The Loss of Pleasure, or Why We Are Still Talking about Oedipus

Female Leadership: Difficulties and Gifts

“…Early on, such experiences made me want to retreat, silence myself, and hide whatever it was about my being female that seemed to draw fire. More recently, my psychoanalytic understandings coupled with greater sociocultural knowledge have helped me see that the psychological and the political are interrelated (Gilligan and Snider 2017). Our psychological and sociocultural experience is connected with the innate human desire to be in relationship with others.…”

Feminist foreign policy as ethical foreign policy? A care ethics perspective

“…The apparently autonomous self, so often seen in men and gendered masculine, is a product not of some essential feature of ‘manhood’ but of a response by men to conform to the codes of gender within patriarchy. Over the past 40 years, research into human psychology has undergone a radical shift towards accepting the interpersonal and relational nature of human development (Gilligan and Snider, 2017: 191). Recognizing this and accepting the relational voice not as morally or psychologically immature, but as a human voice that is thwarted by pervasive gender norms, is the first step towards reaching across divides of difference hierarchy and building real connection with others.…”

“…The work of a feminist ethic of care is to reveal and challenge the way that patriarchy serves to institutionalize hierarchical relations in global politics while dismissing or ridiculing the capacity for attentive listening and empathy. As Gilligan and Snider (2017) argue,Because empathy and mutual understanding impede the division of people into higher and lower, our capacity for relationship and repair has to be compromised or stunted to set in place or maintain an order of living that splits humans into the superior and the inferior, the touchables and the untouchables – whether on the basis of race, gender, class, caste, religion, sexuality, you name it – an order where some voices are amplified and find resonance, whereas others do not, as patriarchy privileges the voice of the father. (2017: 174)…”

“…Policymakers must talk about gender in order to reveal how codes of masculinity and femininity maintain economic, social and political systems that reinforce men’s material and cultural power over women. They must also have uncomfortable conversations about patriarchy – at home and abroad – and how it legitimates and enforces ‘selfless femininity, and detached masculinity’ (Gilligan and Snider, 2017: 192).…”

“…Furthermore, countries such as Sweden and Canada must recognize that progressive change on women’s and human rights in a country like Saudi Arabia can never be imposed by ethical or feminist Western governments. Countries espousing feminist foreign policies must refuse to buy in to an order of living that ‘splits humans into the superior and the inferior’ (Gilligan and Snider, 2017: 174).…”