Anneli Anttonen
Rethinking nationality and citizenship in the Nordic-Finnish context
I am suggesting in my paper that an idea of female working body
is strongly embedded in the Nordic-Finnish feminist thought. It is not only
question of women’s right to work that indeed has been an important goal in
women’s politics. By the notion of female working body I am pointing out that
working is a central attribute when, defining what femininity is, what gender
is and what a female body is about. However, it is important to stress that
work has got different meanings in different times. It does not refer only to
women’s right to paid work but also to mothering and caring at large. Mothering
and caring do belong to the vocabulary of work. Gender is something that is
done by working, caring and mothering.
My aim in this paper is to clarify, why the idea of female working body
has got such a foundational position in the Finnish (as well as in the Nordic)
feminist research. My point of departure is in sociology and especially in
social policies. Thus, when saying that the idea of female working body is one
of the main representations of the Nordic-Finnish feminist scholarship, one has
to keep in mind the limited area of feminist research I am referring to in my
paper. To some extent the idea of female working body is represented also in
the field of feminist anthropology, as well as in feminist literature and film
studies, but this goes beyond my analysis.
In this paper my intention is to explore the historical and theoretical
construction of female working body as a part of nationalist discourses and
citizenship formation. I am asking, why it has got such a strong foothold both
in theoretical debates and in women’s politics. I am also suggesting that the
female working body is better protected by state policies than for example the
female sexual body. Female body rights and sexual rights have got only a minor
position in state policies, although they have gained some more importance
during the last decade, at least in public discourses and feminist scholarship.
“Too large a share of the labours of the field is thrown upon the
weaker sex. A majority of those we saw thus employed were women. On a cold and
lowering day we saw a Finn smoking in his house, and gazing through the window
upon the field in front, where a woman was hard at work. A full share of indoor
employment, including the spinning and weaving also falls, without doubt, to
the females.” (Op.sit. Markkola 1990: 17)
Pirjo Markkola starts her article ‘Women in Rural Society in the 19th
and 20th centuries’ by referring to two British Quakers, Joseph
Sturge and Thomas Harvey, who reported their experiences of Finnish society in
1856. The same story can be read from many other reports and travel books
written by foreign visitors. Women’s hard working in the fields and later on
building sites and in factories evoked astonishment especially among foreign
visitors.
The quotation above tells us one side of a female working body that is
a historical and discursive construction. In this case it has its roots in the
Agrarian legacy of the Finnish society, as well as on Protestantism and
cultural homogeneity of the Nordic societies. Moreover, it also is connected to
the emerging nationalism and nation-state building. To make this statement more
explicable I would like to start with locating the idea of female working body
in the Finnish society of that time.
It is worth to mention that well into the 20th century, Finland was a
predominantly agrarian society. As late as in 1900 87 per cent of the
population lived in the countryside and two-thirds of those economically active
were in agriculture. Women did not form a different ‘working gender’, but were
expected to work alongside with men (Markkola 1990: 18). The agrarian heritage
of the Finnish cultural life explains at least partly, why the image of a
female working body has become so widely acknowledged by historians and
anthropologists.
Another kind of explanation puts stress on the cultural, ethnic and
religious homogeneity. When tracing the common roots of values in the Nordic
countries, we should, according to Henrik Stenius (1996, 1997), pay a special
attention on the impact of Lutheran tradition on the Nordic political and
mental culture.
The Lutheran cultural homogeneity has dominated the Scandinavian
countries. It also is worth to mention that the relationship between state and
church has been unique: they have formed two parts in the same body, adds
Stenius (1996). Even the period of Reformation was in Finland a state-driven
project, not a protest from below. Furthermore, the laws and norms created by
the state were compatible with the laws and norms of the Lutheran church (Satka
1995: 191). Secular local administration among other things was separated from
ecclesiastical administration in 1865, but still the unification of state and
church has fostered a culture of belonging to one religion, to one (imaginary)
community and to one nation.
Moreover, the Lutheran orthodoxy included an idea that work
holds society together. Through work one became part of the society as a
‘Gemeinschaft’. All the Scandinavian countries have a Lutheran work ethic: one
has to earn his or her status as a good citizen through (hard) work. The
Nordic-Lutheran labour code has covered poor and rich people, women and men.
Agrarian culture has advanced Lutheran labour code and left only little space
for gender, class and ethnic differentiation. Moreover, when poverty and
pauperism started to form a serious social question in the 19th century, it was
also politically important to stress that good members of society are
individuals who carry the productive activities the nation needs (Satka 1995;
Procacci 1996, 6-13).
Agrarianism and Protestantism have played an important role in the
process of making of the Finnish nation and its citizens. Compared to many
other European countries industrialization and urbanization process was delayed
in Finland. We also have to remember that after Finland was split out from
Sweden in a war in 1809 it was up until 1917 an autonomous part of the Russian
Empire (i.e. the Grand Duchy of Finland). This again explains the strong
nationalism in the emerging nation state of Finland.
Since the early 19th century, the construction of being a Finn or a
Finnish citizen was strongly rooted to nation-state building. The
transformation from loyal subjects to individuals was in Finland fueled by the
nationalist Fennomanian movement. During the first half of the 19th century the
idea of nation-state began to gather momentum especially among upper classes.
In their struggle against Russification and the Swedish-speaking ruling elite
the upper classes had to gain a more powerful position in politics and in the
emerging public sphere. In this struggle the elite needed the support of common
people, of both men and women (Alapuro & Stenius 1987; Pulkkinen 1987;
Satka 1995).
During the second half of the 19th century people's movements and
organizations such as temperance movement, workers' associations, youth clubs
and women's societies were established alongside with Nonconformist groups like
the Baptists and Methodists. Moreover, Finland saw a rise of co-operative
interest groups (Sulkunen 1990: 48). Irma Sulkunen has noted that "women
took an active part in these nation-wide popular movements, often as the
founders and leaders of local branches” (ibid: 49).
Through these movements the idea of democratic citizenship equal for
all members of society was developed and implanted in the minds of common
people. The idea of democratic citizenship was expressed not only in terms of
civil and political rights, but it included a strong moral commitment to the
welfare of the whole nation. It was thematised in terms of education and
enlightened civilization. In Finland, the works of J.V. Snellman (1806-1881)
and S. Alkio (1862-1930) share the heritage of the Danish N.F.S. Grundtvig
(1783-1872) in their reliance on the power of education against ignorance and
immorality. The duty of the educated classes was to deliver the message of
emancipation, while the duty of the lower classes was to internalize the
pattern of conformity and obedience (Satka 1995: 18).
J.V. Snellman's conceptions on family, state and civil society were at
that time very influential. They were based on the Hegelian philosophy, where
the state represents the most developed level of moral reason. The Finnish
political thought at large represented such an idea of ‘communitarianism’,
where the state is more than civil society and its egoistic individuals. In
Snellman’s political thought adopted by the Fennomanian movement an individual
was seen as a moral being constituted by a community that is the nation, and
family the place to raise up moral and decent citizens. Similar to the Hegelian
thought for Snellman the state was “a process of cultural community becoming
conscious of itself and active with itself” (Pulkkinen 1997: 147). Individuals
were not seen so much as autonomous and abstract monads brought together
incidentally on the market, but rather as teleological and moral agents
(Pylkkänen 1997: 5-6). The Hegelian-Snellmanian moral reasoning reduced the
plurality of particular subjects to a cultural unity leaving only a narrow
space for individualism defined in terms of liberal political thought.
The early construction of the Finnishness was thus flavoured by
Argrarianism, Protestantism and by strong national endeavours. There has been a
good soil for a universal value system based on one nation, one religion and
one gender. The ideal of universal and democratic citizenship that would unify
people, smoothen differences and de-politicize conflicts between classes, sexes
and ethnic or language groups, however, turned out to represent a imaginary
community.
During the first half of the 19th century it was mainly the liberal
bourgeoisie that took the leadership of political mobilization and building up
the nation-state project with scientific conceptions of Finnishness. In the
1880s the situation started to change due to the organization of worker's
movements and women’s movements. Up until the early 20th century these
movements, however, unified Finns in the struggle against their oppressors. As
the state was understood as a main source of protection against Russification,
close ties of loyalty were constructed between people’s movements and the
emerging nation state (Pulkkinen 1987).
In spite of the late independence in 1917 Finland obtained a unicameral
parliament already in 1906 as a result of the weakness of Russia and strength
of people’s movements. The parliamentary reform of 1906, at that time the most
radical in Europe, rested on Finland's own political tradition with a
well-developed civil society and struggle against Russification. Finland's
parliamentary reform gave adult men and women not only universal and equal
suffrage, but also the full right to stand for elective office. This was
unprecedented in the whole world (Sulkunen 1996: 10).
It is striking that women in rather peripheral states such as in
Australia, New Zealand and Finland gained the right to vote much earlier than
in countries with powerful suffragette movements. Irma Sulkunen (1996: 9)
points out that, in Finland, the early suffrage of women was, however, more a
result of nationalist movement than of women's movement. This explains the
paradox contained in the history of women's suffrage seen from international
perspective: the more vehement the battle, the meager the results.
The parliamentary reform with universal and equal suffrage did not
guarantee a peaceful democratization. The harmonious ties between the national
government and people’s movement proved to be partly imaginary. The governing
upper classes faced an uprising by the working class and landless population.
The Finnish Civil War in 1918 with German and Soviet military groups involved,
meant a political and mental crisis that froze the democratization of civil
society and paved way to a strong centralized state that would operate above
all non-human drives.
The "reds" or the socialist side of the war was beaten and
radical workers organizations lost their power for decades. Accordingly, the
relationship between state and civil society was thoroughly transformed. The
main task of the ruling bourgeoisie was to reintegrate the Finnish nation by
strengthening the state by means of a loyal and unified civil society based on
revitalization of conservative peasant values, strict Protestantism and
absolute conformity. It is worth to mention that fascism had only a minor
position in Finland, but certainly there was not much space to western
individualism.
After the Finnish Civil War, tensions between different social groups
increased, and the 1920s and 1930s can be described as an era of suppressing
social and political critique. The purpose of bourgeoisie unification was to
reduce all differences and deviancies into a national unity. The image of
female working body representing common values and undifferentiated gender
order became redefined by mothering and caring.
"In our opinion a real woman is the one who, in answering the call
of her heart, brings up, develops, cherishes, and who cares for the frail and
the weak... In other words, femininity is motherhood in the deepest sense of
the word. That this be given its true value in the greatest of all homes,
society, is the primary task of women's rights work, it is the essence of all
our efforts, even though it is often misunderstood by our opponents and by our
ostensible friends." (Op.sit. Sulkunen 1990: 50-51)
It was Aleksandra Gripenberg, the first authority in the Finnish Women's
Right movement who wrote these words in the beginning of 20th century. The new
national identity of being a woman was bound to home, family and private sphere
of community.
The idea of universal citizenship discussed above was defined in terms
of moral self-government and willingness to serve the welfare of the whole
nation. Irma Sulkunen (1987: 1991, 121) has argued that "the very concept
of democratic citizen is and has always been gender-biased. It did not offer
any promises of unshared equality: all the rights and the duties it implied
tied down the citizenship of women primarily to the family and to the private,
while the citizenship of men was accordingly linked up with the public and with
working life." Men were expected to be respectable workers and
breadwinners, while women were expected to show high moral standards as mothers
and educators of new generations.
Women status as citizens and their special tasks in making ‘women’s
nation’ – an expression introduced by Tuija Pulkkinen (1997) – was compatible
with the social and political order advocated by J.V. Snellman. According to
Hegel’s philosophy women did not have any task to perform in the sphere of
state, where the communal unity of people turns into a self-conscious political
nation – the new moral agency was male and represented by men. Thus, one sex is
connected to universality, knowledge, will, activity and state, the other to
concrete individuality, feeling, passivity and family obligations (ibid:
153-154).
As I have already mentioned according to the elite and educated classes
Finland needed enlightened citizens, who should be informed about new
emancipating ideas, such as the importance of education, health and regular
family life. While the family was understood as a realm of bringing up a new
generation of healthy, decent and responsible citizens, women's role as mothers
and caretakers was emphasized. In Finland, women's citizenship and women’s
civic responsibilities became influenced by what Irma Sulkunen (1987; 1990)
calls social mothering. Hence, even if excluded from the new moral agency,
women took an active role in civil society and in building up the nation state.
They became integrated into the project of individualization and modernization
as different moral agents, ‘citizens’ in their own terms.
Women were building up a ‘women’s nation’ partly as political actors in
people’s movements, and partly through their own organizations. New
emancipating doctrines, such as domestic economics, social work and public
health care, were introduced to promote self-governing among common women and
men. By the turn of the 20th century women had already taken a
leading role in the field of social and health care organizations (Satka 1995).
It might be argued that social mothering became a legitimate pathway for women
from the private to the emerging public sphere (Ollila 1993).
Feminist scholars have paid attention to the exclusionary processes of
citizenship formation, where women and femininity have lied outside the
category of universal citizenship (see Hernes 1987; Lister 1997; Offen
1992; Pateman 1988a; Phillips 1993; Showstack Sassoon 1997; Yuval-Davis 1997).
They also have been debating of women’s citizenship formation in the historical
context and shown that it shares some common features in different parts of the
world.
Social motherhood is a concept that comes very close to debates on
maternalism, maternal citizenship and maternal social policies (see Bock &
Thane 1991; Koven & Michel 1990; Siim 1993). I have found it interesting
that feminist scholars have ended up to very similar conceptualizations (e.g.
Pateman 1988b, 1992; Skocpol 1992) in the context of liberal welfare state
development in the UK and in the United States as in Finland. When looking at
the time period between 1880s and 1950s some kind of maternalist discourse and
politics is to be identified in most western societies.
National projects and politics may well have been motivated by the same
endeavour to strengthen the nuclear family and women's role as mother-carers, but
over the time they have evolved differently and assumed different forms.
Moreover, maternalism means different things in different countries and time
periods. The situation in Finland during the early decades of the 20th century
did resemble more the situation in France than in the UK and United States. At
least the interpretation given by Jane Jenson (1989) concerning the maternalist
discourse in France comes close to the Finnish situation: "In France
prevalent gender identities included the assumption that economic activity of
both single and married women was valid. France state policies reflected this
assumption and facilitated the dual roles of worker and mother... even if women
workers were not exactly the same as men, women were nonetheless workers"
(ibid: 240-241, see also Offen 1992).
This was much the case also in Finland. Even if there were different
norms and expectations towards men and women, the idea of universal citizenship
was not totally split up into feminine and masculine parts. The decent citizen
was a productive and responsible man or woman, whose duty is to serve the
nation by denying his or her egoistic interests and drives. In Finland, work
became the most important dimension of citizenship. Furthermore, women's paid
work in the factories and unpaid work in the farms was in a poor and agrarian
country rather a necessity than a way to emancipation and economic independence
– at least for working class women and women living on small farms.
It would be incorrect to argue that women were totally excluded from
the sphere of political civil society and the struggles for democratic
citizenship. Before Finland’s independence the issue of right for vote did
unify men and women in their struggle for democratic citizenship, this was the
case especially inside worker's movements. Yet, as different moral agents women
mainly lied outside the political power structure, but were creating civil
society through there own activities and agendas (Saarinen 1992: 216). There
were lots of social activities run by philanthropic and voluntary organizations
that promoted the well being of children, mothers and families. For example
maternity and children's clinics started their work by voluntary organizations
in the beginning of the 1900s, and only in 1944, when national laws on clinics,
health visitors and midwives came into force, the activity became a part of
public health care system (Kuronen 1993: 15-17).
Since the 1830s voluntary organizations had been influential in running
such activities as children's day care, asylums for working girls and boys,
schools, hospitals and so on. In the late 1920s there were 1 532 voluntary
organizations listed by the Ministry of Social Affairs that were running
"welfare" activities (Satka 1994: 283-289). Most of today’s social
and health care services run by public authorities have their roots in
voluntary work. In the field of social and health care services the state was
up until 1950s acting more as an extension of civil society than an independent
agent.
Women's active role in civil society led into social policy reforms
that had a special importance for women, children and the well-being of
families. There are some good reasons to argue that the early developments of
social policies have a maternalist origin as its background. During the first
decades of the 20th century maternal policies was in the centre of
social reforms, although strongly influenced by poor law tradition and
population policy. In the 1930s a law on maternity grant, addressed to poor
women, entered into force. Furthermore, a special allowance for low-income
families with more than four children was introduced. In the late 1940s Finland
got a universal child benefit and maternity allowance that represented the
first nation-wide and universal social security systems in the history of the
Finnish social policies.
These benefits were campaigned by women politicians. Social motherhood
was a hegemonic discourse shared by both bourgeois and working class women, but
they did not aim at the same ends. Bourgeois women were deeply concerned about
the increasing employment of women in factories, which was thought to be a
serious threat to the morality not only of women themselves but also of homes,
the future generations and society at large (Vattula 1989; Julkunen 1994). For
working-class women, in turn, maternal values were important, because
motherhood was a social and economic risk in a time when there did not exist
any support systems or benefits for mothers and children. This explains why
working class women in worker’s organizations and in their own organizations
strongly demanded state interventions. It was the state that represented a
sphere where women’s issues could be solved.
The ideal of social motherhood did unify women in some issues, but did
not solve the class question. Maternalism was built up on a hierarchical
sisterhood, where upper class women defined the content of womanhood. On one
hand there was a strong emphasis on mothering, on the other hand both the poor
agrarian families and the more affluent industrial families have needed the
labour input of women.
This conflict became extremely visible right after the Finnish Civil
War. According to the winners the rebellious working class had betrayed the
national project. Especially female widows and their children as well as
thousands of orphan children on the "red" side were treated during
the post-war decades as second-class citizens (Nätkin 1997). In this situation
the bourgeois women's movement naturally took a leadership in defining
womanhood and womanly citizenship duties. Woman's role as a mother was
celebrated more than before and maternal values became extremely important.
Consequently, when working-class organizations lost their legitimacy both on
the level of civil society and the state maternalism gradually turned into a
conservative direction.
In most countries modern social policies have been built upon the basic
idea of compensating the wage earner for lost income. There can be no doubt
that the institutionalization of worker's social rights in the beginning of 20th
century was an important turning point in the history of bourgeois
nation-states and the redefinition of citizenship. Worker's social rights can
been seen as forming an essential part in the process of modernization in which
men as well as women attempted to break loose from the premodern social order.
The signing of the modern welfare state with social rights became possible only
when the paternal rule broke down and paved the way to a stronger political
civil society and people's movements.
The vocabulary of social citizenship and social rights represents a new
grammatical order in the democratization process of citizenship. The extension
of citizenship rights has meant a change in the vocabulary of citizenship where
a "citizen was above all l'homme libre (Condorcet), free to take
part in the grand tout national (Sieyès), that is to participate
(Rousseau) to the sovereign authority" (Procacci 1996: 7). The language of
social citizenship and social rights has challenged the legacy of political
liberalism. Through the idea and practice of social citizenship positive
liberties, such as education, health and welfare or well being of citizens,
became integrated into citizenship rights.
The emergence of a modern welfare state in post-war Europe has been
closely connected with the changing status of citizenship. Peter Baldwin (1990;
1992, 5) has noted that the model of welfare state based on social citizenship
aimed at national unification by combining two extremes of human social
experience: on the other hand, the medieval view of society as something like
family writ large: hierarchical, paternalist, communal; on the other hand, the
extreme liberalist view of society as a mere conglomeration of autonomous,
individualistic monads, brought together only incidentally by pursuit of
self-interest. His argument is that it was with Beveridge and his most
important interpreters Marshall and Titmuss that the notion of social
citizenship became collectively anchored as a major turning point in the
evolution of western societies.
When speaking about post-war time and its dominant vocabulary of
citizenship in the Scandinavian countries we cannot avoid looking at the grand
idea of social citizenship. It was introduced by T.H. Marshall (1950), who
posited a relationship between class and citizenship in his famous sequence of
civil, political and social rights. The Marshallian doctrine of social rights
can be seen as an expression of a change in liberalism's vocabulary of
citizenship in England. According to Procacci (1996: 15) Marshall's intention
was to support a social-democratic turn in a situation, where capitalism
limited citizen's full participation in the democratic society organized
through the principles of market liberalism. Marshall's definition constructs
the citizen as a member of a community, says Nira Yuval-Davis (1997: 70). She
continues: "the notion of the 'community' in the definition of citizenship
evokes a strong 'sense of belonging' and of national identity that citizenship
can provide".
Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1985) and Walter Korpi (1985) have developed
further the classic formulation of T.H. Marshall (1950) in the Scandinavian
context. One of the main ideas in Marshall's theory is that workers in
obtaining political rights were able to establish social rights through the
exercise of political power. According to Esping-Andersen (1990, 27) social
democracy was clearly the dominant force behind social reforms and social
rights in the Scandinavian countries. Rather than tolerate a dualism between
state and market, between working class and middle class, the social democrats
pursued a welfare state that would promote equality of highest standards, not
only an equality of minimal needs as was pursued elsewhere. His conclusion is
that Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries have carried the grand ideas
of social rights and social citizenship further than any other countries.
Social citizenship, thus, seems to tell us one story about the overall
modernization of civil and political rights. In its centre is the idea of working
body protected by state social policies. An individual is a person who owns his
property in his body. Against this background the grand idea of social
citizenship represents a male working body protected by the state. This
conclusion is much debated in the feminist scholarship of citizenship.
Theda Skocpol (1992: 131) writes: “In this early period, European
social insurance was really ‘working men’s insurance’ – a means by which the
state enforced and supplemented contributions by entire categories of employees
and employers in order to partially protect wage-workers (and later some
lower-level salaried people) against losses of income associated with illness,
disability, and old age.”
Tove Stang Dahl (1987) and Helga Maria Hernes (1987) have argued that
the social security system in Norway has been constructed on premises of men as
workers and women as housewives. Hernes (1987: 140) reminds that “social
democratic hegemony has concentrated its attention almost totally on the
citizen as a worker, a male family provider, a working class hero. HIS rights,
identities and participation patterns were determined by HIS ties with the
labour market and by the web of associations as well as corporate structures
that had grown up around these ties.”
Carole Pateman (1989: 187) has, in turn, pointed out that “the
dichotomy breadwinner/housewife, and the masculine meaning of independence,
were established in Britain by the middle class of the last century (19th
century – AA); in the earlier period of capitalist development, women (and
children) were wage-labourers. A ‘worker’ became a man who had an economically
dependent wife to take care of his daily needs and look after his home and his
children.” Accordingly, as Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon (1994, 313) put it:
economic dependency became connected to femininity and women.
Ruth Lister (1997:70) concludes that “in both liberal and republican
traditions the citizen is represented by the abstract, disembodied, individual;
the former tradition tries to ignore particularity and the latter to transcend
it. Feminist theorists have exposed the way in which abstraction has served to
hide to essentially male characteristics of the individual qua citizen.”
In the context of social citizenship debate she raises a question: who is a
social citizen. Lister (ibid: 176) reminds that earlier in history the issues
of maternal and child welfare were in the centre of women’s citizenship
struggles. Later, women’s social citizenship became defined through economic
independence (earning) and right to care (caring).
Social citizenship really seems belong to the masculine vocabulary of
citizenship. Citizenship remains defined as an activity practiced in an
androsentric field of action and represented through codes of phallocentric
discourse, as Kathleen B. Jones (1990: 781-182) has noticed. She continues by
saying that “it is not women who enter public space but persons who happen to
be female.” Although women have gained mainly same legal rights (civil and
political) as men, there has not happened any change in the meanings concerning
citizenship, is her conclusion.
Social rights have strengthen the status of citizen as a worker.
Through work men became party of a social policy contract where individuals
transform their natural freedom into the security of civic freedom. As
different agents and subjects women did not originally have an access to this
contract. Later on, women have been incorporated into the masculine working
order as persons who happen to women, but also as persons with a different
working body.
Now, feminist scholars in the Nordic countries have argued that the
Scandinavian experiences give us a lot of evidence that social citizenship is
not only a masculine construction. Through the grand idea of social citizenship
marginalized and other oppressed groups such as women have become a part of the
social policy contract. It also has meant that women have succeeded to combine
the contradictory position as mothers and workers. According to this line of
argumentation women have succeeded to extend social rights to cover such things
as social care of young children and the elderly, sick and disabled members of
society.
It is also argued that the feminization of social citizenship has not
happened without any struggles. According to Raija Julkunen (1999) the gender
issue resurfaced in the mid 1960s, and as Anne Holli (1991) has later shown the
1960s marked a beginning of a policy, which stressed the similarity of women and
men: gender difference became a negatively loaded objective. The new task set
for state by the new women's movement in the 1960s was to facilitate the
fitting together of wage labour and the home: there were increasing calls for
better day-care services for children, for longer maternity leaves, the right
for parents to stay at home to look after a sick child.
In the Scandinavian countries the state has played an active role in
creating equality between men and women and in promoting women's dual role as
mother-carers and workers. Jane Lewis (1992) speaks about a weak or a dual
breadwinner model, where the woman's status has been transformed from a
dependent mother-wife to worker through the promotion of women's economic
independence. This has been done by means of separate taxation, abortion
rights, generous service provision for small children, the disabled and elderly
members of society, and by individually determined benefits (Anttonen &
Forsberg & Huhtanen 1995).
Especially the 1970s and 1980s saw a huge expansion of social care
services. We might argue that caring has become an acknowledged part of
citizenship. From the feminist point of view there has happened a radical
extension of social citizenship: citizens have won rights to certain social care
services. A comprehensive municipal day-care system is a good example out of
this process. In Finland, children's day-care has been since 1990 a right for
parents, who have children under three years of age, and since 1996 this right
has covered all children under school-age.
In order to solve the contradiction described above, two options are
available. First, social citizenship does represent masculine language of
citizenship. In this case women have been incorporated into the modern social
order as individuals who happen to women, but not as different political and
moral agents. Thus, in the Nordic democracies women have entered the public
space primarily following the masculine order of individualization. Work that
holds society together, has been extended to cover – at least to some extent –
caring and mothering as well. Ruth Lister (1997: 191) puts the extensiveness of
work obligations” in the centre of women’s social citizenship. She is
suggesting that caring should be seriously when defining citizens social rights
and responsibilities.
Secondly, we might think that social citizenship really has become
radically redefined through feminine extensions of work, such as caring and
mothering. In this case the Nordic welfare states have brought into being a
thorough change in the vocabulary of social citizenship. Still, I would like to
say that there has not happened any radical change in the vocabulary of social
citizenship.
As far, I have argued that citizenship formation in Finland has lied on
the normative foundation of work. The early image of female working body has
its roots in the history of Finnish society. During the early 20th century work
became enlarged through such female activities as mothering and later in the
1960s through caring as well. Mothering and caring have served as feminine ways
of redefining what work is about. The extensiveness of work has changed at
least partly the vocabulary of social citizenship and social rights. Moreover,
in Finland women’s right to paid work became the most important goal for
women’s movement in the 1960s, when the ideal of social motherhood was left
behind; it was the reconciliation of home and work that was to solved by state
power.
Some feminist scholars have pointed out struggles around women’s work
have led into desexualization of women’s bodies. Liisa Rantalaiho (1994: 19)
writes that “when femininity became defined through work, caring and mothering
the severe work ethic led into de-erotization women’s bodies.” We might argue
that the female working body is a historical and discursive construction that
has left into its shadow other aspect of female body. It really is striking
that in Finland bodily or sexual rights of women are far less established than
social rights connected to work.
The female working body is much better protected by national
legislation than the female sexual body. Rape in marriage became a criminal act
as late as in the 1990s. Violence against women is today identified as a severe
social problem that has earlier had only a minor influence on state policies
and legislation. Even abortion has remained as a legal practice where experts
have the power to define who has an access to abortion. Although the access to
abortion has not been limited, in practice it would possible to do so according
to the abortion law. Moreover, lesbian women do not have a right to adopt
children or to register their relationship.
All these examples tell us a very different story of women’s rights and
obligations. The female reproductive or sexual body has not gained any
significant position in the legislation nor in public political discourse. This
the reason why I would like to study the contradiction between the female
working body and female sexual body. This paper gives only a historical review
of the idea of female working body.
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Author:
Anneli Anttonen
Dept of Women's Studies
FIN-33014 University of Tampere
Finland
email: spanan@uta.fi
tel. + 358 3 215 7203
(office/women's studies)
tel. + 358 3 255 9601 (home)
fax: + 358 3 215 6562 (office)