Gender as an Independent Category

Joan Scott discusses Marxist interpretation as a method to understand gender in social relationships.  She specifically takes into consideration the essay by Joan Kelly entitled "Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory," praising the distinction by Kelly that economic and gender systems "operate simultaneously" (Scott 1060).  Despite the lack of further development of the idea that gender systems are somehow independent from economic ones, Scott nevertheless thinks that exploring the interactions between both is  a step in the right direction.  The question arises, "How would a gender system interact independently from an economic one?"  Yes, gender can provide illuminating analysis on the production of social order.  How men and women perceive each other is fundamental to Scott's definition of gender as an analytic perspective.  Nevertheless, how independent can a gender system be?  Economic roles affect the production of gender roles and neither exists in isolation.  In this case, there must be a clear understanding of what an "independent" existence of gender means.

Her critique of Kelly is that gender becomes definable in purely economic relations.  (Scott 1060)  That is the misstep that she carefully avoids, and rather seeks to see gender itself as a legitimate form of social analysis.  Her critique, I think, is accurate.  Sex roles are not merely reduce-able to economic roles; although labor activity shapes what men and women think they are.  Scott says that "gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes." (Scott 1068)  A nurse is seen differently than a construction worker, regardless of the fact that nowadays there are male nurses and female construction workers.  The real issue in the critique is if gender has an independent existence, as a social production, how does that production take place?  How is a perception formed?  What documentation can be afforded?  A critique of Scott herself is that the paper was "Philosophy, not history."  So how can these perceptions be identified?  Without documentation it is hard to see the validity of her critique and the possibility of identifying an independent category.  In "Shipwrecked; or, Masculinity Imperiled...," felicitously, Toby Ditz provides a documented gender study, discussing masculinity and femininity against the correspondence of 18th century mercantilists, and demonstrates that the production of gender can be identified.