1. Colonial and Capitalistic Perspectives of Gender

2. Lecture outline
What is colonialism/imperialism and how does it relate to capitalism?
Different conceptualisations of colonialism and its relation to gendered power
Brief look at post-colonialism and the place of gender in post-colonial theory

3. What is colonialism/imperialism?
‘Old’ and ‘new’ forms of colonialism
Old colonialism – late 15th and 16th centuries
New colonialism – 17th and 18th centuries
Shift from indirect to direct political control by colonial state – 19th century

4. Political control
Established as political strategy and for economic gain
Formalised rights of possession over colonies
Established rights to extract and use raw materials, natural resources from colonies
Facilitated development of capitalist industry at home, created markets for manufactured good in colonies

5. Changes Changes in land ownership Commercialised agriculture
Taxation system introduced – wage labour, migration
Restricted form of capitalism
Women lost control over land, capital, their own and others’ labour

6. Effect on women 4 major perspectives on colonial history:
Imperial history
Nationalist perspectives
Marxist and socialist perspectives
Post-colonial studies

7. Themes of literature White western women’s involvement in imperialism
Effect of imperialism on women in Britain
Experiences of colonised women
Men and colonial masculinities
Colonialism and sexuality
Gendered discourses of colonialism

8. Analytical questions
How colonialism affected women and gender relations
The gendering of colonial processes
How women both supported and resisted colonialism
Waylen argues that key concepts for analysis of imperialism besides class and gender are: ‘race’ and ethnicity; slavery; migration; sexuality, reproduction and miscegenation; changes to family relations, work relations and relations of power

9. Gender and imperialism
Imperial history – history of imperialism written from point of view of colonisers
Excludes women and gender
Taken up by feminists and others looking at women’s position in the colonies
Can be part of discourse that represents women in colonies as ‘backward’ in comparison with US and W.European women

10. Imperialism as progressive
Driving force of historical progress
Societies freed from traditional backwardness, become dynamic, modern
Modernisation theory
Oppression of women is part of ‘traditional backwardness’
Modern capitalist liberal democracy will liberate women from feudal bonds
Colonised women have no agency

11. Nationalist perspectives
Experience of colonised people central
Imperial history racist and patronising, sees colonial power in positive light, devalues history and culture of colonised societies
Pre-colonial societies not backward at all, dynamic and developing economically before European intervention
Colonised peoples active agents of change in modernising world
Women involved in independence movements

12. Nationalist perspectives on women
Women’s position pre-colonialism no worse than under colonial rule
Colonial power destroyed bases of women’s power
Colonial powers didn’t liberate colonised women, inhibited indigenous processes of change
Women agents of social change

13. Re-assessment In 1970s and 1980s re-assessment of nationalist period
UN conference on women, first one in 1975
Nationalist struggles improved women’s situation
Focus on economic and political rights
Women’s personal position within family not addressed

14. Marxist/socialist perspectives
Different groups benefitted from capitalist imperialism
Upper and middle classes of indigenous population benefitted
Alliance between colonisers and this section of population
Subaltern status – lower class and other marginalised groups – resisted exploitation and oppression

15. Marxist analysis and women
Colonialism erodes pre-capitalist sites of women’s power
Introduces new forms of patriarchal control
Changes in sexuality, marriage, family
Forms of work, employment and labour
Land use, property rights and inheritance
British rulers in India, together with Brahmin elites in Kerala, destroyed matrilineal kinship system

16. Male alliances Women active resisting colonialism
Hostility from male alliances of colonial authorities and indigenous elites
Waylen: ‘new’ customary laws aimed at controlling women
Collusion between 2 sources of male power
Construction of tradition, new forms of control over women

17. Post-colonialism and gender
Edward Said defined orientalism as a view which defined ‘the oriental’ and the Orient as:
A biological inferior that is culturally backward, peculiar, and unchanging – to be depicted in dominating and sexual terms
The feminine and weak Orient awaits the dominance of the West; it is a defenceless and unintelligent whole that exists for, and in terms of, its Western counterpart
He called into question the underlying assumptions that form the foundation of Orientalist thinking

18. Gender and colonialist discourse
Emerged from literary and cultural studies
Perspective of imperial history a form of colonial discourse, legitimates colonial rule
Colonial rule legitimated with reference to gender relations
Gender relations in colonies (and contemporary societies such as Afghanistan) used as signifier of backward society

19. How useful is post-colonial approach?
Waylen: legitimacy of colonialism problematic
Legitimated through construction of knowledge about the colonised by the coloniser
Power over had to be legitimised – minds of oppressed had to be colonised – persuasion important not only coercion

20. Post-colonial approach criticised
Midgley: must go beyond discourse analysis
Economic, political, military, social and administrative structures important
Need to avoid relativism and challenge imperial history perspective
Need to analyse material basis of power as well as language and symbols which legitimate power

21. Conclusions
Colonialism was gendered, affected indigenous gendered power relations
‘Backwardness’ of indigenous peoples symbolised in gendered terms
Capitalist imperialism worsened women’s position
Post-colonialism gives voice to subaltern
Gender important symbolically and materially
Women active agents in bringing about social change