Posted by John, January 23rd, 2010 - under Women workers, Women's liberation, Women's oppression.

Tags: Capitalism, Family, Feminism

Sometimes just a few words can capture the essence of an argument. And so it is with a new pamphlet by Socialist Alternative about women’s oppression.

Women’s oppression arose with the development of class society about 6000 years ago.

Capitalism deepened and extended this oppression, making the family and the role of women within it the central mechanism for the production and socialisation of the next generation of workers, at little cost to capital but great cost to working class women.

As Sandra Bloodworth, Allyson Hose and Fleur Taylor put it:

The particular gender stereotypes under capitalism are the result of a recent historical development – the nuclear family. The phenomenon of two heterosexual people living with their children, in a home that is not a productive unit in itself, but separated sharply from the workplace, was a deliberate creation of capitalist social reformers during the mid-1800s.

In Australia women have legal equality. Yet study after study shows that despite this, women are second class citizens. They receive less pay for equal work – about 17 percent on average. They are more often in casual and part-time employment.

Women do three times as much unpaid housework as men. And as we look at leadership structures in capitalist society the pattern becomes clear – the higher up you go the less women there are.

This warping of our relationships find expression in sexism and women as objects for men. As Bloodworth, Hose and Taylor argue:

The construction of women as passive sex objects is reflected everywhere in popular culture, from advertising to the music industry, TV films and literature. The emphasis on monogamy and women’s role as mothers and nurturers lays the basis for the denial of women’s sexual needs.

Drawing on the ideas of Engels about the ‘world historic defeat of the female sex’ in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the authors argue that with the rise of class society 6000 years ago ‘new concepts such as wealth, private property and state property came into being.’ This, they say:

…gave rise to the need of the new ruling class to control women’s sexuality, in order to determine their heirs for the inheritance of property. The need to control women of the upper classes led ultimately to ideas and laws which, to be effective, had to apply to all women, and so established the oppression of one half of humanity.

Who benefits from women’s oppression? Patriarchal theory feminists argue all men do. Bloodworth et al demolish this.

The family and the consequent oppression of women are central to the survival of capitalism. Since the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, it is not surprising that ideologically that class bombards us with messages about the family and women’s subservient role in society.

These ideas reinforce the systemic and material oppression of women. It is bosses who pay women less for equal work; it is bosses who employ women on a casual and part time basis; it is bosses who benefit from having a low paid, unorganised group to help keep all wages down and increase their profits.

Women and men have an interest in smashing the low wage structures capitalism imposes on us. We are not just passive recipients of ruling class ideas.

Women have been at the forefront of struggles; sparking for example the February Revolution in Russia in 1917; leading the militant campaigns for equal wages in the 60s and 70s in Australia; setting up the women’s liberation movement of forty years ago.

And it is governments, both Liberal and Labor, who reinforce this oppression with their laws and practices on restricting wage increases and unions, their miserable funding for child care, their anti-abortion campaigns and their homophobia.

Can we reform capitalism to defeat women’s oppression? No, because that oppression through the institution of the family is integral to capitalism.

Struggle can roll back some of the worst aspects of oppression. But capitalists always try to push back the gains struggle wins to increase their profits.

Women’s oppression arose with class society; only abolishing class society can end it.

Of course fighting for change now is important and can win some gains, often temporary. But ultimately women can only be free when workers, male and female, smash the profit system and the chains of the nuclear family.

Women’s oppression, class and capitalism is available from Socialist Alternative. The website is being upgraded so it may be a few days before you can get through.