Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies

4

Authors: Diana Elena Neaga, Nicolae Titulescu University, Bucharest, Romania

The core concept of the book edited by Danila Cutas and Sarah Chan, “Families – Beyond the Nuclear Ideal” is without doubt, one about which most of us all, if not all, could have thoughts, opinions, predictions, standards, experiences and projections. In Romania, for example, the sintagm “the family – the vital cell of the society” is still very circulated, even tough, being associated with the Communist regime and the pronatalist policy of Ceausescu, it has also some pejorative connotations.

9

Authors: Gary Blank

The social struggles associated with the New Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s sparked a popular resurgence of Marxist and feminist theory and practice. In the early phase of these struggles, many left-wing social activists regarded the two traditions as inherently compatible, and urged (or even assumed) their “marriage”. Over the following decade, however, socialist feminists noted that the marriage was at the very least “unhappy”, sparking a vigorous debate over the extent to which the “sex-blind” categories of Marxism could be utilized to address feminist concerns. This review essay assesses two foundational contributions to the debate: Heidi Hartmann’s “dual systems” theory and Iris Young’s “single system” response. While the two accounts are seemingly counter posed, a comparative analysis of their respective strengths and weaknesses points the way toward a truly historical materialist theory of women’s oppression in capitalist society. Such a theory must seek to explain the material basis for a specifically capitalist patriarchy, without employing trans-historical structures (as Hartmann does) or functionalist reasoning (as Young does). In the end, I suggest that an alternative Marxist framework can be utilized to integrate the greatest insights of both accounts, while overcoming their debilitating limitations.

14

Authors: Erica Van Der Sijpt

Over the last few decades, anthropologists interested in reproduction have increasingly focused on the relationship between women’s (limited) reproductive agency and (bio)political forces such as patriarchy, medicine, the state, and the global political economy. In their quest for understanding local and global ‘politics of reproduction’, some have turned their gaze towards the female body, considered to be a symbolic arena in which multi-level power relations are played out. These scholars have studied minute ‘body politics’ as reflections of wider ‘reproductive politics’. This paper contributes to this growing field of study by adding a nuanced perspective of the role of the material body – rather than its symbolic representation – in such reproductive politics. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in eastern Cameroon, I describe how women’s pregnancy pragmatics are informed by existing (bio)political forces on the one hand, and by their material bodies on the other. My detailed ethnographic material shows that, although forces like patriarchy, biomedicine, and the state shape the field within which Cameroonian women give meaning and direction to their reproduction, women themselves have considerable leeway to circumvent existing powers or to use them to their own advantage. I argue that this freedom is inherently connected to some bodily attributes of the reproductive process: the invisibility of early pregnancies grants women time and space for secret bodily interventions. At the same time, I show that the (unpredictable) body can also become a constraining force complicating women’s reproductive navigation. Thus, by attending to both social and material dynamics, new light is shed on the arena of forces that impact upon reproductive practice, as well as on women’s own agency within that arena.

14

Authors: Alexandra Gruian

Lesbian couples are dependent on the medicalization of pregnancy and birth if they wish for a genetically related child. Most countries are unprepared to tackle the issues of same-sex families to say the least. Whereas in social and political contexts that are mostly hostile to LGBT persons the fear of “coming out” renders lesbians invisible, in less oppressive environments lesbian families make efforts in order to “normalize” their condition. Based on the existing literature on the subject, in the current paper I intend to underscore some of the main types of agency that lesbian women employ in order to become biological parents and claim legitimacy as mothers. I will discuss issues related to agency in the medical, social and legal realms.

20

Authors: Ulaş Sunata

This article examines the question of how women are embodied in state feminisms. The focus is on women whose placement in political discourses and policies is problematic in some cases for some reasons, such as who make governmental actions to strengthen women’s position in society; to what end; women’s role and participation in the policy making process; legislative, executive and juridical representation of women; and their relation with feminist movement. How women are located in the society defines not only that women’s position but also the position of men in relation to women. That is the reason why this paper considers state policies on women not always to improve women status but to locate women in, or attach them to the related political visions. The notion of bio-politics is central to Foucault’s work in the context of body and population. He uses the term bio-politics, derived from his own notion of bio-power, as the implementation of state power over both the physical and political bodies of a population. Thus, state policies on physical bodies of women are highly significant for an analytical understanding of both social structures and transformations. I shall present the Turkish case to illustrate a kind of state feminism. The emergence of Turkish state feminism at the turn of the 20th century is a master key to analyze state policies on the women’s body regarding to the Turkish transformation. However, we recognize a line of rupture from the primary policies at the turn of the new century. Besides supranational policies, the recent statefeminism has a new paradigm for women of Turkey. This paper attempts to question not only the paradigm shift from the Westernist to the post-Islamist reason but also the negative impact of their existence on women as individuals and feminist solidarity.

28

Authors: Adriana Iordache, University of Bucharest

This article analyzes the prevalent discourse and policies in the field of reproduction in Romania starting with the 1966 ban on abortions and culminating with recent public statements and proposed regulations. It will argue that the severe control on women’s bodies exercised during the communist regime was primarily motivated by nationalist ethos and traditional attitudes towards sexuality. Meanwhile, contempoirary political discourse and proposed measures are often shaped by a mixture between nationalist and conservative ideology. The ethnic dimension of these doctrines is also being discussed in the paper, as well as the social impact of the regulation of reproduction upon gender relations.