Casting the ‘Other’
Gender citizenship in politicians’ narratives
In the past century the presence of women in the “public sphere” has increased considerably as a result of, amongst other things, the rapid increase in their levels of schooling, professional competences and labour market participation. Much more limited and slower, by contrast, has been the entry of women into the centers of decision-making and power.
This paper proposes reflection on gender citizenship in political arenas, which are precisely those in which action to sensitize and change the broader social context should be undertaken. In order to understand and change gender models in the political-institutional system, analysis is required of how gender is defined and constructed in the specific arenas in which the political careers of individuals are planned and promoted.
The paper presents some findings of qualitative research which collected the narratives of men and women — belonging to different Italian political alignments and occupying different positions and roles — relative to their political career paths and the discourses with which they accounted for female under-representation. The analysis of the texts collected allowed light to be shed on the discursive practices, symbols, meanings and sexed images with which the symbolic gender order is created and reproduced. Highlighted in particular are the gender positioning performed through the narratives, and the tendency to cast women in the role of the “Other” with respect to the political system.
Viewed from this perspective, political arenas are theatrical stages on which gendered knowledge is created and disseminated. It is evident in particular that the symbolic order of gender and the models of the discursive construction of gender characteristic of the cultures analyzed tend to reproduce an image of political activity as a male preserve, where otherness entails marginalization and/or subordination.
References
Alejandro, Roberto
1993 Hermeneutics, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere. New York: State University of New York Press.
Anderson, Walter E.
1990 Reality isn’t what it used to be. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Bergvall, Victoria L., Bing, Janet M. and F. Freed, Alice
(eds) 1996 Rethinking Language and Gender Research. Harlow: Longman.
Bhabha, Homi K.
1994 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Bruner, Jerome
1986 Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, Jerome
1990 Acts of Meaning. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Christie, Chris
2002 Politeness and the linguistic construction of gender in parliament: An analysis of transgressions and apology behaviour.
Working Papers on the Web, vol. 31, Special issues on Linguistic Politeness and Context. www.shu.ac.uk/wpw
.
Davies, Bronwyn
1989 Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales. North Sidney: Unwin Hyman.
Davies, Bronwyn and Harré, Rom
1990 Positioning: The discursive Production of Selves.
Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour 11, 43–63.
Derrida, Jacques
1976 (1967).
Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University.
Fabbri, Donata and Formenti, Laura
1991 Carte d’identitÃ, Milano: Angeli.
Gavey, Nicola
1997 Feminist poststructuralism and discourse analysis. In:
M.M. Gergen and
S.N. Davis (eds).
Toward a New Psychology of Gender. New York: Routledge.
Gherardi, Silvia
1995 Gender, Symbolism and Organizational Culture. London: Sage.
Holmes, Janet and Meyerhoff, Miriam
2003 The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell.
Litosseliti, Lia and Sunderland, Jane
Lyotard, Jean François
1986 (1979).
The Postmodern Condition. A report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Mumby, Dennis K.
1988 Communication and Power in Organizations: Discourse, Ideology and Domination. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Poggio, Barbara
1999 Narrating challenges in organisational cultures, Paper presented at the 15th Egos Colloquium, Warwick, July 4–6.
Potter, Jonathan and Weatherall, Margaret
1993 Analyzing Discourse, London: Sage.
Shaw, Sylvia
2000 Language, gender and floor apportionment in political debates.
Discourse & Society 111, 401–418.
Suleri, Sara
1992 The Rethoric of India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sunderland, Lia and Litosseliti, Jane
Thornborrow, Joanna
2002 Power Talk. Language and Interaction in Institutional Discourse. Harlow: Longman.
Todd, Alexandra Dundas and Fisher, Sue
(eds) 1988 Gender and Discourse: The Power of Talk, Norwood: Ablex.
Van Dijk, Teun
1985 Handbook of Discourse Analysis. New York: Academic Press.
Walsh, Clare
1998 Gender and mediatized politicial discourse: A case study of press coverage of Margaret Beckett’s campaign for the Labour leadership in 1994.
Language and Literature 71, 199–214.
Walsh, Clare
2001 Gender and Discourse. Language and Power in Politics, the Church and Organizations. London: Longman.
Weatherall, Ann
2002 Gender, Language and Discourse. London: Routledge.
Witten, Marsha
1993 Narrative and the culture of obedience at the Workplace. In:
D.K. Mumby.
Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives. London: Sage.
Wodak, Ruth
1996 Disorder of Discourse. London: Longman.
Wodak, Ruth
1997 Gender and Discourse. London: Sage.
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Poggio, Barbara
2022.
Working for Gender Equality in the Neoliberal Academia: Between Theory and Practice.
Revista de Administração Contemporânea 26: suppl 1
Poggio, Barbara
2022.
Trabalhando pela Igualdade de Gênero na Academia Neoliberal: Entre a Teoria e a Prática.
Revista de Administração Contemporânea 26: suppl 1
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.