history shows that even revolutionary states ‘are as resistant as other states
to the participation of women’ (Craske, 1999, pp. 87, 161).
This is not to say that women have not been part of the campaigns to
change politics fundamentally. They have played an important part in the
movements for democracy, political reform, and resistance to authoritarian-
ism, especially in Latin America, Taiwan and the Philippines, forming new
social movements to protest, lobby and articulate political demands
(Hensman, 1996). Women’s organizations with feminist agendas have
emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the National Women’s Lobby in
Zambia and GABRIELA in the Philippines (Whalen, 1996b, pp. 121– 2).
But much of women’s political activism and organization (as distinct
from self-help projects which sometimes alter the gender imbalance in local
power networks – Jaquette, 2001, pp. 116–17) has not been directed at
gender inequalities, backed perhaps by a feminist philosophy. It has been
devoted to economic and social causes which are not gender specific and
from which all would benefit, such as campaigning for human rights, food
subsidies, employment protection and health care. The politics in which
women engage has rarely placed equality (for example, through an exten-
sion of the suffrage) at the top of the agenda. Even when women have been
involved in revolutionary movements which include women’s emancipation
in their agendas this has been ‘limited and full of contradictions’ (Whalen,
1996b, p. 90). Post revolutionary improvements to women’s health, educa-
tion and welfare can be accounted for more by improvements to the lives of
the poor generally than by women’s political activism.
Part of the explanation for this is that women do not constitute a homog-
enous group but are as divided as men in terms of class, religion and eth-
nicity. In Latin America, for example, ‘women stress their class links rather
than their gender identities’ (Craske, 1999, p. 161).
Class conflict
From a Marxist perspective a theoretical explanation of instability would be
in terms of class conflict. As classes develop within capitalist economy and
society, their interests become increasingly irreconcilable. The impoverish-
ment of the labouring class is accompanied by the growth in its size until
eventually revolution becomes inevitable. But at least one of the problems
with this line of thought in the Third World context is that if class
consciousness is developing, it is in a unique way. It is less in terms of the
ownership of the means of production and more in terms of political power.
Instability and Revolution 239