The Practices of Subjectivation of Women
This article deals with the issue of women’s appropriation of the democratic ideal of autonomy and equality, through studying the association of women in relationships to money. It considers the meaning women give to money in an ideal context of emancipation, as well as in one with objective inequalities between the sexes. Thus, the association with money serves as an indicator of identity, of the autonomy they claim or of their place in the gender division of work. Our study shows that for women in conditions where they are able to think about emancipation, the democratic ideal becomes a way to express a care of the self. Their ethical requirements, revealed through their association with money, implicitly reflect the domination of one gender by the other, some aspects of which are no longer tolerated. As a new social norm, these needs encourage them to move beyond the status of an object to that of a subject through subjectification work, in conjunction with the democratic ideal. In showing that today women strive for emancipation on an individual and not a collective level, without drawing upon a gender critique of social relationships, this qualitative research reintroduces the question of the feminist legacy of the 1970s.