being disloyal to your ancestors. Not carrying on the family name is the worse.”

In early Japan, there is large gender discrimination. They have a saying that goes “men as breadwinners and women as homemakers”. Even after Japan introduced the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in 1985, which prohibited discrimination against women in employment and urged employers to treat women equally in terms of recruitment, job assignment and promotion. But, they are still the last to be rehired in a full-time job. Japanese women are also expected to quit their job if they have children. Even if companies are facing a shortage of workers, they had no plan to try to hire more women. Women have to work twice as hard as man to advance their careers because of the prejudices within Japanese companies. Their university education is roughly the same as those without an upper secondary education. In 1997, statistics show that Japanese women hold only 9.3% of professional positions, compared to 44.3% in the United States. Women’s income is only 45%of men’s even though they make up 64% of Japan industry.

Females appear to be less strongly oriented toward personal terminal values than men, but more strongly oriented toward moral means.

Also in sports, especially soccer, where female officials/referees are slowly introduced to the male side of the game are being discriminated. One such example was Andy Gray, a former footballer, popular football pundit and commentator. He was British television channel Sky Sports main pundit since 1992. However, he was fired after he was found to made sexist comments and made offensive gestures to a female co-presenter. He had commented, “Can you believe that? A female linesman. Women don’t know the offside rule.” in which his fellow presenter, Richard Keys replied, “Course they don’t. Somebody better get down there and explain.” during a post-match show when they thought they were off air. In another show, he was caught on camera( in which it was edited out later on) tugging his pants and asking his female co-presenter Charlotte Jackson to tuck the microphone into his pants. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3371091/Andy-Gray-sacked-over-sexism-row.html)

In Singapore today, Gender discrimination while still existent, is less obvious.

Disability –

Besides the various types of discriminations stated above, there is also a discrimination against the disabled people. Having a ‘disability’ means that a person has a physical or mental impairment. This in turn has a substantial and long-term negative effect on one’s ability to carry out normal everyday activities. Disability discrimination occurs when one is treated less favorably because of their disability as compared to someone without a disability. This is known as direct discrimination. There are cases in which people with some form of disability are treated differently, or are victimized. People who are not disabled laugh at the disabled because of the way they walk or talk. These people gang up and make fun of the disabled. They belittle them, and feel satisfied with themselves. The disabled are not able to do anything about it because there are too many people treating them that way. There is also indirect discrimination where everyone is treated equally, but by treating everyone equally, the disabled is put to a disadvantage. This is more subtle and may also be unintentional. An example would be when there are stairs to enter a building but a person with a disability might not be able to use the stairs and may need a ramp.

Size/looks –

Being of a different size or looking different may also be a form of prejudice and discrimination. Often during first meetings, people are judged on first impressions, and first impressions are all about the visuals. Many a time people are discriminated against just because they are “too fat”, “too skinny” or “not good looking enough”. Society has set a standard where everyone wants an ideal body and face. This is known as the golden ratio. The ratio of “(foot to navel): (navel to head)” is the golden ratio of the human body. A person’s face has to be symmetrical and have “nice proportions” to be considered good looking. There is a reason why plastic surgeries are in demand. While applying for jobs, people are required to attach photos of themselves. More often than not, the people who are better looking tend to get the job as compared to those who are less good looking. Then there is the case of body size. People tend to make remarks about fat people and fat jokes. An example would be “Yo Mama So Fat” jokes, which is very common. Even though different cultures have a preference for people of different sizes, everyone in general prefer slim to fat.

Monetary/financially-

Financial discrimination is when people look down on others that they are poorer than them. This will affect them if they want to find a job, get a rent or buy an apartment. People tend to look at the appearance to analyze whether you are rich or you are poor. For example, salesman will normally look for people that are trendier from those who wear clothes that seem old and tear. Service staff of well-known brand in some regions might not serve or even come up to you if they think that you have no money to pay if they let you try. So, what is the point to spend so much time to serve you?

In United States, there is a case that they are discriminating against the blind people by refusing to make money readable for them as they think there do not have the need. They don’t go out a lot, there does not have many chance for them to use the notes. Even for the device that is specially made for them to differentiate the money is expensive. At the end, blind people have to folding their bills in different positions to tell them apart. (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/395668/financial_discrimination_against_the.html?cat=15)

Financial discrimination also involved the low-waged workers. In a way that large number were paid lesser than the minimum wage that they should get and they had worked overtime without pay. When they get injured in the work place, they had to pay the bills themselves instead of having compensation from their company. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112506238)

Status/Education –

For status discrimination, most of this happens in the work place. We can see lot of who butter up status that up high and despise those who have low status than them. Everybody wants to get to a higher place. For these people that have status discrimination in mind, they normally think that this is a short cut and time saving way. For lower status in the society, they are always afraid of offending the people of the higher status. This is because they can’t afford to spend the money to fight cases with them.

We can also see employer refuse to hire people that have foreign name, speaks with accent, from another country or even locals who does not have a high level certificate. Competition is getting higher and higher in the work place.

Nowadays, it is the certificate of education that decides the fate of status in society. Without a certificate, you will get no jobs.

In Singapore, there are several foreign domestic worker abuse cases. Many do not know how to speak English and many doesn’t know where to seek for help.

There are also many cases about children bring their parents to old folks homes and do not care about them anymore, or old folks being abuse because they are a burden to the family.

Sexual discrimination (gay/sexual orientation) –

People often get confused between gender discrimination and sexual discrimination. While gender discrimination is biased opinions about the female/male gender, sexual discrimination is about their sexual orientation.

In society today, talking about homosexuality is still an uncomfortable and touchy topic. While it has progressed from the past where homosexuality was illegal and you could be hanged for admitting that you were a homosexual, it has now been legally acceptable to pronounce yourself one. However this does not stop the community around you to form perceptions and opinions about you.

The 2 main places where Sexual discrimination is most evident are in schools and the workplace. In the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), homosexuals and effeminate men are managed according to the dictates of a manpower directive issued. Probably its most well know classification is Category 302, a medical code given to servicemen who are “homosexuals, transvestites, paedophiles, etc.” homosexuals are further classified into those “with effeminate behaviour” and those “without effeminate behaviour”. This form of discrimination persists despite the fact that homosexuality was depathologised by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973, and homosexuality is not regarded as a psychiatric condition by the local medical profession. More so, the categorization of homosexuality with transvestism and paedophilia by the SAF further backs up the public’s wrong impression that it is abnormal.

During the enlistment for Nation Service, any self-declared or discovered servicemen who are homosexual are immediately referred and sent to the Psychological Medicine Branch of the Headquarters of Medical Services for a thorough psychiatric assessment. After which, each of their parents are to come in for an interview. Once they are catagorised as a homosexual, they are instantly medically downgraded to a Public Employment Status of C (PES C), regardless of their level of fitness, and put through modified Basic Military Training. After Basic Military Training, they are deployed into a vocation which has no security risks, posted to non-sensitive units and given a security status which restricts their access to classified documents. (http://knol.google.com/k/discrimination-against-homosexuals-in-singapore#Singapore_Armed_Forces)

In Singapore, while being homosexual is legal, same-sex marriage is not, and any acts of indecency between two people of the same sex, will have you charged. Singapore being a diverse nation, which encourages harmony between different race, religion and background does not have as many Sexual discrimination cases as compared to America. In fact, according to BBC News on 16 May 2009, there was an event help by pinkdot.sg to commemorate love in all forms and between people of every orientation. The event was for Singaporeans in general – to affirm our respect for diversity and the freedom to love, regardless of sexual orientation.

Figure : 2,500 pink-attired supporters of gay rights, in a Singapore park.

“We recognize that many Singaporeans are conservative… so we planned an inclusive event that would reach all Singaporeans, straight and gay,” organizer Mr Soh says.

Racial –

Racial discrimination is the discriminatory or abusive behavior towards members of another race, also known as Racism. Where most countries do not condone Racism, it is still exists and has become a stereotype in society today.

In the US, many laws forbid racial discrimination, and a number of these are directly derived from Title VII in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The first of these acts makes manifest that employers cannot refuse to hire qualified employees based on race or skin color, and they can’t do other things like harass them for race, refuse promotions, or pay them at lower rates. The 1991 Civil Rights Act defines some ways that people who have experienced racial discrimination can sue.

Till today, racial discriminations still exist, especially in workplaces where largely foreign workers are employed (mostly Chinese nationals, Bangladeshis and Indian nationals). Faced with language barriers and already lowly paid, they still have to follow orders and listen to vulgarities being thrown at them by their local employers and superiors. The same can be said for domestic helpers, where there are numerous reports of physical (and sometimes sexual) abuses by their employers and agencies.

Solutions that can be used to reduce prejudice and discrimination in Singapore
Education

It not right to judge someone base on his or her race. They might look different from others but they are still human. In order to make people minimize discrimination, it is better to start from the younger generation because they are the future. First step is to take down “the Special Assistance Plan( a programme that is catered to students who achieved the top 10% of the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE)) school system” (Aaron, 2006). This school system concentrate on Chinese education as there are so many Chinese students and that most of these schools has rich Chinese traditions and history (eg, Hwa Chong Institution). Therefore, how can the racism be reduced in schools like this. Furthermore, government schools should also include religious subject in their system. In addition, universities should also organize some events that relates to intercultural exchanges. This will give an opportunity for students of any nationality to study different cultures.

Workplace

The company should take “racially and culturally staff” (Strategies for Reducing Racism, 2001). It is not only for worker and for employee but also apply for management or director. Talk to different people from different cultural and try to figure out what is problem that they have meet. By doing this, the organization will know what they need to do to improve better working environment for their employees. Moreover, try to put different pictures of multicultural so none will feel isolate. Furthermore, there should be a special team to solve any racial problem in the workplace. This group can also come up with some activities for employees so everybody can get closer to each other.

Race

In Singapore alone, the government has implemented racial harmony. It was in 1964, that Singapore went through 2 five-day periods of racial riots. First in 21st July and second was in 2nd September. The minority of Malays in Singapore had thought that they would benefit from the special rights for Malays that was part of the 1957 Federation of Malaya Constitution when Singapore merged with Malaya. However, it was not part of the agreement of the merger that the special rights were applicable for the Malays in Singapore as well, causing unrest among the Singapore Malays. Reason being that then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had wanted equal rights for all Singapore citizens, regardless of race.

The riots that broke out in the 2 dates resulted in lives lost and many injured. (http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_45_2005-01-06.html)

And so, on 21st July, which was also the date that the first racial riot broke out in 1964, is celebrated as Racial Harmony Day, in which inter-racial harmony is emphasized and celebrated in schools which students are allowed and also encouraged to dress up in traditional costumes of races other than their own.

As most Singaporeans stays in HDB flats, the government have also implemented certain racial quotas for certain flats so that there is a balance between races in a neighbourhood. For instance, certain flats are only allowed to be bought by a certain race. If so happens that the owner of the flat wishes to sell the flat, the buyer would have to be of the same race as the previous owner so that there is always a balance in the races within the area.

Because of this rule, there are many cases whereby neighbours of different races have inter-cultural exchanges during festive periods. Like how an Indian neighbor share their homemade delicacies with their Chinese neighbour and vice versa.

Locality

Welcome new people no matter where they come from, give them some flower or small gift with nice saying such as “It is nice to meet you; I hope you will enjoy living here”. In this way, everybody will act equally with each other and there will be no prejudice or racism. Another way is that some family can even put the sign with the writing “All race are welcome here”. By doing this, the new people will feel just like at home.

Individual

People do not have to make a group in order to reduce racism. People can minimize discrimination by themselves. Just be nice and be polite to everybody. Be brave to stand up again racial discrimination, read book or research about racism on the internet. Talk to those who still a victim of discrimination so people will understand more about this issue.

Media

As Racial Harmony Day is only emphasized in schools, it can also be spread through the media like radio, television, movies, etc, so that both young and old can be more educated about the importance of racial harmony. Having Racial Harmony Day in school is not enough as the younger generations could still be influenced by others around them especially family members and neighbours. Even though the older generations might have grown up with different races in the older kampong days, there still might be possibility that they have prejudices against other races due to conflicts that might have happened in the past.

Conclusion

After looking at prejudice and racial discrimination in Singapore, there is still a lot to be done even though it is a multi-racial society as it is still very much a predicament in Singapore. Through our solutions such as more inter-cultural exchanges outside of schools where the government is only implementing the racial harmony idealism, in my opinion, racial harmony must still be educated to each and everyone regardless of age so that everyone knows the importance of racial harmony.

Bibilogy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1506469.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8054402.stm

http://aaron-ng.info/blog/racism-in-singapore.html

In the following assignment we will discuss the way of media representation of mental disorder. Additionally, a brief description of the film Me, Myself & Irene will take place in order to understand how the media misrepresent mental disorder. Furthermore, we will try show the real relationship between violence and mental disorder and thus, how accurate are media portrayals of this mental health problem. Ultimately, we will explain the impact of negative media representation on the mentally ill people and on the public.

Mass media representation of mental disorder is negative and describes mentally ill people as ‘monsters’. Media’s sovereign depictions of mental health problems appear to emphasize violence, dangerousness and criminality as long as “Poor, unbalanced press coverage of mental health issues fuels stigma and reduces the quality of life for sufferers, says a leading charity” (www.news.bbc.co.uk). This inappropriate representation causes severe stigma, moral panic, ostracism, as well as discrimination and victimization of these individuals.

Me, Myself & Irene, is a comedy film directed from the Farrelly brothers and was released in U.K on September 22, 2000. The plot of the movie is about one mentally ill man Charlie Baileygates who is passive and generally peaceful. He has ‘split’ personality and thus his alter ego (Hank) is aggressive, foul-mouthed and violent. Charlie has been diagnosed with delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage, and whenever Charlie does not take his medication, Hunk takes his place causing several problems because of his turbulent mental state. His behaviour becomes obscene as he defecates on a neighbour’s lawn and suckles from a stranger’s breast.

This uncontrolled rage makes Hank to make fun of one man with albinism who explains that he killed his entire family but was released early just to make room for psychos. Both Charlie (good) and Hank (evil) try to protect Irene from a gang of corrupt cops who want her dead. Menacing Hank insults and punches nearly everyone he encounters and Irene apologises all the time for Hanks behaviour, explaining that he is a “schizo”.

The film raised many dilemmas about its inappropriate presentation of mental health problems and lot of people argues that the film makes fun of mentally ill people and perpetuates ugly stigmas about mental illness. Me, Myself & Irene is a perfect example of what the media represents about the relationship between violence and mental disorder, and as Thornicroft (2006) claims, schizophrenia is often linked to violence in films and media. This can be seen in my case example, when ‘Hank’ assaults a group of people and also when starts to drown a young girl who has insulted him.

The media today has become more powerful agent than it was in the past. Many support that the function of media is vital within societies as they have been acclaimed as agents of the democratic institutions and guardians of citizen’s rights (McQuail, 2003). Others believe that the media just represent extremity and exaggeration to earn publicity, and as Bennett (1999) claims “News is the policy of hallucinations”.

However, it is a fact that people collect most of the information from the TV, newspapers and radio and as Thornicroft supports “the majority of people gather what they know about mental illnesses either from personal experience and contact with people with such conditions, or from the mass media” (Thornicroft, 2007).

Media portrayals are most of the time inaccurate and sensationalized, depicting mentally ill people as different, dangerous, unpredictable and violent. According to that and what we see from the film My, Myself & Irene, Hank unpredictably assaults whoever is in front of him, making strange movements and behaving abnormally (especially during the personality change from good Charlie to villain Hank). Such representations make people to misunderstand mental disorder, and this misrepresentation appears to play an active part in shaping and sustaining what mental illness means in our culture.

As probably already shown, I am not a totally unbiased observer of what is happening these days. I have a point of view, based on what I have read so far (research) and on personal experience (once, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with a mentally ill friend) and what is going to be presented in this assignment convey this point of view.

I strongly believe that mass media portrayals of mental disorder are in the overwhelming majority inaccurate, inappropriate, unfavourable and harmful to mentally ill people. You only have to read a newspaper, switch on the TV or go to the cinema to spot such demeaning attitudes which can affect significant undesirable consequences. Such consequences will be discussed later in another chapter.

Mass media treat mental disorder as an object of ridicule, using psychiatric terminology inaccurately, and to overuse slang disrespectful terms for mental illness. For example, consider the use of Charlie’s diagnosis with delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage. I am not an expert thus; I have had to do a research on that, just to find that, once again, misrepresentation took place and media used mental disorder as a source of humor. Britain’s two largest mental health charities, Mind and National Schizophrenia Fellowship, have joined with the Royal College of Psychiatrists and claim that “people affected by schizophrenia don’t switch from gentle to mental, as the billboard advertisements say, but are more often withdrawn. In fact, split personality is a totally different condition; it is a dissociative disorder rather than a psychotic illness”. Furthermore, they argue that the behaviour portrayed in the film, has nothing whatever to do with schizophrenia (www.findarticles.com).

I am a member of mass media consumer myself. I am continually entertained by the television programmes, movies and newspapers which I eagerly consume. However, this will not stop me from looking carefully and critically the media misrepresentation of mental health problems.

Comedy portrayals tend to depict mental illnesses as primarily involving little more than specific oddities that the individuals manifest repetitively. This notion of mental disorder as a humorous oddity is conveyed in our movie and movies, whatever their titles, continuously find ways to present mental illnesses as laughable and ridiculous. The fact that our film has a funny plot which involve violence, mental health, beautiful girls and bad guys hunting good guys, succeeds to attract viewer’s attention and interest (Charlie, Hank and Irene produce fun during the film for example when Charlie is trying to make Hank go away etc).

Media images are emotionally arousing, they do not only provide information, but they manipulate emotions in deliberate, skillful and effective way. Thus, I believe that it is very important to understand that movies which are not about mental illnesses, (our movie is categorized as comedy) they make viewers to merely absorb what they see, and therefore reinforce their biases and already inaccurate views, without being particularly aware that they are learning about mental illness. According to that, and as one film critic commended, “Comedies may be mindless, but that does not mean it is not affecting minds” (Wahl, 2003).

Society’s lack of knowledge, negative attitude and discriminatory behaviour is one of the central paradoxes because we live in a world in which up to half of all adults will be diagnosed with mental disorder in their lifetime. Furthermore, up to three-quarters of adult population know someone directly who has mental disorder, and yet we all act as if nobody knows anything (Thornicroft, 2006). Thus, I cannot understand why people who still feel threatened by it, allow stigma to thrive.

Mental disorder misrepresentation by the media also poses significant limitations in the initiatives to normalize mental health services within the community and therefore reduce harmful stigma. According to that, many mentally ill people face prejudice and severe discrimination when happens to live next to ‘healthy’ people “…Just because I have a mental health problem, I am now shunned, my life made even more difficult to live. Maria is a woman whose only crime is to live in an area in which a hostel for people with mental health problems is planned” (Thornicroft-Shunned-2006).

Public’s perception of mental illness is one of fear and paranoia, bordering on mass media as they often use words such as ‘nutter’, ‘psycho’ and ‘schizo’. This can be seen in the film Me, Myself & Irene, when Irene used to apology for Hanks behaviour, saying that he is a ‘schizo’. These words are derogatory which should not be used. In relation to this, I have the obligation to express my opinion that a civilization should be judged by how it behaves towards mentally ill. Likewise, I believe that the well-being of a social system depends on the prosperity of the teams within this social system. Thus, any discrimination and stigma makes social system dysfunctional as a whole.

Equally important to be mentioned is that during the movie, I have realized that misrepresentation of mental disorder not only took place on Charlie/Hank but there was a pervasive and persistent pattern to degrade mental disorder through Whiteys portrayal that according to the plot, have killed his entire family.

As mentioned before, everyday people are learning, from everyday sources, concerning mental illnesses and it appears unfortunate that the majority of those people learn about mental illness from what they see and hear in the mass media. However, even if I believe that the mass media are not wholly to blame for negative perceptions, but every time programmes, articles or film portrays a stereotype, they fail to clear up a misunderstanding about mental disorder and thus, this helps to perpetuate the myths.

In the following extract taken from the book Media madness: public images of mental illness (Wahl, 2003), there is an interesting, clear illustration of how the fearful mass media with the bold headlines tend to misrepresent mental disorder. The case is about a 30 year old woman who entered an elementary school in Winnetka, Illinois in May 1988 and shot a number of children.

“..Time’s May 30, 1988, headline introducing the story of this tragic incident was ‘One Lunatic, Three Guns’. The event was truly tragic, and it is likely that mental illness was a contributing factor in the woman’s actions. Referring to the mentally ill person involved as a ‘lunatic’, however, was both unnecessary (Newsweek’s article on the same incident was titled simply ‘I Have Hurt Some Children: Nightmare in Winnetka’) and inconsistent with standards applied to other groups. If the Winnetka school killing had been committed by someone in a wheelchair, it is unlikely that the Time’s headline would have read ‘One Cripple, Three Guns’. If the incident had involved a black woman, the headline would not have proclaimed ‘One Nigger, Three Guns’. There seems not to be the same hesitancy about using similarly disrespectful terms in referring to people with mental illnesses…” (www.time.com).

Hence, it is obvious that the mass media tend to misrepresent mental illness with disrespectful patterns, fueling public fear and letting stigma to thrive.

Stigma, in ancient Greece was bodily sign for those who were different. Stigmata were cut and burnt onto these different people (most of the time slaves) bodies to mark them as different from the rest population (http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk). Nowadays, mentally ill people are no longer physically mutilated, but still depreciation and hostile attitudes towards them can be just as hurtful to them. Individuals with mental health problems are stereotyped and stigmatized through the media as mad and violent, and thus this stigma causes serious obstacles in their life. Shame, blame and secrecy are taking place as they are the “black sheep of the family”. Mentally ill people experience severe stigma, discrimination, social exclusion and thus, isolation.

Media represents mentally disordered as individuals dangerous to the public, strange and unpredictable like Hank (after all, who would want to live next to somebody who parks a car inside a shop and fights a cow?). But, the relationship between violence and mental disorder is not what the mass media simply represents. It is a complex matter that needs further consideration and critical thinking. Thus, in the following paragraphs we will try to understand what the real relationship is.

Having said that the representation of a phenomenon by the media reflect the frame in which a phenomenon is socially placed, it is considered essential at this point to mention that it is much more likely for people to become victimized from “healthy” offenders than becoming a victim from a mentally disordered individual.

The depiction of the mentally ill individual as violent, unanticipated, dangerous and potential criminal appears to be extremely “popular” in the media’s interest. Furthermore, in the connection between mental illness and violence, schizophrenia possesses a prominent place, mainly because of its complexity. According to this, researches in Great Britain shows that the frame of violence outclasses against other approaches in proportion 4:1 and the individuals with mental illness almost always are presented with negative way, as violent, murderers or rapists, or, in the better case, as objects of sneer (Wahl, 2003).

Additionally, and as empirical evidence show us, actually, the percentage of crimes of violence that has been committed by individuals with mental disturbance does not abstain perceptibly from what is attributed to the general population (Eronen et al., 1996), and the majority of acts of violence that are committed by mental patients are located in cases of incomplete therapeutic confrontation or even parallel use of substances (Swanson, 1997).

However, this study, and most of the studies conducted until recently, have focused on the rates of violence among people with mental disorder, based on those who were hospitalized (inpatients) or on rates of mentally ill which were arrested, convicted or incarcerated for violent crimes. For example, one national survey showed that the lifetime risk of schizophrenia was 5% among people convicted for homicide, a prevalence that is much higher than any published rate of schizophrenia in the general population (suggesting the relationship between schizophrenia and homicide). (http://content.nejm.org).

These studies, however, have many limitations as they only refer to individuals who were arrested, hospitalized or incarcerated which are by definition more likely to be violent or very ill and thus are not accurate representative of mentally ill in the general population.

However, according to a study conducted by NIMH Epidemiology Catchment Area it was found that mentally ill patients suffering from serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression were two to three times as likely as “healthy” people to be assaultive. At this point it is very important to mention that not all mental illnesses are linked to violence. For example, anxiety disorders do not increase the risk of violence. However, although the overwhelming majority of mentally ill with major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not produce criminal behaviour, the presence of such disorders is significantly linked to an increased risk of violence.

Furthermore, this study which had representative sample of 17.803 subjects, showed that people with no mental health problems who abuse alcohol and drugs are seven times as likely to report a violent behaviour as those without substance abuse whereas, mentally ill with substance abuse compounds the increased risk of violence (alcohol and substance abuse far outweigh mental disorder in contributing violence) (http://content.nejm.org).

I am aware of the fact that the link between violence and mental disorder is not that strong. It is a controversial subject and hence, I believe that whether or not, mentally ill are more likely than others to engage in violent behaviour, the subject is not an idle and needs further consideration.

Thus, the public should not losing sight that most people who are violent are not mentally ill, and most people who are mentally ill are not violent. A look at the broader picture is essential, thus even though the media represents dramatic statistics in order to underscore their cases, mass media consumers should know that serious mental illness is quite rare and actually contributes little to the overall rate of violence in the general population.

Furthermore, it is crucial for us to understand that, most of people who are violent do not suffer from mental illnesses. More specifically, mentally ill are more likely to be the victims, rather than the perpetrators of violence “current research shows that people with major mental illness are 2.5 times more likely to be the victims of violence than other members of society” (http://www.cmha.ca).

Moreover, a 1996 Health Canada review of scientific articles found that the strongest predictor of violence and criminal behaviour is not major to mental illness, but past history of violence and criminality (http://www.cmha.ca).

To conclude, and as mentioned before, mental disorder plays no part in the majority of violent crimes committed in our society. However, mentally ill people who live in a stressful, unpredictable environment with little family or community support may be at risk high risk of becoming violent (in relation to our case, Charlie/Hank was away from his family and chased across the country by corrupt cops).

However, mental disorder misrepresentation by the media continues and it is not hard to understand why. Pamela Kalbfleisch claims, that “aˆ¦nothing sells like an insane, unpredictable, undetected, glory killer on the loose who has caused a great deal of pain and anguish to the friends and relatives of the victim” (Wahl, 2003).

To the question why are people with mental disorder depicted consistently from the media in such inaccurate and inappropriate way (dangerous, different) the answer would be for profit. There is no question that mass media selection of what to present to the public is based on financial factors). Mass media operate for profit and wants to fulfill the public’s thirst and excitement for violence related to mental disorder, and thus should present what the public will buy. Hence, it was considered essential for the films trailer to show Charlie explaining that he suffers from delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage so that, attract viewers attention.

Nevertheless, mental disorder produces profits (the film grossed $83 million in the USA according to The Guardian, July 28, 2000), (http://pb.rcpsych.org). Phenomena that are dramatic and puzzling have always been attractive to the public. Thus, what is more buy-able than a ‘funny’ and unpredicted character acting like ‘mad’. Mental illness is therefore, transformed into madness, and madness related to fun is even more ‘fascinating’. Media representation of serious mental disorder, challenge public’s appetite for arousal and excitement as stories about violent crime linked to mental illness provide titillation.

However, the most important thing during the movie is that there was an inappropriate and inaccurate depiction that whenever a mentally ill individual does not take the medication becomes villain (Hank wanted to fight a 10-year-old boy, he vanished a cow, almost drowned a young girl). Thus, this misrepresentation contains an explicit message that the public needs vigilant protection from mental patients.

Consequently, when viewers see such misrepresentation of mental disorder taking place, they become fearful that those ‘different’ people are highly likely to cause physical harm to other people. In other words, this pervasive portray of mentally ill as violent and extremely dangerous, will only lead media consumers to a general belief that mentally ill individuals will attack and therefore harm their community. Such belief will, in turn, create moral panic, and fear in the presence of mentally ill. After all, and as previously expressed, who would feel safe next to somebody who parks a car inside a shop? According to this, and as many believe that homelessness is closely related to mental disorder, moral panic lead to a random attack on a homeless man with schizophrenia in Toronto June 4, 2000 “…Fillmore was attacked as he lay sleeping in a bus shelter last June: he was stabbed and bled to death” (http://pb.rcpsych.org).

Just imagine that once patients leave psychiatric hospitals and therefore eager for support and acceptance, are instead treated with suspicion and fear. This misrepresentation will fuel panic and increase the prejudice and fear, and will make people to cross the street or exit buses or move away when they happen to be next of mentally ill. Moreover, it is highly likely that people who are persuaded by the media to ignore and fear of mentally ill, to become mentally ill. This, in turn, will lead them to self-loathing as they now know that they have become violent, dangerous, and different and so forth.

Moreover, mentally ill are bombarded with unfavourable information about them and therefore perceived as ‘threat’ (self-stigma) and thus, these attitudes towards them have devastating effect on their relationships, employment, housing and social functioning. The discrimination and stigma, excludes them from any social activity and the issue of employment as well (http://bjp.rcpsych.org). According to this, I believe that the most important step to recovery is to work, because of employment offers a social network, route out of poverty.

To conclude, I would like to mention that it is very sad when viewers (including myself) see the way films and mass media in general, portray people with mental disorder as if there is not anyone who is positive. But I guess, ‘non aggressive’ mentally ill do not sell. It is also very inappropriate the fact that the mass media misrepresent mentally ill people and portray them as monsters who want to harm us.

Additionally, I have concluded that the mass media inaccurately present the relationship between mental disorder and violence. Furthermore, I found that the mass media fuel public fear by generalizing all mental illnesses and stereotyping its patients. I also found that the impact of stigma and the discrimination against mentally ill is both common and severe.

Ultimately, I suggest that all the incorrect beliefs of previous generations should not be passing on to new. The stigmatizing and discriminating attitudes towards mentally ill people have been going on for a long time and it is time to stop as I am a believer that the way our society behaves the mentally ill, is not only an issue of mental health care but human rights issue. According to this, I would like to conclude with the following words written by a relative of one mentally ill patient.

“For me stigma means fear, resulting in a lack of confidence. Stigma is loss, resulting in unresolved mourning issues. Stigma is not having access to resources… Stigma is being invisible or being reviled, resulting in conflict. Stigma is lowered family esteem and intense shame, resulting in decreased self-worth. Stigma is secrecy… Stigma is anger, resulting in distance. Most importantly, stigma is hopelessness, resulting in helplessness.” (http://apt.rcpsych.org).

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Intergroup relations started to take form in understanding individual characteristics from the beginning of the twentieth century. The theory of intergroup relations for individual, group, intergroup, and organizational relations defines boundaries, power, cognition, and leadership behaviors. Intergroup relations can be examined from so many different angles. There is even a wide variety of areas of study that have theories into a multitude of issues concerning intergroup relations. However, with the array of research into intergroup relations, narrowing down the topic of research to social psychology, and studying the characteristic, and behavior will be sufficient enough to have a wide range of understanding into group and individual behavior. Certain perceptions can be developed toward a group member or members involving negative or positive intergroup relations, such as: social categorization, stereotypes, intergroup bias, motivations, prejudices, and the functional relationship process within a group.

INTRODUCTION TO INTERGROUP RELATIONS

What is the meaning behind intergroup relations? Why is it so widely studied in social psychology? These are questions that are asked when analyzing the meaning of intergroup relations. To better understand intergroup relations you first have to dive into where it all began and how the term was discovered. In the 1960s and 1970s social psychologists began studying individuals and social interaction. The study of group dynamics proved to be unsuccessful and expensive, so they decided to research the dynamic on a smaller scale by breaking down individuals rather than placing them in larger social structures for their research. However, this setting failed and the setting became inaccurate. As time went on though, investigation of group dynamics was not a dead topic. The research into intergroup relations was yet again opened up for study in the 1980s and 1990s, but this time investigation into human behavior in a group setting (Johnson & Johnson, 2009). The numbers of issues found were: cooperation, conflict resolution, distributive justice, intergroup relations, and cross cultural interactions. This was a major step in research for group and individual behavior among a group setting. It was then a doorway to other fields for research that ultimately became one of the most dominated areas of study on group dynamics.

Intergroup relations in simpler terms can be described as feelings, evaluations, beliefs and behaviors that groups and members may have toward one another. It can have both positive and negative impacts among those individuals that are among the group or outside their group. The psychological process that is associated with intergroup relations among many is social categorization. This can be described as the personalities, motivations of group members, observations, and the practical relationship between groups and those outside groups.

SOCIAL CATEGORIZATION

Social Categorization is a fundamental part of intergroup relations. It involves identifying people that are within your group and those that our outside of your group members. The theory behind social categorization arises from the earlier work of Tajfel of social identity theory. By evaluating an individual’s self-image for which they perceive him or herself; these aspects can also contribute positively or negatively as well when defining their group identity with “we” or “us” as one would with “me” or “I”.

Social categorization is social perception that involves relating to those within your group and discriminating against those that are not in your group. This can cause conflict when one relates with their individual self image to their own group and then having to work with others that are outside of your group members. When relating yourself characteristic and building a trusting relationship with those within your group, members tend to view others more negatively when others from the outside are brought into your group; even if those from the outside have similar characteristics of your own. Once group membership has been established people distinguish individuals who are members as the in-group and those who are members of other group as the out-group (Dovidio, April 21, 1990).

When intergroup boundaries between out-group and in-group have been pronounced people tend to discriminate against the out-group than those in their in-group. People then attribute more strongly to their in-group, and then in turn favor and contribute more toward their group. This is because one’s self-esteem is more enhanced in their own group than in different group memberships. When different groups are not interdependent and group memberships are thrown together; intergroup biases are produced.

INTERGROUP BIAS

Intergroup bias generally defines the members (the in-group) to be more favorable to their own group than to the non-members (the out-group). Bias can cause such behavior such as: discrimination, stereo-typing, and prejudice. This essentially means that trust is turned over to the in-group and not given to the out-group. Individuals tend to give more to their own group than relinquishing those rewards to members of other groups. When social identity is developed among members in a group, it is hard for those members to be able to reach out and identify with outside group members. Once a trust line has been established it is difficult to create non derogation towards the out-group (Dovidio, April 21, 1990).

In order to decrease intergroup bias is to make group members aware of the consequences that surround this behavior. Or by placing groups with other groups on more of a daily basis in order to establish less competition and less trust issues among others. By taking out the element that can cause intergroup bias can help those participating in a group environment to see that each member, whether in their group or others, are key factors to being successful. Being able to observe other’s culture, style and individual character without discriminating from the beginning will help each member find balance in their group and other’s they become involved in. No one group is better than the other. Each has separate tools that can make the ease of intergroup relations work victoriously.

GROUP CULTURE

When evaluating group dynamics in intergroup relations one benefit, as stated, is the culture and style that each individual will bring such as: the history and common ancestry, as well as cultural characteristics. But when viewing culture as it relates to intergroup bias, groups that are involved in intercultural encounters tend to run into conflicts due to sociocultural adaptation. The more different the languages, family structures, religion, standard of living and values of the two groups, the more cultural distance there will be between these groups.

With these cultural characteristics and cultural distance that is placed in groups it can have a tendency to take shape as ethnocentrism where one ethnic group view’s their culture as better than another. When ethnocentrism is present we measure our culture based on others of different ethnicity. This is derived from the cultural conditioning that each individual has encountered as children. Children are typically raised to fit into particular cultures and sometimes when individuals are conditioned we see others ethnic background in a more negative light than positive (Messick & Mackie, 1989).

Groups tend to place distance between those that are of different in cultural background because they perceive them with dissimilarity to their own culture. Sometimes, it is difficult for groups to adapt to those with greater cultural dissimilarities. It is important for those placed in groups to be able to learn more about each individuals own interaction styles, and be able to set structure within those group to have a higher success rate in their groups. When structuring a groups interaction styles and applying everyone’s cultural differences; you can take those differences and use them to benefit a higher success rate. Being able to learn and understand others cultural beliefs and backgrounds can truly add benefit to each group established (Spielberger, 2004).

GROUP BEHAVIOR AND MEMBERSHIP

A group is a social system that involves interaction among members and a common group identity. When discussing group dynamics and how it correlates with intergroup relations, evaluating the conflicts, social categorization, and cultural differences; it is also important to evaluate the fundamental behaviors of group processes as a whole. Groups have a sense of we-ness that helps them to identify themselves as belonging to a certain entity. A group is an important part of sociological concept since it plays such a complex part in everyday life.

Group membership is part of an individual’s social identity. It is a key element of social control over individual’s social pressures towards having to conform. Especially when they can deviate risking their membership as a result of that risk. However, social consequences help establish an important understanding of social life as a whole. We live in a very physical and cognitive world and when discussing group membership and the social pressures, understanding the social influence and group behavior in group memberships is one of the most important keys to everyday life (Messick & Mackie, 1989).

There are several types of group environments that we encounter in a life time; from sports, school, work, family and peers. Every type of group contact comes with social influence and behaviors from each individual involved in the group setting. Individuals affect one another in several different ways depending on their experiences. Experiences that each individual has encountered in their lifetime; is the key tool in intergroup relations. It is what makes group behavior an important asset when discussing the theory behind intergroup contact and how they all in the end relate to one another. Ultimately, the individual’s experiences, needs, social influences and relationships are what make up how individuals approach group membership.

SUMMARY

Intergroup relations are essentially determined by how people relate to one another as well as how they categorize others. Perceptions is what shapes individuals personal needs and values, and by the behavior between groups. This process intermingles and works in sync with each other. With this categorization of people in groups it can sometimes cause the intergroup bias and conflict among the group members or members outside of the group (Dovidio, April 21, 1990). However, with conflict and social categorization come goals to help implement positive group membership. Different groups and culture can help organize and produce efforts to achieve a mutually desired outcome; as long as conditions and discipline is applied. Being able to work together and understand everyone’s individual needs and goals will help establish a positive intergroup dynamic.

Certain perceptions are developed toward a group member or members that are involved in a negative or positive intergroup relation. Social categorization, stereotypes, intergroup bias, motivations, prejudices, and the functional relationship process within a group. These basic processes are the fundamental interpretations of intergroup relations and the dynamics that in turn produce a group membership that can successfully be achieved with hard work, understanding and the basic desires to work as a group and overcome the biasness that can take place.

Everything we read…constructs us, makes us who we are, by presenting our image of ourselves as girls and women, as boys and men” (Mem Fox, 1993).

Besides being an important resource for developing children’s language skills, children’s books play a significant part in transmitting a society’s culture to children. Gender roles are an important part of this culture. How genders are portrayed in children’s books thus contributes to the image children develop of their own role and that of their gender in society.

HOW IS GENDER PORTRAYED IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE?

Gender bias exists in the content, language and illustrations of a large number of children’s books (Jett-Simpson & Masland, 1993). This bias may be seen in the extent to which a gender is represented as the main character in children’s books and how that gender is depicted.

Numerous studies analyzing children’s literature find the majority of books dominated by male figures. For example, Ernst (1995) did an analysis of titles of children’s books and found male names represented nearly twice as often as female names. She also found that even books with female or gender-neutral names in their titles in fact, frequently revolve around a male character. Many classics and popular stories where girls are portrayed usually reflect stereotypes of masculine and feminine roles. Such gender stereotypes are prevalent not only in mainstream children’s books but also in Newbery and Caldecott medal winners. Children’s books frequently portray girls as acted upon rather than active (Fox, 1993). Girls are represented as sweet, naive, conforming, and dependent, while boys are typically described as strong, adventurous, independent, and capable (Ernst, 1995; Jett-Simpson & Masland, 1993). Boys tend to have roles as fighters, adventurers and rescuers, while girls in their passive role tend to be caretakers, mothers, princesses in need of rescuing, and characters that support the male figure (Temple, 1993). Often, girl characters achieve their goals because others help them, whereas boys do so because they demonstrate ingenuity and/or perseverance. If females are initially represented as active and assertive, they are often portrayed in a passive light toward the end of the story. Girl characters who retain their active qualities are clearly the exception (Rudman, 1995). Thus, studies indicate that not only are girls portrayed less often than boys in children’s books, but both genders are frequently presented in stereotypical terms as well.

WHY IS GENDER-REPRESENTATION IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE SIGNIFICANT?

Many researchers and authors argue that readers identify with characters of their own gender in books. Therefore, the relative lack of girl characters in texts can limit the opportunity for girls to identify with their gender and to validate their place in society.

The manner in which genders are represented in children’s literature impacts children’s attitudes and perceptions of gender-appropriate behavior in society. Sexism in literature can be so insidious that it quietly conditions boys and girls to accept the way they ‘see and read the world,’ thus reinforcing gender images (Fox, 1993). This reinforcement predisposes children to not question existing social relationships. At the same time, however, books containing images that conflict with gender stereotypes provide children the opportunity to re-examine their gender beliefs and assumptions. Thus, texts can provide children with alternative role models and inspire them to adopt more egalitarian gender attitudes.

Gender stereotypical roles are constraining to both genders. Just as girls are trapped in passive and whiny roles, boys and men are rarely described as people demonstrating emotions of sadness and fear, having hobbies/occupations that are not stereotypically male and in roles where they aren’t competing or meeting high expectations. These stereotypes limit boys’ and girls’ freedom to express themselves (Fox, 1993; Rudman, 1995) and pressure them to behave in ways that are ‘gender appropriate’ rather than ways best suited to their personality.

WHAT SHOULD TEACHERS KEEP IN MIND WHILE SELECTING CHILDREN’S BOOKS?

Ideally, all children’s books used in the classroom should have well-rounded male and female characters. However, teachers seldom have much control over the children’s books they use as their selection of books is often restricted to what is cheap, easily available, or contributed by parents and well-wishers. Despite these constraints, it is possible to take active steps to ensure the use of books that promote gender equity among the sexes.

One recommendation is to look actively for books portraying girls/women in a positive light with active, dynamic roles. Another suggestion is to look for books and stories that do not portray either gender in a stereotypical manner. Rudman (1995) recommends gender-neutral books where

*individuals are portrayed with distinctive personalities irrespective of their gender

* achievements are not evaluated on the basis of gender

* occupations are represented as gender-free

* clothing is described in functional rather than gender-based terms

* females are not always weaker and more delicate than males

* individuals are logical or emotional depending upon the situation

* the language used in the text is gender-free, etc.

Teachers can also choose books that have counter-sexist attitudes embedded in them, such as feminist texts that can help children recognize gender-stereotypical messages. Combining traditional and non-traditional books can also spark discussion of how genders are portrayed in different books (Jett-Simpson and Masland, 1993).

Regardless of the type of book chosen, the message of respect for both genders should be subtly contained in the texts. It is important to avoid books that have strident messages on gender equity, as children tend to reject books that preach. In Mem Fox’s (1993) words, “laboring the point kills the point of the laboring.”

HOW CAN TEACHERS USE CHILDREN’S LITERATURE TO PROMOTE GENDER EQUITY?

Before using strategies to identify gender stereotypes and develop gender-equitable perceptions among children, it is important for teachers to first recognize and articulate their own attitudes (Rudman 1995). Then they can guide children to be critical by using scaffolding strategies like the following:

* collectively analyzing gender assumptions in the text

* raising questions about main characters and their portrayal.

* asking children to reverse the genders of individuals, e.g., “What if Sleeping Beauty was a boy?” (Temple, 1993)

* having children guess a writer’s gender on the basis of the story they have just heard (Lawrence, 1995)

* asking children to use gender-neutral names in the stories they write and read this aloud to other students so that they can guess the protagonist’s gender (Lawrence, 1995)

* have children adopt the opposite sex’s point of view about a very gendered issue (Lawrence, 1995)

Children can discuss a novel by participating in the above activities in heterogeneous groups. It is important for teachers to support children’s group discussions by posing thought-provoking questions and facilitating student exchanges. McGowan, McGowan & Wheeler (1994) have described a number of children’s books that can be used as catalysts for discussions, and suggested different group activities for primary grade students. The authors have designed these activities for the purpose of promoting gender awareness and using them to explore issues such as: respect for yourself and other individuals, similarities and differences between boys and girls, traditional and non-traditional gender roles, gender stereotypes, and friendships between boys and girls. Along similar lines, Lawrence (1993) suggests getting older students to conduct surveys and create collages to sensitize themselves to gender issues they encounter in books they read.

Trites (1997) reminds us that during discussions with children, it is important to validate both feminine and masculine voices, and to listen to dissenting individual opinions. Teachers need to recognize that many children may have attitudes that are gender stereotyped only towards certain issues. Students need to be allowed to make choices that are consonant with their own personalities and which are self-empowering. It is also important to keep in mind that rethinking gender roles cannot be achieved in a day but is an ongoing process.