Woman-Nation-State

by Nira Yuval-Davis (Contributor)

This book examines the place of women within ethnic and national communities in nine different societies, and the ways in which the state intervenes in their lives. Contributions from a group of scholars examine the situations in their religious, economic and historical context.

185 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[irmoki · Rating 5 out of 5]

A multinational perspective on the ‘woman-nation-state’ question. Far from ethnocentric, each perspective comes from a post colonial place and makes for a very enjoyable read.

[cindabella · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel I learned a lot from this book there is so much that has been documented historically that is still relevant today.

I was introduced to the Russian term ‘natsíonal’ nost’ and its Hebrew equivalent ‘Leumiut', neither of which translate directly into English. The meaning is an individual’s membership in a collectivity which is inherited from their parents, which differs to the terms nationality and ethnicity as it is not the legal relationship between an individual and a specific state and it is also ‘not limited to minority or subordinate groups, but constitutes a major parameter of social relationships’. The authors suggest that this ‘relationship to the state has to be problematized and theorized and not assumed’.

If nation states didn’t import people from elsewhere would there be such a varied national accent? For example, the difference between the Liverpool accent and London accent, so much difference on so many levels and yet according to nationalistic discourse individuals from both regional populations are united through a perceived shared nationality of Englishness, that is reinforced through the education system and media.

‘The condensation of women's identity within the family is accompanied by a failure to recognise the complexity of state regulation of motherhood.’

This quote is taken from Chapter 10, Women on the Family – The Foundation of a New Italy’ but could be applied to any nation state. The book uses examples of several nation states and demonstrates using evidence how women are used as breeders of the population to provide a military for the state, a labour force and a continued supply of women to provide sexual gratification for men, as Silvia Federici has noted in her book also, free access to sex for the 'youngest and most rebellious male workers' meant less rebellious male workers that were easier to control'.

Woman-Nation-State says it is important to consider the state in terms of its intentions and in terms of effects. For example, in ethnically diverse nations it is to maintain or change existing demographic patterns.

When quoting the 1949 British Royal Commission on Population;

‘Immigration on a large scale into a fully established society like ours could only be welcomed...if the immigrants were good human stock and were not prevented by religion or race from intermarrying with the host population and becoming merged with it’.

This is further reinforced as a policy to effectively change the face of the nation whilst still maintaining a majority demographic of perceived ‘whiteness’ by testimonies of black women who received coercion by health workers who encouraged birth control, sterilizations and abortions in efforts to control their fertility in comparison to white women.

Chapter 3, ‘Women, Nation and the State in Australia’, talks about the first 50 female ‘assisted immigrants’ to Australia in 1831 from another of Britain’s colonies, namely Ireland, who were expected to;

‘exert a sobering influence over the moral debauchery held to be rampant in the colony as a result of the excess single men; they were to become the wives of laboring men and mothers of their children and they were to provide menial domestic (later factory) labor in the homes and industries of the colonial elite’.

The same chapter references the more recent growth in the Filipino marriage market where Australian men ‘are now looking for Asian brides to fulfil what they see as the traditional role of a wife’. Again the intent of the state by enabling this has to be considered as well as the effects.

Chapter 9 makes note that there is always the possibility of sexual harrassent when females are in the same environment as men so again the intent and effects of this enabling by the state needs to be considered.

The book uses examples of how ‘much of the breeding that engaged white women during the last years of the 19th century provided the grim fodder for the slaughter at Gallipolli and France between 1914-1918. Over 333,770 men went overseas and 63,163 or nearly 1 in 5 died in active service. Only 1 in 3 escaped wounds, capture or death’.