Public/Private Spheres vs Women in Relation to Global/International Politics

Fig. 1.  “The Gang’s All Here.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr, 5 August 2010.Web.11 June 2014.

It is very common to find private and public spheres associated with genders separated from each other throughout the history in works of scholars and political scientists. Public sphere is a big sector of social life that consists of important systems such as government with its president, Judiciary, Congress, and laws. It includes also trade system with detailed discussions of businesses and corporations. One of the largest portions of public sphere is military system. Education, media, religion have their places in this sphere also. Public sphere is basically a sphere where power operates and it is associated with masculine gender. The picture becomes contrasting when we think about the private sphere. This sector of society includes family and all its functions, marriage and sexual life. Food, fashion, and everything that is within the domestic domain are considered in the private sphere which in its turn is associated with women and feminine gender. Private sphere itself is usually ignored in the explorations and analysis of historical or present events while public sphere is in the center of discussions. Therefore it seems that men are in charge of the public sphere, and women are assigned to be in the private sphere. Accordingly, when we take a look at only public sphere and we eliminate women and private sphere from the discussions, we limit our understanding of international politics because society as a whole cannot exist with only public sphere and without intersection and connection of both spheres. Considering only public sphere will stereotype our understanding of international politics; hearing only “masculinized stories” will create  so-called “single story” about historical and present facts that will turn to be far from the reality. Therefore, we need to take into account the private sphere along with the public sphere and hear stories from both men and women in order to understand the whole picture of international politics.

To see how the separation of public/private spheres affect our understanding of international politics and women in relation to global politics, the example of Carmen Miranda and her role in international politics will be a good example to discuss.

Her example shows that the separation of spheres does not make sense because both spheres are operating depending on each other. Her example also shows that women are effective not only for private sphere operations but also for improving the relationships in global international politics between countries, i.e. women belong not only in the private sphere. Carmen Miranda was an actress, a singer and as a woman she was a representative of the private sphere (by definition). She has been also “chosen” by a corporation of a public sphere for promoting the production (bananas), and it was using her  in order to push the business of bananas forward by targeting women in private sphere and by advertising bananas using a well thought character of a woman.

According to Cynthia Enloe, “the companies envisage their customers to be women; mothers and housewives concerned about their families’ nutrition and looking for a reliable product. The most successful way of bonding housewives’ loyalty to a particular company was to create a fantasized market woman” (128). So, being in the private sphere and responsible for children and their well being, mothers will think of their children and will buy the products that are told to be good for their children. A good example is her cartoon where she appears as a half woman and a half banana; Miranda sings about bananas and pictures the best aspects of bananas saying “[bananas] are best for you,” “bananas are solid food that doctors now include in babies diet,” “since they are so good for babies, I think we all should try it” (video). Carmen Miranda also played a big role in improving the relationships between Brazil and United States. By inviting this actress to work and make movies in US, Americans were presenting a friendly relationships with her country (Brazil). Therefore, considering international and global politics, it is crucial to consider both public and private spheres in order to see what role women and private sphere play in international and global politics. If we consider only public sphere in case of Carmen Miranda, we will not understand a thing about women in relation to global politics when clearly there are some ties. So, both spheres operate together for certain goals, depend on each other, and as we saw they are not meant to be separated from each other.

As members of private sphere, women are supposed to be responsible for the house, families, marriage and domestic domain, but we can encounter women in different institutions of public sphere. To get better understanding of international politics, it is important to see women and functions they bear while working in those institutions or even when they are strictly wives of men who are in the public sphere. According to Enloe, “women supply most of the clerical labor force that has made the complex communications, money transfers and arms shipments possible. They handle the procedures and technology, and more importantly, they provide many male officials with on-the-job encouragement” (9). It seems that, without the feminized skills of operating in different institutions, the latter won’t be able to operate promptly. And if we consider women in private sphere and leave them aside, we won’t be able to make sense of politics because we will not be able to understand the inner part of the political machine that is operated by women. Thinking about the civil-service secretary to Oliver North – Fawn Hall, we can see that as a secretary she was working along with her boss while shredding important documents. But as history shows, Fawn Hall was treated as “blonde beauty,” as a sex object while testifying during the court. She, and other women in this case of Iran/Contra affair was not considered seriously in order to make sense of politics that took place during that affair. All these women were treated as “characters who simply add ‘color’ to the all-male, blue-suited, red-ried political proceedings” (Enloe 10). Their stories were not heard even if those could have changed the single masculinized stories of complicated international relationships. Those stories will sound differently even if we consider women in private sphere who are not like Fawn Hall working in National Security Council or in some other public institution, who are simply wives. We will get better understanding of politics if we consider them in relation to men who are in public sphere. As Enloe mentions, “thousands of women today tailor their marriages to fit the peculiar demands of states operating in a trust-starve international system” (Enloe 10). Many of these women are married to officials who do serious types of secret jobs, to men who are engineers of weaponry and those men are trustworthy because their are in “stable” relationships with their wives (Enloe 10). Men gain the perception of  “reliability” owing to their wives (owing to the private sphere which is separated somehow) and their wives’ support, on which as Enloe tells “national-security state depends” (Enloe 10).

The colonization and the international politics of it is another example, which helps to recognize that public and private spheres are pretty much connected to each other and that the understanding of politics is different when the private sphere is included in the discussion. Women as a main representatives of private sphere had an important role in justification and support for the colonization. As Enloe mentions, “colonial soldiers, settlers and tourists were looking for ways to send home images of the societies they were ruling, images that were appealing and yet made it clear that these alien societies needed the civilizing government only whites could bestow” (Enloe 42). And the postcards that these colonizing people decided to send back home were made using colonized women’s sexuality. They were pictured on the postcards the way that people who see those would get several types of perceptions at the same time. First, these women who were in pictures were “exotic” and “erotic”  showing that they are not civilized and they do not know what it means to be a “respectable” woman, and so colonizing people need to teach them that. Second, these postcards were creating the idea that their society is submissive and needs some dominant hand that would be able to control them. And so considering women  and sexuality as parts of private sphere, we can see that throughout the history private sphere was used to satisfy public sphere’s needs. And without considering this private sphere we would not be able to understand what justified colonization, how it worked and in general what role women had in relation to global politics.

In general, the separation and the discussion of only public sphere will leave unanswered questions in understanding the politics. As Enloe mentions, if we consider those two private and public spheres we will conclude that “the personal is political . . . relationships we once imagined were private or merely social are in fact infused with power” (Enloe 195). And so, private sphere is not completely separate from public sphere, it is used a lot in order to make the public sphere and its politics work. But as it is important to understand that private sphere is connected to public sphere, it is as important to understand that public sphere is very much dependant on private sphere as we saw throughout the example considered in this paper. And so the logical thing to do is to consider both while exploring politics of certain countries or events. It will give the overall and more realistic picture of what is around us.

Works cited

Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas Beaches and Bases. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1990. Print.