Constructions of gender perspective

 

The 1960s is considered in Western countries an age of social and political transition which included the inauguration of the women’s movement and the vivid discussion of sex-roles in Nordic countries. It was likewise a critical period for Finnish folklore studies, because the old text-centred paradigm of “the Finnish method” reached its end, and scholars started to search for new theoretical stimulus elsewhere, principally from anthropology, sociology and linguistics. Researchers started to collect their materials not from archives but from various fields, and the focus of studies shifted from texts to persons, groups and societies and to the culture and traditions they constructed. In consequence scholars were also compelled to redefine and ponder upon the main concept of the discipline: folklore[168]. 

Despite these new winds blowing in folkloristics and the women’s movement, the first folkloristic studies making women and their culture visible appeared much later, at the turn of the 1980s, after the so-called second wave of feminism[169]. Three research articles marked the beginning of the new period: Senni Timonen’s essay[170] exploring the image of women as drawn by male collectors of folk poetry, Aili Nenola-Kallio’s analyses of death in women’s world view[171] and Leea Virtanen’s work on the singing tradition of Setu women in Estonia[172]. The most outstanding works were the dissertation by Aili Nenola-Kallio [173] and her anthology Miessydäminen nainen [174]. The first analysed lament tradition as an expression of peculiarly women’s culture and as a tradition carrying special meaning for women – a viewpoint presented for the first time in our discipline. Nenola’s second book aimed to explore the basic assumptions of women’s studies in cultural research and the male bias in the study of culture. Both studies gained a great popularity and influence among students of folkloristics in Finnish universities as study books and as a source of inspiration for discussing aspects of gender. As a result – and owing too to the spreading ideas of social construction, I suggest – women came to be viewed as active generators and interpretators of their own way of life, culture and traditions. Thus the female experience and interpretations of the world and life became an important aspect of research on folklore[175].

The aspect of gender studies in folkloristics was, particularly in the beginning, emancipationist and it aimed to criticise the male bias in all disciplines studying culture by making women’s way of constructing and interpreting everyday life visible[176]. Understandably this project was mostly conducted by women researchers studying women’s culture, but other ways of analysing gender aspects of collective materials – for example folklore performed by women and men – from a gender perspective existed as well[177]. An imposing example of this phase is a compilation edited by Aili Nenola and Senni Timonen, entitled Louhen sanat [178], where the name Louhi refers to the Mistress of Pohjola (Northland) in the Kalevala. Louhen sanat ran the gamut of gender studies in folkloristics, analysing for example symbolic meanings of gender and womanhood as a point of research, traditions used by women, the images of good and evil women in folklore and, finally, images of women in folk poetry. The theoretical frameworks were grounded on a broad spectrum of concepts, such as gender regime, folklore as a tool for contest, female experience, the other, and cultural models for gender and sex roles. In order to analyse mental models of gender meanings most researchers now committed themselves to the social construction perspective in their investigations.

After Louhen sanat Finnish female scholars began to plan the first research project exploiting gender-perspective from a broad, multidisciplinary point of view. This project was named “Culture, Tradition and Gender System” (1992–96) and it was funded by the Academy of Finland and directed by Aili Nenola, a folklorist and a professor of women’s studies at the University of Helsinki. Thirteen female researchers participated in this project and the compilation of articles published in the aforementioned Gender and Folklore originated in the context of this group[179]. In addition to the project and its achievements another compilation had a great impact on the development of gender perspective in Finnish folkloristics, namely Satu Apo’s publication entitled Naisen väki [180], where she considered archaic sexual discourses and gender relations of agrarian Finnish culture. Her analysis is based on materials of folk poetry and literature, and examines various constructions of gender relations in the Kalevala and Kanteletar, and in the experience of women in other text materials. Apo’s texts paved the way for new interpretations of old folklore materials from the perspective of body and sexuality, an approach applied among others in the works of Laura Stark-Arola[181].