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Paradigms and Political Discourse: Protective Legislation in France and the United States Before 1914*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Jane Jenson
Jane Jenson
Affiliation:
Carleton University/Harvard University
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Abstract

This article examines the differences in pre-1914 France and the United States in two kinds of state policies regulating women's behaviour, those “protecting” the condition under which women participated in certain occupations and those providing infant and maternal protection. Those policies are examined to illuminate the argument that politics, including state policies, makes an important contribution to the maintenance and change of ongoing systems of social relations. Central to this argument is the notion that meaning systems around which actors constitute collective identities are a crucial analytic focus for understanding stability and change. At the end of the nineteenth century hegemonic societal paradigms, constructed out of the processes institutionalizing new social relations, emerged in France and the US. The French paradigm of “citizen-producer” and the American one of “specialized citizenship” had quite different implications for the patterns of gender relations embedded within them. These implications are visible in the treatment of women's work and maternity in these years of the emerging welfare state.

Résumé

Ce texte examine les différences entre la France et les États Unis avant 1914 dans deux domaines de politique publique réglementant les comportements féminins: d'une part les conditions « protectrices » sous lesquelles les femmes exerçaient certaines professions, d'autre part la protection maternelle et infantile. Cet article examine ces politiques pour illustrer la thèse selon laquelle la politique, y compris les politiques publiques, contribue largement à la reproduction et à la transformation des systèmes de rapports sociaux en vigueur. Cette thèse s'appuie sur l'idée que les systèmes de représentation, autour desquels les acteurs constituent leur identité collective, forment un passage obligé dans l'analyse et la compréhension de la stabilité et du changement. A la fin du 19e siècle, des paradigmes sociétaux, élaborés en dehors du processus d'institutionalisation de nouveaux rapports sociaux, parviennent à l'hegémonie en France et aux États Unis. Le paradigme français du « citoyen-producteur », et le paradigme américatn de la « citoyenneté specialiséd », incorporaient des présupposés tout différents quant aux rapports sociaux de sexe. Ces présupposes sont évidents dans la prise en compte du travail féminin et de la maternité en ces années d'émergence de l'État Providence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 235 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1989

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References

1 This theoretical argument comes in part from my elaboration of notions developed within the French regulation approach. For sociological versions, see Lipietz, Alain, Mirages and Miracles (London: Verso, 1987)Google Scholar; Lipietz, Alain, “Rebel Sons: The Regulation Approach,” French Politics and Society 5 (1987), 3–17Google Scholar; and Lipietz, Alain, “Building an Alternative Movement in France,” Rethinking Marxism 1 (1988), 2–17.Google Scholar

2 Three fallacies which derive from not acknowledging this simultaneity have plagued social theory. The first fallacy is the denial of any dilemma by arguing that structures create subjects or subjects create structures. Advocates of both positions have been hegemonic at different points in time. A second fallacy involves admitting both structural effects and agency, but then seeking actors capable of recognizing the effects of structures and “escaping” to become the agents of historical change. From this perspective, only some actors are capable of imagining change while others are destined to be no more than unconscious, albeit perhaps unwilling, supporters of existing structures. Accepting that all actors are capable of being acting subjects—but only sometimes—is the third fallacy. The argument of this article rejects all three positions.

3 This distinction can be called one between two worlds, the esoteric world of structures and the exoteric realm of everyday life, or Marx's “enchanted world.” See Lipietz, Alain, The Enchanted World: Inflation, Credit and the World Crisis (London: Verso, 1985)Google Scholar, especially chap. 1.

4 The term derives from grammar, where a paradigm links different forms of the same root, thereby ordering diffference and demonstrating connections across forms which might not otherwise appear linked. The best-known use of the concept in social science is by T. S. Kuhn who suggests that paradigms are historical constructs, whose selection from a range of possible paradigms is based on struggle for allegiances. Paradigms illuminate the world until the contradictions which they can no longer absorb permit other scientists to imagine an alternative and gain support for that vision. See Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).Google Scholar

5 Jenson, Jane, “‘Different’ but not ‘Exceptional': Canada's Permeable Fordism,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26 (1989), 69–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, explores such variations for Canadian politics.

6 Nelson, Barbara, “The Gender, Race, and Class Origins of Early Welfare Policy and the Welfare State: A Comparison of Workmen's Compensation and Mothers’ Aid,” paper presented to the Colloquium on Gender and the Origins of the Welfare State, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, November 1987.Google Scholar

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8 For details of this analysis see Jenson, Jane, “Gender and Reproduction: Or, Babies and the State,” Studies in Political Economy 20 (1986), 17–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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10 In the Department of the Seine (Paris) by the late 1880s, municipal officials were willing to pay a poor mother the entire cost of a wet nurse (the same amount as the average weekly wage of an unskilled working woman) in order to discourage unmarried mothers from giving up their babies. The remainder of the costs of maintaining the mother and child were to be paid for by the earned income of the mother, however. See Fuchs, Rachel, “Morality and Poverty: Public Welfare for Mothers in Paris, 1870–1900,” French History 2 (1988), 290–94, 304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15 This citation from a subsequent union campaign to protect the eight-hour day captures the theme of the movement: “… if the eight-hour day was lost, not only would wages decrease but the worker would ‘lose dignity,’ would not be able to educate himself or his family and women would have ‘to return to the slavery of housework after a longer workday.’” See Cross, “The Quest for Leisure,” 202.

16 Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412.

17 Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45.

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22 Blake, “Origins of Maternal and Child Health Programs,” 13–18; and Wertz and Wertz, Lying-in, 202.

23 Mothers’ Aid pensions, which some states began by 1911, marked a shift in anti-poverty policy away from day nurseries and other programmes which permitted mothers to work and toward programmes which foreclosed the category of working mother. See Michel, Sonya, “From Civic Usefulness to Federal Maternalism,” paper presented to the Berkshire Conference of Women's Historians, Wellesley College, June 1987.Google Scholar

24 For half a century the 1791 Loi de Chapelier by codifying an “atomistic” labour market prevented wage-earners from defending their interests. By the end of the century it was replaced by a set of institutions and actors representing a more collectively-determined wage relation. See Boyer, Robert, “Wage Formation in Historical Perspective: The French Experience,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 3 (1979), 106.Google Scholar

25 In the debates about pauperism and pauperization in the nineteenth century, three issues were intertwined: the inevitable growth of wage labour, the inadequacy of workers’ wages and their aleatory character which maintained workers in a situation of uncertainty. See Hatzfeld, Henri, Dn Paupérisme à la sécurité sociale: Essai sur les origines de la sécurité sociale en France, 1850–1940 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1971), 25.Google Scholar

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29 One testimony to economic stabilization is the synchronization of wage levels and cost of living which developed by the end of the nineteenth century. See Boyer, “Wage Formation in Historical Perspective,” 107. On the stabilizing effects of social policies see Weiss, John, “Origins of the French Welfare System: Poor Relief in the Third Republic, 1871–1914,” French Historical Studies 13 (1983), 47–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Rebérioux et al., “Hubertine Auclert et la question des femmes,” 133.

31 Hubertine Auclert represented this strand. Her socialist feminism advocating complete equality including suffrage failed because republicans feared female suffrage would reinforce the church and thus bring about the political defeat of republican forces. See Ibid.

32 Sowerwine, Charles, “Workers and Women in France before 1914: The Debate over the Couriau Affair,” Journal of Modem History 55 (1983), 411–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zylberberg-Hocquard, Marie-Hélène, Féminisme et syndicalisme en France (Paris: Anthropos, 1978).Google Scholar

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35 Feminists did insist that women's rights had to be expanded if women were to perform their duties; as well, they demanded improvements in the conditions of maternity, women's education and working conditions. See Offen, Karen, “Depopulation, Nationalism and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France,” American Historical Review 89 (1984), 652.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

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39 Cott, Nancy F., The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 6–7Google Scholar and chap. 1.

40 Gordon, Linda, Women's Body, Women's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York: Viking, 1976), 99–100.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., xv.

42 Ibid., chap. 6.

43 Baker, Paula, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review 89 (1984), 628, 640.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Nancy Cott argues that the link between Progressive politics and the woman's movement was around the discourse of difference. See Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 21.

45 Schefter, “Trade Unions and Political Machines.”

46 Lehrer, Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, 126, 142. The labour movement led demands for protective legislation for women until 1890, after which middle-class reformers directed the campaign. See Baer, The Chains of Protection, 33.

47 This analysis of the WTUL is primarily from Dye, Nancy Schrom, “Feminism or Unionism? The New York Women's Trade Union League and the Labor Movement,” Signs 3 (1975), 111–25Google Scholar; and Lehrer, The Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, chap. 6.

48 Jacoby, Robin Mille, “The Women's Trade Union League and American Feminism,” Signs 3 (1975), 126–40.Google Scholar

49 For a consideration of how these notions affected interwar politics, see Jenson, Jane, “Both Friend and Foe: Women and State Welfare,” in Koontz, Claudia, Bridenthal, Renate and Stuard, Susan Mosher (eds.), Becoming Visible: Women in European History (2nd ed.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 535–56.Google Scholar