Who Needs Civil Society? A Feminist Perspective

...to a lesser extent, range of skills—it is most likely that the number and membership of organizations will turn out to be gendered as well...

...Where it does, it rings all the alarm bells...

...What makes civil societystate a useful way of dividing up the contemporary world is usually some thesis about the coerciveness of state power or amoral fragmentation of market relations: the idea that democracy depends, for example, on a dense network of voluntary organizations, or that people need forms of association not regulated by either market or state...

...Feminists have, of course, been happy to seize any opportunities offered via equality legislation or affirmative action...

...I do not want to exaggerate this point, for I am continually struck by the lapses one finds in government departments and the failure to live up to standards one would have thought obligatory in the modern state...

...Most obviously, women still tend to earn less than men...

...All too often, this "community" turns out to mean women, who are expected in their capacity as wives, mothers, and daughters to take responsibility for more damaged members of their family, including those previously cared for in mental hospitals and not yet equipped for returning to "normal" life...

...The former was usually housed in a makeshift accommodation and often depended on a fragile roster of volunteer workers, but because it was under the control of parents and workers, there was more scope for developing nonsexist ways of caring for children and engaging with parents' preferences and needs...

...There are certain features of modern democracy that can be said to counteract background inequalities...

...Celebrations of an active citizenry or a vibrant civic culture have often signaled policy shifts that seek to move responsibility from state to community...

...If we take civil society in its characteristically modern meaning—as a way of referring to the terrain of voluntary associations that exist between economy and state—there are two reasons why feminism should be attracted to the politics associated with this...

...Responsibilities that used to fall on the shoulders of mothers, wives, and daughters (but hardly ever on fathers, husbands, and sons) would then be recognized as social responsibilities, to be funded out of general taxation...

...because of this, civil society is likely to reflect and confirm whatever is the current distribution of sexual power...

...It is critical of the state as an exclusive forum for political action...

...When feminists indicate a preference for a thriving network of "counterpublics," or say they want to see child care organized by a local self-governing collective, the value attached to civil society is still largely instrumental...

...Think of the coffee-house society of eighteenth-century Europe, where men had their clubs and meeting places and discussion groups and women barely figured at all...

...But we know that the opposite also happens: that state policies can get ahead of opinion formation in civil society, and that when this gap becomes too great, some kind of backlash occurs...

...The revival of civic traditions of self-help and responsibility is then connected in some obscure (to me) way with restoring marriage as a life-long commitment and getting the family back on its traditional tracks...

...At this point in the argument, feminists usually become rather restive about the delights of civil society...

...Feminism is about equality, understood here as meaning that there is no significant difference between the sexes in their jobs, responsibilities, or roles...

...Wage differentials thereby reinforce responsibility differentials, while the hours and timing of work are very unforgiving toward those trying to combine paid employment with parenthood...

...This means that even those with no particular pretensions toward democracy will be vulnerable to internal pressure...

...The second is that some of the associations that spring up in civil society have a looseness, even an indeterminacy, that makes them particularly hospitable to feminist politics...

...Voluntary Associations and Public Support One of the key ambiguities, then, is that feminism is simultaneously anti- and pro-state...

...But feminism is also supportive of the state as an agent of redistribution, regards the market as peculiarly unsuited to meeting the welfare needs that dominate so many women's lives, and considers the patchy network of voluntary associations a poor substitute for universal provision via the state...

...We can decide not to reveal our religious or political beliefs...

...Where private and/or voluntary associations fit in is probably the least developed part of this...

...Leaving aside as implausible the notion that this equality will arise spontaneously from the workings of the market, there are basically two different ways of conceiving this development...

...we may even be able to conceal our class and ethnic origins...

...It also affects the way we view ourselves...

...Feminism tells us always to check out the consequences for sexual equality...

...The deeper difficulty is that the problems that generate the category of civil society derive from a nonfeminist agenda, and that this remains true even if we leave Hegel behind to concentrate on more recent debates...

...But being more attuned than some other traditions to the power of culture in regulating social relations, they are also acutely aware that strategies for change have to intervene on a number of levels...

...A further, more practical point is that the many associations that are locally based—the housing cooperative, the association of black parents, the group formed to protect a historic local building—will be more accessible to women than the grander avenues that lead to state power...

...It is hardly surprising that civil society so often conjures up a masculine realm...

...A longer version of this article will be published in Simone Chambers and Will Kymlicka, eds., Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society, Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics, Princeton University Press, 1999...

...range of contacts...

...Those on the margins of public life then have more scope for developing alternative scenarios and ideas...

...DISSENT / Winter 1999 57 Civil society matters, finally, because programs for radical change have to capture people's hearts and minds and cannot depend on directives issuing from the state...

...One consequence of this is that feminism is by definition experimental—it implies listening to many different voices and exploring as yet untried possibilities...

...A feminist looks around the world and sees much the same patterns repeating themselves in every sphere of existence...

...In both cases, one might say that politicians had become overly confident about what could be achieved by fiat alone...

...tends, for these reasons, to see the more amorphous, decentralized, and pluralistic activities of civil society as better suited to the development of feminist politics...

...As a serious alternative, the equal-shares model depends on major changes in the hours and conditions of work to enable both women and men to work what would currently be considered part time: each doing a maximum of (say) thirty hours a week in paid employment, each then able to take an equal part in the unpaid labors of care...

...Woman" still suggests an association with nature or family...

...Recent examples include the attack on affirmative action in the United States, and the revival of white-Australia nationalism in a country where a pluralistic multiculturalism seemed to have become the accepted view...

...Civil society is not open to regulation in the same kind of way...

...None of this adds up to a thesis about civil society as the source of social cohesion or the guarantor of freedom or the place where morality resides...

...Civil" often implies a contrast with natural or familial...

...self-confidence...

...The more intimate the group, for example, the less willing it may be to put decisions to a vote...

...There are still others who regard voluntary associations as the last resort of the reactionary traditionalist, and the least amenable to sexual equality...

...but few of us can conceal whether we are women or men...

...The state, that is, should assume more responsibility than it currently does for human wellbeing, should not treat looking after the vulnerable as a predominantly private (read, female) responsibility, and should shift its order of priorities so as to give greater prominence to questions of care...

...But when so much of what generates an organization is gendered —time...

...they would regard a redistribution of responsibilities from the family to the voluntary sector as making things worse rather than better...

...THE OTHER point about associations in civil society is that as voluntary associations they belong to nobody but their members...

...In some recent analyses, civil society figures as part of an argument against excessive state spending and in favor of selfhelp...

...Feminists have been quick to spot the potential coerciveness in this, and the way it can work to disempower those who feel at odds with the dominant consensus but lack the confidence to expose themselves before people they regard as "sisters" or friends...

...Our sense of ourselves as women and men has been built up through so many circumstances and in so many layers that we can rarely separate out those aspects of our personality that are just "us" from those that express historical practice and cultural conventions...

...The key presumption underlying these two is that human relationships are ordered very differently in different parts of our lives: it is because of these differences that we need "more"' civil society...

...This is not necessarily (indeed rarely) discussed under the rubric of civil society, but it does have the effect of directing feminism away from an exclusively state-centric politics and highlighting the role of nongovernmental associations...

...The first concentrates on the public provision of services that were previously carried out by women in the home: setting up publicly funded and subsidized nurseries, providing a network of publicly employed careworkers to cook meals and do the shopping for the elderly or disabled, providing highquality full-time care in residential homes...

...The point suggested earlier is that the state can be more conservative (more stuck in the old grooves) than the free flow of opinion and argument in civil society...

...Think of those London clubs that even today close their doors to women and pride themselves on providing a safe haven for the exclusive use of men...

...It is more often men than women who celebrate "a vibrant civil society" as the alternative to this...

...Sexual difference runs deep in human identity and is not something we can temporarily suspend...

...In the absence of overlapping membership, this looks more like segregation than "society...

...The scenario premised on public provision has obvious limits, set by our perceptions of what counts as loving care...

...Overt exclusion has become relatively rare in the last years of the twentieth century, but there could certainly be a flourishing network of men's associations paralleled by a less flourishing network of women's associations...

...This requisitioning of female labor may not be what most theorists have understood by civil society, but the term has undoubtedly come to carry this additional connotation...

...even more far-reaching and demanding, it implies equal responsibility for both sexes in caring for the young, sick, and old...

...Elements of this strategy have always featured in feminist campaigns, but when followed through to what might seem the logical conclusion, usually lead to serious disquiet...

...This is only one of many instances where feminists have expressed reservations about centralized state power, talked of the risks of co-option and betrayal, and presented state institutions as actively patriarchal or peculiarly unresponsive to human need...

...Hegel saw man as having his "substantive life" in the state and civil society, while woman pursued her "substantive destiny" in the family, and this highly gendered understanding of civil society is by no means unique...

...In Green's view, this shifted the balance between civil society and state disastrously in favor of the latter, encouraging inefficiency (because there was then only one provider of insurance or health), and discouraging "the spirit of personal responsibility on which a vibrant civil society rests...

...The background to both points is that it is difficult to state in advance what "women" need or want, and that this indeterminacy affects the kind of politics in which feminism thrives...

...THOSE PURSUING this second line of argument rarely think of "shared parenting" (or to extend this to the sick and elderly, "shared caring") as a matter of exhortation, for there are clearly structural features in contemporary societies that encourage us to carry on in the old unequal way...

...As is often the case, Green's argument is linked to the increase in one-parent families, and the rise of illegitimacy, divorce, and separation...

...they would argue for a much reduced role for the market-based private associations engaged in production or marketing...

...In 1970s Britain, feminists often expressed a preference for the self-financing, self-regulating, community nursery over the local authority nursery subsidized by taxation...

...To illustrate with one example from Britain, David Green recently contrasted the friendly societies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which sprang up through traditions of self-help and insured workers against hard times, with the national insurance program later introduced by the government, which made insurance against sickness and unemployment compulsory and organized the payments via the state...

...Nonetheless, a powerful strand of feminism views the self-governing, voluntary association as more accessible and contestable than the male-dominated, rule-bound state...

...This makes civil society important to feminist politics, but does not necessarily say anything about civil society as a value in itself...

...and that practices of sexual inequality are so insidious and pervasive that they cannot be tackled merely by initiatives from the top...

...This is perhaps the point at which the other side of the hyphen takes over: it matters whether one is a liberal-feminist, socialistfeminist, postmodern-feminist, and so on...

...There are feminists who favor greater decentralization...

...One problem is that this approach promises equality for the sexes without changing what the men have to do: this looks rather like the man who extricates himself from pressure to do an equal part of the housework by buying a dishwasher or employing a cleaner...

...The battle for sexual equality has to be won in civil society, for there is a limit to what can be achieved through the "right" legislation alone...

...There are disagreements about this, and many have thought that the anti-statism of the contemporary women's movement went too far...

...This affects the way others view us...

...Individual associations may be wonderfully vibrant— stretching boundaries, contesting orthodoxies, generating new forms of power—but those 58 DISSENT / Winter 1999 that speak for subordinate groups are still likely to be less numerous and weaker than the rest...

...Her most recent work, Which Equalities Matter?, will be published in 1999...

...1. Jodi Dean, "Including Women: The consequences and side effects of feminist critiques of civil society" (Philosophy and Social Criticism, 18, 3/4, 1992...

...and (b) that public provision for child care, health care, and age care is an intrinsic part of the "feminization" of policy and helps create a sexually egalitarian world...

...Same old pattern of dominance, same old pattern of exclusion, same old problems whether in family, market, civil society, or state...

...Those who have trouble with these descriptions are less likely to romanticize civil society or conceive of it as so very distinct from anything else...

...It is also at odds with what I have indicated as a long-standing feminist distrust of the over-centralized state...

...The best solution lies somewhere between the two, with a significant increase in public provision combined with a redistribution of responsibilities between women and men...

...The Attractions of Civil Society One might then say that feminism does well enough without any conception of civil society, but this would be too abrupt...

...This second strategy leaves the responsibility for care work primarily as a private responsibility, shared equally between women and men...

...The first is that a feminist perspective is radically pluralist, and that pluralism finds a more welcome home in the associations of civil society than in either family or state...

...A THIRD RISK has less to do with civil society and more with the way the concept is invoked to support critiques of the welfare state...

...If all action takes place within the legislature, there is less chance for those most radically questioning the prevailing consensus to influence public agendas...

...This requires a pluralist politics rather than one that seeks "the" solution from on high...

...With the requisite energy and determination, people can of course do extraordinary things...

...Churches, to take one unlikely example, are hierarchical associations, and not really amenable to equality legislation...

...The related difficulty is that the relatively unregulated nature of civil associations can make them more prone to discriminatory behavior than the publicly scrutinized institutions of the state...

...In opposition to this, an alternative has been developed, premised on enabling a different division of labor between the sexes inside the home...

...Counterattractions Against this there is the crucial problem with civil society: that it so often operates to keep women out...

...The second scenario is also limited, if only because many 60 DISSENT / Winter 1999 households contain only one adult and would not benefit from any strategy of equal shares...

...The associations of civil society are brought into existence by the actions and choices of their members...

...Feminism, on the whole, has been less inclined to accept this division of spheres...

...people may feel this makes things too formal, or sets people up as adversaries when they ought to be thinking of one another as colleagues and friends...

...2. David Green, Reinventing Civil Society: The Rediscover of Welfare Without Politics (London: Institute for Economii Affairs, 1993...

...Does feminism need a concept of civil society...

...Because it is so often about bringing some56 DISSENT / Winter 1999 thing new into existence (not, that is, just pursuing long-established interests and claims), it can be said to have a particular affiliation with some of the less regimented of civil society's groups...

...There are still many invidious ways in which voluntary associations reproduce social hierarchies and social exclusions, and their very voluntariness can discourage measures designed to equalize the members' power...

...Yet feminists did not stop talking about the state just because so few women exercised political power—if this were the policy, there would be all too many things on which feminists would have to remain silent...

...In such circumstances, the associations of civil society can be more coercive and less protective of individual equalities and freedoms than the much-despised institutions of the state...

...There are feminists who see sexual equality as incompatible with the market economy...

...Feminism is always in some sense about transformation: articulating previously unheard voices, exposing previously unchallenged biases, and rewriting political agendas...

...Despite the points developed earlier, many feminists have continued to look to the state as one of the sources of gender justice, believing (a) that publicly sanctioned principles of sexual equality will help protect women exposed to wage exploitation, domesDISSENT / Winter 1999 • 59 tic violence, or the cultural pressures of their community or group...

...At its best, this is what the right to vote does: it makes differences of sex, class, or race temporarily irrelevant, and gives men and women a moment of equal power...

...This is not to say people are doomed to repeat whatever they learned in an early socialization or that sexual identity is so pervasive/ invasive that no one can hope to change it...

...If there is to be a contest between civil society and the state—a sense in which societies can choose to have a bit more of one and a bit less of the other—feminism is then more likely to situate itself on the side of the first...

...It is not that civil society is being presented as a good in itself, but that there is more scope for identifying and exploring nonsexist, egalitarian ways of doing things when operating outside the heavy hand of state power...

...Those who describe the family as a unit based on love, or the market as organizing people "behind their backs," or bureaucracy as the implementation of impartial rules, may well come to regard civil society as more "social" than any of these—less intense than the family, less anonymous than the market, particularly crucial to social cohesion...

...tends to see state institutions as hidebound, unresponsive, promoting a conservative political agenda...

...DISSENT / Winter 1999 61...

...It is the other elements in our ethical system that determine our position on voluntary associations and civil society ANNE PHILLIPS is professor of politics at London Guildhall University...

...Civil society then becomes a code name for people assuming responsibility for their own lives, and welfare spending is blamed for diminishing the role of voluntary associations through which people once assumed this responsibility...

...they would argue for a much increased role for nongovernmental, voluntary associations in the organization of social life...

...This being so, they will inevitably reflect whatever is the existing distribution of resources (money, information, contacts, time) and probably reflect whatever is the existing balance of power...

...There is no body to oversee its activities, to check that each citizen joins an equal number of groups or that each is equally active...

...This implies equality in respect of employment...

...In a vibrant civil society, there will be as many organizations as there is energy to go around, and even if most of these continue to be dominated by men, the very multiplication of alternatives opens up opportunities for contesting dominant conventions and promoting radical change...

...But simply handing over to the state what used to be carried out within the hierarchical family (moving women, as Scandinavian feminists have described it, from private to public dependence) can never be a complete answer...

...In domestic units containing two parents, it then makes economic sense for the woman rather than the man to leave employment in order to care for the children or for the women to change to a part-time job...

...yet as Jodi Dean notes in her discussion of civil society, there have been dramatic changes, including the ordination of women, in a number of these.' For associations that actively pride themselves on reflecting their members' views, there are even more opportunities for contesting sexism or male bias...

...It is also important to recognize that voluntary associations are not entirely unregulated: they mostly come under the purview of national legislation and are required to operate in a reasonably honest and fair-minded way...

...Voluntary associations often operate on a borderline between friendship and politics, bringing together like-minded people who share similar views or enjoy the same intellectual and leisure pursuits...

...The deeper problem is that handing children or aging parents over to full-time institutional care falls short of most people's vision of a humane and caring society—and certainly falls short of what most feminists have wanted to see...

...But imagining a world without sexual hierarchy —and imagining what kind of people we might become in such a world—is an awesome task...

...I shall qualify this in the next section, for nothing is ever so simple...

...It certainly does not need what is presented in so much of the historical literature, where civil society figures as a place where women are not...