Choice, free choice and women

Free choice, as a concept, means that the way in which people manage their lives is shaped by them and are not predetermined or dictated by fate, causality or diverse superior forces.

Several philosophers, such as Kant, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Bourdieu and others have explored this issue. This writer cannot refer at great length in this chapter to the concept and its implications but will emphasize the aspect that related to free choice in the gender context, focusing on women and their choices. The basic questions that concerned the philosophers revolved around the concept of 'free'. Can there be choice that is innocent of everything? What was this system of choice?

Determinism claims that all human activity is derived from some reason pertaining to the actual event. In contrast, Kant (1888) avers that people, in contrast to the other creatures in nature¹⁰², have a set of values that enables them to decide between several possible and different alternatives. Even when there are apparently two alternatives, there are motives of equal weight. But instead of this dichotomous stance one can talk of the degree of freedom or the degree of necessity that a person has in order to determine or to choose (www. daat.ac.il).

When discussing free choice one must differentiate between two terms - preference and choice, the difference between them being that choice is based on a set of values and ethics. Rabbi Noah Weinberg (www.aish.com) stresses that no mistake should be made thinking that ethicality means choice between good and bad (since we all, even the worst and the most perverted people, choose to be good). Accordingly, free choice is the choice between life and death¹⁰³, as is written in the

102 Rabbi Noah Weinberg (www.aish.com) maintains that to be created in the "image of God" contrasts with other creatures. Man has free choice. In this godly spark – free choice – lies our potential to shape and change the world

103 The use of free choice in order to solve problems means using to grow and not to surrender, in order to cope with the reality – not to escape, to live – and not to die (www. aish.com).

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Torah, "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses… Now choose life, so that you and your children may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Life presents us with many situations in which decisions must be taken, i.e., we find ourselves in a situation of infinite choice. Understanding and recognizing this situation means self-awareness that enables us to control our choices; the active use of our free desires in contrast to the passive approach allows things 'to happen'. But one must also be aware of choice, says Rabbi Weinberg, adding that choosing is not sufficient - the choice must be out of "Honesty to yourself – do not accept the beliefs of society as your beliefs, unless you have thought about them and found that you agree with them. Live for yourselves, not for society .."

(www.aish.com). Is this feasible?

The question of free choice is honed when it is laid at the doorstep of feminism. Did the women choose actively? Do they have the freedom of choice?

Tannen (1993) believes not because women are 'marked' so that they are not free to choose, since male dominance uses 'symbolic violence' that is replicated through social mechanisms such as the family, the education system, the state and the religion (Bourdieu, 1998). The results of control:

Women recognize the control and consider it legitimate; internalizing the situation presents the reality as self-constructed, as unique and as

obligatory (logical conformism) (Durkheim and Mauss, 1903).

The social structuring emphasized also by de Beauvoir (1949) blocks the possibilities of choice facing people in general, but mainly women. The reality in which women live is ednocentric¹⁰⁴, having undergone a process of naturalization¹⁰⁵ (Spiro 2007) that does not allow women to choose but routes them to the channels in which they operate. This roller, that on the one hand routes and on the other blurs the channeling, leaves the women, in fact, without any ability for free choice, despite their belief that they did indeed chose their path.

One of the outstanding examples of the above paradoxical situation is manifested in the connection to pregnancy and abortions. Even now, in

104 Ednocentrism – a perception of the world from the male perspective, that assumes that their unique attributes are universal and obviously clear (Spiro, 2007).

105 Naturalization is a historic process that creates collective forgetfulness of the social origin and of the arbitrary approach underlying this source and therefore affords a feeling of "obvious", "That's how it is" (Spiro, 2007).

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the 21^st century, women do not officially have the right to have an abortion (Stevens, 2007), meaning that a series of decisions affecting their bodies but more importantly their lives, are not under their control.

The apparent cooperation of women in this situation, their identification with the role imposed on them, stem only from the absence of an alterative that was attained through copying what Bourideu (1998) terms 'symbolic wealth'.

This approach, of course, contradicts Sartre's (1946) existential approach and his claim that people make themselves what they are through their choices: 'His existence prior to his essence". His essence is not predetermined but he himself creates it and his behavior provides a philosophical basis for the concept of self-leadership.

This basic existentialist message has a strong and positive educational impact, but its use does not manage to meet the world of female values that became established in patriarchal society. Their world is one of dependency relationships, authority and control that led to developing a set of expectations, tools and abilities that motivate initiative, courage, motivation and self-confidence. In the absence of these tools, or their lack of development by women, the encounter with empowerment concepts creates disparity that they find hard to close due to the lack of change in the cultural infrastructure in which they live and function.

The Israeli experience, based on the 'development of a new society' that in a public declaratory manner defined itself as 'different and better' than the 'old', also embraces the value of gender equality (Kamir, 2007). The women strove to be part of the process of building the renewed homeland and accepted their role (motherhood, wives who help their men to fulfill their role as the savior and redeemer) with apparent understanding and agreement. Their agreement-channeling stemmed from excluding the value of collectivism on which Zionist society is based (national society).

In Israeli society that grew from this infrastructure women were partner to the exclusion and marginality of other women who were not part of the hegemony –Mizrahi women, Arabs, immigrants etc. The social

channeling of the 'other' women was performed by both women and men and their 'free choice' was trampled even more.¹⁰⁶

Summarizing the above, even in the 21^st century men are still perceived as controlling and women as controlled by them. The change till now is

106 This is similar to the marginality and exclusion of Afro-Americans or of minorities in western society in general.

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the fact that it is harder for us to identify the ideological and interests of the 'controllers' – the males - since it is hidden from eye and more sophisticated. It is now not politically correct to talk or to behave in a discriminatory way, but the discrimination exists in the private and collective unconscious that affect our lives (Kameer, 2007; MacKinnon, 1987, 2005).

The domains for which it is necessary to struggle changed from a struggle over the needs to survive to one over the path, values and norms.

Empowerment should lead to recognition of focusing on altering that which exists.

The empowerment on which we will focus refers to adult women and to those who have already experienced natural processes of knowledge and self-awareness. The current empowerment process they will experience entails an element of both 'correction' and 'acceleration'. 'Correction' means change in the existing self-perception that will lead to change in the balance of powers that limit the possibilities and their autonomy (Sen, 1993). They will subsequently be capable of demanding their right to autonomy (independence) from awareness of their right to choose and to supervise the sources that will help them to cope with the control of others over them (Keller and Mbwewe, 1991). Empowerment is a type of change of the second order that necessitates transformation mainly in institutions with a patriarchal structure¹⁰⁷ (Bisnath and Nelson, 2001;

Kabeer 2001), that are the majority of the institutions existing; but the family institution, followed by work, have to be in first place. They should be capable of defining the choice, of seeing themselves not only as capable but as committed to introducing change (Kabeer, 2001;

Nussbaum, 2000). Empowerment will therefore lead them to advanced stages and to that of self-realization.¹⁰⁸