Motherhood by patriarchy
In her 1977 book, Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich writes that a government’s co-optation of the female reproductive potential to serve the institutional end of financial growth (Pyle, 1997) is motivated by a patriarchal system of thought that keeps female childbearing potential under male control.
In examining how far Rich’s statement applies to Singapore, a triune of facts immediately come to mind, and they are; the social construction of motherhood as a concept that conflates family values with economic sustainability; the use of policies to manipulate women’s reproductive capacity in order to serve national interests; and the role of motherhood as a setting for gender subordination in the workplace. These are some ways in which patriarchy, which is a system of symbolic and material male power by which the social inferiority of women is perpetuated (Turner, 2006), operates in the discourse of motherhood in Singapore.
From a policy perspective, the idea of motherhood is interpreted as denoting a set of values that conflate a woman’s potential to give birth, with her state-ordained role as torchbearer who promotes, within the family, the core values of Singapore society (such as “society before self” and “family as a basic unit”) which are viewed as necessary for the preservation of economic stability (Chew, 2004).
This definition of motherhood can be viewed as a patriarchal attempt to channel women’s maternity and sexuality into the service of institutional goals. Singapore’s fertility policies rolled out since the 1960s, which indicate that discourses on motherhood have been closely tied with the economics of the country, are examples of the appropriation of childbearing in the service of policy aims.
In the 1960s, Singapore’s policymakers arrested high total fertility rate (TFR) through measures to discourage people from having more than two children. Families not stopping at two, lost income tax deductions, priority in education, and maternity leave.
In the 1980s when the state found that educated and wealthy people were having fewer babies than those with poor education and earnings, it introduced policies, which included adding $10,000 to the CPF of women with low education and income, if they were below 30 and underwent sterilization after the birth of their first or second child (Pyle, 1997). More recently, the government introduced a slew of measures from housing grants to cash gifts for babies, to increase TFR (Adam, 2013).
One might assume from looking at these measures that policymakers construe motherhood to be primarily a node of production for new entrants into the labor force and consumers for the domestic market, both of which are key in attracting investment (Pyle, 1997), and only secondarily as a powerful and meaningful personal experience in the life of a woman.
Predominantly functionalist in its approach, the Singapore government recognizes the nuclear family as the basic building block of society in which parents socialize children to become well adjusted members of the community. But this way of viewing motherhood becomes a problem when it bears the allusion that women carry a heavier responsibility for low TFR.
Policymakers, Stivens notes, “make explicit connections between the need to balance work and life and their worries about the problems posed for the country by women’s failure to reproduce.” This tendency to view women’s reluctance to have babies as a threat to “state potency” (2007, p. 44) is a subtle way of blaming women for low TFR, which is, in reality, a consequence of factors including quality of life and work stress (Adam, 2013). One might argue that this tacit blaming of women, which may induce in them a sense of failure in achieving patriarchal interests, might have the effect of women feeling pressured into perceiving policymakers’ interests as their own goals and aspirations (Abbott, Wallace & Tyler, 2005).
A related point is the state’s use of policies to manipulate women’s reproductive capacity in serving national interests. By alternating between anti- and pro-natalist policies to adjust the supply of labor in relation to growth rates (Pyle, 1997), the state has conscripted the woman’s body as an arena for the perpetual tweaking of childbearing policies to serve the greater good of the country (Stivens, 2007).
Viewing the state’s TFR policies in their totality, one may note an apparent shortsightedness in TFR policymaking. It is, after all, the state’s anti-natal policies of the 60s that have, to some extent, contributed to the recent low TFR (AWARE, 2011).
Crucially, the state’s fluctuating approach to TFR policy formulation, its conception of the female body as the focal point of such policies, and its treatment of her body as something to be cajoled into or away from baby production, are demeaning to women because of the patriarchal motivation that deems it correct to subject women to laws and policies that they have had no substantive role in making (Rich, 1977).
Patriarchal construction of motherhood also frames it as a setting for gender subordination in the workplace. Women represent about 43 percent of Singapore’s workforce (AWARE, 2011) and are key to economic success. Today, it is hard to envision a labor force without women because their contributions have improved living standards and are vital for family income (Acker, 1992). But they have it harder than men because unlike men, who have been socialized to see themselves as soldiers and breadwinners, women are expected to excel at work and be caring mothers at home (Blair-Loy, 2003). Their work performance is judged within a patriarchal paradigm within which success at work is seen as the result of sacrifice outside work. This male-centric job appraisal when applied to women, tips the balance of workplace success toward men who do not have the burden of reconciling the roles of employee and homemaker (Acker, 1990). This inequity is exacerbated when we take into account the fact that women in Singapore are paid 27 percent less than men (AWARE, 2011). The state’s consignment of women to motherhood colored by the selfless and nurturing qualities it denotes, limits women’s ability to gain equal symbolic and material footing with men at work, and therefore perpetuates their dependency on men.
Ostensibly the discourse on motherhood in Singapore has revealed the limits of patriarchal policymaking in addressing the country’s low TFR. Linking motherhood with numismatic concerns, using policies to steer female reproductive powers toward national ends and expecting women to embrace motherhood while parochial attitudes on the sexual division of labor mean that having a child would actually hinder their professional progression, are methods motivated by patriarchal values, which, if not tempered with pragmatic policymaking, will fall short of correcting low TFR.
Richard Philip -14 August 2013
REFERENCES
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