Equality and inequality between women and men are front and back of 'the same' in developed capitalism

Hildegard Heise (Berlin)

In very different socio-political tendencies there is a consensus that in the western industrial nations women are generally disadvantaged in comparison to men in the perception of life chances which this society offers and evaluates positively. Disagreement consists solely in determining the causes of this situation and forecasting future developments. Two opposing approaches define the broad field of determining the causes: 1. the idea that traditional conditions are still responsible for the discrimination; 2. the view that a relatively independent forced relationship between the sexes, which is reflected in particular in the gender-specific division of labour, is constitutive for capitalism. I do not consider either of these assessments to be convincing - but they are very noteworthy, because it is precisely their polarity that keeps them so persistently alive. The former version loses its plausibility simply by pointing to the high stage of development of bourgeois society, which suggests that conditions inherent to capitalism are being detected. The second model loses its scope when what has just been said is actually taken seriously and the implications of the stage of development are looked at.

In view of these implications, attention should first be drawn to the dominance of the system of social labor within the multidimensional interrelationships between the various areas and levels of society, a dominance with regard to the constitution and development of our society and thus also with regard to the subjective living conditions; then to the peculiarity of bourgeois society that this dominance only becomes fully effective when both areas that determine the material life cycle mature: the working sphere and the family sphere. But this process of maturing has almost been completed in many capitalist countries in recent decades. But what does maturation mean? Maturing means that, due to the objectification of employment conditions, the detachment of the great mass of people capable of gainful employment from the objective and social conditions of production is typical. The resulting separation of the subjects, which is a prerequisite for action, has also taken hold in the family sphere - not, however, because of a possible isolation of people or even the dissolution of family relationships, but because - to give an example - the vegetable garden is no longer constitutive for family forms of life. If, however - and I conclude with reference to the second view - the separation of persons is characteristic with regard to the continual re-constitution of the material sphere, then a certain social assignment of the sexes to one another cannot be a genetic starting point for the formation of their formative relationships. For such an assignment would immanently logically presuppose the connection of the persons. This would be the basis of daily action, regardless of whether the action was conformist or resistant to existing structures - and furthermore regardless of the form in which this basis would be lived out: as personal domination of men over women, as economic-technical calculation applied by the male sex or as comprehensive male hegemony over female forms of life.

Contrary to the criticized assumption, the conclusion is that the essential cause of gender inequality lies in the social non-assignment of persons to one another and thus in the non-assignment of persons to certain functions that shape society. From this follows methodically turned around: Since in the mature bourgeois epoch - despite state care and other modifying influences - the isolation of people (detachment from the conditions of production) is decisive for their livelihoods, the treatment of the gender question therefore focuses primarily on the capitalist sphere of employment. It focuses on this primary source with regard to the shaping of social relations quite independently of the special situation of women, i.e. regardless of whether they are employed or not, whether they actually have children or not, and whether they live with a male partner or not. On the other hand, if it is true that discrimination against women must be based on the position of human beings as isolated subjects, it is also true that this position implies, in terms of personnel, the exact opposite of what has just been said: the general interchangeability of the owners of goods and, in this respect, equality of persons. Consequently, with regard to the fundamental structural relationships that we are talking about here, equality and inequality between men and women can only be the front and back of 'the same' , that is, only two expressions of the same quality. This quality is not simply defined as the isolation of the social subject, but as its immanent consequences: These are, briefly hinted at, firstly the intrasubjective contradiction of the acting person, which is based on the coupling of individually active action and the independence of the objectified result of this action; secondly the subjective transposition of this intrasubjective dimension into external opposites, i.e. into phenomena in which the person no longer lives as involved. (This tends to affect - as a consequence - all the contradictions and opposites of the capitalist world, and consequently also the subjective processing of the gender opposition).

Since, on the one hand, both groups of people on principle without distinction (because in the basic structural contexts they are not assigned to each other and therefore do not differentiate) on the one hand embody this contradiction, on the other hand they process it in tension-reducing forms of action: therefore they are equal to each other. Because on the other hand - partly biologically conditioned, partly historically grown - they are affected to a varying extent by the intrasubjective contradiction - which after all refers to securing one's existence as such and from a subjective perspective represents the framework of all contradictions of the capitalist mode of production - due to different anchoring in child care, because they are also are also urged in different ways to deal with this situation: that is why they are unequal to each other. According to this, women, on average and in comparison to the male sex, are more intensively involved in the contradictory securing of their existence and at the same time more intensively turned away from this way of life. The interaction of both dimensions causes, in general, the well-known different position of the sexes in the concrete social power relations, which - apart from the classification of persons in class and group contexts - shape the chances in life. Only secondarily do the different anchorages (burdens) that are created in terms of material life management and other gender-specific characteristics gain significance.

My view, which here without determination of the family relationship forms and without defining the role of individuality (see [Hildegard Heise: Flucht vor der Widersprüchlichkeit] for a detailed explanation), has four consequences with regard to the constitution and development of gender relations: 1. The gender relationship in bourgeois society is essentially an objective relationship - and only after this form is a direct personal relationship, in this respect among other things a hierarchical relationship. Not unlike the class relationship, it is primarily mediated and specifically shaped by commodity relations. People of both sexes are owners of goods (detached from and related to each other): owners of labour, of capital, of money as consumers. 2. the mature capitalist system of social labor sees and shows no gender specificity in its basic structures - it is and therefore appears to be gender neutral. Accordingly, the relationship between men and women is characterized on the one hand as a relationship of (gender-unspecified) equals, on the other hand as a relationship of opposites - and synchronously to the latter the system of social labor as patriarchal. 3. Taking into account the double face of the capitalist system in relation to its gender-determination leads to the result that the given world is not simply to be classified as alien to the female sex. A harsh juxtaposition of female and male principles of life - even if it is a juxtaposition of moving and changing principles - is not to be found in our life world. Such a confrontation is, however, produced by the acting persons for reasons that are due to the general structures of the capitalist system of social labor itself. 4. the aforementioned double-edgedness in the relationship between the sexes has an effect on the gender specifics of their own. For it is this tension between equality and inequality that feeds the processes of the de facto rapprochement of men and women, but at the same time the processes of reproduction of the respective specifics. This situation leads both to the constant nourishment of the tension between the two currents, in so far as they preserve themselves as the sustaining structure of bourgeois society, as well as for the constant nourishment of two divergent feminist goals, in so far as they are brought into being as a resistant response to that sustaining structure. Consequently, feminist action is a circle - basically. Thus the opposition of the sexes is constantly being dissolved and just as constantly - despite the ongoing shifts in specifics - fortified as opposition.