Responsibility and authority

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Shaw said "Freedom means responsibility. That is why most men dread it" (www.quotationspage.com/quote). The concept of responsibility necessitates a discussion unto itself (not to be explored in depth at this point).This researcher believes its importance as regards this study stems from its being a key concept in understanding the current situation in which women find themselves, and the situation for which they strive through the change. Responsibility is connected to freedom and the ability to choose, that we develop in the empowerment process, or a transition from a passive to an active stage.

A close connection apparently exists between knowledge (or understanding) and responsibility. Everyone is familiar with the Bible story about Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), who ate from the "tree of knowledge" and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Life in the Garden of Eden bore no responsibility, for they had no knowledge, no understanding and no moral judgment. When man received knowledge and the ability to judge, he could also monitor his deeds and decide according to his own recognition and choice whether to be good or evil.

Knowledge enables choice.

Empowerment, as noted above, entails developing awareness, which is a type of knowledge, associated with the ability to choose and develop responsibility. The ability to choose entails a decision-making process based on an order of priorities and the ability to cope with the results. The means to this, according to Aristo, is education,⁹³ in its socialization context, through which people can develop and realize their personal skills and attributes. Attaining knowledge, education, was closed to women for many years, i.e., an attempt was made in fact, to control the knowledge they could acquire and thereby control their ability to choose.

This reality helped make them passive and apparently lacking responsibility.

The concept of responsibility is manifested in two situations:

1. At the personal-interpersonal level where personal (individual) responsibility is manifested in responsibility for oneself, and/or for the other, to which is added an additional concept – that of authority.

2. At the social level (of collective responsibility) manifested in responsibility for a group or for public matters, and it is therefore responsibility due to a role with its accompanying authority.

93 The terms 'education' and 'teaching' are frequently mentioned as tools for social change. They are incorrectly used as if they were synonyms although they provide knowledge but in different ways.

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The dynamics of the relationships between the genders is defined by Benjamin (2005) as relationships of control – enslaving the woman and bestowing male authority, a situation that has been internalized by both genders. This historical reality is perceived and still exists as an obvious situation and as unavoidable, and has been translated over the generations into laws that have validated the social order. The meaning of this set of relationships is that women usually have almost no responsibility and lack authority compared to men who concentrate most of the responsibility and authority in their own hands. The reality of the lack of collective responsibility affected the women's self-perception of themselves, of their abilities or the boundaries of the ability and led to developing behaviors and self-management accordingly.

The question of how this situation was created greatly occupied feminism, but it will be wrong to claim that only one party (men) are responsible for creating these unequal power relations. Women should also be viewed as contributing to the situation. The explanation offered by Benjamin (2005:28) refers to the process of developing a personal identity in which people are in need of recognition by 'others' both similar and different to ourselves. This situation creates a type of paradox – while recognition is "the reaction of the other that affords meaning to feelings, intentions and activities of the self" (Benjamin, 2005:20), they face the need and ambition for self-definition that enable enslavement to the 'other', which in our context is the male gender 'other'.

Voluntary submission, waiving, lead to gaining control. Although Fromm (1992) stresses the escape from freedom or from responsibility as a universal phenomenon. The equation of the relationships between the genders indicates the need of women for recognition that pushes them into submission, or is maybe a need stronger than that of independence stemming from consciousness. This situation facilitates the control of men over women. Egalitarian relationships will not be possible as long as these relationships of control exist. Moreover, control is not healthy for the long term since the controller (the man) also eventually becomes a slave of control.

The answer to questions regarding "Who controls my life? I or the other?"

"Who is sovereign" (Schafer, 1976) is not simple and clear-cut.

Furthermore, as part of the process of maturing we develop the agency (Schafer, 1976), composed of initiative, responsibility, independence or sovereignty, and this is an expansion of something basic, existing in us.

Submissiveness or lack of responsibility became the symbols of the 93

definition of femininity, compared to masculinity. Women define themselves through and according to the needs of the males, the children or of society. Their self-perception is that they cannot cope or take responsibility for themselves or for their lives or for domains, topics or roles.

In order to create change in the situation described above, the empowerment processes must relate seriously to the issue of responsibility and authority from the perspective of the women and the men alike.

If we take an example from the realm of management, we realize that a connection exists between 'delegating authority and taking decisions"

(Davidov, 1993) or between responsibility and authority.

The empowerment process is presented as a situation in which there is a source of power – in this case the administration, or in our case, society – that delegates authority to the powerless – the employees, (or women in our case). Delegating authority offers the empowered person two options:

Accepting the authority delegated = taking responsibility, or refusing to accept the authority = not accepting the accompanying responsibility.

These two concepts again point to the dialogue between the internal and the external, and the almost symbiotic connection between them that connects to one of the basic distinctions of feminism: There is no sterile personal or public (external) sphere but rather an inseparable combination of the two.

Another interesting question that arises from this definition is "What is the source of authority or power? Is it external – the administration- society or internal - the employees- women, each for herself and as a group. Observing reality, aiming for an answer - for each person has a source of strength originating in another foci. The administration's focus of power is based on the formal definition and on the control of sources and resources – money, connections, and, translated to the case discussed here – men, while the employees - women enjoy a focus of power based on knowledge, abilities and skills. The connection between these two foci of power will be able to produce results.

This analogy reveals the broad repertory that can define foci of power, some aspects of which are situation-dependent and some are dependent on social agreement. It is important to remember, in the above example, that the power relationships between the two populations are defined as

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hierarchy – management and employees. The situation is more complicated when it is defined as egalitarian, the origins of the authority and responsibility must still be addressed. The change needed is constructing an egalitarian social array that will have to compete with concepts of 'personal and social responsibility' and with the concept of authority and to redefine them or define them differently.