Feminism is Back in France--Or Is It?

Abstract

Edited by Penelope DeutscherMickle Le Dceuff discusses the revival of feminism in France, including the phenomenon of state-sponsored feminism, such as government support for "parity": equal numbers of women and men in government. Le Dceuffanalyzes the strategically patchy application of this revivaland remains wary about it. Turning to the work of seventeenth-century philosopher Gabrielk Suchon, Le Dceuff considers her concepts offreedom, servitude, and active citizenship, which may well, she argues, have influemzedJean-Jacques Rousseau. Le Dceufffavorably juxtaposes the active citizenship defended by Suchon with the kind of citizenship implicitly supported by recent French government feminism.

The Social and Gender Politics of Confucian Nationalism

“…In her study of gender differences in participation in six western European and North American democracies, Carol Christy (Githens, Norris, and Lovenduski 1994) argues that gender differences in participation are diminishing, but that the rate of change is very slow. Christy's assumption that as the democratization process takes hold in newer democracies women's participation will increase has been criticized by a number of feminist scholars including Clark and Lee (2000), Ledouff (2002), Phillips (1998), andShanley andNarayan (1997). They argue that Christy's assumption does not hold true for East Asian democracies, where women continue to be politically marginalized.…”

Equality in multiplicity

“…Feminists often find Luce Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference problematic when it comes to analysing justice for women of diverse cultures. For example, the postcolonial thinker Gayatri Spivak has argued that, in view of Irigaray's reliance on a Western (Lacanian) psychoanalytical account, it is misplaced to apply her theory directly to the situation of ethnically diverse women (Spivak, 1993: 142-7; see also Le Doeuff, 2000;Huntington, 1998). Against such criticisms, this article contends that Irigaray's account is in fact more helpful to a multicultural feminist politics than her readers often assume, even though her recent writings do present a major difficulty in this regard, which, to date, has not been adequately explicated.…”