Are They Speaking for Themselves or Being Spoken for? ebook

Permission is granted to use the publication Are They Speaking for Themselves or Being Spoken For? In Search of the Identities of Professional Female Politicians: A Theoreticaland Empirical Study under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) licence – provided that this licence information is retained and Weronika Żybura and University Civitas are indicated as the owners of the text. The text of the licence is available on the website: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.pl

Reviewers:

dr hab. Małgorzata Molęda-Zdziech, professor at SGH, Warsaw School of Economics

dr hab. Irena Pańków, professor at ISP PAN, University Civitas in Warsaw

Editor: Marek Gawron

Translation: Barbara Komorowska

Typographic design and layout: Marek W. Gawron

Cover design: Aleksandra Jaworowska, [email protected]

e-ISBN: 978-83-66386-54-9 (pdf)

e-ISBN: 978-83-66386-55-6 (PDF is compliant with WCAG 2.1 guidelines)

e-ISBN: 978-83-66386-56-3 (epub)

DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.31323463

The publication of this volume has been co-financed by a subsidy from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland) under the auspices of the Excellent Science II – Support for scientific monographs programme, grant number MONOG/SN/0083/2024/02.

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Preface – on Persistent Absence: Research Intuitions

Despite the social perception that the role of women has changed over the past decades, their participation in public life remains low.

In the European Parliament, women constitute 41% (GUS 2023a). In 2019, the percentage of women in the Sejm in Poland was 28% and 24% in the Senate.1 In no political grouping active on the Polish political scene in 2019 did women constitute half of its members of parliament (Szczęśniak 2019). The participation of women in local government authorities is also low: in poviat2 councils and provincial assemblies, they constitute less than 30%. Very few women hold the offices of commune heads, mayors and city presidents – in 2022, they occupied 12% of these positions (GUS 2023b). Inequality is also indicated by the fact that women much less frequently hold high positions in parliament (e.g., speakers and vice-speakers of the Sejm and Senate and chairs of committees) compared to men (Czarnacka 2021a: 127–128). As for the media, men more often comment on events in broadcasts and TV programmes on current affairs and are the authors of most press materials (IMM 2020).

Among the causes of this are structural conditions (the resources of time, money and skills which are unequally distributed in society), institutional conditions (including the type of electoral law, the advancement of democratization, the method of selecting political representation and the level of party competition) and cultural conditions (stereotypes, values, traditional vs. egalitarian views on gender roles, religion and socialization). ‘Women-friendly’ procedures and solutions are being proposed and implemented to increase female representation in institutions, including proportional representation, large constituencies, high electoral thresholds, quotas and parity on party lists. Do these measures touch on the essence of the problem, the actual cause of exclusion? This doubt has been one of the inspirations for this publication.

Political discourse has been formally opened for women and today, in democratic countries, they have the same rights to participate in political life as men. The definition of women’s role in society and their self-identification, that is, the way they perceive this role, have also changed. However, despite women’s formal equal rights, the growing acceptance of their political activity and readiness to take such actions, they still constitute the minority in public life. Not only are there more male than female politicians, but men hold higher, more decisive, exposed and prestigious positions. Women remain underrepresented at the higher levels of the political, economic, religious, military and academic hierarchies.

Why are there still so few women in politics? How do the supposedly universal and neutral categories of democratic-liberal discourse – presented as self-evident – establish boundaries that remain difficult for many to cross? It is possible to formulate several research intuitions, the scientific verification of which has become the basis of this book.

I suppose that the sources of women’s underrepresentation in politics should be sought deeper beneath the surface, beneath the external layer of formally equal rights. Among the likely causes of this situation are the criteria of membership, which are not directly expressed and articulated, yet are embedded in the deep structure of public discourse, shaping the conditions of access in ways that tend to disadvantage women more than men. If this is indeed the case, then institutional measures alone for increasing women’s activity in the public sphere will fall short of addressing the problem. What is needed is a critical examination of these deeper causes of exclusion.

Moreover, I suspect that the difficulties women face in politics – the limitations they encounter in their professional activities and in articulating their identities – are also rooted in the status of the Other, the stranger, that continues to be assigned to them despite social and cultural changes. Female politicians are entering unknown, hostile territory. Politics remains a male world, a stereotypically male form of activity. A politician continues to be a male profession – a figure characterized by masculine traits. It is interesting and worth examining how female politicians who enter this traditionally male-dominated sphere construct their professional identities amid ambiguous expectations and criteria. What elements – traits, references, strategies, or stereotypes – do they draw upon in forming their political selves?

Another intuition is that the presence of these still few women does not necessarily mean that politics is changing and becoming different. I question whether the widely held public expectation – that women will change politics for the better – is justified. How should we understand this assumption? Does the increasing numerical representation of women truly challenge the patriarchal structure of political institutions? Do female politicians employ any discursive strategies that can suggest a qualitative shift in political discourse – some linguistic measures that can be interpreted as emancipatory and empowering women in the world of politics subordinated to male values and experiences?

Finally, the increasingly visible presence of topics related to the feminist political agenda (such as equal rights, reproductive rights, counteracting violence, and political representation) in political media narratives can be seen as ‘suspicious’. Does this mean that the discourse is changing: becoming more open and inclusive? Can we talk about undermining the patriarchal status quo? This opening may be apparent, constituting a strategy for ‘taming’ threads that threaten the order of discourse and for subordinating and categorizing them within the framework of an unchanging structure of power. It is worth trying to deconstruct and undermine this strategy.

The list of research intuitions requiring scientific confirmation should also include the extremely important context in which today’s female politicians operate. The mediatization of politics – the subordination of the political field to the logic of action and the habitus of the media – means that the rules of the game in the field of politics have changed. And politicians – regardless of gender – must respond to this change. Power remains at stake in this area but the position in this competition is determined, as one might suspect, by new competences: media literacy and a specific media personality. To exist in the voters’ consciousness, politicians – both men and women – need to develop the habitus of a celebrity.

What does this mean for women? Is the gender of a politician – a celebrity, a ‘fast thinker’ and a ‘seller of platitudes’ – no longer (so) important? Or maybe there is a change in expectations towards a politician, who no longer must fit into a role model defined by male characteristics, but must be, above all, media-friendly – physically attractive, seductive, ready to comment on any topic and allow access to their privacy?

Following this line of thought, one might ask whether the habitus of a celebrity – unlike the traditional gender habitus – is easier for women to cultivate. Perhaps this is because the dominant criteria for evaluating political actors have shifted: no longer rooted primarily in gendered stereotypes or the traditional roles assigned to women, but in media visibility, performative expressiveness, the ability to attract attention, and overall media appeal. After all, it seems that female politicians, to no lesser extent than men, can be expressive, blunt, radical and capable of providing journalists with ‘clicks’.

I will put the last, most disturbing assumption as follows: Is it not the case that women, when entering politics, can do, say and change less than they (we) think? Is change possible at all? To what extent is it possible? Referring to the words of Didier Eribon (2013: 224), which are the motto of this book and given the determinist structure of discourse and the mechanisms of power and control inscribed in it, to what extent are the autonomy and agency of an individual possible? Is there a way out of ‘imprisonment in habitus’? Or maybe all that remains is a slight shift, distance, a step to the side?

Introduction: The Assumptions and Structure of the Study

The subject of this monograph is the discrimination of women in the public sphere. The study presented herein was conducted between 2016 and 2018, during one of the many episodes of political conflict surrounding women’s reproductive rights – a conflict that has only grown in significance after the analysis was completed.

The context of the study encompasses processes and phenomena such as the mediatization and theatricalization of politics, the aestheticization of public identities, the demassification and personalization of political messaging – driven by the rapid development of social media – interactivity and competition for the attention of an audience, increasingly overstimulated with information. These are accompanied by deep political polarization and the rise of populist rhetoric.

All these processes, crucial for the analysis of the media discourse, have accelerated and intensified in recent years. Today, the notion of ‘gender’ in political media communication evokes even more intense emotions and controversies than just a few years ago. Opponents of gender equality policies are visibly mobilized. These developments are reflected in the growing importance of the anti-gender discourse in Poland (Graff, Korolczuk 2022). How do these narratives infiltrate political debate in the media, and how do they shape the strategies through which women – still underrepresented in this sphere – construct their professional identities?

The research problem at the core of this publication concerns the discursive conditions shaping the participation of women in Polish politics. My goal was to identify and describe the conditions in which female politicians articulate their professional identities from the perspective of the cultural and social conditions of gender. I formulated the following thesis: how female politicians’ professional identities are constructed in press interviews reinforces the patriarchal structure of political and media discourse. Both the discursive mechanisms at play and the self-presentation strategies employed by female politicians reproduce the subordinate position of women in politics. The main theoretical assumptions underpinning this study concerned three issues: first, the patriarchal structure underlying both the media and political fields; second, the gender conditions shaping female politicians’ strategies for constructing their professional identities; and third, an individual’s active role in creating their identity through linguistic practices within discourse.

The study aimed to uncover the mechanisms through which cultural femininity is produced and maintained within the political discourse of the Polish press, focusing on selected high-circulation mainstream daily and weekly publications with diverse ideological profiles. The research material consisted of existing content: written texts – specifically, political press interviews. I analysed 61 media statements given by 35 women active on the Polish political scene – leading and recognizable female politicians representing right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties. The study examines how Polish female politicians construct their professional identities within the androcentric field of politics and what linguistic strategies they employ in building their professional ‘selves’. I proposed a set of categories to organize these political self-identifications and scenarios that women active in Polish politics adopt or distance themselves from.

The overarching question addressed in this study concerns how the professional identities of female politicians were articulated in the context of gendered cultural and social conditions, as reflected in Polish press discourse between 2016 and 2018. The study focused on content published in daily newspapers: Rzeczpospolita, Gazeta Wyborcza and Gazeta Polska Codziennie, as well as in weekly publications: Newsweek Polska, Polityka, Wprost, Sieci and Do Rzeczy.

The specific questions were as follows:

1. What discursive mechanisms of constructing female politicians’ professional identities appear in the analysed press interviews?

2. How were topics related to the feminist political agenda categorized in the analysed press interviews?

3. What stereotypically feminine and masculine traits and roles did female politicians reference when articulating their professional identities in press interviews?

The book is divided into two main parts: a theoretical section and an empirical-analytical section.

The structure of the theoretical part is organized around two key issues: the definition of gender and the role of the cultural and social conditions of gender in political discourse.

Chapter One offers a conceptualization of the category of gender within the agency-determinism dimension and reflects on the extent to which gender constitutes a stable, unchanging characteristic of the actor, or rather a space of free, agentive expression. The chapter also discusses this concept understood as a political category – a project of social change. It concludes by proposing a definition of gender adopted for this book. This conceptualization treats gender as dynamic and performative, as well as relatively stable – an element embedded within the broader cultural order.

In Chapter Two, the category of gender is discussed as a feature of political discourse, a characteristic of this field of social activity. The conceptualization of political discourse is grounded in the sociological theories of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman and Anthony Giddens. The chapter addresses the gender conditions of Polish political discourse, considering influences stemming from both liberal and conservative ideological assumptions.

The empirical-analytical part of the study consists of three chapters: a methodological chapter, an analytical chapter, and a chapter summarizing the research findings.

The methodological chapter outlines the analytical approach adopted in the study. A key challenge was to identify a research method capable of analysing political discourse both as a structure that determines the actions of subjects and as a site of agency in which those actions, while conditioned by the structure, are not fully determined by it. The methodological decisions taken in the study were aimed at establishing an analytical framework that simultaneously accounts for the influence of the mechanisms of control and discipline and for the space of agency available to active subjects.

The next part of the methodological chapter describes the type of discourse that constitutes the subject of analysis. A political media interview is characterized as a type of game in which the stakes involve symbolic power and the possibility of imposing one’s own definitions of the situation.

In addition to the mediatization of politics, the context in which female politicians’ linguistic practices are analysed includes the patriarchal structure of society. These practices, which are the subject of the study, are described from the perspective of the dominant values and modes of action rooted in men’s experiences in both the media and political fields. The local conditions of Polish political discourse are also considered: the structure of the political scene during the studied period and the deep polarization between the ruling party and the opposition.

The analytical chapter is composed of three parts, each corresponding to the hierarchy of the research questions. The first describes the mechanisms through which female politicians’ professional identities are constructed in press interviews. The second analyses how topics related to feminism are framed and categorized in these interviews. The third focuses on how politically active women construct their professional identities in press discourse by referring to stereotypical gender traits and roles. This section concludes with an exploration of the motivations cited by the interviewees – what prompted them to enter the public sphere – as key to understanding their decision to engage in politics.

The chapter devoted to conclusions discusses the research results. This part of the work interprets the discursive mechanisms identified in the analysed press interviews and proposes hypotheses that provide answers to the research questions. To sum up the analysis, the Polish press discourse is described as guarding the androcentric order through diverse, often subtle, mechanisms disciplining female identities.

At the end of the work, the theoretical assumptions of the monograph are considered again. The research results are placed in a theoretical field defined by the following concepts: Foucault’s ‘discourse understood as power’; Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘internalized habitus’; Goffman’s ‘interaction order’ and stigma, which open up the structures to change; and Giddens’s ‘agency’ and ‘reflexivity’ of a subject. Women remain different despite changes in how they are perceived and the social acceptance of their slowly growing presence in politics and political bodies. They continue to experience stigma – although often subtle and not directly expressed – and the related uncertainty and caution, which are the features of their professional identities, as well as a challenge and a burden in their everyday professional activity.

* * *

This monograph is based on my doctoral thesis, which I defended at Collegium Civitas in December 2022.

I am grateful to the late dr hab Hanna Palska, professor at Collegium Civitas, for her support in preparing this dissertation and for believing in my abilities. I also thank Dr Barbara Markowska and the participants of the seminar for doctoral students she led for the inspiration, constructive criticism and motivation that I drew from these meetings.

I would also like to thank my doctoral supervisor, Professor Stanisław Mocek, for his time as well as his substantive and organizing comments that helped me complete my work. I also express my warmest thanks to Marek Gawron, the editor in charge of this publication, for his support, understanding and patience. I thank University (previously: Collegium) Civitas for its financial and organizational support in bringing this work into the scientific discourse.

1. Are they Speaking for Themselves or Being Spoken For? Gender Between Agency and Determinism?

How does social and cultural gender influence the linguistic behaviours through which female politicians construct their professional identities? How is this reflected in the public images they create? Does the masculine character of political discourse subordinate articulation of women’s identities to unchanging pressures and expectations? Or is gender (also) a space for improvisation and individual expression? A space for speaking for themselves and not where they are just being spoken for?

There is no single definition of the concept of gender. Being a broad category, it does not refer to one element or one sphere of activity. It is a feature of an individual, interactions, relationships, structures and social institutions. Gender is a cognitive and political category, a scientific and ideological perspective, and a project of a political utopia. It is also a concept that is used in everyday language to describe everyday experiences. In public debate, but also in scientific discourse, gender is used as a mental shortcut to describe many phenomena, processes, and relations in various – theoretical, political, and daily – orders. Hence, there are many ambiguities regarding this term.

Sorting out the ambiguity of the concept of gender is the first step in the research project presented in this publication.

1.1. Gender as a Characteristic of the Actor, the Performance, and the Stage

In social sciences, gender refers to socio-cultural characteristics. This category is defined as an arbitrarily imposed social and psychological construct that includes personality traits, social roles, stereotypes, expectations, and ideas about masculinity and femininity. Gender has a set of meanings and refers to behaviours culturally identified with men and women at a given time and place, internalized through socialization and not resulting directly from biological differences between male and female bodies. The category is related to other dimensions, such as class, race, and age (Bem 1993: 9).

Gender functions at all levels of social structure, which is why going beyond its socio-cultural definition, most commonly in science, and looking at it as both a feature of an individual and a quality of interaction, an interpersonal relation and an attribute of social institutions is justified.

Firstly, gender is a feature of an individual – an actor. This concept refers to an individual’s subjective experience, a set of attributes possessed by them, their psychological orientation, and a filter through which they pass their own experiences. At the same time, as a socially constructed category, gender is external to an individual and dependent on the social context – it contains social expectations formulated towards men and women. It is therefore historically and culturally conditioned.

This way of defining gender draws attention to its normative and disciplinary nature – it is a set of social beliefs not only about what femininity and masculinity are but also what they should be. Gender determines what is the ‘proper’ and ‘appropriate’ form of being a man and a woman in society, which behaviours and attitudes are socially rewarded and which are subject to regulation and discipline.

In the individualistic approach, gender is among the foundations of social identity defined as a configuration of social influences and individual decisions. Gender identity is among the basic criteria of identification by a community, and ‘identification with gender is one of the most important dimensions of building one’s own identity’ (Titkow 2007: 41).

Shaping identity and acquiring the norms, standards, behaviours, roles, and values which are considered appropriate for men and women in a given society takes place in the process of lifelong socialization, within institutions such as the family, school, religious organizations, media, the state, labour market and social groups. Socialization determines what self-image an individual will have, what idea of their place in the world they will accept, what they will consider appropriate and adequate for themselves and what is inappropriate and improper.

The internalization of behaviours ascribed to the culturally assigned gender leads individuals to interpret themselves in cultural terms – identifying with the definitions of femininity and masculinity3 and internalizing the belief in the ‘natural’ character of gender and its associated traits. The desired effect of this process is the embodiment of cultural gender – the implementation of beliefs about one’s gender that define an unsurpassable horizon of possible and impossible aspirations and behaviours of an individual (Zawadzka 2014).

This definition of gender, which is applied in social sciences, places the category of socio-cultural gender in the relationship between an individual and their environment. In this approach, this phenomenon is understood primarily as an individual quality. However, using gender as an analytical category requires not only focusing on an individual and their experience but also understanding the specific relationships between the positions an individual occupies in the social structure and the resulting practices. It is also necessary to look at these practices as elements of the social structure – to understand their conditions and how they are reproduced and transformed in time and space.

Therefore, secondly, gender is inscribed in a script – in a role that an actor has to play. Understanding gender as a feature of interaction relates this concept to the system of social, interpersonal classification, which allows for the identification of a partner in this relationship in terms of social expectations, stereotypes, and gender norms.4

Erving Goffman (1959) compares interaction to a performance in a play – actors play their roles on stage, in specific decorations and according to a previously mastered script. Gender is a feature of each such performance. Male or female costume is a basic, largely unintentional signal that defines the interpersonal situation during the first impression. A culturally feminine or masculine pattern of action is the primary or secondary thread of each interpersonal encounter. As Goffman writes (1967: 5–15), when skilfully conducted by actors and actresses, this thread makes it possible to control the impression made, achieve the goal of the interaction and present oneself as an attractive, convincing, and coherent character. Goffman’s theatrical metaphor uses gender as a façade, which is the part of a performance that an individual maintains for its duration – ‘the items of expressive equipment … that we most intimately identify with the performer himself and that we naturally expect will follow the performer wherever he goes’ (Goffman 1959: 24). The façade includes such features as costume, appearance, and manner. The imperative inherent in interaction is to communicate and present oneself in a way that is acceptable to others, which is why actors try to maintain a coherent self-image and avoid dissonance. Contradictions and shortcomings within the façade cause troublesome tension, anxiety, confusion, embarrassment, or fear. The social definition of femininity and masculinity is therefore a script worth mastering and perfecting.

Anticipatory socialization means that an individual who is aware of social (the audience’s) expectations and effective ‘stage tricks’ can direct their performance in such a way as to give the intended impression. An actor and actress enter into successive interactions with a preformed idea of the audience’s expectations, with knowledge of cultural stereotypes and conventions of male and female behaviour. Importantly, the audience does not have to be physically present. Internalized social expectations control the appropriate performance of gendered scripts even in a situation where an individual is alone on stage. Sandra Bartky (1997: 148) notes that although women no longer live locked up in their homes and are not subject to the authority of their husbands, they still feel constantly judged by men. When women are being judged against their will is an expression of men’s social authority over women.

Referring to Goffman’s theatrical metaphors requires the following remark. Understanding gender as a stage mask that people use in both everyday interactions and when performing for a wider audience does not mean that it is false, nor does it mean that it can be taken off or replaced with another mask at any time. Masks are not so much put on, they become part of individuals – acting is not a deception, but a feature of human behaviour.

In this approach, relational identity means that human actions are socially conditioned and that a person does not express their nature but adopts behaviours related to a given social situation or gender. The expression of specific features, as if they resulted from nature, is the effect of social training. Men and women express not so much the essence of masculinity and femininity as a set of immanent features, but the readiness and inclination to present themselves within the framework of conventions that are subject to constant change and negotiation. An actor therefore has a limited ability to reject the gender mask, ‘Through social discipline, then, a mask of manner can be held in place from within’ (Goffman 1959: 57).

In other words, the audience’s expectations are relatively unchanging and clearly defined here; a good actor should take them into account, respect them and try not to disappoint. Experiments with a gendered costume and script are risky from the perspective of the reception of such stage expression. Thus, the gendered façade treated as an embodiment and reflection of the official values of a given society is a tool for reproducing a social order based on differences and inequalities. Female and male behaviours consistent with expectations create a kind of ceremony in the sense that they constitute a public expression of the renewal and confirmation of a community’s moral values.

Thirdly, gender turns out to be a script in a specific performance – in a story about hierarchy and inequality between people. Defining gender as a property of social interactions draws attention to the ordering and hierarchizing function of this construct. In this approach, gender should also be understood as a category employed to establish relations between people, both men and women, as well as between representatives of the same sex (Wharton 2005). The entanglement of each interpersonal relationship in gender assumes its participants have different access to social, cultural and symbolic resources. In this sense, gender is a power relation in a patriarchal society – a mechanism of social hierarchization that universally and cross-culturally places men and women in a dominant-subordinate relationship.

The relationality of gender means that understanding what femininity is requires understanding what masculinity is. Dominant cultural ideas related to sex, expectations and stereotypes apply equally to men5 and women (Bradley 2007: 14–26). An order based on gender inequalities is internalized by both those who impose this order and those who are subordinate to it. The social and symbolic oppression of men is manifested in expectations that they will live up to the ideal of masculine behaviour created by culture, which includes hierarchy, violence and control. The cultural construction of masculinity assumes that men will be characterized by such traits as authority, agency, prestige, courage, aggression and physical strength. Masculinity means the need to be dominant and conquering, yet simultaneously stoic and composed (Skucha 2014a, 2014b). In other words, the need to constantly ‘prove’ that one is a ‘real man’ and to fulfil ‘self-evident’ obligations (e.g., of a breadwinner) makes cultural masculinity no less burdensome and oppressive than feminine gender (Bourdieu 2001: 5–42).

Understanding gender in relational terms means seeing it as internally complex – as many different ‘femininities’ and ‘masculinities’ that also enter relations of domination and subordination. ‘Emphasized femininity’ and ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 1987: 183) are culturally preferred patterns that, by virtue of ‘self-evidence’, are maintained as dominant, naturally superior to other, alternative models and better in normative terms. These socially constructed ideal types are supposed to be an expression of aspirations and a set of patterns, and are symbolically, politically and economically favoured, reproduced and disseminated by various institutions – family, school, state, economy and Church.

Fourthly, and finally, gender is a characteristic of the stage on which the performance takes place – it is a feature of a social system as a whole, as well as an attribute of the individual institutions that create it. Gender is a characteristic of social reality that is perceived as self-evident and not subject to criticism or questioning (Wharton 2005: 6–10). This approach relates this category to how members of a community are distinguished and stratified based on biological differences and the cultural meanings written over them. Here, gender is an indicator of identification and a mechanism of regularly marked division between people. It is a criterion that orders and organizes a community by assigning different social roles (division of labour), attributes and patterns of behaviour to individuals.

Gender as a feature of institutions refers to the understanding of the organization of work, family, school, media and politics as gender-oriented. Institutions defined as the social rules of the game, taken for granted and sustained by shared beliefs are, in fact, built on cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity (Wharton 2005: 17–39). The shape they take is a response to the social notion of the individuals who create them as having certain characteristics resulting from their biological constitution (particularly their role in reproduction).

Importantly, the institutions that shape and reproduce the social (and symbolic) order are gendered both when they treat men and women differently and when they treat them the same – because in the latter situation, different experiences related to gender are omitted.

Gender is therefore not only a feature of an individual but also a system of practices that exists independently of them. It is an attribute of interpersonal relations and social institutions, a cultural property of (all) social structures and the cultural and historical processes that, usually unconsciously, create them, as well as their unintentional effects.

A proposal for integrating the described theoretical approaches is Ken Wilber’s model of the analysis of social phenomena (as quoted in: Czub 2006), which makes it possible to capture the dynamics of the relationship between the individual, interactive (relational) and social dimensions of gender.

And so, on an individual level, which refers to the inner world of an individual (the intentional dimension), gender should be considered as a subjective experience, a mental construction and a structure of the ‘self’. Examining these mental states from the perspective of their external manifestations (the behavioral dimension) shifts the focus to empirically observable behaviors. The third plan proposed by Wilber (the cultural dimension) conceptualizes gender as a property of a cultural environment, encompassing the worldviews and values shared, understood and communicated by a community. Finally, the fourth approach (the social dimension) allows for describing gender as a social system and a feature of institutions reflecting the values and culture of a community.

This selection of approaches to gender seeks to demonstrate that gender is one of the key factors shaping individual experiences – such as that of an actor or actress – as well as the functioning of broader social structures, including the theatre and the individual’s role within it, particularly as embodied in performance.

1.2. Gender as a Political Perspective: A Scenario of Change

Gender can also be defined as a project of a differently organized world and an idea for change. Treated as a set of sociological connections, the concept of gender is necessary for understanding the differentiation and hierarchy of social phenomena. As a scientific theory of change and conflict, gender makes it possible to analyse the reproduced asymmetry between social actors. The deconstructivist approach to culture adopted in gender studies reveals the mechanisms of the creation and persistence of gender difference and identity, thus opening up the possibility of cultural change. The practical involvement of studies on the cultural conditions of gender and their interventionist nature means that gender should also be considered as a political category. As Browne writes:

If, however, various differences between the sexes are considered negligible and do not justify substantially different social outcomes for each, then we are faced with what must be institutional prejudices and discriminatory traditions as the causes of inequality, and ought to orientate our political practices accordingly. (2007: 3)

Gender is a political category in the sense that it makes it possible not only to study differences between femininity and masculinity but also to analyse the significance of the asymmetry between them and the mechanisms that allow them to be maintained. As a category containing both difference and inequality, gender is politically and socially directed and defined. It describes reality – it discovers hidden, neutralized or justified inequalities – and at the same time calls for change. As a political project, gender is ‘a kind of condensed script that allows individuals and groups who develop it to learn about, convincingly interpret and change some area of social reality in line with their non-self-evident interests’ (Graczyk 2014: 407).

Gender mainstreaming is a political project aimed at searching for strategies and indicating political actions that deal with the problem of exclusion and discrimination based on gender. It involves including the issue of equality in the mainstream of socio-political activities.

It is also an international strategy developed to achieve equality between men and women in all areas of political, social and economic life (Limanowska 2014). Representatives of various trends in feminist political philosophy explain in diverse ways the social, economic and cultural conditions of the limitations that women encounter in the public sphere and also propose different ways of solving them (Majewska 2014a; Phillips 1991). These proposals share a vision of change, oriented at the interests and needs of women, which considers their multidimensional conditions and is also based on some common foundation.

Viewing social reality from the perspective of the cultural conditions of gender makes it possible to see the gendered nature of the norms, values, mechanisms and standards deemed neutral and to consider them as serving to justify inequality and reflecting the difference in power. The idea of politics and active engagement in the reconstruction of the existing reality and the removal or reduction of inequalities, which is inscribed in this kind of narrative, can constitute the basis of group interest, an impulse for self-organization and the legitimization of collective actions (Phillips 1993).6

However, despite its emancipatory potential, socio-cultural gender is a problematic basis for building a collective identity. The universal character of the category of group interest was questioned within the framework of the third wave of feminism in favour of the interests of individual groups of women (Titkow 2014). Being the basis for constructing an individual identity, gender proves to be insufficient as a basis for creating a collective identity. In practice, women mobilize based on a set of characteristics, such as race, class or religion, and their collective identity must be constantly reinforced and constructed (Krasuska 2014).

Gender is therefore a quality of a system of social practices, the essence of which is to create and maintain the differences between men and women and to organize relations of inequality based on this distinction. At the same time, recognition of these inequalities involves opposition to them. As a political category, gender undermines the patriarchal order and projects social change.

1.3. A Negotiable Scenario: The Approach to Gender Adopted in This Monograph

Gender is a deeply internalized identification inscribed in an individual’s identity. It also defines scripts of interaction, constitutes a definition of a situation and is a role and a prop used by social actors. It is an important and one of the first noticeable clues that allow them to orient themselves in everyday life.

This category is also a feature of institutions – a type of ‘track’ that individual behaviours ‘safely’ follow. Following institutionalized norms of behaviour gives a sense of belonging and of being accepted.

Gender also influences what I see, how I see and what I cannot or do not know how to see as a researcher and observer.

Finally, it is a problem and a challenge in the sense that it assumes not so much difference, but inequality which demands action and change.

Gender is a characteristic of all levels and domains of social life. The complexity and heterogeneity of this construct justify moving beyond a single definition in order to delineate its theoretical framework

The use of the gender category in research requires a researcher to take a stance on several issues.

Firstly, it is important to decide how the concept of gender, understood as a socio-cultural construct, refers to biological reality. By proposing later in the text to consider the approach to gender on the biological determinism vs. gender socialization axis, I intend to define my approach towards the question of the extent to which the differences between men and women are innate and the degree to which they are acquired.

Secondly, the use of the category of gender necessitates addressing the question of conditioning. To what extent is gender a construct of a determining nature – normative, disciplinary, or even oppressive – and to what extent can an individual assume a creative and active role in relation to it? This dimension has been conceptualized as the interplay between individual agency and social structure.

Thirdly, the variability and liquidity of gender defined as action should be reconciled with the permanent features of the gendered social structure within which this action takes place. Reference to the stability vs. variability dimension involves describing the category of gender as a multifaceted variable, dynamic and dependent on the context and individual experience, but also contained in relatively stable, scientifically observable norms, stereotypes and expectations.

In the biological determinism vs. gender socialization dimension, gender means answering the question of the extent to which differences between men and women result from acquired (consciously or not) and imposed patterns and the extent to which (if at all) they are innate and biological.

The biological paradigm considers sex, not gender. Sex is understood as a set of anatomical, physiological and bodily features. Differences between men and women are explained by a different hormonal balance, physiology, psyche and the anatomy of each sex. From this perspective, the innate conditions of the biological constitution are the cause of the different behaviours of men and women, the roles they play in society, the positions they occupy in the social hierarchy, the values that guide them and the goals they set for themselves (Hurley 2007).

Proponents of the cultural explanation of the differences between the genders take the position that they are a cultural construction resulting from acquired beliefs about masculinity and femininity learned during socialization. Gender socialization is the process of incorporating an individual into society, adopting gender characteristics and embedding these in their identity and self-concept (Wharton 2005: 17–49). Sally Haslanger (2000: 39) defines gender as a social category derived from biological sex, but having nothing in common with it. In the constructivist approach, gender is a projection of ideas about the characteristics proper to biological sex.

The definition of gender adopted in this work is located between these poles. The social definition of biological differences between the sexes is not – as Bourdieu (2001: 14) writes:

a simple recording of natural properties, directly offered to perception, [but] is the product of a construction process implying a series of oriented choices, or, more precisely, based on an accentuation of certain differences and the scotomization of certain similarities.

Given the constructivist (‘cultural enthusiasts’) and biological (‘nature proponents’) paradigms of understanding the differences between the sexes, the perspective adopted in this monograph involves analysing how culture develops, sharpens and increases the biological differences between the sexes. Cultural concepts of femininity and masculinity are understood as social and cultural practices, developed, often in a multilayered way, based on biological differences or the common idea of them.

It has been assumed that considering the conditions resulting from biological sex is necessary to understand the social construction of gender. In European and North American cultures, having an anatomical configuration of a man or a woman is important – in social perception, it is biology that determines gender affiliation, based on biological indicators. Even if we assume that these distinctions result from the social process of differentiation, observers decide whether they are dealing with a man or a woman. As Bourdieu (2001: 11) states, ‘… the social principle of vision constructs the anatomical difference and … this socially constructed difference becomes the basis and apparently natural justification of the social vision which founds it’.7

The dimensions of culture and biology interpenetrate, mutually condition one another and simultaneously influence how people function; none of them independently determines or explains the behaviour of an individual.

Outlining the theoretical framework of the concept of gender also requires referencing the dimension previously defined as individual action vs. social structure. It can also be described as follows: whether and to what extent is the cultural construction of gender a fate, a social fact passively absorbed by a subject, and to what extent is the subject active and agentic, negotiating the gendered costume that they put on?

A human being is to a large extent a ‘product’ of the social system that raises them from their earliest years. Socialization and acculturation within a family, school and peer environment aim to inscribe principles, norms, values and social expectations into the identity of an individual and to make these natural and self-evident ways of reacting to the world. Formulating the concept of symbolic violence, Bourdieu (2001: 33–42) assumes that, when a specific order is recognized as universal and self-evident, the social system is already internalized at the level of the body, affecting the deepest, corporeal level of functioning. The embodiment (somatization) of the social order means that the principles, norms, values and social expectations are inscribed in the body – they become internal necessities that manifest themselves already at the level of biological reactions. The need for acceptance and feelings of shame, uncertainty or fear are mechanisms that regulate how an individual navigates and performs in society, motivating them to act in accordance with external expectations. They constitute a type of unconscious practical knowledge that is responsible for sensing ‘one’s place’ in the social hierarchy.

This knowledge is embodied in the form of habitus – a quasi-natural disposition, a pattern of thinking that often seems immanent and takes on the appearance of a ‘second’ nature, pretending to be true (Bourdieu 2001: 8). Habitus is, however, an embodied social law, an acquired matrix of perceptions, thoughts and actions that allows us to perceive a world structured by relations of domination as self-evident, and the arbitrarinesses underlying it as natural phenomena that do not require legitimization (Bourdieu 2001: 24).

Habitus causes men and women to automatically and non-reflectively respond to social requirements, recognize relations of domination and not question them. Learning the mechanism of forming internal dispositions reproduces the world based on gender inequalities – writes Bourdieu (1984: 244). It is this compatibility between the habitus and the external world that maintains a social order grounded in relations of domination – the effectiveness of external necessities is based on the effectiveness of internal necessities.

In Jeremy Bentham’s concept of panopticism, to which Foucault (1995: 195–231) refers, the social system’s supervision of an individual means that they feel that they are being constantly watched. The apparatus of producing knowledge is an essential element of exercising power through visibility. The power-knowledge mechanisms make seemingly objective scientific discourses define the areas of norms in relation to every aspect of human life, and going beyond them – behaviours that are abnormal from the perspective of power – is the basis for exclusion from the social space and the implementation of corrective mechanisms.

Foucault (1981) defines reality as produced by discourses. Discursivization is a tool of power and control in the sense that knowledge, by influencing how individuals think, speak and act, serves to produce an order of things that is consistent with the goals of normative power. Gender is precisely such a system of regulation, a manifestation of the power’s normative control over an individual.

‘Normal’ behaviours of men and women from the point of view of the system of power do not require constant disciplinary supervision and correction through overt prohibitions and orders because the basic mechanism of correction is the individuals themselves. As knowledge of expectations related to gender (the regime of knowledge) is part of their identity and narrative about themselves, they constantly discipline themselves, adapting their actions to the requirements of the internalized observer. As Foucault (1995: 102) writes, it is ‘the submission of bodies through the control of ideas’. The power of discourse involves constructing gender subjects for whom cultural and social expectations related to gender are fundamental and affect who they are and who they can be.

In Bourdieu’s and Foucault’s concepts, an individual is socially and culturally determined. The ‘male’ and ‘female’ ways of functioning, deeply inscribed in the body, leave no room for free will and the active reception of external necessities. What is more, these necessities remain unconscious – the mechanisms of symbolic violence, internalized self-control and knowledge/power remain transparent, invisible and inscribed in how the world is perceived – thus leaving both the dominator and the dominated defenceless against their influence.

Giddens (1991: 75) sees the attitude of an individual towards the social world differently: ‘We are not what we are, but what we make of ourselves’ – he claims. Identity is not a passive thing, determined by external factors and an individual is not a passive object of cultural manipulation. According to the researcher, identity is a reflective project of a conscious, critical subject, actively seeking information and creatively transforming it. It is not social pressure, but an individual who is responsible for planning their life, choosing their way of being in the world and the trajectory of their own identity. Reflexivity is the property of a subject – their functioning in society involves continuously interpreting cultural messages, anticipating events, questioning ‘self-evidence’, searching for answers and re-evaluating.

In the face of the uprooting typical of modernity, the disappearance of tradition and faith in fate and destiny, on the one hand, and the almost unlimited number of competing possibilities, on the other, an individual chooses a lifestyle: such activities that most suitably reflect their needs. According to Giddens, the activity of a subject towards the social world is manifested in their ability to impose their own order on the diversity of messages, select information and thus take control over experience. The experienced world is therefore the effect of active procedures. Choice and active construction of identity are the main principles that determine an individual’s life.

Giddens characterizes the relationship of an individual with the social world as mutual permeation, intertwining. Actively creating oneself, an individual is not separated from the broader context of social events but responds to its normative expectations. At the same time, self-control, the implementation of which is the goal of society and the condition of its existence, is reflective and results from the trust of individuals in the institutions that create society. In addition to a sense of security and ‘normality’, the social milieu offers an individual the knowledge that is necessary to reflectively experience one’s life. This is not only about expert knowledge but also about screnarios mediated through the media and culture, from which one can draw inspiration.

Giddens’s concept of an agentic subject shows that gender identity and the behaviours that emanate from it are a compromise between the universal definitions of masculinity and femininity internalized in the process of socialization (acquired gender) and how each individual finds themselves in relation to these patterns (interpreted gender). These approaches show how an active subject creates their own gender identity. Here, gender is a socially constructed structure that is subject to constant transformation in the process of individual negotiations, remaining in a dynamic relationship with an active subject.

The definition of gender adopted for the purposes of this monograph is located between the poles described as social structure and individual action. Cultural socialization is not a mechanism that operates against a subject who passively and uncritically absorbs a message. The participant in the discourse is active and interprets themself in terms of culture (Środa 2003: 29–53). This influences how gender as a category is socially constructed and that they can choose some options and give up others.8 At the same time, their freedom of choice is limited and defined within certain frameworks.

The effect of negotiations between an individual and their cultural environment remains largely predictable because the process of building gender identity does not take place on neutral ground, but within the framework of a society based on gender divisions (Kimmel 2000). What is more, these are difficult negotiations. ‘There is always room for cognitive struggle over the meaning of the things of the world,’ writes Bourdieu (2001: 13), but ‘only a thoroughgoing process of countertraining, involving repeated exercises, can, like an athlete’s training, durably transform habitus’ (Bourdieu 2000: 172).

The operation of automated dispositions, which are often unconscious, inscribed in the body, (their ‘hypnotic power’) cannot be suspended by an effort of will alone. To question and undermine cultural ‘self-evidence’, it does not suffice to be aware of its arbitrariness.

As Tony Lawson (2007: 159) notes, the reality is:

… a structured open world. It is a conception which recognises that in our everyday practices we, all of us, as complexly structured, socially and culturally situated, purposeful and needy individuals, knowledgeably and capably negotiate complex, shifting, only partially grasped and contested structures of power, rules, relations and other possibly relatively enduring but nevertheless transient and action-dependent social resources at our disposal.

Therefore, if the ways of experiencing and performing gender in action are entangled in individual experiences, ‘passed through’ the individual structure of the ‘self’, whereas the norms, expectations and ideas about socio-cultural gender built into an individual’s identity usually remain unconscious, internalized and already inscribed in the automatic, non-reflective reactions of the body, how can we capture this changing, dynamic category in a research context?

Can we say that a concept that is constantly becoming, changing, liquid, performative, fragmentary and often operating beyond the boundaries of consciousness, exists at all? Can it be described and defined as provisional and unstable? These doubts boil down to the question: Can gender function as a research object? The positioning of the gender category in the dimension of stability vs. changeability is crucial because simultaneously it is a question of legitimizing the cognitive value of this category.

The term ‘performativity’ in relation to socio-cultural gender indicates that the meanings attributed to gender are intentionally and unintentionally constructed in discourse, variable and subject to shifts (doing gender). Gender is constructed through the daily repetition of words, gestures, norms and forms in all areas of social life, focused on the human body and its roles. These repetitions create a sense of ‘truthfulness’, self-evidence and coherence of the meanings attributed to masculinity and femininity. In other words, gender is (only) a matter of a strong, unquestionable belief in the substantial existence of gender, with no biological or cultural essence of gender existing. This understanding of gender performativity implies that within each repeated performance, there remains a space in which meanings can shift and where resistance to the culture of domination is revealed.9

In turn, the intersectionality of gender means that it remains in a dynamic relationship with other dimensions that define an individual’s identity and position in society. An individual’s identity is a point of intersection of various existential planes – material, symbolic, race, gender, age, class, nationality, etc. Gender is a layer of identity that coexists with other features, being one of the interdependent, overlapping systems of oppression (Hooks 2000; Krasuska 2014). The internal differentiation of gender does not make it possible – as third-wave feminists emphasize – to speak of a common experience of women (and certainly of men – the author’s note), a collective female consciousness or a common interest shared by women because this approach omits and excludes many aspects of femininity (Kuźma-Markowska 2014).10

However, the concept of social and cultural gender is embedded in the patterns, social expectations, ideas, ideals, codes and cultural clichés that form the shifting stream of meanings and behaviours and therefore manifests itself in relatively stable forms. An example of this form is the gender stereotype – a fixed, common idea in a given culture regarding the attributes, behaviours and social roles of men and women (Chybicka 2010).11

It is a relatively stable form of social self-knowledge, which, in the process of socialization, is built into individual self-knowledge – the concept of the ‘self’, self-esteem, self-perception, motivation and self-understanding (Kwiatkowska 2010). The gender stereotype is a symbolic representation that shapes and reflects the image of reality, which makes it possible to master it cognitively, order its complexity and make it communicable (Kurz 2014). It contains relatively constant representations because relatively stable (and culturally maintained) biological differences constitute its basis. The immutability and universality of the cultural concepts of masculinity and femininity are also related to the tendency, reinforced in culture, to perceive gender as dichotomous, and masculine and feminine traits as mutually exclusive.12

Stereotypes are structures that are constantly being processed, transformed and/or reproduced (Lawson 2007: 148). However, they remain a social and cultural form of gender, a framework for staging gender identity that can be conceptualized and analysed scientifically. Recognizing oneself as a person who fits the conventional images of femininity and masculinity remains a relatively constant feature of the behavioural repertoire (Connell 1987: 194). Fitting into the norms and obligations resulting from a social role and putting on a kind of necessary mask or costume that constitutes a response to social expectations and pressures – all these are forms of stability that are subject to observation.

In the stability vs. changeability dimension, gender is a process and a structure, a dynamic category, an ongoing ‘lived experience’ (Bradley 2007: 9–10), whose manifestations are at the same time relatively permanent. In relation to an individual, gender is both a state and a process, it is constantly produced and reproduced, given and expressed (Środa 2003: 60–66). In his conversation with Benedetto Vecchi, Zygmunt Bauman (2004: 15) states: ‘Identity is revealed to us only as something to be invented rather than discovered; as a target of an effort, an “objective”; as something one still needs to build from scratch or to choose from alternative offers and then to struggle for and then to protect through more struggle…’.

As an intersectional category, on the one hand, it is fragmented and, on the other, it allows us to distinguish what is common. It responds to the historical, cultural and social contexts of women’s self-identification and experience and can also constitute the basis for collective identity. Feminist researchers emphasize that given the diversity of women’s experiences, it is possible to reach a compromise, create common ground and reconcile different positions.13 As a social practice, the category of gender absorbs diversity and can constitute a bond of collective identity. Understood as an experience of asymmetry of power in society, it is an articulable political interest.

1.4. Summary

Where can gender – that is, the social and cultural conditions of gender – be situated within the spectrum between individual agency and social determinism? Is what I articulate a genuine expression of my will, or merely an illusion of agency?

Certainly, gender is a multifaceted category, subject to analysis from different perspectives. It is a feature of an individual, one of the essential elements of identity, which manifests itself in behaviour. In the symbolic order, gender is an element of culture, socially shared norms and values, as well as the main social identifier, a feature of social relations and a criterion for the organization of the social order. It is also a dynamic, processual and non-essentialist category, constituted where the perspectives of an observer and an actor intersect, where the unforeseen and the unplanned can happen.

The commitment to changing the social order which is based on inequalities, as inscribed in the study of the cultural conditions of gender, makes gender a political category. As a project and a political strategy, gender refers to social conditions and inequalities based on gender, the recognition and elimination of which can be the basis of group interest and a postulate legitimizing political actions. It can challenge the existing order, which it defines but does not determine.

The reference of the gender category to the dimensions of biological determinism vs. gender socialization, individual action vs. social structure and stability vs. variability outlines the broad theoretical framework of the concept, problematizes this category and makes it possible to articulate doubts and indicate decisions important for this work. The definition of gender adopted for the purposes of this book is situated within the paradigm of moderate cultural constructivism. The staging of cultural gender means playing, rejecting or modifying the gender role assigned to biological sex.

The gender identity of individuals is defined as constructed and reproduced within a discourse – in relation to the socially accepted definitions of masculinity and femininity, which are normative and disciplinary, but not determining. The concept of a subject as actively receiving and processing a cultural message and playing a gender role draws attention to the possibility of negotiating gender identity and behaviour (cf. also Kwiatkowska 2010).

This category is actively created within the organization of society, its structures, institutions and mechanisms. It is a living experience, a process, happening in relatively stable, research-perceptible frameworks of culture, social situation and social expectations. In particular, gender stereotypes are a relatively stable and research-perceptible structure built on oppositions and opposites, which constitutes a reference for gender understood as a continuum and becoming a dynamic and variable category entangled in individual experience.

Therefore, female politicians are being spoken for, but they are also speaking for themselves.

Concluding the definitional considerations on gender, it should be emphasized that the proposed multidimensional understanding of and approach to this category as the qualities of all that is social does not mean that this concept is absolutized and recognized as the only and most important explanation of the shape of social connections and inequalities. Using this category in science requires awareness of the limitations of its ‘explanatory power’ (Browne 2007).

In social sciences, socio-cultural gender is not the only or most important category explaining the position of an individual in the social structure (Gdula 2014). As a scientific category, gender is an inclusive approach, that is, open and intersectional. It should be perceived as one of many interconnected dimensions, as a category that, when abstracted from a broader context, does not explain the social behaviour of an individual. The phenomenon of deceptive distinctions described by Cynthia Fuchs-Epstein (1988) involves overestimating the significance of differences resulting from gender – using this category to explain the different positions and behaviours of men and women, while they result from other conditions, such as class, race, age or education.14

Gender as an analytical category is therefore one of many sources of the differences and inequalities between members of society, one of many explanations, and not the most important, of the hierarchy of positions occupied in society and one of many intersections in the extensive network of social conditions. Intersectionality, which is one of the most important properties of gender, may lead to the conclusion that, when alienated from other dimensions defining the social situation of an individual, it actually explains little.

However, even though various social categories intersect, overlap and mesh, autonomously treated distinctions determined by socio-cultural gender are significant.