COMPETITION: A Feminist Taboo?

Edited by Valerie Miner and Helen Longino. NewYork: The Feminist Press, 1987.

Teresa O'Brien

In our capitalist, individualist society, competition is an integral part of our learning, of our day-to-day realities, of our fight for feminist identity and , achievement. For some, competition is a personal fight for grades, for a job, for love, for attention. For others, it involves more than the merely self-serving: it is a competitive battle with the powerful in the struggle for women's political, economic and social rights. Yet this in itself entails an assumption of a morally superior type of competition, belying the fact that such an assumption is itself competitive (that is, my brand of competitiveness is more authentic than yours). We are born into a commutative society and competition is fostered throughout our lives, through an educational system that all too often focuses on grades rather than learning, an economic system that focuses on material gain as an indication of worth. Competition exists, but must it be relegated as a rather suspect topic to the confines of mainstream ideology?

The writers in this book demonstrate that competition need not always be construed as a destructive phenomenon, on based on internecine and structural rivalry. It may, they argue, be used to advantage since "competing brings experience and experience strengthens... Appropriate competition encourages the experience, strength and confidence that nourish the cooperation that feminists prize." The book moves from vivid accounts of the role of competition in everyday life - personal, political, economic - to the ways in which competition might be used to transform our world. Is competition healthy, or is it an act of bad faith in our quest for sisterhood? Indeed, is such a quest doomed to failure since many sisters, including Cinderella, do not exactly set a fine example of a cooperative spirit?

I initially felt very uneasy about the tone of many parts of this book - especially the more self-analytical chapters. My uneasiness rested not on the idea that competition is a taboo subject, but on my feminist belief that psychological analyses of mother-daughter relationships or petty rivalries amongst females for the attention of men or the title of best-dressed or whatever, are not relevant to the more wide-ranging issues of class and gender. Yet obviously we must have an understanding of how we live our lives, before we can implement change in those lives. Indeed, many of the contributors underline this when they point out the moral and political significance of competition and of how competition between women is not so much based on individualism but is instead a reflection of our positions vis-à-vis our race, colour and class. That competition may be used as a of divide-and-conquer strategy is not a result of a patriarchal or a capitalist conspiracy, but is a reflection of those ideologies as they exist. One must, however, ask this a if a destructive form of competition is so endemic in our society, can we fight it from within and hope to sabotage its negative effects? Can we use it to build a more cooperative and stronger association for all women? The contributors to this book certainly think so.

One of the problems in tackling this subject is that the term 'competition' conjures up so many different ideas (as, indeed, papers in this book illustrate). The book runs the gamut of discussions on competition as a game of one-up womanship to competition as a fight for scarce market resources. For some competition is rivalry; it is individualistic.

I happen to remember piano lessons. I was given them with a vengeance. Not to develop a love of music or a gratifying personal competence - but because 'you'll be so popular at parties if you can play piano for everybody.' (Read: and the other girls can't.)

Letty Cottin Pogrebin sarcastically tells us this in the opening chapters as she caustically describes the ways in which little girls are taught to compete with each other. For others, the term is a motivation to write about the struggle for economic and political independence. The reasons for competing or disliking competition are argued through: as a reflection of unresolved conflicts in mother/daughter relationships; as a result of an identity crisis due to the internalization of patronizing attitudes; as a rationalization of one's successes or lack of them.

Many of the contributions present a view of women as bent on self-flagellation - yes, I know I am a success in university/business life but what a shambles my personal life is! - but many also focus on the structures that are the background to any discussion on women and competition. These focus on the poor representation of women in universities and in business, of the correspondingly high representation in low status jobs such as domestic work, on the women in developing countries who are shunted into ghettoized, marginal and poorly funded development projects. They point to the fact that our society encourages individualistic competition in order to discourage cooperation to such a point that even the most well meaning females fall into the trap of competing to impose their views on others, and that beneath the slogan that sisterhood is powerful there lies a multitude of complexities.

Myrna Kostash's very fine piece is a case in point of the well meaning feminist falling afoul of her own ideals. She describes the feelings of little sister status that many Canadians have with regard to their metaphorically big sisters in the US. Canadian feminists have, she says, idealized their American counterparts while they, on the other hand, are barely aware of us. Resenting the ethnocentrism of so many Americans, Kostash describes her visit to Greece, and her gradually-developed relationship with Greek feminists and with their rationalization about certain concessions to men. Kostash tells us "After six months of this, I began to believe I really was a representative of an 'advanced' form of feminism." In short, she adds, she had become that American she had always resented. While she argues generally for the separation of women's struggle for liberation from nationalist and left wing struggles, she concedes that this is itself, in a global sense, an imposition of a view that developed within a certain political framework. To impose this view on others is to assume a "feminist authenticity" that is inherently in competition with other views and ultimately assumes its own superiority.

That the most committed and well meaning occasionally fall into the use of an inauthentic form of competition is a cautionary tale to the editors' note of optimism when they argue that we can learn to use competition wisely. There may be among some feminists a taboo against competition, but for most of us sisterhood does not mean a blind adherence to one doctrine of total unity. One can support the broad ideals of feminism but recognize the legitimacy of adopting different methods.