Though feminism in the 'Third World' has simultaneously contributed to and occasionally benefited from the progress of nationalism, these two movements and ideologies often find themselves at odds with each other. Secular state-sponsored nationalisms mobilize sexualized images of the nation, usually presented as a 'modern' woman eager to serve the international capitalist economy. By contrast, 'ethnic' and religious nationalisms make use of images of the ideal 'pure' woman, filled with traditional values and untainted by the foreign, mainly Western, world. Within these gendered conceptualizations of nationhood, individual women are identified as highly valuable, though dangerous, guardians of national culture, thus leaving them more open to state control and vulnerable to abuse by outside 'invaders'. Power over women's bodies and behaviour becomes central to discourses of national identity, simultaneously justifying this control by the state while potentially leaving women with the ultimate ability to shape images of nationhood through their agency. As a part of their popular resistance to colonialism, many national liberation movements expressed their (generally sincere) commitment to women's social and political causes. Though women contributed greatly to independence struggles throughout the formerly colonized world, the process of constructing the new nation was a highly gendered one that saw the often quite sudden marginalization of feminist issues and women themselves from the dominant national discourse upon independence. States did not completely abandon women's issues; rather, they mobilized them as a political resource in the construction of a highly gendered form of nationhood. Feminist organizations, such as those in Singapore, were driven underground or completely depoliticized as the state attempted to unilaterally determine women's place in society. Geraldine Heng argues that though state legislation specific to women helped ensure specific protections for women, it also "enacted and codified a description of women as specially gendered subjects under the law, a sexualized codification directed specially to the state's female citizens."[1] The production of an official feminine identity for the state's female subjects is tightly tied to the nationalist self-imagination. Heng notes that "women, the feminine, and figures of gender, have traditionally anchored the nationalist imaginary."[2] These representations of the nation as "mother land" or "a proud woman" not only portray the nation symbolized by 'woman', but transform individual women into symbols of the nation.[3] As the nation is 'feminized', so too are women 'nationalized' in nationalist discourse. Huma Ahmed-Ghosh argues that women's "bodies and characters are appropriated to define and 'claim' nationalism."[4] The role of women within the nationalist cause is generally minimized as women move from the role of agents within their societies to objects of their 'nation'. Ethno-nationalist rhetoric of a 'pure' (feminized) homeland emphasizes the role of women as bearers of culture, reproducers of the community, and hence the most susceptible to foreign incursion. This interpretation, argues Ahmed-Ghosh, "forms the basis of hegemonic resistance to women's independence and autonomy,"[5] since it, in effect, justifies patriarchal domination of women in the name of national integrity. Kesic emphasizes the compatibility between patriarchy and nationalism, both of which "appear 'natural and imply domination, fixed hierarchy, superiority, exclusivity and exclusion, actual divisiveness and isolation, silencing of Others, territorialization, and conquering of bodies and territories."[6] In this way, she argues, the rule of one's 'homeland' or conquest of that of 'Others' is easily translatable into women's subordination in the first case and sexual violence in the second. Emphasizing rape as a "gender-specific form of war violence", she cites Croatian nationalists who asserted that "the rape of a Croat woman stood for the rape of Croatia."[7] In addition to obscuring the human suffering of individual victims, such a construction of the 'raped' nation lends itself to imagery of the disgraced woman, thus symbolically shifting blame for the nation's disgrace from men to women. Ahmed-Ghosh writes, "The family's and the community's respectability [are rooted] in women's behavior."[8] Ideas of respectability are often defined through what Uma Narayan calls a process of "'selective labeling,' whereby those with social power conveniently designate certain changes in values and practices as consonant with 'cultural preservation' while designating other changes as 'cultural loss' or 'cultural betrayal'."[9] Thus, women's actions come under strict surveillance, leading alternately to their deification or demonization depending on their conformity to the ideal of "sacrificial, obedient, and devoted wives and mothers."[10] As a national symbol, however, woman also acts as the nation's representative to the world. In the context of global capitalism, she becomes a marketing symbol, manipulated by the state in order to enhance the nation's economic desirability. In such portrayals as the "Singapore Girl" of Singapore Airlines, sexualized images of Asian femininity surreptitiously mobilize racist orientalist stereotypes in order to market the nation's business sector on the world market.[11] Similarly, beauty pageants allow for the nation's symbolic entry onto the international stage, dominated by a specific set of 'Western' aesthetic codes. Such figures go on to represent, and to market, their respective countries throughout the world. In her role as both a "Holy Virgin" protectress of national sanctity and a sexualized commodity on the world market, 'the national woman' acts as a symbol of the nation's engagement with modernity. States strive to regulate the nation's "acceptance of modernity's incursions, … distinguishing between the [desirable] technological and economic machinery of modernization, … and the [undesirable] cultural apparatus of modernization."[12] Through the construction of imagery of the 'national woman' and the manipulation of women's behaviour, states regulate the boundaries of national identity while reinforcing a gendered vision of nationhood. In such a construction, women are treated as objects, rendering their "agency marginal or nonexistent."[13] Nevertheless, as objectified embodiments of the nation, women are in a position to shape the meaning and structure of nationhood through their agency. Ahmed-Ghosh notes that 'the national woman', intended to be a symbol of the negation of women as social agents, "could potentially challenge the very representations and institutions that create her."[14]
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[1] Geraldine Heng. "'A Great Way To Fly': Nationalism, the State, and the Varieties of Feminism" in Alexander and Mohanty (eds). Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. New York: Routledge, 1997. (37)
[2] Heng, "A Great Way To Fly", 31.
[3] Vesna Kesic. "From Reverence to Rape: An Anthropology of Ethnic and Genderized Violence" in Walker and Rycenga (eds). Frontline Feminisms: Women, War and Resistance. New York: Garland Publishers, 2000. (29)
[4] Huma Ahmed-Ghosh. "Writing the Nation on the Beauty Queen's Body: Implications for a 'Hindu' Nation" Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; 2003; 4, 1. (210)
[5] Ahmed-Ghosh, "Writing the Nation", 208.
[6] Kesic, "From Reverence to Rape", 25.
[7] Kesic, "From Reverence to Rape", 24/31.
[8] Ahmed-Ghosh, "Writing the Nation", 213.
[9] Uma Narayan. "Essence of Culture and a Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism" Hypatia; Spring 1998; 13, 2. (100)
[10] Ahmed-Ghosh, "Writing the Nation", 216.
[11] Heng, "A Great Way To Fly", 38-9.
[12] Heng, "A Great Way To Fly", 33.
[13] Ahmed-Ghosh, "Writing the Nation", 210.
[14] Ahmed-Ghosh, "Writing the Nation", 225.