Gendering Luhmann: The Paradoxical Simultaneity of Gender Equality and Inequality

Abstract

From the perspective of the present leading question, a twofold and contradictory finding becomes apparent. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the functional differentiation of society and its postulation of full inclusion of all societal members have become irreversible (Luhmann 1980). Since the late nineteenth century, however, a shape of gendered differentiation prevails that is rooted in the form of functional differentiation — more precisely: in the division of housework and gainful work — and is targeted at the reconcilliation of the bourgeois family and the working conditions of the capitalistic economy. During the course of the nineteenth century, the functional systems put themselves increasingly on a self-referential basis — politics is made by the autonomous people, matrimony is based on the love of the spouses, in economy, money is invested to gain money. As a result, different modes of inclusion for men and women were elaborated and justified by an external-referential relatedness on pre-social, naturally given and asymmetrical corresponding gendered characters. As Theresa Wobbe puts it: ‘The concept of [gender] differentiation followed different patterns of modernization than the functional differentiation: It infiltrated all functional systems, was not functionally confined and produced determinations that did not converge with the normative idea of self-rationality’ (Wobbe, 2003: 18; own translation).