Gender and the crisis in Iceland

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Gender and the crisis in Iceland

Postby StuartM » Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:23 pm

This is an article in English recently posted on the website of the Left Greens who are currently one of the two parties in the Icelandic government. It looks at the connection between patriarchy and the economic changes which led to the crisis. Some good news just from the last few days is that a new law has been passed which introduces gender quotas in company management positions.

Women and the crisis
by Drífa Snædal

There is certain arrogance in saying that Iceland is in crisis. There is currently a recession but hardly a crisis. We still have our infrastructure, our kindergartens and our nurseries, our health services and our high level of education. Probably, very few countries are as well equipped for meeting a recession as Iceland is. There hasn't been any shortage of food or energy and we have a functioning democracy where you can make yourself heard without risking imprisonment or other forms of punishment. Therefore, I claim that by describing Iceland as a country in crisis one is stretching it too far. BUT we do have an economic problem and it´s a big one. This problem is a problem we inherit from patriarchy at its worst, a patriarchy that was left to its own by indifference for too long.

Let me go back a few decades to try to understand how a patriarchy could bring a society of well-educated inhabitants into recession in just a few years. In this analysis I will, of course, put on my gender spectacles and begin when women came together and formed Kvennalistinn, the Women´s party, in the early 80´s. Before that we had zero to three women in parliament at a time, but this changed when women were tired of knocking on the traditional parties' doors and went for it on their own. The influence of the Women´s party was enormous. Not only did they, or should I say we, get more women into parliament. Suddenly, all other parties came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to have more women in their parliamentary groups. At this time, power within Icelandic society lay to a large degree in the political sphere. Politicians had great power over the economy, the biggest companies were state-owned and so were our natural resourses.

As happens very often, when women gain political power, the nature of power and political influence as such tends to slip away into other directions, to fields where men are dominant. This has happened all over the world with more women in politics and the declining power of small male groups within politics. This is where privatization and liberalism is presented to the scene! Suddenly, it became unacceptable and undemocratic to have state-owned companies. Politicians all over the world sold our property to friends and families, but mostly men did so with the urge to reign and keep the power over communities, people and counties. This is what happened in Iceland and in many other parts of the world. At bargain prices, governments sold away what was rightfully the people´s common property. Power slipped from our hands, from the hands of rightfully elected women and men. In Iceland, a small society of only 300 thousand inhabitants, we saw great power move into the hands of about 30 young businessmen. These were men a little older than I am now, with big egos and high ideas for a small island, but mostly for themselves. You cannot analyze this era without thinking in gendered perspectives. I myself am educated in business administration and when I graduated I was offered a minimum wage job in a bank. At the same time, I saw my fellow male students fly high in the banking sector as soon as they graduated. I, of course, ran out of the staff manager's office and slammed the door and instead built a career in the high paid sector of the women´s shelters movement!. As I struggled against trafficking in my new job there were rumors about crazy parties at the highest level of bank managers where prostitutes came with the yachts and anything had a price tag on it, including women. Of course this affected the society as a whole. Anything was for sale and no restrictions were allowed. It was unthinkable to the right wing regime to put restrictions on the right of men to buy women. At one point in time we had 12 strip joints in a population of 300 thousand inhabitants. Prostitution grew, and with this changing mentality, trafficking was allowed to grow as well in our small, liberal country. It is with great pleasure that I tell you that in the first year of the current red-green government, remarkable changes have been undertaken within the legal system and on issues regarding prostitution, domestic violence and trafficking – and there is more to come.

Just three days ago we also passed a law of women quotas in the boards of bigger firms. But of course that's just a drop in the ocean.

The task we have before us is huge but the opportunities are also great, perhaps the greatest we have seen so far in our republic's short history. With the recession and the fall of our banking system a dominant international political ideology was severely hit. This is the ideology that money makes the world go round, that power is connected with masculinity and that any interference of lawmakers into the life of business is harmful. This ideology has been hit hard, but nonetheless it is, I´m sorry to say, not dead.

Our main task in the coming years is to steer Icelandic society through the depression without privatizing our welfare system or our educational system. We must come through, without having to sell our resources to greedy multinational corporations. These corporations watch every step we take with the look of predators in their eye, wanting to make money off our difficulties. We will not manage to protect our society against these dangers, if we are not guided by the gender perspective.

The battle for the welfare system is closely linked to the struggle for gender equality which we have fought for in Iceland for so long. In many areas we have been rewarded. We now enjoy equality regarding parental leave and within the educational system. We also have the highest participation of women in the labor market in Europe and among the highest fertility rates as well. This we have managed on account of our welfare system. But the system is not only our method for participating in society; the welfare system is also the space where women work. In Iceland we haven´t had unemployment for the last years. Now, suddenly, we have 10% unemployment among men and 8% among women. This has called for drastic measures - to save the men. There is a huge pressure to build more houses, make new roads and build aluminum smelters all over Iceland to save the labor market. But this is to save the men´s labor market. Our women´s jobs are within the public system; in the schools, in healthcare, in social services and so on. That is why it is absolutely vital for gender equality in any economic depression to take care of the public system and welfare. Women´s jobs are intricately linked to the welfare of community, and the welfare of community goes hand in hand with women´s jobs.

But let me turn again to the opportunities the recession might give us. In Iceland, as around the world, there was a change in power with the collapse of the banking system. And there lie the opportunities – to shift power from the old male elites and revolutionize traditional hierarchies. The biggest danger in situations like this one is to be stuck in a traditional way of thinking, the patriarchic way of thinking, i.e. to think that women and men have the same power by having the same amount of women in government as men. This kind of head counting only gets us so far. There are leftovers from yesterday all over the place and we need to be more radical. In creating a new way of thinking we of course have to use the tools of feminism. Few –isms, I dare say, have gone further in questioning established truths and putting a question mark behind every decision. To apply feminism in crisis situations and problem solving is a very hard thing to do. We have not achieved it in Iceland or in any other country in the world for that matter. Feminism's inability to be a mainstream way of thinking is perhaps its greatest strength, after all. Feminism has to be radical to bite and to evolve, but radical solutions are rare in democratic societies. At least they take more time to implement than it takes to solve a recession. Even with that knowledge I am convinced that we should never settle for slow progress. We always have to be radical, impatient and perhaps a little bit annoying. Even at times very annoying!

In our feminist reflections and on women´s role in creating a fair society, we have to seek strength in the women who preceded us. As I stand here I of course think of women like Clara Zetkin and other pioneers in our battle for women empowerment. Clara Zetkin and Lenin had an ongoing debate through letters about the role of women in the revolution. Lenin, as so many men since, was convinced of the importance of women joining the battle and claimed that when the socialist society had become a reality, the inequality between men and women would be history. Socialism would solve the problem and the best way for women to struggle for gender equality was to join the socialist movement. Of course the battle for equality amongst everyone is a battle for gender equality as well, but, as we have learned over the past years, and as Clara Zetkin seemed to know, gender equality never comes without intense struggle. It can never be considered as a by-product of anything else.

In the sixties and seventies, women were active within the socialist movement but when they got tired of making coffee for the presumed revolutionaries they began their own fight. This is what happened in Iceland with the Women´s party and the Red stocking movement. Although working within the traditional frame of parliamentary democracy, the women´s party was very radical in criticizing the power play in society and challenging the tendency of power ending in the hands of only few people. Maybe this is our greatest challenge, to deconstruct power, analyze it and fight against it. We have to be very aware of the danger of walking into the patriarchical system. It is easy to think that we have achieved something significant when we count equal heads of women and men. The head counting, however, is more a symbol of the real situation, not a goal in itself. We have to use all of the radical feminist tools we have, to fight for the real power of women in the reconstruction after capitalism. When I talk of power, I mean the equal ability for women and men to have an impact on the society they live in and to control their own lives. This only happens with the joint forces of socialism and feminism hand in hand.

As we reconstruct a society after the ruins of capitalism it is good to bear this in mind and to learn from the experience of the heroic women before us. Never sit down and think that anything comes without a fight – not even if you're a member of a feminist party.
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Re: Gender and the crisis in Iceland

Postby sam » Mon Mar 15, 2010 1:49 pm

Thanks for this. A few years ago I read a similar argument made about why Norwegian men were "abandoning" politics to women, turning instead to more lucrative business opportunities, usually in natural resource exploitation.

There was a political position in Connecticut that always had businessmen vying for the small position. The men wanted not just the salary but the networking contacts to build their businesses, and they were not being good public servants in the position. In the late 1990s the municipality decided to keep responsibilities the same but reduced the salary to a symbolic $100 a year, diminishing the position's attractiveness to male power players. Then the first woman occupied that public servant position.
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

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Re: Gender and the crisis in Iceland

Postby berryblade » Mon Mar 15, 2010 9:21 pm

This article is fucking brilliant.
I'll feel no fear or hate as I commit menocide
Kill your masters.
'Menocide' - Otep Shamaya
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