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Socialist Review, September 1994

Rose Wilson

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Equal rights or liberation?

 

From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Sex, Class and Socialism
Lindsey German
Bookmarks £5.95 (£4.95 in Bookmarks Club)

Tory attacks on single parents are increasing. Not only is their situation made worse by cuts in benefit and harassment by the CSA, but they themselves are to blame, according to right wingers like Peter Lilley, for the the breakdown of civilisation as we know it. The arguments of leading feminists like Germaine Greer only seem to back the Tories up by insisting on women celebrating the traditional role of wives and mothers.

In such a climate, this book is like a breath of fresh air for anyone looking for a way of undermining and eradicating women’s oppression today.

Unlike so many other writers on the subject, Lindsey German succeeds in explaining the changing reality of women’s lives over the last 200 years, whilst at the same time locating the reason for women’s oppression in the class society in which we live.

For many readers this explanation might seem to contradict the reality of their everyday experience. After all, isn’t it men (regardless of class) who rape, get better pay and are sexist towards all women? What has class got to do with it?

German shows that although women of all classes face sexism, there have always been differences between working class and ruling class women. Far from all women suffering oppression in the same way, the lives of rich mill and landowners’ wives were as different in the early days of industrial capitalism from those of working class women as is the life of Princess Diana from that of a single mum today.

For the rich, access to nannies, boarding schools and cleaners dramatically alleviates the effects of women’s oppression. Working class women have to cope with the kids, shopping, housework and going out to work to supplement the family income.

These real class differences between women means there can be no such thing as sisterhood with women such as Princess Diana or Margaret Thatcher who would fight tooth and nail to preserve the system and their privileges. As German states, ‘although these women may be oppressed within their own class, they can also act as the oppressors (and sometimes the exploiters) of others.’

The whole notion of seeing things in terms of gender rather than class leads many feminist writers to believe that avoiding oppressive relationships and paying someone to clean the house or cook meals is the way forward to liberation. Unfortunately, as German puts it:

‘... most women, of course are likely to be the ones doing the paid cleaning rather than employing the cleaner; even if such an option were desirable, which it is not, it is simply not available for most women workers. Role reversals do not begin to challenge the privatised family and its role in the reproduction of labour power’.

Only by analysing the role of women in the family can we understand why, in spite of the greater freedom and control women have today over our lives and sexuality, women’s oppression still remains a major feature of society. In spite of the tendency of early industrial capitalism to undermine and almost destroy the family as it pulled men, women and children off the land and into the factories, it was the needs of capitalism – the pursuit of profit – which ultimately ensured it survived. It is within the family that workers are fed, clothed, refreshed and the next generation of workers brought up. It costs nothing to the bosses and the state. To provide all these services – free creches, communal laundries and food kitchens – would cost a fortune. It is much cheaper to place this burden on the individual family.

That is why the Tories and the bosses fight so hard to shore up the family – both ideologically and through increased intervention – by the state, social workers and health visitors. So although the lives of women have changed dramatically over the years – 70 percent of women now work outside the home compared with 10 percent in 1911 – the central role of women still remains that of wife and mother.

But because women make up a greater percentage of the workforce than ever before, the struggle for real liberation is possible. German argues that ‘the history of working class women under capitalism has always found them organising as part of their class alongside men.’

The women’s movements of the late 1960s and today do not look to this tradition. Their theory is one of ‘patriarchy’ – an unchanging structure of male domination acting independently of class. This has led women, German argues, up a blind alley:

‘For although there have undoubtedly been major advances for women in the past decades, these have been nearly all advances for bourgeois feminism ... in business, finance, journalism and higher education ... This in turn has brought fewer real gains for working class women and indeed some major attacks on hard won rights.’

For working class women the fight is not with all men but with the system that maintains their oppression through the family. Although women physically bear children that does not mean we have to be solely responsible for their upbringing. We need a society where the whole community cares for the young, the sick and the old.

That doesn’t mean we sit back and wait for the revolution. It means fighting in the here and now. But unless we understand the fundamental division in society is that of class, we will always end up merely tinkering with the system – making small gains for a few women while leaving the majority of us in the same position or worse off. That is why the fight for socialism and women’s liberation must go hand in hand, and why this book is essential reading for an understanding of the way forward for women.


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