Manufacturing egalitarian injustice: A discursive analysis of the rhetorical strategies used in fathers’ rights websites in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

The fathers’ rights movement is a worldwide phenomenon that takes a particular form in our geopolitical region. Responding initially to an apparent judicial preference for mothers to have custody of children, the movement grew alongside, and in resistance to, the women’s movement. In this paper, we analyse how texts of fathers’ rights discourse strategically appropriate egalitarianism in the context of gendered struggles over rights within the nuclear family. Texts from four fathers’ rights websites are engaged to locate, construct and critique the discursive power of the movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We discuss examples of strategies that appropriate egalitarianism, engage quantifying logic, and demonise women and argue how the fathers’ rights sites exemplify resistance to the impact of the women’s movement on Family Court and criminal justice interventions into violence against women at home.

Masculinizing Care? Gender, Ethics of Care, and Fathers’ Rights Groups

“…However, FRGs are increasing and becoming “increasingly vocal” (Collier 2010, 120; see also Collier 2013; Crowley, 2009, 2013; Hacker 2013; Rosen et al 2009). FRGs exist in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the United States (Basu 2015; Busch et al 2014; Collier and Sheldon 2006; Crowley 2013; Dragiewicz 2011; Flood 2012; Hacker 2013).…”

‘I’d just lose it if there was any more stress in my life’: Separated Fathers, Fathers’ Rights and the News Media

“…However, the vexed nature of contemporary debates over custody across the Western world is arguably a product of the challenges posed by the feminist movement (including the anti-domestic violence movement) to the patriarchal family and profound changes in personal intimacy over the last 50 years, as well as the rise of a global fathers' rights movement (Boyd 2003(Boyd , 2004(Boyd , 2006Busch, Morgan and Coombes 2014;Collier 2006;Dragiewicz 2011;Flood 2004Flood , 2010Kaye and Tolmie 1998). Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995;also Smart and Neale 1999a) theorise that the conflict between mothers and fathers over children following parental separation has intensified in recent years because family relationships and paid employment have both become more precarious.…”

“…As elsewhere across the Western world, fathers' rights groups in New Zealand have mobilised the rhetoric of liberal feminism to argue that the principles of gender equality and gender neutrality be applied to the issue of post-separation parenting arrangements (Busch, Morgan and Coombes 2014;see also Collier 2006;Crowley 2009;Dragiewicz 2011). In New Zealand, fathers' rights groups were strong proponents of the Shared Parenting Bill when this was introduced into parliament in 2000 by Muriel Newman, a Member of Parliament for New Zealand's far right political party ACT.…”