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Women and the State : A Preliminary Review of Feminist Analyses of the State

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to theoretical understanding of the nature of the state in relation to women. The basic reason why feminists are interested in the role of the state-especially the capitalist state-is that most of state policies affect women's lives and their social status in modern society. Their analyses are focused on the functioning of male-dominant state, which acts to draw on, transform and modify particular sets of patriarchal relations. Concerning the role of the state vis-a-vis the opression of women, the concept of a patriarchal state can be made use of. Thus the patriarchal state can be defined as any state or political superstructure that functions mainly in the intrests of men. Two major theoretical arguments from the feminist analyses of the state are: First, in capitalist societies the state is often viewed as being relatively autonomous in relation to economic class and gender. However, analysis of the actual action/inaction of the state reveal that it represents the interests of certain "class(especially the bourgeois) and gender(especially male). The bottom line for the state is always the protection of the capitalist patriarchal system as a whole. Second, in the welfare state women have become more independent of husbands and more dependent on the state. There has been a shift in the locus of female oppression from the family and the privte sphere to the public sphere. In other words, what has been called family patriarchy has been weakened, whereas social patriarchy-that is, male dominance in the public sphere-has been strengthened. However, these theories of women and the state have the following difficulties: First, the theoretical discussions about women and the state tend to be simplistic and often fall into an overriding functional model. Most studies emphasize the major function of reproducing capitalist production relations and women's oppression. They tend to invite questions, rather than answering them, on why and exactly how the state functions as such. Second, the theory of the patriarchal state fail to lead to a comparative analysis of different national and historical contexts. An alternative theoretical framework needs to be developed, which can explain the differences and similarities among capitalistic patriarchal states. Against the rather simplistic and funcionalistic views on the relationship of women and the state, the need for an alternative model has been raised, One of the responses is a non-deterministic model which views the relationship as a more dynamic than determined or static one and the role of the state as a contradictory rather than a functional one, such as the Dahlerup's. While this model does not suggest a clear picture of the nature of the state like the theories of capitalist state or the patriarchal state. However, it helps us on how to analyze state policies toward women in order to understand the nature of the state. As an alternative strategy for investigating the dynamic features of the state concerning women, we developed a model on the basis of Dahlerup. The state is viewed as a complicated system with internal contradiction, and the actions of the state vis-a-vis women are viewed as a response to different sets of interests, i.e. capitalist interests, patriarchal interests, state interests, and women's interests. Two cases of state policies in Korea are presented according to this model: the policies on women's employment and on the Family Law.