COLONIAL AND CAPITALISTIC

PERSPECTIVES OF GENDER
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
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
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
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
Effect on women
4 major perspectives on colonial history:
 Imperial history

 Nationalist perspectives

 Marxist and socialist perspectives

 Post-colonial studies
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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