Trapped in heteronormativity in Croatian? New answers to old limitations on fair language use in...

CHAPTER FIVE

TRAPPED IN HETERONORMATIVITY IN CROATIAN?

NEW ANSWERS TO OLD LIMITATIONS ON FAIR LANGUAGE USE IN LANGUAGES WITH STRONG GRAMMATICAL GENDER

ROSWITHA KERSTEN-PEJANI HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY

Introduction

Thirty years ago, Monique Wittig stated that the linguistic indexing of persons by gender “give[s] way to a primitive ontological concept that enforces in language a division of beings into sexes” (Wittig 1985: 3). Ever since Wittig pointed to the problems of the “self-evident concept” (Ibid.) of gender, considerable work has been done on the following related subjects: how grammatical gender shapes and limits language use in different languages (cf. the volumes edited by Hellinger and Bußmann 2001, 2002 and 2003); how language regulates dominant discourses about gender (cf. Butler 1990); and on the pressure to dedicate oneself to one or another of the linguistically enabled genders (cf. Hornscheidt 1998: 166; Pastre 1997; Bertoša 2005). Yet, recent analyses on the relation between gender/sex and language have somewhat turned away from questions of grammatical structures and these system-inherent limitations. They seem rather concerned with individual language use and linguistic interaction on a face-to-face basis. This tendency to neglect the impact of grammar, linguistic structures and the power of prescriptive linguistics (cf. Hornscheidt 1998) in modern research on gender and language might to some extent be rooted in an Anglo-American preponderance of the field (cf. Hellinger/Pauwels 2007: 657). Since English is a language that has no

Chapter Five 84

grammatical gender (cf. Hellinger/Bußmann 2003: 6)1 and might, therefore, not be a very satisfying source for research on the interconnection of gender as a social concept and as a grammatical matter, research in gender linguistics has to a certain degree turned a blind eye to the fact that in many languages the male bias that has been observed since the very beginning of feminist language critique has not changed profoundly (cf. Motschenbacher 2010: 3). One recent anthology on the relation of language to sexism by Mills only scarcely takes into account the prevailing question of grammatical gender in the naming of people and their implications for users and hearers/readers of the languages concerned. Probably the clearest account on grammatical gender is found in a footnote stating that:

. . . in languages other than English, at least in languages which have grammatical gender, sexism is still overt and blatant, since the masculine form is used to refer to both males and females fairly consistently. (Mills 2008: 133, fn.5)2

This marginal comment exposes that speakers of many languages worldwide, due to the formal structure of the languages concerned, are apparently unable to overcome an “overt” and “blatant” sexism in their daily use of their language. Moreover, it is significant that this fact is, in recent years, only deemed worthy of a little footnote, even within a research community concerned with sexism in language (cf. Szpyra-Koz owska 2010). The preponderance of English as a subject of inquiry as well as the dominant language of publications in the field is certainly one of the possible reasons for this neglect. On the other hand, that the enduring existence of a dominant language use in many languages—tongues whose lexicons present “an inherently sexist medium of expression” (Rosenfeld 1984: 235)—has somehow lost attention might also be due to the use of constructionist and queer theories as necessarily diverging from older, structuralist feminist works on gender/sex and language. One main criticism of these former approaches is that the tackling of the male bias of language can hardly be accomplished by female visibility alone, since this above all means supporting heteronormativity rather than questioning the predominant gender order (cf. Hellinger/Pauwels 2007: 657). By making women more visible in language, there is the danger of a reinforcement of the dichotomous and hegemonic ways of thinking about gender as binary (male/female) (cf. Wittig 1982: 68)—a feature that has too seldom been addressed in feminist linguistics (cf. Bertoša 2005: 235).

Trapped in Heteronormativity in Croatian? 85

Apart from this potential support of what Butler calls the “heterosexual matrix” (Butler 1990) by such a sexually/gendered differentiating language use, there is an evident tendency to rate occupations when referred to in the feminine as deviant and less prestigious (cf. Koniuszaniec/B aszkowska 2003: 268 for examples in Polish, and Pavlidou 2006(2) on the Greek context). Wittig alerted readers to this negative trend in 1980:

The concept of difference between the sexes ontologically constitutes women into different/others. Men are not different, whites are not different, nor are the masters. (Wittig 1980: 108)

Despite this vivid intersectional breakdown, neutralisation of personal indexing is not an option in many languages. This lack of possibilities for referring to people without gender-marking in languages with grammatical gender alienates and disconnects gender linguistics on English from other languages, as Bertoša shows regarding the specific grammatical questions in Croatian (cf. Bertoša 2001: 72-73). By making women visible (i.e., using the feminine word forms, feminisation), it is possible to use rather traditional (but nonetheless very important) means in tongues with strong grammatical gender to move away from patriarchal, androcentric language use. This can be seen as one of many steps in incessantly questioning the presumed neutrality of masculine word forms as a means of naming people generically—and not only in specific contexts of naming male identified people—to achieve a more inclusive and fair way of naming, showing and seeing people in all their diversity (cf. Abbou 2011).

In the following considerations, I will discuss the still very visible issue of everyday linguistic sexism in languages with grammatical gender and examine how these languages can be more inclusive and less male biased by showing opportunities for different styles and approaches that are used in the Croatian queer-feminist community. Activists concerned with the widespread and normalised use of language that tends to transport and (re)produce hegemonic patterns of a gender order they want to overcome find their own ways of questioning these normalisations and develop strategies that go beyond the traditionalist feminist claims for language change.

The question of how to cope with the linguistic restrictions of a language system that requires the naming of gender in almost every utterance referring to people (see below) is not an issue specific to Croatian but rather one that—more or less—concerns all languages with a strong grammatical gender. Shifting back to these abiding problems of naming and labelling people can also show us the shared typological and

Chapter Five 86

highly problematic traits of languages with a strong grammatical gender. And, accordingly, it can shed light on ways to tackle this specific, still existing feature of overt and blatant sexism, as Mills so rightly calls it.

Grammatical Gender and Heteronormativity Reproduced in Language Use

Talking about feminist critique of language use and grammatical norms often implies above all exploring possibilities for making women visible in a language that has come to neglect anything other than prototypical male identities and realities. Well over two decades ago, Butler was already backing this idea:

The development of a language that fully or adequately represents women has seemed necessary to foster the political visibility of women. This has seemed obviously important considering the pervasive cultural condition in which women’s lives were either misrepresented or not represented at all. (Butler 1990: 2)

Since gender inequality and negation in daily language use persists, Butler’s account is still valid—and particularly so in so-called gendered languages, despite that being a term that is very unclear and multifariously defined (cf. Hornscheidt 1998: 143). Still, in recent years there has been a noticeable shift in gender linguistics that has made researchers seek to attack the binary gender identity system that seems to have been, to the present, not only overlooked but even reinforced by feminist linguistics. Instead of asking for a language use that includes women (by using more feminine nouns) and breaks with androcentric views (by avoiding so-called masculine generics or better, androgendering masculines—cf. Hornscheidt 2012: 211) as supposedly neutral naming, queer theorists rather insist upon the need to break with all gender and sexual manifestations and categorisations backed and facilitated by language use. As stated above, this is a claim that seems to have its roots in Anglophone research communities, and it contains some severe drawbacks for languages with a strong, indeed inescapable, system of grammatical gender (see below), such as German, Greek or Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian and other Slavic as well as Romance languages.

The question of heteronormativity and its close connection to our daily language use is one of the main concerns of new, post-structuralist, constructivist and queer research on gender/sex and language. Heteronormativity is not a new object of critical analysis, as Wagenknecht (2004) points out, but one that has gained more attention since the rise of


queer theories. Heteronormativity, just like androcentrism and other subtle and overt forms of sexisms, genderisms (cf. Hornscheidt 2012: 50) and other discriminatory practices, is deeply enshrined in our societies’ belief systems—with language being one of the main methods of constructing and deepening discourses about people and people’s identities. As Wagenknecht puts it, heteronormativity:

. . . regulates the knowledge of production, structures discourses, controls political action, determines the distribution of discourses and serves as a way of allocation in the division of labour. (2004: 189, my translation)

Regarding language and language critique, heteronormativity is a matter of concern to everyone dealing with ways of questioning norms of power and social exclusion. Kimmel (1994) (and, later, others, including Polyzou (2010: 128) and Motschenbacher (2010)), has pointed out that heterosexual men in particular are under daily pressure when it comes to proving their sexual and gendered identity. Women who are carrying out supposedly “male” work and thus dressed in a “masculine” way, for example, face much fewer restrictions and sanctions than men obscuring the boundaries of “masculine” ways of living. Or, as Wittig, bemoans in another essay:

. . . heterosexual society is the society which not only oppresses lesbians and gay men, it oppresses many different/others, it oppresses all women and many categories of men . . . (Wittig 1980: 108)

For our considerations it is reasonable to suggest that talking and writing in binary gender categorisations may support heteronormatively grounded limitations of people’s choices and decisions in life, since:

. . . every time speakers or writers use binarily gendered forms, they reinstate the discursive formation of the heteronormative system. (Motschenbacher 2013: 8)

Post-structuralist and Post-modern Answers to Heteronormativity in Language Use

The concerns about heteronormativity in language use are especially vital in a post-structuralist view on language, and on the role language plays in shaping and constructing our perception of the world around us. As Hornscheidt has elaborated in several books and articles in the last decades (predominantly but not exclusively in German), a post-structuralist view

Chapter Five 88

on language, combined with a constructionist view on gender and language, has the advantage of enabling us not only to address the naming or un-naming of certain human categories and categorisations, but also to question the discourse behind those categorisations themselves: when language is not taken to be a matter of mirroring or reflecting a reality that exists next to, and independently of, language use, but rather a reality itself, the role language plays in making and shaping the world has special importance. Hornscheidt (2006) emphasises that a post-structuralist view on language allows us to see that there is no neat split between language use and the linguistic system, but that the linguistic system is made by language use, repeatedly conventionalised and given hegemonic meaning and dominance over people’s own use of their own language. Following Hornscheidt, it is important to acknowledge that the symbolic order of language might seem to us as something that both predates and takes precedence over our own use of language, but that nevertheless people make and reinforce it perpetually:

Linguistic acts are in their interactive function based on an also linguistically produced symbolic order, which, however, is here not understood as antecedent, but which in itself gets consistently confirmed and (re)produced. A permanent repetition can lead to a linguistic symbolic order, which itself leads to a stabilisation of a notion of naturalness of this symbolic order. (Hornscheidt 2006: 21, my translation)

Hornscheidt introduces this post-structuralist view on language in accordance with a constructionist understanding of both gender and language. Another highly influential researcher in the field of feminist linguistics, Deborah Cameron, observes a dominant shift from modern to post-modern approaches in research on gender linguistics, which is accompanied by a strong tendency to deny the grand narratives (Cameron 2005: 484). Accordingly, the current trend in gender linguistics is, clearly, not to tackle the whole symbolic order of a language but rather to look locally and to carry out microanalyses of certain linguistic features in their specific social, political, geographical and functional context. However, Cameron also highlights that there is a tendency to over-focus exclusively on local context and, as such, of becoming too fragmented in one’s analysis. This might lead to losing the political meaning of a feminist and queer language critique that is still indispensable in myriad linguistic contexts. Also, Cameron states:

There is a paradox here: in acknowledging what they take to be the real complexity and variability of the relationships between language, gender,


and sexuality, contemporary feminist researchers have become increasingly remote from the common-sense understanding with which most other people operate.

And she calls on feminist linguists “ . . . to find ways of telling more complicating stories in ways a wider audience will find compelling” (Cameron 2005: 500).

Another fact that often seems to divide academia from “real life” on questions pertaining to feminism and gender/sex is the former’s general reliance on constructionist theories that relate little to the common-sense understanding of gender and the role of the sexes affirmed in everyday life. Still, the introduction of a constructivist view of gender into gender linguistics is very rewarding, as the notion of gender and sex as categorisations made by language use and reproduced through linguistic actions makes it very hard to blame language per se for being discriminatory or sexist. Just as gender and sex are categorisations made and shaped by people, so is language and its supposed naturalness, a term often referred to in more conservative linguistics (for an account of such arguments cf. Posch 2014: 36ff.). Or, as Motschenbacher (2010: 15) states:

We need to see that the constructionist approaches to language and gender actually enable us to tackle the issues of supposed naturalness, heteronormativity and essentialist understandings of gender and gendered as well as sexual identities.

The System of Grammatical Gender and its Relevance to Conventional Language Use in Croatian

One of the main obstacles to inclusivity in the Croatian language is the omnipresence of the androgendering masculine, a challenge it shares with German and other languages with strong grammatical gender. What is often stated as a neutral naming is in fact to a high degree one-sidedly gender specific. This has become obvious not only because of the parallel usage of the masculine for male people exclusively when put into a gender specific context (cf. Hellinger/Bußmann 2001: 9), but has also been shown in tests where the participants perceived supposedly generic names as masculine (cf. Gabriel/Mellenberger 2004; Kusterle 2011).

One characteristic of Slavic languages is the prevalence and omnipresence of grammatical gender throughout the language system, with grammatical gender realised in nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles and numerals. These are word categories that are often used in naming people and whose grammatical gender is in most contexts unquestionably

Chapter Five 90

adjusted according to the gender/sex of the person. This linguistic system often makes it hard to actually imagine any form of truly neutral, non-heteronormative language change, since so much would need to be modified.

Another important feature in this matter is the significance of very strict agreement rules (cf. Rehder 2006: 262) and their impact on whole morphosyntactic structures, which would require changes to many different parts of a sentence. The strong correspondence between grammatical and lexical gender in Croatian (cf. Bertoša 2005: 233), which is also typical of other Slavic languages (cf. Hellinger/ Bußmann 2001: 8), is reinforced by a high productivity of feminising derivational suffixes (cf. Bußmann 2005, on a discussion of this issue, pertaining to German). This very visible productivity, for the generation of nouns in Croatian is further increased by a comparably high number of different eligible suffixes. Yet, the different derivation suffixes (esp. -ica, -kinja, -inja and -ka) do not only provide a higher potential for feminising words when naming people, but also contain some serious semantic risks such as trivialising3 the feminine. One of these hazards is that the use of certain suffixes could already be marked as “Serbian” and may therefore be perceived as “non-Croatian”4 (especially -ka and -kinja). Another such semantic risk is semantic interference, especially with the conventionally very frequently used suffix -ica for deriving feminine from masculine nouns, since it is also used to derive diminutive forms from masculine nouns (cf. Bertoša 2001: 71; Bori 1998: 39).

Important for an understanding of the Croatian system regarding grammatical gender in its usage for animates is the virtual impossibility of avoiding the naming of gender/sex in utterances about people. The following examples can clarify how gender is essentially realised everywhere in Croatian. They show how fitting into one of the dominating identity categories of gender/sex is necessitated by the whole linguistic system:

(1) Ja sam feministkinja [I am a feminist(F)] (2) Ti si gladan [You are hungry(M)] (3) Ti si gladna [You are hungry(F)] (4) Ja sam bio tamo, ali ti nisi došla [I was(M) there, but you didn’t come(F)] (5) Ja sam bila tamo, ali ti nisi došao [I was(F) there, but you didn’t come(M)] (6) Oni su bra a [They(M) are brothers] (7) One su sestre [They(F) are sisters] = Gender/sex identification needed


(8) Bili smo u gradu [We were(M) in town] (9) Mi smo svi kriti ari [We are all critics(M)] (10) Kako ste putovali? [How did you travel(M)] = Gender/sex ambiguous – but strong male bias

androgendering masculine)

While examples (1) to (7) show that for concrete reference, a clear gender/sex identification is obligatory and in fact unavoidable, the last three examples demonstrate how masculine word forms can be used in a way that does not necessarily reveal a person’s gender/sex, although the same sentences could always be used in a gender specific context too. Especially interesting in Croatian is the linguistic rule illustrated in (10) that prescribes the use of the masculine in the polite plural, no matter who is the addressee.

The important question in relation to examples (1) to (7) is then, again, to what extent such dominant language use—which is hard to avoid in everyday talking and writing—shapes our own binary gendered, sexed and heteronormative understanding of the world. The ambiguity of women being potentially included or excluded—for the utterances could just as well be made with a gender/sex specific intention referring to male people only (cf. also Hellinger/Pauwels 2007: 660)—is illustrated in examples (8) and (9). Example (10) provides insight into another important issue, i.e., the intersection of social prestige and gender/sex as (re)produced in language use.

Speakers of standard Croatian tend to name people who (self-) identify as women with the “correct” forms of the word (i.e., in the feminine gender) and, accordingly, those who are male (self-) identified with the masculine form of the word. Prescriptive Croatian linguists also tend to recommend the use of feminine forms when indexing women, while strongly supporting the use of the masculine as generic naming practice (cf. Babi 2006; and the survey in Glovacki-Bernardi 2012). Correspondingly, there are no strong calls from people working in the field to favour the strategy of gender-neutralisation (cf. Hellinger and Pauwels 2007: 663) in Croatia. Instead, Croatian feminists concerned about linguistic questions would always opt for the second strategy of feminist language reforms: feminisation.

The findings of an analysis of the Croatian newspaper Vjesnik in 20105 gives us some understanding of the quantities of gendered nouns used in personal appellations in a mainstream news context. Vjesnik, as a rather conservative, high-standard political daily newspaper, was chosen by the author to provide insight into the normalised, conventional way of naming

Chapter Five 92

people in public language use in Croatia. This survey of 599 articles from six randomly sampled issues of Vjesnik and consisting of n = 4,928 nouns denoting people made it very clear that naming people with masculine word forms in gender-neutral contexts is indeed the prevalent practice in Croatia. Accordingly, the data show that the naming of people with androgendering masculines in nouns comprises over one third (39 percent) of all naming contexts of people in the control sample. In addition to that figure, the remaining material consists, to a great extent (another 44 percent), of masculine nouns denoting people (self-)identified as male. Accordingly, nouns used to actually and potentially name male people are used in this specific feature of public language use much more frequently than nouns to name women (those comprising less than 10 percent of the total, with n = 511).

In accordance with this situation, sexist language in Croatian, in opposition to gender-inclusive language use, is usually perceived in the perpetual use of masculine word forms for all genders (cf. Bori 2004), while the opposite method, of naming men generically with feminine word forms, is not practised and would probably be perceived as derogatory (for an older—but unfortunately still very valid—account of that matter, see Schulz 1975: 65). Hence, a gender-inclusive way of language use can be realised through a comprehensive insertion of feminine nouns, both in gender-specific and gender-neutral contexts. Still, for the purposes of queer theorists, the strategy of feminisation has the disadvantage of supporting heteronormative patterns of naming and (re)producing gender/sex since it tends to strengthen the discourse about normative gender binarism (cf. Motschenbacher 2012: 94), as laid out above.

Examples of Feminist and Queer Answers to Heteronormativity in the Language We Use

With these considerations in mind, the following example (a) of Croatian queer/feminist language use provides an ambiguous picture. We could imagine the writers of the texts taken from one of the leading LGBT-online forums, the website queer.hr, to simply use the kind of language they have learned and been taught to use, unintentionally reproducing hegemonic and androcentric perceptions of gender/sex, since they use the androgendering masculine in contexts where people of all possible gender affiliations could be meant:


a) „Organizatori ne o ekuju nerede, a pozvali su sve Spli ane da ih podrže.”6 b) [The organisers(-MASC) do not expect troubles, and have called(-MASC) on the people of Split(-MASC) for their support.] Still, it might also be possible that this usage of conventional language with regard to the naming of gender/sex demonstrates an intentional decision to strategically avoid reinforcing heteronormative patterns through the naming of binary male-female dichotomies. Yet, it remains unclear throughout the other texts of the homepage whether or not the use of conventional language is intentional.

On another relevant webpage, queerzagreb.hr, the writers endeavour to use language more inclusively, by adding the feminine suffixes by the use of the so-called slash variant (see below), though not extensively or comprehensively: c) „Do danas realizirana su dva Queer Zagreb festivala (2003. i 2004.) koji su najve i queer festivali u jugoisto noj Europi te su okupili više od 200 izvo a a/ica sa raznih krajeva svijeta. [...] Tako smo do danas isproducirali kazališnu predstavu, realizirali projekt Queer Zebra [...] organizirali izložbu «Postsocijalisti ki queer identitet» na kojoj su izlagali umjetnici/e iz regije . . . ”7 d) [Up until today, two Queer Zagreb festivals have been realised (in 2003 and 2004), which are the biggest queer festivals in Southeastern Europe and which have assembled(-MASC) more than 200 performers(-MASC/-FEM) from different parts of the world. . . . So until now we were able to produce(-MASC) a theatre performance, realised(-MASC) the project Queer Zebra . . . organised(-MASC) the exhibition “Post social queer identity” in which artists(-MASC/-FEM) of the region have exhibited(-MASC) . . . ] In many of the contributions to both the homepages cited in the above examples (a) and (b), the naming of people is realised solely or at least mainly with masculine word forms, but directly addressing people is often done in more gender-inclusive manners. Hence, although there seems to be an awareness of the issue, the steps taken to achieve gender inclusivity are inconsistent.

The following examples are taken from kontra.hr, the homepage of the lesbian group Kontra, which opts for feminised language in its self-representation: e) „Lezbijska grupa Kontra je nevladina organizacija koja promovira ljudska prava lezbijki i biseksualnih žena. Osnovana je u ljeto 1997. godine u Zagrebu. Neke od naših lanica bile su osniva ice prve lezbijske grupe u Hrvatskoj Lila Inicijative (1989), te lanice Ligme (1992).”8

Chapter Five 94

f) [The lesbian group Kontra is a non-governmental organisation that promotes the human rights of lesbian and bisexual women. It was founded in 1997 in Zagreb. Some of our members(-FEM) have been founders(-FEM) of the first lesbian group in Croatia, Lila Inicijativa (1989), and members(-FEM) of Ligma (1992).] In naming contexts where people of other than (self-)identified female gender/sex are also to be involved, the authors of kontra.hr consequently use feminine and masculine forms in parallel, distinguished by a slash: g) „Biseksualac/ka: muškarac ili žena kojeg/koju emocionalno i seksualno privla e pripadnici i pripadnice oba spola”ix h) [Bisexual(-MASC/-FEM): man or woman who(-MASC/-FEM) emotionally and sexually is attracted to members(-MASC and -FEM) of both sexes.] This strategic practice of gender/sex-inclusive language use avails itself of the existing possibilities of linguistically identifying gender/sex, although these possibilities do not transcend the familiar margin of gender/sex as either male or female. Still, there is clearly an awareness of the need to avoid sexist and androcentric uses of language. This is consequently met throughout the contributions on the organisation’s homepage, which points to an evaluation of language as an important matter in questions of social equality and anti-discriminatory tactics.x

The strategic use of a slash (/) is certainly the most frequently employed form for disrupting conventional ways of naming and unnaming gender/sex and for avoiding the use of the androgendering masculine in Croatian sociocritical publications. It is used for naming gender/sex alternatively throughout the sentence and is not limited to nouns—a point that makes its usage even more attractive for Croatian. Still, it seems to contain much of what is criticised in queer readings as heteronormative. It remains questionable whether the slash is capable of avoiding and overcoming heteronormative ways of naming and, accordingly, thinking (cf. Hornscheidt 2012: 319). Sentences formulated gender-inclusively by means of the slash-variant in Croatian can nonetheless challenge normative views on language and its supposedly correct realisation since they point to the need for integrating forms other than masculine ones in naming people, in order to overcome sexism in language.

This way of naming gender, already itself quite conventionalised, has the severe shortcoming of usually only adding the feminine suffix to the masculine form of the word. Although the otherwise only allegedly included but not named, non-male realities are made visible to some extent, the feminine form could easily be read as a mere appendix of the masculine word, making the female visibility at once a matter of


subordination and maybe even strengthening the hegemonic power relations with regard to gender/sex. This leads us back to Wittig’s account of the category of sex being especially disadvantageous for women (cf. Wittig 1982: 67).

The authors of the texts of the homepage of the very active feminist education and information centre, Centar za ženske studije (Centre for Women’s Studies), show us how the slash-variant can also be combined with the use of the feminine forms (as possibly but not necessarily generic): i) „Unutar svojih programa Centar motivira studentice i druge sudionice/ke na kriti ko mišljenje i svijest o važnosti ženskih tema [...]”

j) [Within its programs the Centre motivates students(-FEM) and other participants(-FEM/-MASC) to think critically and to be conscious about the meaning of women’s issues . . . ] The slash-variant elucidates that using the masculine word forms alone can result in naming only one identity with regards to gender/sex, thus ignoring other identities. This way of writing can be positioned within a feminist discourse, which above all demands equal opportunities for women. To that effect, the slash-variant does not specifically contribute to overcoming the linguistic (re)production of a binary gender order; rather, it aims to tackle androcentric and sexist attitudes. Yet, as Mills and Mullany put it, any kind of intervention against sexist and androcentric social attitudes helps to clarify unbalanced ways of naming and perceiving people with regard to gender and promotes critical reflection on existing norms and habits (cf. Mills and Mullany 2011: 145).

A new, more subversive method of linguistic intervention has been developed in recent years within queer contexts in Croatia (see example (f)). This way of using language builds on already-existing gender-inclusive naming possibilities in Croatian to, potentially, truly exceed the mere naming of feminine and masculine words in a parallel fashion by creating interesting, flexibly composable hybrid forms. With its unconventional mergers of naming practices that are conventionally used to establish either female or male realities and identities in one word, this strategy is a linguistic intervention that challenges the supposed clarity in the naming of people with regards to gender. Accordingly, it comes much closer towards answering queer claims of breaking the borders of heteronormative classifications of people inside the binary gender order. Similar to the slash-variant, the hybrid form can be used for all parts of speech where gender is realised and throughout the whole syntactic

Chapter Five 96

structure. Yet, the hybrid form shows an even more convincing new strategy of resistance to androcentric as well as binary and heteronormative (re)productions of social conceptions of gender/sex by linguistic means. Regarding this strategy, Bertoša states that “ . . . breaking the language norm is tightly linked to breaking the social norm and therefore exceptionally subversive” (Bertoša 2005: 234).

The following examples are extracted from different publications provided by the homepage of the queer/feminist non-profit organisation Ženska soba (Woman’s room) and are sorted according to lexical categories:

k) Substantives:

• lingvisticei (linguists) from: lingvistice (fem.nom.pl.) and lingvisti (masc.nom.pl.)

• itateljaice (reader) from: itatelja (masc.gen.sg.) and itateljice (fem.gen.sg.)

• pojedinacka (individual) from: pojedinac (masc.nom.sg.) and pojedinka (fem.nom.sg.)

Participles: • nau iola (learned) from: nau io (masc.sg.) and nau ila (fem.sg.) • uradilao (made/done) from: uradila (fem.sg.) and uradio (masc.sg.) • moralie (had to/forced) from: morali (masc.pl.) and morale (fem.pl.) Pronouns: • drugei (others) from: druge (fem.pl.) and drugi (masc.pl.) • onie kojie (the ones, who) from: oni koji (masc.pl.) and one koje (fem.pl.)

With this new and creative possibility of fair language use, made available by the activists of Ženska soba, there is a novel and innovative mode of using the rather restrictive grammatical patterns of the Croatian language in a way that addresses two important issues which feminist and queer critics of the status-quo want to tackle: First, it allows for the critical transcending and questioning of the normalised and heteronormative gender order by resisting its (re)production. Second, it shows possibilities for overcoming the conventionalised prescriptive use of Croatian that strengthens and reproduces hierarchical and predominant gender order—a mode that always favours masculine naming paradigms while neglecting non-male identities.


References

Abbou, Julie. “Double Gender Marking in French: A Linguistic Practice of Antisexism.” Current Issues in Language Planning 12 (1) (2011): 55-75.

Babi , Stjepan. “Hrvatski jezik, Zakonodavstvo i ravnopravnost spolova.” Jezik 3 (2006): 81-87.

Bertoša, Mislava. “On the Language Transgression of the Sex / Gender Binary and Linguistics: A Very Brief Overview.” In Trangressing Gender. Two is not Enough for Gender (E)quality, edited by Jelena Pošti and Amir Hodži , 226-238. Translated by Sandra Antulov of the Croatian original article: O jezi noj transgresiji spolne/rodne binarnosti i lingvistici: sasvim površna razmišljanja, in: Pošti , Jelena and Amir Hodži (eds.),Transgresija roda. Spolna/rodna ravnopravnost zna i više od binarnosti. Zagreb: Ženska soba 2005.

Bertoša, Mislava. “Jezi ne promjene i feministi ka kritika jezika.” Revija za sociologiju, 1-2 (2001): 63-75.

Bori , Rada. “Ženski identitet u jeziku.“ Tre a 1 (1998): 37-44. —. “Nejednakost u jeziku. Više od stereotipa.“ In Uostalom,

diskriminaciju treba dokinuti. Priru nik za analizu rodnih stereotipa, edited by Valerija Barada and Jelavi Željka, 17-30. Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije 2004.

Bußmann, Hadumod. „Haben Sprachen ein Geschlecht? Genus/gender in der Sprachwissenschaft.“ In Genus. Geschlechterforschung/Gender Studies in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, edited by Hadumod Bußmann and Renate Hof, 482-518. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag 2005.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York and London: Routledge 1990. Cameron, Deborah. „Language, Gender, and Sexuality: Current Issues and

New Directions.“ Applied Linguistics, 26/4 (2005): 482-502. Duke, Janet. The Development of Gender as a Grammatical Category.

Five Studies from the Germanic Languages. Heidelberg: C. Winter 2009.

Gabriel, Ute and Franziska Mellenberger. “Exchanging the Generic Masculine for Gender-Balanced Forms--The Impact of Context Valence.” Swiss Journal of Psychology, 63 (4) (2004): 273-278.

Glovacki-Bernardi, Zrinjka. “Job Adverisements in Croatian Newspapers--Gender Perspective.” In Doing Gender--Doing the Balkans. Dynamics and Persistence in South-Eastern Europe, edited by Kersten-Pejani , Christian Voß and Simone Rajili , 147-159. Munich/New York: Otto Sagner 2012.

Chapter Five 98

Hellinger, Marlis and Hadumod Bußmann. “The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men.” In: Gender Across Languages, Vol.1, edited by Marlis Hellinger and Hadumod Bußmann, 1-25. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company 2001.

Hellinger, Marlis and Hadumod Bußmann (eds.). Gender Across Languages, Vol.1. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2001.

—. Gender Across Languages, Vol.2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2002.

—. Gender Across Languages, Vol.3. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2003.

Hellinger, Marlis and Anne Pauwels. “Language and Sexism.” In Handbook of Language and Communication: Diversity and Change (Handbook of Applied Linguistics: 9), edited by Marlis Hellinger and Anne Pauwels, 651-684. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 2007.

Hornscheidt, Antje. „Grammatik als Ort von Geschlechterkonstruktion. Eine kritische Analyse.“ In Kritische Differenzen - geteilte Perspektiven. Zum Verhältnis von Feminismus und Postmoderne, edited by Antje Hornscheidt, Gabi Jähnert, and Annette Schlichter, 140–173. Opladen: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 1998.

—. Die sprachliche Benennung von Personen aus konstruktivistischer Sicht. Genderspezifizierung und ihre diskursive Verhandlung im heutigen Schwedisch. Berlin/N.Y.: 2006.

—. Feministische W_Orte. Ein Lern-, Denk- Und Handlungsbuch Zu Sprache Und Diskriminierung, Gender Studies Und Feministischer Linguistik. Frankfurt/Main: Brandes & Apsel2012.

Katz, Jonathan Ned. The Invention of Heterosexuality. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press 2007(2).

Kimmel, Michael S. “Masculinity as Homophobia. Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity.” In Theorizing Masculinities, edited by Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman, 119-142. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications 1994.

Koniuszaniec, Gabriela and Hanka B aszkowska. „Polish. Language and Gender in Polish.” In: Gender across languages Vol.3, ed. by Marlis Hellinger and Hadumod Bußmann, 259-285. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2003.

Kusterle, Karin. Die Macht von Sprachformen. Der Zusammenhang von Sprache, Denken und Genderwahrnehmung. Frankfurt/Main: Brandes & Apsel 2011.


Mills, Sara and Louise Mullany. Language, Gender and Feminism. Theory, Methodology and Practice. Abingdon and New York: Routledge 2011.

Mills, Sara. Language and Sexism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008.

Motschenbacher, Heiko. “Grammatical Gender as a Challenge for Language Policy: The (Im)Possibility of Non-Heteronormative Language Use in German versus English.” Language Policy (2013): 1-19.

Motschenbacher, Heiko. Language, Gender, and Sexual Identity. Poststructuralist perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company 2010.

—. „Queere Linguistik: Theoretische und Methodologische Überlegungen zu einer Heteronormativitätskritischen Sprachwissenschaft.“ In Genderlinguistik. Sprachliche Konstruktionen von Geschlechtsidentität, edited by Susanne Günthner, et al., 87-125. Berlin: De Gruyter 2012.

Pastre, Geneviéve. „Linguistic Gender Play among French Gays and Lesbians.“ In Queerly Phrased. Language, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by Anna Livia and Kira Hall, 369-379. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997.

Pavlidou, Theodossia-Soula. “Glosa – Genos – Filo: Provlimata, Anazitisis Kai Elliniki Glossa [Language – Grammatical Gender – Social Gender: Problems, Reflections, and the Greek Language].” In Glossa – Genos – Filo, edited by Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou, 15-64. Thessaloniki: Institute of Modern Greek Studies 2006(2).

Polyzou, Alexandra. „Desires, Sexuality and 'Lifestyle': Masculinity Constructs in Three Greek Men's Lifestyle Magazines.“ In Language and Sexuality (Through and) Beyond Gender, edited by Costas Canakis, Venetia Kantsa and Kostas Yiannakopoulos, 113-142. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2010.

Posch, Claudia. Feminist language forms in German. A corpus-assisted study of personal appellation with non-human referents. Hamburg: Anchor Academic Publishing 2014.

Rajili , Simone. „Silovanje jezika! – Vergewaltigung von Sprache! Debatten über Gender und Sprache in der serbischen Presse 2001-2012.“ In Babel Balkan? Politische und soziokulturelle Kontexte von Sprache in Südosteuropa, edited by Christian Voß and Wolfgang Dahmen, 271-293. Mucnich/Berlin/Washington: Verlag Otto Sagner 2014.

Chapter Five 100

Rehder, Peter. „Das Kroatische.“ In Einführung in die Slavischen Sprachen, edited by Peter Rehder, 250-267. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2006.

Rosenfeld, Marthe. 'The Linguistic Aspect of Sexual Conflict: Monique Wittig’s Le Corps Lesbien.’ Mosaic, 17 (2) (1984): 235-241.

Schilt, Kristen and Laurel Westbrook. „Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity. 'Gender Normals', Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality.“ Gender and Society, 23 (4) (2009): 440-463.

Schulz, Muriel R. “The Semantic Derogation of Woman.” In Language and Sex. Difference and Dominance, edited by Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley, 64-75. Rowley/Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers 1975.

Szpyra-Koz owska, Jolanta, and Sara Mills. “Language and Sexism. Cambridge [...].” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14/2 (2010): 274-279.

Wagenknecht, Peter. „Heteronormativität.“ In Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, vol. 6/I Hegemonie bis Imperialismus, edited by Wolfgang Fritz Haug, 189-206. Hamburg: Argument 2004.

Wittig, Monique. “The Straight Mind.” Feminist Issues, Summer (1980): 103-111.

—. „The Category of Sex.“ Feminist Issues, Fall (1982): 63-68. —. „The Mark of Gender.“ Feminist Issues, Fall (1985): 3-12.

Notes * I am very thankful to many people who commented on this paper on different occasions, above all Costas Canakis. My deepest thanks go to the organisers and participants of IGALA 8 in Vancouver in June 2014 and of the postgraduate course “Feminisms in a transnational perspective 2013: Feminist critique of knowledge production” in Dubrovnik in May 2013 where I was able to present a version of the paper. My colleagues and supervisors from the DFG research project were indispensible in their commenting and clarifying my considerations on many occassions over the last years. 1 Still, the remaining gender traits in English (above all lexical and social gender, cf. Hellinger/Bußmann 2003: 7 and 10) are important for recognising the often contested interconnection between gender assignements and the linguistic manifestation of social gender/sex of people (in English, pronouns need gender assignment above all when referring to people). This means that a gender/sex identification of the named human being is required, just as in other languages, where grammatical gender is more prevalent. It is also required for utterances referring to inanimate objects and where, for this reason, the interconnection between grammatical and social gender is often denied (see, e.g., Duke 2009: 24).


The respondents’ hesitation to adopt masculine nouns when talking to/about transsexual men in Schilt and Westbrook sheds light on the importance of even this “little” feature of (grammatical) gender left in the English language (cf. Schilt/Westbrook 2009: 448). 2 Apart from the possible fact that the English language itself does not require as much development of gender-inclusive ways of language use, it is important to see that existing research on languages other than English is often simply not visible and accessible to the international research community, due to the language of the publications. The major contrastive project by Hellinger/ Bußmann (2001-2003) has certainly helped to close that gap and provides a crucial starting point for research in the field. 3 This was especially obvious in the recent offhand, informal reference to Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor as Kosorica. 4 This odd argument is used even more frequently in Serbian than in Croatian discussions on gender sensitive language use as a strategy for devaluating feminist linguistic claims (cf. Rajili 2014) and apparently does not take into account that almost all morphosyntactic and lexical devices in the two languages are both shared and, usually, permitted because of their use in the neighbouring country. 5 This data is part of my dissertation thesis, which will soon be completed. I am including this here to illustrate how frequently the masculine is used and the according prevalence of the masculine, adding to a picture of hegemonically gendered language use that is of concern to those in feminist and queer linguistics. These disciplines address head-on the fact that the “structural sexism” inherent in Croatian (and other gender languages) makes queer and feminist approaches to language modification profoundly challenging. 6 http://queer.hr/18608/odreden-datum-drugog-split-pridea/ (last retrieved on September 3, 2013). 7 http://www.queerzagreb.org/pocetna.htm (last retrieved on March 21, 2012, hacked on September 3, 2013). 8 http://www.kontra.hr/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid =&id=15:lezbijska-grupa-kontra&Itemid=41&lang=hr (last retrieved July 31, 2014). ix http://www.kontra.hr/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=42 &Itemid=56&lang=hr (last retrieved on September 3, 2013). x When I talked to Kontra activist Sanda Brumen in June 2011, she expressed her opinion on the need to use gender-inclusive language in her activist work. I owe Sanda special thanks since she first showed me the (until then unknown to me) alternative mode of integrating masculine and feminine grammatical forms in one word, which I will depict in this paper.

CHAPTER SIX

NEW TEXTS, NEW POLITICS: POSITIONING GENDER IN THE CAMEROONIAN

ELECTORAL CODE

LILIAN LEM ATANGA UNIVERSITY OF BAMENDA

AND ALEXANDRE T. DJIMELI UNIVERSITY OF DSCHANG

Introduction

Cameroon is one of the few African countries that has recently (2013 parliamentary elections) attained the 30 percent margin of number of women in parliament (with 31.1 percent in the lower chamber and 20 percent in the upper chamber). The gender equity in Cameroon makes the country eleventh in ranking position in Africa and thirty-third in the world.1 This paper seeks to examine the effects of new texts on political change in Cameroon and how gender sensitivity in electoral documents and in particular the Code Eléctoral Camerounais (Electoral Code of Cameroon) can lead to such change.

International legal instruments such as the Maputo Protocol and the CEDAW declaration recommend a system of quotas regarding the representation of women in decision making positions, including elective positions into councils and parliaments. These instruments recommend a 30 percent critical margin of attainment for parliaments to be gender sensitive in decision making. Some local organisations in Cameroon including Ensemble pour la Parité, More Women in Politics, Parité, etc., request not only for such quotas but also for gender parity in elective positions—not an unreasonable request considering, for example, that the population of women is marginally greater than that of men (MINEPAT 2010).2 An increase in the country’s number of women and gender

New Texts, New Politics 103

equality in decision making positions in Cameroon is therefore examined in this paper with regard to a modification in the discourse of the nation’s new political text—the electoral code in Cameroon. In this paper, we examine the contribution of the media to the introduction of these new texts and also examine the electoral code to see how it impacts on political change in Cameroon.

The media, considered by discourse theorists the fourth power (Litosseliti 2006; Fairclough 2001) after the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, are considered to have an important role in the promotion of the discourse of equality. The media thus have a significant part to play in the production and consumption of the equality discourse and thus serve as an agent for change in a gendered political discourse and ideology. With regard to the representation of women in the media, Litosseliti observes that they are often still portrayed “as sex objects, mothers, and wives in relationship with others, rather than independent” politicians (Litosseliti 2006:93). Media contribute, on one hand, to the preservation of public spaces as masculine and can, on the other hand, challenge the dominant practices by giving spaces for alternative “progressive” discourses (Atanga 2012) and the “promotion of women” in public spaces, challenging the control of (political) spaces as masculine (e.g., More Women in Parliament). Thus, the point of departure for our analysis in this article is the possibility of an opening, or alternatively a closing, of media spaces with the goal of promoting equal opportunities for women and men, especially in the political field in Cameroon.

We distinguish here two types of media: cultural and information. Cultural media are those whose content is not limited to current events. In this category we have, for example, books, films and all formats with a symbolic content. Distinct from cultural media, information media deal essentially with news. We have as examples the newspaper, the radio or the television. In this article, we draw on both cultural and information media. For the former, we draw on a book entitled Code Eléctoral Camerounais (APRODA 2012); and for the latter, we select from newspapers that addressed gender issues during the adoption process of the electoral law no 2012/001 of April 19, 2012.

The specific research questions which we attempt to answer in this paper are the following:

How is gender represented in the Code Eléctoral Camerounais? How is it treated in newspapers? What are the contexts and perspectives of media discourse on gender in

Cameroon?

Chapter Six 104

In analysing the Code Eléctoral Camerounais, we examine to what degree gender is considered in the book and the extent to which the language therein is gender sensitive. In regards to the newspapers, we examine how they assess the “inclusion” of gender in the Cameroonian Electoral Code. The paper is organised in four parts: theoretical and methodological orientations; the representation of gender in the Code Eléctoral Camerounais; the treatment of gender in (selected) newspapers; and the perspectives of the evolution of gendered discourse in Cameroon.

Theoretical and Methodological Orientations

In this section, we present the data and the choice of methods of analysis. The data are composed of a book—a cultural medium par excellence—and newspapers, which fall into the category of information media.3 The book in question is the Code Eléctoral Camerounais, published by APRODA, a specialised publisher of, among other things, legal texts, during the second trimester of 2012 and immediately after the promulgation by the Head of State of the Unique Electoral Code. The Code Eléctoral Camerounais (“the Code”) contains Law no 2012/001 of April 19, 2012 on the Code voted during the March session of the Cameroon National Assembly. In this publication, the law is embedded in paratexts: indications on copyright, the Explanatory Statement, the Table of Contents, and so on.

The Code is published in both French and English. (The title of the book, however, is exclusively in French.) The book is bilingual, respecting the Cameroonian constitutional provisions on language which state that official documents should be published in French and English. Publishing in the two languages also ensures a wider distribution of the content to the different linguistic populations. Publishing the text in two languages means one of the languages is a translation of the other. In intercultural communication, there is necessarily a bias in translation from one language to the next, as Lotbinière-Harwood (1991) observed. These translations may result in either gender sensitive or gender blind language. The bilingual presentation of gender in the Cameroonian Electoral Code can thus lead one to observe disparities in the French and English versions and consequently in the consumption of the texts in French and English. Our analysis, based both on the English and the French versions, takes these aspects into consideration.

We selected two daily newspapers for analysis: the conservative Le Messager and the progressive Mutations, deemed conservative or liberal at least in terms of their dedication to considering gender. They are the only daily newspapers that published interviews as well as opinion columns


during the process of the vote of the Electoral Code and after the Code was voted in the Parliament. We selected a week (April 9-16, 2012) of media coverage on the vote on the Electoral Code in the National Assembly. The choice of the newspapers was not based on traditional dichotomies such as pro-governmental newspaper or opposition-friendly newspaper. It was not even based on whether they were publicly or privately owned or on a linguistic (French or English) basis. Rather, the two principal criteria were as follows: their sensitivity to gender and their proximity to civil society organisations that promote the gender agenda. We must indicate, following the analysis, that these two newspapers are more inclined to “accompany” the actions of civil societies lobbying for the inclusion of gender in the Code. The media texts selected for analysis are completed with interviews of newspaper editorial staff and civil society leaders.

The data is analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough and Wodak 1997; Wodak and Meyer 2009) views discourse as a social practice (Fairclough 2003; Blommmaert 2005; Machin and Mayr 2012). As such, we consider gendered discourse as both a process and a result of social practices within Cameroonian society. This includes power relations where discourse is a mode of expression. Using CDA will therefore enable us to understand the inclusion of gender in the Electoral Code and to comprehend how Cameroonians perceive gender inclusion or parity within the Cameroonian context. We draw in particular on Wodak’s Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) and van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Approach (SCA) (Van Leeuwen and Wodak 1999; Wess and Wodak 2003). The Discourse Historical Approach, developed by Wodak and associate researchers, attempts to “integrate much available knowledge about the historical sources and the background of the social and political fields in which ‘discursive’ events are embedded” (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 35). The Socio-Cognitive Approach, on the other hand, argues that there is necessarily a relationship between discourse, society and cognition. Discourses produced by mental operations (cognition) are nourished by social inputs and adapted to a specific context. Thus, discourses are based on social ideologies. Using both approaches to CDA, we start by examining how gender is included in Code Eléctoral Camerounais.

We have observed that the document on the Code is in French and English. It is obvious, given the linguistic structure of Cameroon that one version of the Code is a translation of the other. Given that French is the more dominant and majority language in Cameroon, we suppose that the original version was in French. We also suppose that there are many

Chapter Six 106

translators, as we will show in our analysis further in the paper. In the section that follows, we examine the gendered discourse on the Code.

The Electoral Code: Kick-Starting Discourse on Gender

An electoral code is a compendium of legal instruments which govern the electoral process in a given country (Ewang Sone 2012). The new Code in Cameroon, as summarised by Ewang Sone, unites in a single document laws governing the electoral consultations shown by the Constitution—that is, the election of the President of the Republic, the Parliamentarians, Senators, municipal and regional Councillors, as well as referendums. It also includes specification on Cameroonians voting abroad and dispositions concerning the financing of political parties and electoral campaigns. The Code has laws regarding Elections Cameroon, the electoral body in charge of organising electoral consultations and referendums.

The Cameroonian Electoral Code of April 19, 2012 considered gender in four different types of elections: legislative, municipal, senatorial and regional. For the legislative4 elections, the legal provision prescribing the inclusion of gender can be found in chapters I and IV of Part V of the Code. These chapters treat the “mandate and mode of the ballot” and “the declarations of the candidates,” respectively. In Section 151(3), the Code states that “each list shall take into consideration the various sociological components of the constituency concerned. It shall also take into consideration gender aspects.” The last thing to be mentioned in Section 164 (4) (f) is gender. This clause specifies that the declaration of candidates must show “evidence of consideration of gender in drawing up the list.”

In the different articles of the Cameroonian Electoral Code evoking gender, the word “gender” is always found at the end of the paragraph. In article 15 (3), the word “gender” is preceded by the expression “besides” in the French version, giving it the value of an appendage— proof that “gender” is the last thought in the article. Not only is the mention of gender last on the list of Section 151, but it is also the last word in the sentence. In the same article, 151 (3), of the French version, it is preceded by the expression en outré—“besides.” Its content is not defined and the modalities of application are not specified. The introduction of the word “gender” gives the impression that a door on the discourse on gender is being opened, yet the fact that nothing more is mentioned about defining how gender will be taken into consideration makes us think that the door to a gendered discourse on the Code is being closed with no room for the


discussion on how exactly gender can be considered during an electoral process.

While the word gender is included in the Code, the publication utilises masculine pronouns to denote actors in the electoral process regardless of the gender of the Members of Parliament (MPs), Councillors, Senators or President of the Republic. It appears to assume, possibly from a historical and patriarchal perspective, that Councillors, MPs, Senators and Presidents have been men, and thus their construction and representation in discourse is male. The French text is completely gender insensitive in referring to the actors in the Code. Systematically, all the pronouns used in the Code have male referents. The English version, considered to be a translation, is sometimes gender sensitive in language (see Section 161), although it predominantly uses the generic male. Sections 164, 165 and 166 use the pronouns he/his [see Section 165 (d) below]:

A declaration by which the substantive or alternate candidate testifies, on his honour that his name appears only on that list and that he is not the object of any of the disqualifications provided by the law. (my italics)

At a micro-level, both the English and the French versions of the Code are indicative of a culture of men as leaders. Almost systematically, the President of the Republic and parliamentarians are referred to as “he” in the Code. The French version does not contain a single reference to “le/la president(e).” The pronoun used to refer to all the leadership positions is a normative “il(s).” This oversight could be a result of the traditional French language where positions of leadership are customarily male. Even when a woman occupies such a position, she is referred to, for example, as “Madame le xxx,” as in “Madame le Secrétaire Général.”

The English version of the Electoral Code, as observed above, is most likely a translation, and there are variations in the sensitivity to gender in language use. In some articles, the language is completely insensitive while in others, the language is fairly gender inclusive. Section 13 for example uses the neutral terminology “chairperson” instead of the traditional “chairman.” In Section 24 as well, there is the use of “he/she” to refer to the Director General. This is a significant advancement from exclusively masculine language, although some feminists will claim that the male is still dominant since the masculine pronoun is placed before the feminine pronoun. Unfortunately, shortly after these demonstrations of gender neutrality, the same position, that is, the Director General is referred to as “He” in Sections 26 and 27. One may be tempted to conclude that these sections are translated by two different persons, some gender sensitive and others not gender inclusive in their language. If we

Chapter Six 108

assume that only one person translated the two sections—24 and 161 on the one hand and 26, 27 and 116 on the other—then we can claim that this translator is struggling to challenge their male normative programming; that is, they are having trouble viewing directors or presidents as something other than men. Section 140, which focuses on the taking of oath by the incoming president after the ballot, is openly discriminatory:

Mr President of the Republic, Do you pledge yourself on your honour to faithfully perform the duties entrusted to you by the people, and do you solemnly swear before God and men to devote all your efforts . . . (my emphasis)

Using the address Mr suggests the phallocratic programming of the author’s cognition that a country’s President is male. Also, since politics is traditionally a male domain, it may be understood that the use of “before God and men” is indicative of the fact that women are absent in such contexts. The use of “Mr” in addressing the president can also be indicative of the fact that so far, there has been no female president in the country. However, asking the (supposedly male) president to swear “before God and men” is a clear indication of the gender ideology in Cameroon, which does not acknowledge Cameroonian female voters in the electoral process even at the point of swearing in where they are referred to as “men.”

Gender equity calls for putting in place measures which guarantee equal chances to be elected among any “sociological compositions,” that is, along any socio-economic or gendered lines. This supposes among other things that women and men have to be included as much from the start to the end of the electoral process. How this inclusion is done is not specified in the Code. The Explanatory Statement of the Code thus underlines “the taking into consideration of gender in the constitution of candidate lists” as an innovation of the unique Electoral Code (APRODA 2012: XIV). Gender considerations in the constitution of candidate lists cohere with the conclusion of the Explanatory Statement, which refer to “equity:”

Undertaking this major reform shall constitute a major step towards consolidating multiparty democracy in Cameroon with the adoption of a modern and updated legal and institutional framework, adapted to the national context and conducive to the conduct of elections on the basis of high standards of transparency and equity. (APRODA 2012: XXII)


Gender inclusion is meanwhile not taken into account in the other stages and aspects of the Code, especially the structure and organisation of elections, the composition of the different commissions, the management of litigations, etc. The Ghanaian electoral commission recognises the capacity of women to contribute to the organisation of elections and to do so in a manner that assures that principal demographic characteristics are respected (Debrah, Kojo Pumpuni Asante and Gyimah-Boadi 2010: 17). The legal provisions in the Code, unlike the case of Ghana shown here, are vague with regard to the modes of “operationalisation” of the gender approach in the election of parliamentarians.

By way of summarising, we can say that even if the inclusion of gender is an innovation in the Electoral Code, it is not an important aspect of the law. Instead, it appears to be an appendix or a simple supplement to the essentials. The gender approach or the inclusion of gender in the Code suggests a certain hesitation of the Cameroonian legislation when it comes to clear inclusion of women in the electoral process. The perspective is still dominantly male. This observation is contrary to that of Jacques Fame Ndongo (2002) or Célestin Ngoura (2002) whose works accord a very important place to women in Cameroonian traditional societies. Their argument that women hold a central positive role may not be valid in a political framework, as they examine women not in modern political contexts but traditional contexts.

Despite some inadequacies recorded, the attempt of gender mainstreaming in the Cameroonian Electoral Code is a new provision that if applied, can influence electoral governance. That is one of the reasons why the issue is of interest to journalists5 and explains why media could be attracted to the question of gender in electoral law.

The Treatment of Gender in Newspapers

Our objective in analysing daily newspapers in Cameroon is to decipher their position on the place of women in a Cameroon which aspires to democracy. Of the 120 issues published by each Le Messager and Mutations, approximately forty articles in the former treated topics related to women while the latter published over a hundred. Between April 9 and April 16, 2012, these two newspapers relayed the debates on the bill of the unique Electoral Code deposited in the National Assembly. The articles were generally centred on the capacity of the Electoral Code to respond to claims of political opposition and to reunite disparate and sometimes counter political trends. Generally, few newspaper articles in the different newspapers integrated gender into the reporting of the debates. Mutations

Chapter Six 110

is possibly the only newspaper that accorded a specific article to the issue. This took the form of an interview with Justine Diffo, the national coordinator of the network of More Women in Politics.6

In this article, Diffo defends the idea that there should be an “institutionalisation of equality in the electoral process.” For Diffo, the inscription of gender in the Electoral Code in the constitutional law commission (which, at the time of the interview, was under examination) was an indication of “an index of modernity.” She observed that the issue of gender should go beyond just mention and affirms that “we insist on mechanisms to put in place gender and wish for example that after the adoption of the Electoral Code, the President puts in place an ordinance which defines the modalities of application.”7 She specifically thinks that candidate lists that do not “respect the 30 percent minimum quota of the two sexes” should be rejected. Her text ends with the observation that the emergence to which Cameroon aspires in 2035 can only become a reality through the valorisation of the capital women represent, since, as previously indicated, they comprise a little over half of the Cameroonian population.8

This reasoning is in agreement with an observation by Luc Sindjoun and Mathias Eric Owona Nguini about the formulation of the problem of women in Cameroon:

Politically, the problem of women is based on marginalisation, from the sad observation of the relatively total absence of women in structures where the destiny of our country is determined; marginalisation is not in line with the fact that women constitute the greater percentage of the population of Cameroon [ . . . ]. The argument of numbers and majority gives legitimacy to the demands of the women. (Sindjoun and Owona Nguini, 2000: 47, our translation)

If the national media have not lingered on gender as a great innovation during the voting process of the Electoral Code, they have all published many articles in favour of the inclusion of gender in electoral governance after the promulgation of the electoral law. The articles criticise the absence of the political will of the current government regarding the inclusion of gender, calling on women to fight to gain a prominent place in elective positions and advocating for legally sanctioned equality. These ideas are demonstrated in the following sample of texts: Firstly, in an opinion column by Marie Thérèse Atangana Amougou entitled “Genre et élections—Avancées, reculades et perspectives du Code électoral du 19 April 2012 [Gender and elections—progress, regression, and perspectives of the Electoral Code (our translation)];”9 secondly, in an interview with


Élise Pokossi Doumbè entitled “Les femmes doivent assumer leurs responsabilités [Women have to assume their responsibility (our translation)];”10 and finally, in an interview with Édith Mongue Din entitled “Le concept de quota est aujourd’hui dépassé [The concept of quotas is outdated today (our translation)].”11

The articles were published during events dedicated to the promotion of gender in politics. These events were coordinated by national and international organisations and institutions.12 In the parliament, other aspects of the Electoral Code eclipsed gender; meanwhile, the gender related events, surrounded by a massive campaign of press relations, were mainly centred on the promotion of female gender. This lack of attention to gender in the parliament is also reflected in the newspapers we studied, possibly reflecting political ideology of the context. It is possible that Cameroonian journalists do not perceive the issue of gender to be as pressing as other political concerns, which would explain the paucity of gender related articles in the media. Newspaper articles on the inclusion of gender in the Electoral Code are thus treated mostly through interviews with women. Commentaries, editorials and opinions on women’s inclusion or women’s participation in politics are sparse.

How do we explain the reticence of the legislature to truly “operationalise” the inclusion of gender in the electoral law and the hesitance of its treatment in the media? How do we explain that even when some articles deal with it, they seem to favour men? In our opinion, an exploration of the context of gender in politics and in the media in Cameroon can help explain the evolution (positive or negative) of media discourse on gender in Cameroon.

Contexts and Perspectives of Media Discourse

Literature shows existing analyses of media texts on the inclusion of gender in legal documents. Laurent-Charles Boyomo Assala in his study on the relationship between communication and the transformation of the image of women indicates that the principle of equality of women and men and the necessity of protecting minorities is stated in the preamble of the Cameroonian constitution of January 18, 1996. His analysis reveals the constitutional committee of 1995 (the MPs who passed the law) did not want to include gender as an aspect of the new law and as Boyomo (2003: 440) puts it, the MPs did not want to put the “protection of women to the state, that is, the law.” The guarantee to all citizens of the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms and the protection of women was left in the margins.

Chapter Six 112

Boyomo also contends that to escape this vicious cycle, specific legal measures need to be taken into account. He claims the need for “positioning certain interests in the public sphere to protect certain minority groups.” The introduction of gender in the unique Electoral Code appears as a legal attempt to favour women who are politically, though not demographically, a minority. The actual deficiencies are justified in part by the history of the process of the inclusion of gender in the Electoral Code.

In fact, the introduction of gender in the Electoral Code is an old demand by the civil society and principally feminist movements. As Luc Sindjoun and Mathias Eric Owona Nguini (2000: 45) affirm:

It is this feminine society [ . . . ] that propels this formulation of the “feminine problem.” These different associations make up “para-political enterprises” that permit the amelioration of the visibility of women in the public space. (Our translation)

The work of Cameroonian civil societies aligns with that of world movements for the recognition of the rights of women and the repair of injustices carried out on them. As in the early 1990s where aid to African countries was attached to democracy, many debt and poverty reduction initiatives now include the topic of gender in governance and development initiatives.

According to Thérèse Atangana Amougou, the inclusion of gender in the Electoral Code is a consequence of international influence on Cameroon and the promises of the Head of State, Paul Biya, during presidential campaigns—although it could be the case that his engagements and promises are not always fully kept. Among the international engagements, one can cite protocols signed such as the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance 2007, African Charter for Human Rights and Peoples, the Maputo Protocol and the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1979. Article 9 of the Maputo Protocol, for example, says that:

States should engage in specific positive actions to promote participative governance and equal participation of women in the political life of their country through affirmation, national legislation and other measures.

Among the promises of the Head of State of Cameroon, one can make reference to Paul Biya’s speeches of October 2, 1997 during the Presidential campaign at Maroua and on September 15, 2011 during the


third ordinary congress of the CPDM in Yaoundé where he invokes the issue of gender.

Even with the ratification of the international instruments on human rights and the many promises made by the Head of State, gender had never been included in the Code. This is because the government had never taken that opportunity. The opportunity was offered during the elaboration of the unique Electoral Code, a consequence of the 201113 presidential elections and the legislative and municipal elections in 2013.14 These elections were postponed following the insistence of civil societies, political parties and international partners of the need to have an electoral code for a better organisation of the elections. Gender was taken into consideration in the project in a period where the gender approach was being definitively systematised in many other African countries.15 Gender, however, was not taken into account following the recommendations of those advocating for the inclusion of gender in the Code. The way the government positioned it in the texts—at the end of articles and at the end of sentences—indicated that it was not an important aspect of the electoral reform.

As André Tchoupié (2011) showed, current regimes in some African countries do not easily cede to political claims when they can handle their opponents and the results; in general, the complaints of the civil society and the opposition are taken into consideration in microscopic doses. This is evident in that gender inclusion is ‘microscopic,’ as shown in this paper. One then can understand the critique of Edith Mongo Din, the president of Ensemble pour la Parité, who thinks that a simple mention of gender in electoral lists is an indication that Cameroon has not advanced in its commitments to gender issues. It is also an indication that Cameroon does not take into consideration the demographic weight of women in elections who represent up to 60 percent of the voters.16 The anecdotal manner of taking gender into consideration in the Code can be said to also justify the accidental treatment of the gender problem in the media.

The inclusion of gender in the Cameroonian Electoral Code can be said to be a result of progressive forces and pressure from the international environment. International influence on gender policy in Cameroon is real. However, official speeches (of the president and ministers) include the subject of gender only when making reference to international events or when preparing for international events (e.g., the World Congress on women in Mexico in 1975, Copenhagen 1980, Nairobi 1985, Beijing 1995 or Women’s Day on March 8th). In other words, the actualisation of gender in politics depends on the political interest of the regime in place.

Trapped in heteronormativity in Croatian? New answers to old limitations on fair language use in...

Documents

Transcript of Trapped in heteronormativity in Croatian? New answers to old limitations on fair language use in...