TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Electable Selves —“Every Woman for Herself!”
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0001
[gender quota;feminism;political subjects;socialism;governing]
This chapter begins with a decision event—the reversal, just before the 2008 election, of the law stating that at least 30% of political candidates must be women. Having lost this chance at a legitimate 30% candidacy, women in politics shifted their strategies from investing in structural and legal transformations to mounting individual campaigns and engaging in self-polishing in order to transcend the ever-expanding campaigning. The larger feminist movement spurred bythe quota loss ultimately led to a better outcome for women in the 2012 election. The author conceptualizes electable selves as an abstraction of renewed political subjects who treat their bodies and minds as pliable, infinitely renewable, and limitless. By framing themselves as oyunlag or intellectful, and as morally righteous subjects capable of transforming corrupt politics, these women imagine politics differently. Introduction weaves together the multiple strands that facilitated the development of these political subjects: the gender politics during socialism that had promoted women’s fluency in being public selves; influences from socialist, transnational, and liberal feminisms; and the transformation of elections from events into electionization—perpetual campaigning beyond official election periods, with campaigns blurring existing boundaries between private and public and taking over governing and everyday life.
1. Legacies: Gender and Feminist Politics under State Socialism
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0002
[democratization;Mongolian Women’s Committee;gender equality;state modernization;women's organizing]
The first chapter dispels a widespread assumption that Mongolian women became politically active only with the advent of democratization and the uptake of liberal feminism in the 1990s. It argues that the national women’s organization during socialism, the Mongolian Women’s Committee (MWC), was crucial in promoting women as active political subjects. The MWC’s ongoing involvement of women in political and social spheres fostered women’s self-advocacy, mass mobilization, and networking skills, as well as their commitment to abstract principles of gender/sex equality. These skills proved to be fundamental during the democratic era’s competitive elections. Even though socialist era structures and decrees that supported women were diminished with the country’s shift to neoliberal capitalism, the political subjectivities of women continued with subsequent generations. The chapter also argues that the MWC was not just an arm of the state and that its work toward improving women’s condition went beyond the Politburo’s visions. Each generation of MWC leaders devised ingenious tactics, proposals, and work projects in order to showcase the role of their organization and to prevent the Politburo from demoting it. By merging the state’s modernization efforts with their feminist goals, they influenced the state and shaped women as social and political agents.
2. Electionization: Governing and the New Economies of Democratization
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0003
[campaign sponsoring;gig economy;neoliberal instability;political time;mining]
Free democratic elections in Mongolia differ greatly from their counterparts in Western countries. This chapter explores the ways in which parliamentary elections have been transformed from time-grounded events to a perpetual structuring force—electionization. Elections now govern everyday life, shape subjects and subjectivities, and continue as a sociopolitical formation in flux. The chapter argues that elections are popular because they are significant beyond their function of choosing a nation’s Parliament. They are meaningful to participating actors as gig economies, social and cultural capital, entertainment, and even an employment and a career path. Much of the populace has appropriated electoral campaigns as new safety nets to help mitigate the instabilities brought about by neoliberalism. Sponsoring electoral campaigns, therefore, means participating in ad hoc governing, which presents new obstacles for women candidates, as campaign financing remains murky and largely a private affair. Electionization also marks a new era of governing the country and its economy through campaigns. Mongolian politicians use the campaign stage to gain popular consent – for example, to convince a resistant populace to accept mining agreements with international corporations.
3. SurFaces: Campaigns and the Interdependence of Gender and Politics
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0004
[campaign media;portrait posters;Ulaanbaatar;Joan Scott;democratic leadership]
Chapter 3 presents an in-depth exploration of the entanglement of gender and politics through an analysis of the campaigns on the streets of the city of Ulaanbaatar and in media spaces. Campaign images communicate an emerging understanding of gender and class as well as aspirations for the future. The chapter theorizes the motives behind the explosion of portrait posters and how the gendered world of campaigns is recreated through various techniques of visibility and invisibility. Drawing on Joan Scott’s (2019) insight that anxiety about leadership instability in democracy influences gender inequality, the chapter illustrates how such inequalities get reified through shifts in value making. Gender inequality persists despite women’s active embodiment of highly valued cultural traits, such as education, expertise, and professional accolades, as male politicians capitalize on essentialized and “primordial” notions of masculinity. The chapter examines how women’s expertise, reputation, and social capital are being diffused to enhance the existing male hierarchy in their political party, with little advancement for the women. This analysis also elucidates the persistence of the Mongolian paradox: although women constitute the bigger and better educated group in the country, they remain limited in political power compared to men.
4. The Backstage: Inside (Pre)-Campaigning Strategies
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0005
[political parties;women's empowerment;women's space;panoptic practice;Michel de Certeau]
The chapter takes the reader backstage at elections, focusing on the precampaigning that informs the official campaigning on stage. To illustrate how women mobilize resources, acquire support, and gain and lose power within formal structures of political parties, it follows a candidate who creates her campaign base by making exchangeable social capital that allows her to enter political negotiations with her superiors. By complicating Michel de Certeau’s (1984) concept of strategy versus tactics, the chapter provides a lens through which to view what the author calls affective and architectural ways of navigating the rigid and oppressive hierarchy of the male-dominated establishment. The chapter follows how time, space, and the style of elite political work contradicts women’s commitment as mothers and spouses and undermines the very reputation that they bank on for their campaigning. The chapter also illustrates campaigning as governing by incumbents and reveals why newcomers and women are excluded from gaining seats in the system despite their credentials.
5. Intellectful: Women against Commercialized Campaigns
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0006
[self-development;NGO;Mongolian elite;symbolic capital;election fraud]
This chapter explores how, through being intellectful (oyunlag), women candidates attempt to imagine politics differently. Their envisioning sometimes challenges the social forms of electionization but is also shaped by electionization. In contrast to chapter 4, where women campaign from within the party, here women’s strategies arise both from within and outside of their political affiliations. These women pursue advanced degrees at prestigious foreign universities, establish NGOs, assume leadership positions, master foreign languages, publish books and other media, and engage in self-development. Although held in high esteem as a concept, being intellectful has subtle and paradoxical limits in the context of campaigns, which proliferate by substituting for some functions of government, charitable organizations, and the private sector. And while political groups covet these women and use them for their advancement, they also tend to keep these women at a distance, lest their extraordinary skills undermine the groups’ power and hierarchy.
6. Self-Polishing: Styling the Candidate from Inside and Outside
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0007
[voters;women politicians;beauty;charisma;body]
The chapter explores how self-polishing—a set of practices geared toward making perfect electable candidates—generates particular kinds of subjectivities for female candidates, subjectivities informed by contesting and complementing global, national, and local forces associated with new gender identities. Through self-styling—largely through enhancing their presence via wardrobe updates, voice training, and beautification techniques—these women strive to command the attention of voters, a distinction that sets them apart from other kinds of famous women. In contrast, inner cultivation, also a part of self-polishing, is meant to bring them closer to voters by displaying their caring and down-to-earth lifestyle-improving skills. The chapter is structured around individual women candidates who engage in these strategies of self-polishing against the conflicting views of electability held by voters and the political leadership.
Conclusion: The Glass Ceiling as a Looking Glass
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226818733.003.0008
[political institutions;campaign financing;free democratic elections;politicization of everyday life;voter participation]
The concluding chapter distills the main findings of the study in the sphere of gender transformation, political systems, structures of democratic elections, and their overlaps. It emphasizes the obstacles for women in politics and their impact on the society at large, asserting that the very practices and processes of campaigning and gaining power have become socially legible and broadly influential “technologies of gender,” to borrow Teresa de Lauretis’s (1987) formulation. The conclusion cautions that the new cultural and social practices in the context of electionization can become a form of domination. Instead of the country staging elections, it is the elections that rule the country, through their attendant campaigns. Individual women’s focus on shaping electable selves is not a substitute for the structural and legal support that is necessary in a time of neoliberal overtaking of electoral campaigns.
