Strategic Practices: Hidden Histories of Gender in Finland 1880-2005

The research project is multidisciplinary, employing three historians and four ethnologists. The project is led by Professor Laura Stark, and the project members are: Docent Marja Kokko, FM Eerika Koskinen, FL Heli Niskanen, FL Pasi Saarimäki, FT Saara Tuomaala, and FM Arja Turunen. The project team’s research will be conducted during the period 2007-2010 in the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, and the Department of History at the University of Helsinki. The purpose of the project is to form a tightly-knit research community to address complex theoretical issues of gender and power which are more fruitfully addressed by an interdisciplinary project than individual researchers working separately.

In recent decades, gender history research has been dominated by the concept of sukupuolijärjestelmä, introduced by Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdmann in 1988. This model aroused intense interest and spawned a wave of empirical and theoretical research in the 1990s. The sukupuolijärjestelmä  model states that the basic logic of gender operates along the horizontal axis of gender difference and the vertical axis of gender hierarchy, in which maleness and masculinity are the standard of ranking. It also includes the concept of an historical series of  'gender contracts' between men and women which have specified the rights, roles and responsibilities of each.

In the wake of post-structuralist criticism of closed and deterministic systems models, however, the shortcomings of the sukupuolijärjestelmä model have become increasingly apparent.  The sukupuolijärjestelmä model has proven too rigid and too abstract to promote deeper research on gender inequality and the role of human agency in it. The sukupuolijärjestelmä model emphasizes gender as a structural system rather than a set of choices or activities in which both men and women engage. The abstract nature of the sukupuolijärjestelmä model makes it difficult to identify the agent at work in gender inequality. The gender system model has also made it difficult to understand gender power relations as a process subject to change. Moreover, built into the sukupuolijärjestelmä model is an assumption of 'men' and 'women' as generic categories which stand in opposition to each other, and which are internally homogeneous. Instead, we need to explore in more detail the important differences which exist within the category of ‘men’ and within the category of ‘women’. Gender researchers need to also further examine how, historically, men have exerted their power over other men (through economic means, but also, for instance, by performing culturally ideal “masculinity” more successfully), and how women have wielded power over other women. Finally, the model takes for granted the very things it should set out to investigate, since it takes the oppression of women as its point of departure. Our point of departure is that ‘gender’ is constantly produced by ‘acts’, including communication, which are wilfully produced by social persons.  Gender roles can be seen as a set of activities and discourses which persons perform because these roles not only constrain, but also make possible socially-relevant action. It is our job to trace out how, if and when these activities and discourses result in power differentials and gender inequality, not to start out from the assumption that “women” suffer from a lack of power in all areas of social life. Within the current post-modern drive for social change in the areas of gender, family, sexuality and reproduction, the key concerns of women’s studies, feminist studies and queer studies are undergoing diversification and fragmentation as never before. Now is the time for each discipline to clearly define its key terms and develop new critical concepts, not use old, worn out ones.

Utilizing widely-accepted qualitative methods and large bodies of empirical data, the project Strategic Practices will develop and test a sensitive theoretical model which will allow us to study how gender relations have historically been negotiated in everyday homes, marketplaces and workplaces. The new model under development, whose working title within the project is the process model of gender (sukupuoliprosessimalli), will allow us to reincorporate individual motivation and strategy back into our structural understanding of gender, and to trace out the dynamics of gender power at the local, everyday level where they occur. Unlike feminist studies, our disciplines (history, ethnology, and folklore studies) are not normative and do not have explicit emancipatory aims. We seek to describe and understand the rich tapestry of gender, maintaining that in order to understand gendered power relations, we must explore how persons both past and present have viewed the dynamics of agency and power. Our project seeks to reconceptualize the concept of gender away from the notion of a hierarchical structure and toward a more fluid orchestration of cultural tactics in which individuals need social competence in order to navigate the complexity of gender codes. Our ultimate aim is to test this theory against our data and use it to produce critical discussion and serious empirical research in our own fields. The project is planned as a closely collaborative discussion group in which the guidance of postgraduate students, and the continued training of postdoctoral researchers, is paramount. Four doctoral dissertations and two post-doctoral studies will be completed within the project. One national seminar, a joint seminar with other gender-related projects and a joint anthology of articles will be produced in order to facilitate broader discussion. The research results will be useful for scholars in gender theory, social studies and the humanities.