Both the articles demonstrate the essence of gender equality and human or national security. Reading the two articles I noticed several relevant information regarding (1) gender branding, population racism, human security, and (2) the gender equality and neoliberal governmentality. In the advertorial genre, the description presented in the article about the Kenneth Cole’s photos and text, it made the theme of security as a way of fashion. I commend the way Cole expressed the gendered codes of fashion through photos and texts. It links the idea from national security to human security. In a visual way, it shows concern and equality among women, regardless of race and culture. Correspondingly, gender equality is a mode of biopolitical and neoliberal governmentality that the European Commission aims to understand and to optimize the life function of the population through it. In the article, Foucault explains that a neoliberal governmentality is a unique form of post-welfare state politics that the state outsources the responsibility to guarantee the population’s well-being. On the other hand, the relationship between biopolitics and the deployment of political branding is a population racism.
Regarding the gender equality policy, it operates as a biopolitical mechanism for raising and optimizing below-replacement level fertility rates . It implies that the gender equality is formulated to accommodate aims both in biopolitical and bioeconomic level. The gender political deployment gives biopower the new admission of social relations and optimization of utility in the society. Specifically, from the reading, it demonstrates the attempt to induce female subjects to make choices, a means of expressing freedom and lessen the baggage of gender roles in the context of neoliberal governmentality. The governance achieves its legitimacy from market information and the financial market that allows shaping the feelings and capacity of the public. For example, fear is modulated as a matter of security and of producing and sustaining confidence. In relation to population racism, it plays a significant part in producing influence that circulates fear in the public, which provides neoliberalism with motives of political branding. Moreover, the gender equality is bound to fertility, market economy, and governmental practices; it shows the ideas about gender equality as an object of science and technology of governance. The gender equality as a solution to the harmful effects of declining fertility has the positive result and necessary for the industrialization. Furthermore, the reconciliation allows access to the economic, social, and personal relations, especially for the family unit. It gathers all these relations under the power or knowledge that is subject to control in the unified biopolitical mechanism. However, the gender equality needs the contribution, support, and participation of men actively. As suggested, men should be encouraged to become caring through the creation of good values and identities. The capacity of gender as a technology of power accommodates in a flexible and adaptive demand through neoliberal governmentality.
Gender equality is a context supplement technology for the regulation of differences as applied in the number of ways in accordance with the perceived causes and effects in the society. In particular, an equality means the ability of men and women to have the same degree of freedom of choice regarding taking risks and decisions with the lifestyle and interests. The gender equality policy addresses the needs of the neoliberal governance in a flexible and expansive ways. Evidently, the transformation and unification of the biopolitical technology regulation are associated with the production, reproduction, and reconciliation policies wherein it encompasses the social, economic, and personal relations. The reconciliation regulates and unites the personal relationship and family units. The gender mainstreaming is a biopolitical technology that tracks, processes, and controls the different forces and modulates all the information. Thus, the gender is discovered anywhere and institutes in the different areas of life. Overall, the gender theory and feminist politics face the challenges as gender continues to be an important critical aspect and the gender equality policy is a major success of the feminist movement and the concerned public.
Reference
Clough, P. T., & Willse, C. (2011). Beyond biopolitics: essays on the governance of life and
death. Durham: Duke University, 55-64.
Gender Equality as Neoliberal Governmentality. (n.d.). The Biopolitics of Gender, 133-157.
