Feminism and Gender Equality: Understanding Social Constructs and Inequality

Posted on Dec 14, 2024 in Social sciences

Understanding Feminism, Sexism, and Their Interrelation

Feminism is a socio-political movement that formally began in the late 18th century. It represents the awareness of women as a group facing oppression, domination, and exploitation by men within the patriarchy. This awareness motivates action towards liberation and societal transformation.

Sexism, often considered a significant social ill by the feminist movement, is the oppression of females.

Relationship:

Feminism seeks gender equality and an end to women’s oppression. It is not a movement to mistreat or denigrate men, nor does it seek to place women above men. It should not be misconstrued as an antonym to sexism. Sexism is based on outdated views of women as objects, often involving physical or psychological mistreatment, and subjugating women who do not conform to these views.

Equality Feminism vs. Difference Feminism

In the 1970s, two distinct trends emerged within feminism: equality feminism and difference feminism.

Equality feminists focused on changing laws to achieve social improvements for women. Difference feminists, while supporting legal changes, also aimed to transform women’s lives through self-awareness groups, fostering friendship and a world free from traditional patriarchal structures.

Difference feminism, with authors like Rosi Braidotti, diverged from equality feminism, represented by figures like Celia Amorós.

The core difference lies in their perspectives on masculinity and femininity. Equality feminists view these as socially constructed gender roles that harm one part of humanity, advocating for the dismantling of these roles. Difference feminists, however, emphasize the unique characteristics of women.

According to Victoria Sendón, both trends share the goal of liberating women, one through changing laws and societal conditions, and the other through exploring self-awareness in private.

Equality feminists often have extensive bibliographies, military campaigns, and academic support, using sociological studies to inform equality plans. Difference feminists have less literature but engage in deep theoretical work, questioning societal norms and advocating for women’s unique identity.

Many equality feminists were associated with leftist political parties, while difference feminists were often anarchists.

Equality feminists achieve progress through laws and regulations that improve women’s lives. Difference feminists work in smaller, visible spaces, educating and encouraging self-respect and awareness of rights.

The struggle for equality often involves economic emancipation, professional advancement, and domestic policies. However, it can also lead to loneliness, exhaustion, and triple shifts.

Difference feminists question the methods of achieving equality, aiming to change the way politics is conducted rather than replicating male-dominated approaches.

Victoria Sendón further elaborates:

Equality feminists see men as the model. Difference feminists seek equality between women and men but do not aim to be equal to men. They challenge the androcentric social and cultural model while advocating for legal equality, equal pay, and equal opportunities without negating sexual difference.
Equality feminists argue that men have used the difference to subjugate women, exploiting their ability to gestate to maintain control. Difference feminists agree but emphasize that differences in race, age, religion, language, ethnicity, and sex have led to inequalities. They argue that difference is not inherently linked to inequality and that equality can be achieved while maintaining differences.

Difference feminists argue that the class struggle model of the proletarian revolution should not be a model for feminists. Improvements in the working class have occurred in democratic countries. While improvements are necessary, the dominant model must be questioned and changed.

Key takeaways from difference feminism:

It does not oppose equality.
It aims to transform the world by changing women’s lives.
Sex difference does not imply essentialism but acknowledges diversity.
The goal is not to be equal to men but to challenge the code that equates difference with inequality.
Legislative and structural changes are a starting point, not the end.
Creating a symbolic order means introducing sexual difference in all areas of life.
Solidarity among women is a powerful political tool.
The power struggle begins with self-signification and female empowerment.
The object of power is not to gain positions for women but to achieve substantive representation.
The thought of difference is an ethic based on values defined by women.
It replaces binary logic with analog logic.
It is a temporary path, not a dogma, an experience tied to life.

Difference feminism, based on sexual difference, seeks the feminine essence. It is similar to American cultural feminism, which highlights inconsistencies with men, encourages the acknowledgment of inequality, and promotes female superiority and authority, sometimes advocating for lesbianism. It uses psychoanalysis to rebuild a female identity and criticizes equality feminism for treating women as unable to escape male dominance.

Equality feminism rejects the search for a feminine essence as a patriarchal creation and focuses on achieving equality with men, often aligning with socialism and advocating for parity.

The Body as an Instrument of Inequality

The body is not merely natural but a social and political construct, making it a site of discrimination, resistance, and contestation. This leads to the concept of the gendered body.

Empowerment is the process by which oppressed people gain control over their lives.

The female body has historically been defined by men based on desire and power. Women have learned to devalue themselves to achieve two objectives: to be desirable to men (often involving harmful practices) and to be the perfect mother-wife.

Politics and religion have significantly influenced women’s bodies, perpetuating stereotypes of women as housewives and assigning them the bulk of unpaid labor.

Currently, there is a narcissistic obsession with the female body, driven by consumerism and aesthetic ideals. The body is treated as a status symbol, representing youth, health, energy, and mobility.

The body is used as an instrument to strengthen consumer power. This involves regulating and controlling individuals through their bodies to create a “perfect body” that boosts consumption and encourages self-discipline through diet, exercise, beauty care, and sexuality.

The “beauty myth” promotes an unrealistic feminine ideal, shifting from a focus on motherhood to a more androgynous ideal focused on reproduction and seduction. This instills the idea of achieving the proposed female imaginary through weight and shape control.

Slimness is associated with success and well-being.
Fatness is associated with failure.

Medicine has often overestimated the risks of obesity while underestimating the risks of weight loss. Health professionals often treat obese individuals with prejudice.

The commodification of the body by the fitness, aesthetics, and dieting industries creates an excessive value while minimizing the risks involved.

These inequalities are perpetuated through:

The masculine image of strength and power, where the body is a tool for work and does not require the same aesthetic scrutiny as women’s bodies.
The image of women as weak and submissive, with their bodies sexualized and treated as objects of desire, reinforcing male domination. The media and advertising significantly influence this commodification.

Understanding the Gendered Body

To understand the gendered body, we must differentiate between sex and gender. Gender is a social construction that establishes norms and expectations based on individuals’ bodies.

Our identities as men and women are shaped by social and cultural constructs, such as the idea of motherhood as a woman’s natural role, which have been reinforced throughout history.

The body is the primary evidence of human difference. Sexual difference has been used to build power relations, with one sex deemed “strong” and the other “weak.” The body is where the law is inscribed, and structural inequalities are reflected in everyday interactions.

The gendered body represents social values that restrict, control, and manipulate bodily functions. The female body is constructed according to male-defined laws and social structures.

The female body, constrained by symbols assigned by the dominant male, expresses constructs considered proper for women.

Is the woman’s body governed by the male imaginary? Clearly, the male vision regulates the representation of the female body. However, this does not mean men are inherently malicious but are also victims of their upbringing.

The woman’s body is not merely a natural entity but a socio-political construct, a site of discrimination, inequality, resistance, and empowerment.

Capitalism and globalization have commercialized the woman’s body for advertising and consumption. There is symbolic violence against the woman’s body, compelling her to conform to social mandates to be desirable to men.

Women are often influenced by male ideals, culture, religion, and society, leading to different body images across cultures. The body is closely related to gender stereotypes, with women representing fragility and men representing strength.

Millennium Development Goals:

Eradicating poverty and hunger
Achieving universal primary education
Promoting gender equality and empowering women
Reducing child mortality
Improving maternal health, including pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care, and better control of diseases and early pregnancies
Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Ensuring environmental sustainability
Developing a global partnership for development

Measuring the Gender Gap

For teens in some regions, the right to education remains elusive.
Poverty is a major obstacle to education, especially among older girls.
In all developing regions except the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), more men than women are in paid employment.
Women are often relegated to the most vulnerable forms of employment.
Many women work in informal jobs, lacking benefits and job security.
Top-level positions are still predominantly held by men.
Women are slowly gaining access to political power.

Constructing the Myth of Female Identity: Is It Universal Across Cultures?

The myth of female identity is closely tied to the myth of motherhood. The essentialist view sees motherhood as natural and a social role assigned to all women.

The myth of maternal instinct, as defined by Victoria Sau, is:

A human commitment to another human being to be born, grow, and become someone in the world.
An investment in time, energy, pain, and hope.
A bond that changes but lasts until death.

While the ability to give birth is biological, the mandate to make motherhood central to women’s roles is a social construct. This patriarchal ideology places women in the realm of biological reproduction, denying their identity outside the mother’s role. The myth of maternal instinct suggests that women are naturally predisposed to love and duty as mothers, and those who cannot or refuse to fulfill this role are seen as deficient.

Feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir argues that mothers occupy a place of subordination and exclusion from the category of social subjects.

Marta Lamas, in her article “Madrecita Santa,” points out that viewing motherhood as “natural” fails to recognize the high personal cost it entails for women.

Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was the first anthropologist to study education and child-rearing in different cultures. She found that women vary across cultures. For example, Tchambuli women are aggressive and compete for leadership, while men are more concerned with their appearance.

Not all mothers should be viewed under a single cultural model of motherhood. The concept of motherhood has changed in our culture.

In the West, from the 16th to the 19th century, high infant mortality rates led to strategies to limit affect and decrease the pain of loss, such as child abandonment and the use of wet nurses. Childhood as a distinct phase did not exist until the 18th century.

Rousseau, in the 18th century, emphasized the need for survival and culture for new citizens and delegated this work to women.

Family crises lead to profound transformations. There is no single model of family; we find families formed by marriage and offspring, non-marital families, childless couples, blended families, and same-sex parent families, among others.

Romantic Love as a Cultural Construct: Its Emergence and Current Development

Romantic love emerged as a revolutionary concept in the late 18th century, merging love, passion, sexual encounters, and freedom of choice. It marked a period when love was an expression of liberation from the prevailing order.

This new concept of love was rebellious and represented a vision where individuals were the authors of their destiny. It was dominated by intuition, love at first sight, and the desire for connection.

However, this revolution was short-lived. With the rise of industrial society, revolutionary romantic love was frustrated. The disciplining of the Industrial Age, through religious and political institutions, transformed the subject and their feelings. Romantic love became a reinforcement of marriage, family, and motherhood, with affect shaped into rules of conduct.

For example, according to conventions often expressed by the Church and the law, once love was found, it had to be forever. Passion was acknowledged as the engine, but it had to give way to raising children. Women were tasked with sustaining romantic love, while men were relegated to work as the labor force of society.

Romantic love, in its original form, was incompatible with the organization of the family. Its complexity was reduced to rules of conduct to maintain social order, including roles, gender, work distribution, children, and the family’s relationship with the community.

These divisions, along with patriarchal ideology, led to heterosexual monogamous unions being seen as natural expressions of romantic love.

The advent of industrial society split the world into two: love as support in housework and love as an expression of freedom and a utopian goal, full of promises of happiness.

Today, marriages are more ethereal, based on love, passion, and self-encounter. Marriage has lost its culturally imposed stability but not its passion. We find a utopia based on the emotional origins of romantic love and its expression as freedom.

The complexity of romantic love, with its opposites and contradictions, has more room in this postmodern model of marriage, which integrates and regulates opposites, where family and divorce are both part of love.

Belief in postmodern romantic love does not respect classic features; it does not require institutionalization or coding. It is a source of shared emotions that mitigate loneliness. People form a community of two, rearming between old schemes. Love has become a sort of postmodern individual religion, making us protagonists of our own novel, making us feel special, and transporting us to a sacred dimension away from routine.

Mari Luz Esteban, in her article “Romantic Love and the Social Subordination of Women,” views romantic love as intrinsic to the social subordination of women.

Key points from her review include:

We live in a social organization that places men and women in different, unequal, and hierarchical positions, influencing many women’s subjectivity.
The incorporation of group dynamics and the type of links contemplated, along with individual, group, and institutional dimensions, are necessary to deepen the analysis of interpersonal relationships.
Love is essential, and not having a partner is perceived as a lack. There is a tension between love and reason, with love seen as beyond human control. Love defines the human “essence” as it lies beyond reason.

Differences in the Experience of Sexuality in Dominator and Partnership Models According to Riane Eisler

Riane Eisler, in her works “The Chalice and the Blade” and “Sacred Pleasure,” outlines seven key differences between the dominator and partnership models of human relations:

Gender Relations
Violence
Social Structure
Sexuality
Spirituality
Pleasure and Pain
Power and Love

Focusing on the fourth difference, sexuality, we can compare the two models:

Dominator Model:

This model is characterized by coercion in mate choice, sex, and procreation. It involves the eroticization of dominance and the repression of erotic pleasure due to fear. The primary functions of sex are procreation and female sexual discharge.

Partnership Model:

This model emphasizes mutual respect and freedom of choice for both men and women in mate choice, sex, and procreation. The main functions of sex are bonding through mutual pleasure and reproduction.

What Do You Think of the Maternal Instinct? What Does It Involve?

The maternal instinct is not instinctual but the internalized fulfillment of a social mandate. Society assigns women the roles of caregivers and child-rearers, often stigmatizing those who do not conform as unnatural.

The maternal instinct is an altruistic activity where the mother sacrifices herself for her child’s benefit. It involves continuous care, prioritizing the child’s needs over her own. It can also be seen as intergenerational solidarity.

According to Victoria Sau, motherhood is a human commitment to another being, involving investment in time, tenderness, pain, and hope. It creates a bond that lasts until death.

Sex as a Risk Factor for Health

Certain diseases affect men and women differently, not solely due to biological sex but also due to other factors. According to Luis Bonino, men’s lifestyles, influenced by the traditional hegemonic model of masculinity (MMTH), contribute to health problems. This model promotes self-sufficiency, aggressiveness, authority over women, and hierarchical values, leading to unhealthy habits like excessive alcohol and tobacco consumption, high cholesterol, stress, repressed anger, and reckless behavior. These habits increase health risks for men and those around them.

Common diseases among men include coronary heart disease, cancers of the lung, trachea, pharynx, esophagus, and bladder, genital cancers, drowning, alcohol abuse, cirrhosis, drug addiction, and AIDS. The MMTH model contributes to a lower increase in male life expectancy compared to women over the last 50 years, making it a risk factor for men.

Femininity as a Risk Factor for Health

Traditional female education has several implications for women’s health:

Responsibility for welfare, care, and relationships, leading to neglecting personal needs and plans.
Living for others, forming romantic love.
Constant availability and resignation, leading to submission.
Selflessness and sacrifice, leading to victimization.
Feelings of guilt and failure when trying to change roles.
Tolerance and empathy, leading to pain and justifying violence.

The body communicates through symptoms during different life stages, causing:

Menstrual disorders
Anemia
Unwanted pregnancies
Double/triple shifts
Endocrine diseases
Aesthetic slavery
Pain
Fatigue

Gender Bias in Healthcare: Common Biases and Consequences

Gender bias is the difference in treatment between sexes with the same diagnosis, which can affect health. It stems from gaps in research, professional training, and healthcare for women.

Major Deficiencies:

Research and training of professionals in healthcare for women.

Consequences:

Lack of research on lethal chronic diseases vs. non-lethal chronic diseases.
Higher percentage of women diagnosed with non-specific symptoms.
Differences in health service provision and treatment outcomes.
Need for better balance and refocusing of research on diseases prevalent in women, like arthropathies.
Medical knowledge often produces classifications more sensitive to men’s health issues.
Women use primary care services more, while men use hospitals and emergency services more.
Women wait longer in emergency rooms.
Belief that men have more serious health problems.
Women are often admitted to hospitals with more severe conditions than men.

The Family as Caregiver: The Role of Gender

Caregivers attend to dependents, either formally or informally. Informal care is more common but less recognized, with poor support and healthcare for caregivers.

Women (mothers, daughters, or wives) are often primary caregivers, performing the most demanding tasks and dedicating more time. The elderly, disabled, and needy require the most care.

Three basic elements of gender:

Gender Assignment: At birth based on genitalia.
Gender Identity: Biological and psychological aspects established from early life.
Gender Role: Socially established standards for each sex.

Women caregivers face significant impacts on health, quality of life, employment, social relationships, and personal time. Less educated, unemployed, and underprivileged women form the largest group of caregivers. Policies should address these inequalities.

Current institutional measures include:

Spain: Law on the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for Dependent Persons, Law of Reconciling Work and Family Life, Comprehensive Plan for Family Support.
Andalusia: Plan for Family Support.

Addressing inequalities:

Promote male involvement in care.
Develop affirmative action alternatives for women.
Support women who refuse traditional roles.
Analyze each informal care situation, including the health of both caregiver and dependent.
Develop caregiver support policies considering responsibilities, burdens, and inequities.

Strategies for Providing Care for Dependent Elderly in the Home Environment

Different strategies exist based on the characteristics of care:

Location of Care: Care can be provided in the same home as the caregiver, in separate homes, or with shared living arrangements.
Caregiver’s Role: Often the daughter (or husband/son if no women are available) assumes responsibility, whether living together or in separate homes.
Full Responsibility: Caregivers may have to quit their jobs, unlike those who maintain some work from home or in separate homes.
Family Involvement: Can range from zero when one member assumes all care to shared care (“swallow care”) where the patient rotates among children.
Municipal Aid: May be available for those assuming full care but not for those in separate homes or shared living.
Hiring Caregivers: Common in separate homes, often involving migrant caregivers. In shared living, caregivers may be hired during work hours.
Impact on Family Dynamics: Deterioration of relationships and abandonment of partners when one person assumes all care. Less impact in shared living and minimal impact in separate homes.
Health Implications: Depression, social isolation, and anxiety for those providing total care. Tiredness and exhaustion in shared living. Fewer physical and psychological problems in separate homes.
Internal Factors: Feelings of duty and guilt, gender mandates, and the desire to combine care with work.
External Factors: Low income for full-time caregivers, impact on work and income in shared living, and financial independence in separate homes.
Relationship Quality: Contradictions in feelings for total care, less intense but affectionate in shared living, and freer in separate homes.
Keywords: Entrapment (total care), Negotiation (shared living), Independence (separate homes).

Gender and the Development of Nursing

Historically, women have faced detention, invisibility, subordination, and lack of social power, influencing nursing’s identity and development. Since the Middle Ages, women were responsible for care, but their contributions were undervalued. Those who used herbs were called healers, while men pursued science. Women healers were often branded as witches and persecuted.

Medicine developed within a patriarchal structure, designed and practiced by men, excluding women from knowledge generation and practice. According to WHO, women have always been caregivers, providing care and feeding children and family members. These activities are considered feminine in most cultures.

Feminist theories of health highlight nurses’ actions and gender inequalities, recognizing gender as a determinant of health.

Gendered Professional Identities and Conflicts:

Professional Identity: Social construction resulting from socialization processes. Professions are attributed male or female values. Medicine is seen as male, with higher status, while nursing is seen as female.

Women were excluded from healing activities, scientific training, and authority. Feminist critics in health highlight:

Androcentrism at all levels of nursing (care, teaching, management, research).
Medicalization of women, treating normal situations as pathological.

Medicine fragmented and manipulated female biological processes, reinforcing power imbalances.

Causes of Gender Violence: A Rational Analysis

Establishing specific causes of violence is difficult, but experts suggest it stems from women’s unequal position and the misuse of violence to resolve conflicts. Society often hides violence due to instilled values or beliefs justifying aggression.

Women often take time to recognize and report abuse, typically 5-10 years after the first attack. Reasons for delay include:

Hope for change.
Fear of reprisals.
Shame, failure, or guilt.
Normalization of violent behavior.
Psychological or economic dependence.
Insecurity and lack of support.
Uncertainty about where to turn for help.

Recently, women reporting abuse and having dependent children face accusations of manipulating their children against the other parent.

Detecting Abuse When There Are No Visible Injuries

Abuse is not limited to physical harm but includes psychological, sexual, economic, social, and environmental violence. The unequal position of women and the unjust use of violence to resolve conflicts are key causes.

Non-physical abuse is harder to detect. Psychological abuse, often more dangerous than physical injury, involves persistent threats and manipulation. Factors that should raise suspicion include insults, contempt, offensive words or looks, and embarrassing or guilt-inducing behaviors.

Social and health service professionals can detect abuse early. Identifying psychosocial and gender elements through a therapeutic relationship can lead to an accurate diagnosis. Breaking the silence is the first step to understanding and visualizing the problem. Non-verbal contact can help discover how to assist the person.

Observe the woman’s attitude during consultation, use of health services, and the couple’s attitude.

Requirements for Nurse Intervention with Battered Women

Nurses intervening with battered women must be aware of gender issues and meet certain requirements:

Personal: Explore gender biases, examine ideas of reciprocity, justice, and democracy, and check personal beliefs.
Theoretical and Technical: Include ethics of mutual care, understand gender construction, be alert for gender violence, and control with assertiveness.
Attitudinal: Provide confidentiality, empathy, listening, calmness, support, and physical contact. Respect each woman’s process.
Feelings: Assess feelings, collaborate, offer resources, and postpone decisions.
Avoid Myths and Stereotypes: Do not rush to respond, provide recipes, intellectualize, pathologize, diagnose, judge, or discourage women.

Common myths include viewing abuse as a private matter, specific to lower classes, or believing abusers are alcoholics or that women deserve it.

Care Plan for a Woman in Extreme Danger of Abuse

Inform her of the danger and discuss strategies.
Refer urgently to social work or 24-hour support services.
Register the episode and actions taken in the medical record.
Issue an injury report and medical report, giving a copy to the woman.
Assess family status, dependents, and available resources.
Call emergency services (112) or specific community services (016).

To file a complaint:

Contact National Police (SAM), Guardia Civil (EMUME), or the Police Court.
Submit a copy of the injury report.
Detail injuries and damages.
Recount events with details.
Sign after reading.
Request a copy of the complaint.

The Cycle of Violence: Description and Review

According to J. Corsi, violence is the exercise of power through force, whether physical, verbal, or psychological.

Gender violence is any act based on female membership that can result in physical, sexual, or psychological harm, including threats and coercion.

Before physical violence, there are previous stages:

Isolation: The woman only interacts with her partner, stops seeing family, and avoids friends.
Control and Prohibitions: Forces changes in clothing, constant calls to monitor activities.
Impairment: Criticizes her as a bad mother, insults, and ridicules her.

These stages consolidate control and domination by the abuser. The woman becomes a victim, losing safety and support, and becoming isolated.

Lenore E. Walker describes a cycle of violence where abuse escalates to a climax, followed by a “honeymoon” phase where the abuser manipulates the woman with forgiveness and gifts. This phase is an act of power and control, absolving the abuser of responsibility and continuing the relationship.

Zubizarreta et al. note that punishment (aggression) is associated with immediate reinforcement (regret and tenderness) and delayed reinforcement (potential behavioral change). This cycle is important but not applicable to all cases.

During this cycle, the woman experiences tension, anxiety, fear, and disappointment, leading to a climax of violence. She feels impotence, hatred, loneliness, and pain, further isolating herself due to shame and guilt. In the “honeymoon” phase, she hopes for change and tries to renegotiate.

The “Power and Control Wheel” model, based on experiences of 200 women, rejects a cyclic model, suggesting that violence is constant in their relationships.

“Violence against women impairs the development of freedom and endangers women’s fundamental rights, individual liberty, and physical integrity.”