Women’s movement in Australia
Women’s movement
in Australia
Today, women are faced
with what seems to be a contradiction. The first women’s liberation leaflet in Australia
was distributed at a demonstration against the Vietnam war in 1969. In October that year Zelda D’Aprano and two other women chained themselves to the entrance to
the Arbitration Court in Melbourne. For the first time that Court found in favour
of equal pay for identical work. And in 1972 the Court ruled in favour of one pay
rate for workers under an award to prevent employers continuing their evasion
of equal pay by classifying jobs women did as different from men’s.
Yet,
thirty-two years later, Australian women working full time still earn on average
85% of male earnings. And when all women are compared with all men, the percentage
is still only 66% because 70% of women work part time. And the gap is increasing
again. In the year May 1999 to May 2000, male earnings for full time ordinary
time increased 5.1%, but women’s only by 4%.
We have a plethora
of anti-discrimination laws and equal employment opportunity (EEO) is enshrined
in legislation. Yet women remain concentrated in the low paid, often part time jobs
with few career prospects. In the late nineties, in the Department of Education,
Employment and Training, 50% of employees were women. In the two lowest levels,
they made up 75%, but only 12% of management. A review of staff at Griffith
University in Brisbane revealed the same inequalities. In 1999, women were 52%
of all staff, 35% of academic staff and 62% of general staff. Yet women were over-represented
in the lower classifications in both the academic and general areas. Women made
up 86% of general staff level one, 73% in level three, but only 45% of level ten
and 29% above level ten. They made up 55% of academic level A positions, 38% of
level B, 33% of level C, 20% of level D, and only 14% of level E. When faculties
were compared, the gender differences were striking. Women academics made up 94%
of staff in the school of Nursing, but only 9% in Engineering, 23% in Science,
29% in International Business and Politics. And this is a university that claims
its Affirmative Action program is working!
Thirty years after
the sexual liberation movement burst onto the scene, media commentators such as
Bettina Arndt regularly campaign against the right for single women to have children,
single women are denied IVF in some states, older women who choose to use IVF are
vilified. Lesbian women are still marginalised, portrayals of sex in popular
culture remain male centred and ignorant of women’s sexual pleasures. And the Catholic
Church continues to discriminate against lesbians and gay men with impunity.
Internationally, abortion rights remain tenuous with a new campaign to defend
women’s rights against the Bush administration in the US, and in other countries
it remains illegal. Women are still openly treated as if they’re sex objects in
advertising, in popular culture and in a massively expanding sex industry.
Women’s right
to work is widely accepted today – for instance there has been no concerted campaign
against married women’s right to work during a decade and a half of mass unemployment.
But it isn’t that simple. The Howard government slashed funding to community
childcare centres, virtually making work for many low-income women an impossible
option as child care can eat up such a large percentage of their income it is
not worth it.
So was the women’s
liberation movement worth the time and energy? In spite of it all the answer
should be a resounding «yes!». It was worth every minute spent protesting, marching,
writing leaflets, attending meetings and raising hell. In the sixties, pregnant
women were simply expected to leave work with no access to maternity leave or pay.
Contraception was primitive and unreliable, and illegal, backyard abortions were
a nightmare waiting to happen, making sex a source of anxiety and guilt. In
1961 women were only 25% of the workforce. Only 17% of married women between the
ages of 25 and 34 and 21% of married women 35 to 44 were in the paid workforce.
In 1966 the participation rate in the paid workforce by women was 36% compared
with 84% of men. By 1994 women were 43% of the workforce and 53% of women aged
16–54 were in paid work compared with 73% of men. However, the dramatic change
was for married women with 63% of married women aged 25–34 in paid work and 71%
aged 35 to 44. As late as the early sixties women were not able to serve on
juries, could not get a bank loan in their own right, and there was no
supporting parent’s benefit for women (or men for that matter) if a partnership
broke up until 1974. Divorce was a long drawn out, expensive affair and there were
no refuges where women could escape a violent relationship until the 1980s.
So on the one hand,
we have won significant gains, on the other women remain oppressed. Like all
social movements, it took militant, bold and determined political actions to
force reforms from the system. Without the movement, women’s rights would be even
fewer.
Even though we
can win reforms, while capitalism continues to exist, there will continue to be
women’s oppression. Capitalism is a dynamic, changing society and is able to absorb
all manner of protests. Many of the demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement
fitted with the needs of the developed world fairly easily, as employers and
governments drew in millions of women to cope with labour shortages caused by
the massive boom. However, the fundamentals of the system did not change. Social
relations still rested on exploitation and oppression. The driving force of
society remained competition for profits for the minority who make up the capitalist
class, rather than human need. So while women’s increased participation in the paid
workforce was actually encouraged, it had to be on the terms of capitalism. Employers
and governments are not interested in ensuring women work in an environment that
fits with their need to breast feed their child, or of families struggling to
find the time for long hours on the job and still carry the responsibilities in
the home. On the other hand, women’s oppression plays a vital role in maintaining
the system and the power of those who rule. So this minority have a very real material
interest in the perpetuation of sexism. That is why ultimately we will need a revolution
to completely overthrow capitalism and build a new society in order to end women’s
oppression. In a society based on collective and democratic control of all wealth
so that human need can be the basis for social decisions, it would be possible to
organise work and the socialisation and care of children on the basis of people’s
needs. There would not be any social group who could benefit from women’s oppression.
Then women’s liberation will be possible.
These are the themes
of this pamphlet.
Why are
women oppressed?
Frederick Engels,
friend and collaborator of Karl Marx, showed that women have been oppressed ever
since the beginning of class society. Using copious notes Marx had made throughout
his lifetime trying to understand why women were oppressed, in his path-breaking
book The Family, Private Property and the State, published in the 1880s,
Engels gave the first materialist explanation of women’s oppression. He argued
that with the rise of classes, the ruling class found it necessary to control,
for the first time in human history, 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. So sexism
and the kind of discrimination against women we see everywhere today is deeply embedded
in social and cultural traditions which stretch back many centuries before capitalism.
However for the sake of brevity, this pamphlet will only look at how women’s
oppression is perpetuated under capitalism.
One of the main
institutions of capitalism is the nuclear family – two heterosexual people living
with their children. In some cultures the extended family continues, but it plays
a similar role as the nuclear family in perpetuating the gender stereotypes
which are central to women’s oppression. The stereotypes of man the protector,
the provider, and woman the caring, loving wife and mother dependent on the man
and devoted to her children underpin the treatment of women as sex objects, the
idea that women are by nature more passive and nurturing than men, and provide a
rationale for lower wages and fewer job opportunities. From these stereotypes
follows the oppression of lesbians and gay men, but also the sexual oppression
of heterosexual women. The emphasis on monogamy and women’s role as child bearers
lays the basis for the denial of women’s sexual needs, and the idea that women are
mere sex objects for men’s pleasure.
The family
promises a haven from the pressures of work, a refuge where love is the driving
force rather than competition and exploitation. Unfortunately, the reality is
nothing like the promise. Because the family is not separate from and insulated
from society. Men tend to earn more, have more job opportunities, and their role
in the paid workforce is valued more highly than work done in the home. Therefore,
the relationship on which the family is based is from the very start unequal.
For the vast majority of families, the gender roles are impossible to escape. Even
if they would like the man to take time off from paid work to play more of a role
doing child care and housework, most families cannot afford to sacrifice the wage
of the higher earner. In spite of the fact that more women work outside the home,
and that they are now 54% of university students in a country like Australia,
the gender stereotypes are being reinforced, not broken down. Even the conservative
Institute of Family Affairs has commented that with women concentrated in part
time work and men increasingly working longer hours, even with the best of intentions,
individual families find it virtually impossible to challenge the stereotype of
the woman taking major responsibility for children.
This very real
inequality in the family, caused by inequalities in the workplace, is backed up
by the derogatory way women are treated in advertising, popular film, and literature.
Men are encouraged to see women as at best, passive objects of their desires, at
worst, not worthy of any respect or control over their bodies. They are also encouraged
to see their «masculinity» as strong, aggressive, domineering, stoic, dismissive
of sensitivity. Combine all of this with the tendency for capitalism to turn everything
into a commodity, sex is something for sale, ie. prostitution, and so is something
that can be taken by the strong from the weak. So instead of a haven of love and
rest, the family is actually one of the most violent places for women to be. Most
sexual violence against women is by men they know in the family.
The reality of
the workplace backs up the inequalities and violence in the family. Women’s low
pay makes it difficult to leave a loveless home, making them dependent and emphasising
men’s authority in the family. The concentration of women in the lowest paid
jobs means a lack of women who exercise authority, reinforcing men’s sexist attitudes
and reinforcing women’s lack of confidence in their own worth. This affects every
area of our lives from the most public to the most intimate. Women who are public
figures are subjected to endless discussion by the media of their dress sense and
their appearance. Women who are aggressive and confident are ridiculed or treated
as threatening and domineering for the same behaviour that is praised as «ambition»
or «strength of character» in men. In personal relationships, most women find
it difficult to assert their own desires. Research into women’s sexual activity
found that a majority of women in heterosexual relationships rarely experience orgasm,
not because they are «frigid» as the myth makers would have us believe, but because
they cannot bring themselves to tell their lovers what they enjoy and need. The
reason women gave for denying their own pleasure is very revealing. Most
instinctively knew that the man assumed his role to be the initiator in all
things sexual. To take away his control would be to undermine his confidence, and
threaten the whole basis of their relationship.
The inequalities
between women and men, while based in the social situation of how capitalism
organises work, are reflected in the way women and men are socialised from
birth. Studies have found that mothers smile more at their male children when
they’re active, such as using building blocks, moving around, but smile more at
their daughters when they are quiet and passive. Parents tend to interrupt their
daughters more readily than their sons in conversation. Other studies show that
adults respond in radically different ways to a child in the same circumstances,
depending on whether they think they are male or female. The gender stereotypes
so central to women’s oppression are so much part of the way we are socialised
from the earliest age, discriminatory behaviour towards women goes largely
unnoticed. Research into the way people communicate revealed that men initiate most
topics of discussion, interrupt others vastly more than women, and generally
dominate social situations. These learned responses begin with our earliest
communications with other human beings and are often treated as if they are purely
psychological, or even accepted as representative of women and men’s different
«natures». But they cannot be understood outside the social circumstances that
produce the inequalities between women and men.
These studies,
while important in understanding how our socialisation into the stereotypes
works, and how women and men come to view themselves and others in gendered ways,
do not explain why women’s oppression cannot be rooted out under capitalism.
One way to understand why is to look at who benefits from this state
of affairs.
Who gains
from women’s oppression?
Some feminists
agree with Marxists that women’s oppression is centred in the family. However,
we disagree about who benefits from the family. Heidi Hartmann, still widely read
in universities, popularised the idea that the family was the result of co-operation
between ruling class and working class men to force women to service men in the
family:
It seems self‑evident
that men are the beneficiaries of women’s oppression – that’s why it’s such a
popular idea. The unequal relationships between women and men in the family, the
discrimination against women in the workforce, plus prostitution, and sexism in
general, mean that men can buy sex, can coerce their wives, lord it over the family,
abrogate their responsibilities to their children, and yet be praised for their
masculinity. Women who build a career, or simply take time away from the family
are much more likely to be accused of «neglecting the children».
The family is
clearly not maintained and argued for in order to service men. Since World War
II, it has suited capitalists to employ married women in ever increasing numbers.
Did they ever consult working class men about how that would affect the «services»
to them? The whole history of the family under capitalism shows that it was
considered by capitalists to be the best institution to feed, clothe and socialise
working class children at the lowest possible cost. The unpaid labour of women (and
to a lesser extent of men too) in the family saves the capitalist state billions
of dollars every year. That is why it is governments, and not «men» in general
who appeal to «family responsibilities» to justify education fees, denial of a living
wage to unemployed youth, cuts to health care and appalling facilities for the aged.
While the system was booming, the welfare state could take over some of the family’s
responsibilities. Now that boom is long past, the family can be called upon to
fill the gaps left by cut backs to social services. Of course, in many less developed
countries, welfare has never taken the burden from the family, which is why women
take the brunt of poverty in the third world.
However, while
the central role of the family is to rear children and provide a healthy
workforce hopefully socialised into appropriate, submissive behaviour, the family
does provide a place where adult workers aspire to rest, love, and recuperate from
the dreariness of work. It is to a large extent this dream that ensures the continuing
popularity of the ideal of the family even though increasing numbers of marriages
end in divorce and many homes are anything but restful and loving. But it is the
case that when it suits the needs of capitalism, men can be torn from the family
with no regard for their needs, unlike children. For much of the early history
of white Australia, men did itinerant work separated from their wives and
children. Men are sent off to fight in wars, or in the Great Depression forced
to roam the country looking for work. Their need to be «serviced» did not entitle
them to remain in the family. Theories which argue as Hartmann did that all men
conspired to gain the services of women in the family cannot explain why
working class men accepted this treatment. If they could influence the establishment
of the family, surely they could insist they remain in it.
In the process
of invasion and creation of a new capitalist state in Australia, the middle and
upper class people who argued for the family recognised not just crude economic
benefits in the family, but also its importance as an institution that could help
stabilise the colonies. Some of them explicitly understood the important role it
would play in establishing ideologies and social behaviour that would be the bulwark
of their exploitative system. Caroline Chisholm was quite explicit about it when
she began her campaign to establish the working class family in Australia in
1847:
Chisholm played
a much more significant role than any working class man in pushing women and men
into the constraints of the nuclear family. Leading feminists at the turn of the
twentieth century «eulogised motherhood». Feminist writers themselves such as Marilyn
Lake have documented how in fact, working class men resisted attempts to force them
to live the settled life of monogamous marriage.
It is still the
case today that some middle class women play a more important role in perpetuating
women’s oppression than most men. Women who lead the Right to Life, campaign against
women’s right to abortion. In the late nineties it was middle class women such as
Leslie Cannold and Drusilla Modjewska who led a campaign attacking pro-choice activists
for not considering the «moral» dilemmas involved in abortion, implying they were
wrong to support free safe abortion on demand, but should support state controls
over women’s right to choose. Pru Goward, appointed as Sex Discrimination
Commissioner in mid‑2001, well known friend and supporter of John Howard,
influential newspaper columnist, and defender of big business, can hardly be expected
to fight for the rights and conditions that working class women need to combat
their oppression. Jocelyn Newman, Amanda Vanstone and Bronwyn Bishop preside over
areas such as social services, the legal system and aged care that affect women’s
lives. These women and others like them such as Labor Party women parliamentarians
who have supported economic rationalist policies, have vastly more power over
policies affecting women, than any working class man. Bettina Arndt is well
known for her attacks on single mothers and support for the gender stereotypes,
receiving wide publicity in the media.
It can be shown
that the sexism that permeates all of our lives creates direct benefits to the capitalist
class. They get cheaper labour to help prop up profits than they would otherwise
get, by paying women less and subjecting them to generally worse conditions than
if women’s rights were recognised. Even ruling class women benefit from the oppression
of working class women as they too live off profits and employ cheap labour to
do their housework and child care. The family frees them of responsibility to pay
for the hours of work needed to rear children ready to be a compliant workforce
in the factories and offices which generate the profits on which these ruling
class women live.
However, there
is another very important advantage which flows from the sexism engendered by
the family and inequalities at work. That is the deep divisions it causes among
workers. For workers to improve their conditions, to win reforms, they need
collective organisation and struggle. Sexism (along with racism and homophobia)
makes it more difficult to build such struggles than it would otherwise be. If
men think women belong at home, they miss an opportunity to involve women in the
struggle where they are needed. If they are so used to telling sexist jokes and
denigrating women they make women feel unwelcome at a strike meeting, on a picket
or at a demonstration, they harm no one but themselves and the women they offend.
Because they make it much easier for their bosses to win. If women feel less
confident of their rights they are less likely to join a union, or to join a picket.
It does not benefit working class men to have women workers, who could be fighters
in the unions, unorganised and under confident. It benefits their bosses.
So there are massive
and obvious reasons why sexist ideas are regenerated and propagated, no matter
what reforms women may win. Those who own and control the wealth of society also
control the dominant ideas.
But if sexism
is not in working class men’s interests, why do they accept sexist ideas? The vast
majority of us have little or no control over the work we do, over what is
produced, over who will be able to buy what we produce, or how our workplace is
organised. This lack of control over a central part of our lives lays the basis
for the idea that our bosses are born to rule, or at the very least, that we are
powerless to do anything about their authority over us. And in the everyday run
of events this is to all intents and purposes true. The only way we can challenge
their rule is by banding together with others, a point we will end with below.
Once the central
idea justifying the exploitation by a minority of the majority is established,
rejecting any of the ideas that go along with that is very difficult. The idea that
women are weaker physically, that they are naturally more caring and passive than
men, rests on a certain reality. The family demands that women play that role, their
conditioning ensures that most women are physically less strong than men. Just as
the dispossession of Indigenous people condemns them to terrible living
conditions and alienation, which breeds substance abuse, which in turn seems to
justify the racist stereotypes about them, so the actual situation of women backs
up the sexism.
It may be the case
as some sociologists and psychologists argue that denigrating those more oppressed
gives the oppressed a sense of power. A man who comes home from a dreadful,
boring, dangerous job, tired and frustrated with his lack of power may get some
satisfaction from taking it out on the woman with whom he lives, knowing it
will be mostly accepted as his right. But this behaviour does not actually give
him any real power. It simply reflects his powerlessness. That it is lack
of power, and not power itself that leads to sexism and ultimately sexual abuse
among ordinary people is reflected in the statistics of sexual violence. It is
well known that levels of sexual violence towards women are high in Indigenous
communities in Australia. Why? Precisely because of the racist oppression of their
communities, the loss of culture and alienation, lack of jobs, discrimination
by police and authorities which increase the sense of powerlessness.
This is not to
say that all sexual abuse of women stems from powerlessness. Vast numbers of cases
result from the power relationships created by our class based, exploitative society.
The power the churches had over Indigenous children stolen from their families,
or of pastoralists over Indigenous women condemned to domestic labour and sexual
slavery on their properties until only a little over two decades ago led to some
of the most horrendous abuse recorded. In churches, the hierarchy of clergy over
their charges gives them the power to abuse those in their care. The regular exposure
of such violence emphasises how integral sexual oppression is to capitalism. Sexual
abuse by screws is part of everyday life in jails. The power of employers and managers
in the workplace gives them particular licence to abuse women. In a society in
which those in authority can use their position with impunity to use women and
children as sex objects it is little wonder that those who want to lash out against
their own powerlessness and alienation mimic the behaviour of those in power and
accept the ideas that justify it.
The story so far
is a sorry tale of oppression and division. And yet, socialists are confident we
can fight women’s oppression. Contrary to the caricature of us promoted by many
of our critics, we do not think we have to wait around until after a revolution
to make improvements in women’s lives. It was socialists who were central to the
Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s. According to Ann Curthoys, a participant
in those heady days, «ideologically, at first, the socialist tradition was
dominant».
Because Socialist
Alternative recognises the way sexism diminishes women’s lives and the divisive
role sexist ideas play in the working class, it is imperative that we take a stand
against it wherever we experience sexism. We argue for men to take down sexist
pictures of women, we object to sexist jokes, we discourage those we work or
live with from using sexist language. We discuss the problems of sexism, and
how it affects even the left. We take steps to encourage women to play leading
roles in campaigns and organisations and defend their right to defy the gender
stereotypes. We encourage male activists and socialists to gain an understanding
of women’s oppression, how the gender divisions disadvantage women and how to
stand up to sexism. These are necessary steps in order to ensure we are conscious
of the effects of sexism in everyday life and the way it can constrain women’s
involvement in politics.
But we know that
it is out of the struggles for reforms that it is most likely that masses of people
can begin to challenge the horrible ideas of capitalism and build the necessary
organisation to make the revolution. So we support efforts by women to redress
their inequalities in whatever way they can. We actively support and sometimes
initiate campaigns against right wing attacks on women such as Right to Life marches,
or John Howard and others’ attempts to deny single women access to IVF.
As with all the
effects of capitalism, it is in the fight for reforms that a revolutionary movement
will be built. And if in those struggles, workers don’t overcome the divisions
caused by sexism, racism and homophobia there will be no successful socialist revolution.
But how can that happen, if the ideas of capitalism are so dominant, and so well
grounded?
The most fundamental
factor is the contradictions between the promises of capitalism and the actual experience
of ordinary people. On the one hand there is the myth of equality before the law,
the romantic idea of everlasting love in monogamous marriage, the emphasis on
our «individuality» to name just a few. However the class divisions in society and
the fact that exploitation and oppression demean people means these myths make a
mockery of most people’s lives. There is a popular idea that people will only
fight back when their lives become unbearable as a result of falling living standards.
But the process by which people resist is much more complex. Lack of power breeds
lack of confidence. But in the long post-war boom, rising living standards actually
raised levels of confidence. The fact of the boom moved people to expect more from
life than previous generations. But of course, bosses and governments shared no
such aspirations. But also, it increasingly became evident that in spite of the
boom, racism, and other forms of oppression would not be wiped out without a fight.
One of the first signs of this recognition was the Civil Rights Movement in the
US. This in turn highlighted the need to struggle to others. For instance, it was
the US Civil Rights Movement that inspired mostly white, and one black university
student, Charles Perkins, to organise a «Freedom Ride» from Sydney University around
the outback NSW towns where anti‑Aboriginal racism was rife. This led to
increased anti-racist activity. Again, the Women’s Liberation Movement arose from
the contradictions highlighted by the boom. As women were pulled into the workforce
in growing numbers, as contraception became available, and more women entered tertiary
education, especially as teachers (pulled in by a shortage of teachers in an expanding
education system), the idea that they should be content to be housewives and
mothers began to come unstuck. It is not insignificant that it was working class
women, many of whom had been influenced by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA),
that hit the headlines in 1969 protesting over equal pay. Working alongside men,
catching public transport where they paid the same fares, but being paid less,
facing the problems of childcare while experiencing discrimination at work drove
an at first tiny minority to take a stand.
The boom led
to workers expecting higher living standards, but facing huge fines for their
union every time they took industrial action because of the anti-union laws of
the right wing Menzies government. It was no accident that in the same year women
chained themselves to buildings to demand equal pay, a million workers had taken
action earlier that year and successfully smashed the Penal Powers as the anti-union
laws were known. When one group shows that gains can be made, and solidarity is
possible, it gives others increased confidence. This can be especially important
in helping oppressed groups make their first move. Out of this growing level of
confidence and struggle in the late sixties, the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation
(BLF), after many years of struggle to unionise their industry and win safer
working conditions, took the lead in urban environmental campaigns to save historic
working class areas and parks around Sydney. Their campaign in turn inspired environmentalists
who took up their phrase «green bans» and applied it to their movement. This all-male
workforce became famous for their support for women’s struggles, in particular,
for the right of women to work in the building industry. They inspired activists
with their bans at Macquarie University in defence of a gay student victimised
because of his sexuality. None of this was simply accidental or merely episodic.
It is the nature of class struggle to encourage ideas of solidarity. Because workers
find that on their own they come up against the power of governments and bosses.
Once solidarity has been won, the issues of new supporters gain a new hearing and
so on.
But it is not
simply that issues link up in a linear way. Qualitative changes become possible
once the normality of everyday life and its subservience is broken. In the turmoil
of struggle, ideas which seem settled and undisputed come up for grabs. Because
once workers begin to take some control over their lives, the sense of
powerlessness is weakened. This then provides the basis to examine long held beliefs.
There is nothing so encouraging than to win an argument with workers organising
a picket that women should participate against their doubts. And it is not only
men who accept sexist ideas about the role of women. Well, perhaps more inspiring
is to witness women (or any workers for that matter) feeling their own power.
One of my earliest political experiences was a strike by textile workers at the
Kortex factory in Melbourne. Their joy when they turned back a truck from entering
the plant is something embedded in my memory that helps me keep going in the lowest
points of struggle.
There is no
formula for how struggles will begin. The radical movements of the sixties and
seventies were underpinned by the contrast between expectations fuelled by the economic
boom and the reality of capitalism. Sometimes it is because of bitterness stored
up because of oppression, or attacks on living standards by bosses and governments,
which is the driving force for the world wide new movement against corporatisation.
So struggle is
central to building a movement that can unite women and men in the fight against
sexism. But socialists do not assume this is automatic. Sexist ideas are strong
and many varied. So being organised as socialists, developing an understanding
of sexism, where it stems from, how to fight it is part and parcel of building
on the opportunities that emerge when struggles break out. The intervention of activists
to explicitly argue against sexism is still often needed. The difference is, we
can get a hearing that in «normal» times might seem impossible. Because the need
for solidarity can be stronger than the commitment to the horrible ideas of capitalism.
There are those
who argue that women need to be organised «autonomously», otherwise their «issues»
won’t be taken seriously, or they won’t be able to participate as equals in the
struggles. But this ignores the very real class and therefore political
divisions which necessarily divide women. Unlike the divisions among workers caused
by sexism, these divisions cannot be overcome in any permanent way. Take past
women’s struggles. In the campaigns for women’s suffrage it was common for
middle and upper class women to only support property based voting rights
(which denied the vote to working class women and men) to give them equal
rights with men of their own class. It was only ever the working class movement
that consistently supported universal suffrage. It might seem that all women can
unite for abortion rights. However, leaving aside the religious views of many
women who will never support that right, even women who want abortion rights
don’t have the same needs. So abortion campaigns have always been divided between
more middle class women who simply want legalised abortion and working class
women who need free, safe abortions on demand. And when it comes down to it,
ruling class women don’t need the right to work or equal pay, as they live off
profits as do the men of their class. So inevitably, all women’s movements,
including the Women’s Liberation Movement, while it could raise slogans such as
«women united will never be defeated» in its first flush, were in the end torn apart
by class differences which were reflected in different political trends from the
commitment to working class struggle and unity of socialism to radical feminism
which argued that all men oppress all women, and therefore all women could unite,
but could not expect solidarity from men. The first signs of the shifts
occurring was the disappearance of «Liberation» from the name of the movement.
Janey Stone, a revolutionary socialist at the time and an activist in the Women’s
Liberation Movement, predicted where things were heading.
Just as the radicalism
of the early movement had been related to the rising tide of radicalism and
industrial action, so the increasing dominance of the more right wing ideas of
feminism accompanied the retreats of the working class and other movements. These
questions matter, not because of some abstract shibboleth devised by socialists.
When activists embark on a program of struggle based on unachievable goals – in
this case, the hope that all women could unite – the ultimate, predictable failure,
leads many activists to demoralisation. The disillusionment of many women
committed to women’s rights is palpable in student publications. In the Melbourne
University women’s student magazine, Judy’s Punch in 1995, one woman
wrote that a march against fees, organised from NOWSA (the national conference of
women students) was great until the cops attacked it. Then solidarity collapsed.
She expressed her disillusionment thus:
Yet we are expected
to take the ideas of feminism seriously! Another woman wrote that she had hoped
that NOWSA would «pull feminism apart», analysing why the movement was in disarray.
But she was disappointed that it didn’t. It is important we learn the lessons
from the last Women’s Liberation Movement and the developments over the last decade
and a half, so that if the possibility of mass struggles for women’s rights accompany
the new anti-capitalist movement we may avoid some of the pitfalls.
Out of the turmoil
of debates in the last decade there are those who agree that all women
(ruling class and working class) cannot unite. However, they argue that all left
wing women should organise «autonomously». However women with fundamental political differences will come up
against the same differences of
principle that keep them in
different organisations. And they will find more in
common on these matters of principle with men with whom they agree. This argument, while acknowledging class differences is still a concession
to the idea
that our identity forms our politics, rather than experience and theory. If any group of women has fundamental political agreement, they will be most
effective if they are organised together with men with the same politics. The idea that women need a separate organisation is a concession
to the idea
that men naturally and always will dominate, and that women are incapable of playing a leading role in their own
right in organisations. Take for example the disagreements that have come up over whether
to oppose Right to Life Clubs on campus. Not all left wing women agree on the tactics of demonstrating at their stalls and meetings. So those who
do, have a much
stronger presence and ability to defeat the pro-life clubs if they entail the solidarity of men who agree.
The socialist answer to the question
«how can we win women’s
liberation» is to
look to the traditions of
collective struggle of the working class. Not that other groups in society do not take up their own demands and lead campaigns. The point is to see
that linking these
to those of the working class is the way to build a movement capable of uniting millions, and of forcing change. Marxists do not put this emphasis on the working class because we think workers are somehow more virtuous,
good, or more deserving than others. It is because as a class united in struggle, they have the power to defeat those in power, and ultimately, to bring capitalism crashing down and to build a new
society based on collectivity out of the ruins. The dynamic in the workers’ movement
is in the opposite direction to what we have seen in the women’s movement. At first, the old
divisions can seem insuperable at times. But if workers’
confidence continues and they continue to want to fight their rulers, they have to begin to overcome ideas such as sexism, bringing the oppressed
into the struggle by raising their demands. In any case, women are half the working class, whether they’re in paid work or not. It is necessary to remind us of that because there is, even after the unprecedented entry
of women into the paid workforce, a stereotype of the «worker» as male and blue collar. This caricature of the working class lies behind the fear that the «working class» won’t fight for «women’s
issues». The working class today includes increasing numbers of white collar workers, often university educated, who might think of
themselves as middle class, but nevertheless find
themselves organising unions
like any other workers.
Bank and finance workers are a good example, leading militant struggles in countries
such as South Korea in the last decade.
There is
nothing inevitable about the specific demands of women being part of working class struggle, especially if it involves at first mostly male workers. However, the need
for unity, for involving as wide a
layer of workers as possible to gain the strength to defeat governments and employers opens the way for old prejudices to be
smashed. That is one important reason for socialists to be organised, and to have ideas about how to win the necessary arguments. Because it is often the intervention
of socialists into
spontaneous struggles
that encourages these steps to be taken. If they are not taken, nine times out of ten
the struggle will fail because of its own divisions.
It is not accidental that surveys have shown that skilled male workers often have the most progressive ideas about women’s rights – even
than most women.
Because they are the section of the working
class often with
the highest levels of unionisation, they learn the lessons of unity.
So the socialist answer to sexism is struggle.
And fundamentally, to end capitalism, struggle led by the
working class who have the power to stop
production and therefore the
capitalist system. In the first
two years of the twenty
first century, the anti-capitalist movement has taken off around the world marked by mass mobilisations against bodies
such as the World Trade Organisation, the IMF and the World Bank, or gatherings of heads of governments. This
movement has its own features and dynamic. The tens of thousands who turn out to the mass mobilisations obviously take heart from the fact that lots of different
struggles come together at them, that all kinds of issues can be raised, discussed and protested about. Anger over sweatshop conditions has raised a pertinent
women’s issue. In this climate, the defensiveness of «autonomous» women’s organisations is completely out
of step with events. The mass protests should be the focus of everyone who wants to fight sexism, and for women’s liberation. In Porto Alegre at a mass mobilisation against the World Economic
Forum, unity between the 15–20,000 who protested on the streets illustrated the potential for this new movement.
The issues raised included (apart from economic demands to deal with poverty)
opposition to US backing for corrupt military dictators in Latin America, support for abortion rights, and a drag queen led a contingent calling for Lesbian and Gay rights. At the May 1 protest in Melbourne in
2001, socialists were able to involve marchers in chanting slogans about issues from Third
World debt, to union rights, to Queer liberation. Tens of thousands of women join with equal numbers of men at each and every one of these mass protests, laying the basis for a movement
which can fundamentally challenge the very basis of women’s oppression.
And that is the existence of class society itself. For that, we need a movement
centred on the working class.
For only with
the end to the underlying class divisions which make sexism necessary and useful to the system will women’s liberation be possible.