The oppression of women is not determined by their biology, as many contend.
Sexual difference is a biological reality but oppression and discrimination
have not always been attached to such a difference. The origin of such
oppression is economic and social in character. Throughout the evolution
of pre-class and class society, women's childbearing function has always
been the same. While women's social roles have changed from society to
society, their social status has not always been that of a degraded domestic
servant, subject to man's control and command.
Before the development of class society, during the historical period
that Marxists have traditionally referred to as primitive communism (hunter-gatherer
societies), social production was organised com- munally and its product
shared equally. This did not mean that different tasks were not carried
out by the various sub-groupings based on age, gender, etc. within the
larger social group. But it meant that there was no exploitation or oppression
of one sub-group by another. No material basis for such exploitative social
relations existed. Both sexes participated in social production, helping
to assure the sustenance and survival of all. The social status of both
women and men reflected the indispensable roles that each played in this
productive process for the survival of the group as a whole. Social differentiation
was not linked to inequality.
Women's oppression and class society
The origin of women's oppression is intertwined with the transition from
pre-class to class society. The exact process by which this complex transition
took place is a continuing subject of research and discussion even among
those who subscribe to a historical materialist view. However, the fundamental
lines along which women's oppression emerged are clear. The change in women's
status developed along with the growing productivity of human labor based
on agriculture, the domestication of animals, and stock raising; the rise
of new divisions of labor, craftsmanship, and commerce; the private appropriation
of an increasing and permanent economic surplus; and the development of
the possibility for some humans to prosper from the exploitation of the
labor of others.
In these specific socio-economic conditions, as the exploitation of
human beings became profitable for a privileged few, women, because of
their biological role in production (i.e., the social production to maintain
the existing generation and their production of the next generation), became
valuable property. Like slaves and cattle, they were a source of wealth.
They alone could produce new human beings whose labor power could be exploited.
Thus the purchase of women by men, along with all rights to their future
offspring, arose as one of the economic and social institutions of the
new order based on private property. Women's primary social role was increasingly
defined as domestic servant and child-bearer.
Along with the private accumulation of wealth, the family unit developed
as the institution by which responsibility for the unproductive members
of society-especially the young-was trans- ferred from society as a whole
to an identifiable individual or small group of individuals. It was the
primary socio-economic institution for perpetrating from one generation
to the next the class divisions of society-divisions between those who
possessed property and lived off the wealth produced by the labor of others,
and those who, owning no property, had to work for others to live. The
destruction of the egalitarian and communal traditions and structures of
primitive communism was essential for the rise of an exploiting class and
its accelerated private accumulation of wealth.
The family system
This was the origin of the family institution. In fact, the word family
itself, which is still used in the Latin-based languages of today, comes
from the original Latin
famulus, which means household slave, and
familia, the totality of slaves belonging to one man
.
The oppression of women was institutionalised through the family system.
Women ceased to have an independent place in social production. Their productive
role was determined by the family to which they belonged, by the man to
whom they were subordinate. This economic dependence determined the second-class
social status of women, on which the cohesiveness and continuity of the
family has always depended. If women could simply take their children and
leave, without suffering any social or economic hardship, the family would
not have survived through the millennia.
The family and the subjugation of women thus came into existence along
with the other institutions of the emerging class society in order to buttress
nascent class divisions and maintain the private accumulation of wealth.
The state, with its police and armies, laws and courts, enforced this relationship.
Ruling-class ideology arose on this basis and played a vital role in the
degradation of the female sex. Women, it was said, were physically and
mentally inferior to men and therefore were ``naturally'' or biologically
the second sex. While the subjugation of women has always had different
consequences for women of distinct classes, all women regardless of class
were and are oppressed as part of the female sex.
There is no other institution in class society whose true role is as
hidden by prejudice and mystification as that of the family. Bourgeois
moralists claim that the family is the basis for the natural and moral
unity of society. Bourgeois anthropologists perpetuate the myth that the
family unit has always existed. They deny the fact that the family originated
with and flowed from the development of private property, class society
and the state. They obscure the fact that in pre-class society the basic
social unit was the clan and that within each clan goods were shared in
common. Clan structures are not the same as the family system, which is
based on a legally binding marriage contract that enables the transmission
of private property.
Throughout the history of class society, the family system has proved
its value as an institution of class rule. The form of the family has evolved
and adapted itself to the changing needs of the ruling classes as the modes
of production and forms of private property have gone through different
stages of development. The family system under classical slavery was different
from the family system during feudalism. Under classical slavery, the family
institution was restricted to the slave-owning class (there was no family
system among slaves). Under feudalism, the family system was extended to
the laboring class, the serfs, who owned some means of production (small
plots of land, animals, and hand tools), and was the basic unit through
which social production was organised. By contrast, the urban ``nuclear''
family of today has ceased to be a unit of social production.
Moreover, the family system simultaneously fulfills different social
and economic requirements in reference to classes with different productive
roles and property rights whose interests are diametrically opposed. For
instance, the ``family'' of the serf and the ``family'' of the nobleman
were quite different socio-economic units. However, they were both part
of the family system, an institution of class rule that has played an indispensable
role at each stage in the history of class society.
The disintegration of the family under capitalism brings with it much
misery and suffering precisely because no superior framework for human
relations can yet emerge. In class society, the family is the only institution
to which most people can turn for the satisfaction of some basic human
needs, including love and companionship. This is especially true of those
doubly oppressed on racial, ethnic, etc. grounds. However poorly the family
may meet these needs for many, there is no real alternative as long as
class society exists. Nevertheless, the main purpose of the family is not
to provide such basic needs. It is an economic and social institution whose
functions can be described as follows:
-
a. The family is the basic mechanism through which the ruling classes abrogate
social responsibility for the economic well-being of those whose labor
power they exploit-the masses of humanity. The ruling class tries, to the
greatest degree possible, to force each family to be responsible for its
own, thus institutionalising the unequal distribution of income, status
and wealth.
-
b. The family system provides the means for passing on property ownership
from one generation to the next. It is the basic social mechanism for perpetuating
the division of society into classes.
-
c. For the ruling class, the family system provides the most inexpensive
and ideologically acceptable mechanism for reproducing human labor power.
Making the family responsible for care of the young means that the portion
of society's accumulated wealth-appropriated as private property-that is
utilised to assure production of the laboring classes is minimised. Furthermore,
the fact that each family is an atomised unit, fighting to assure the survival
of its own, hinders the most exploited and oppressed from uniting in common
action.
-
d. The family system enforces a social division of labor in which women
are fundamentally defined by their childbearing role and assigned tasks
immediately associated with this reproductive function-care of other family
members. Thus the family institution rests on and reinforces a social division
of labor involving the domestic subjugation and economic dependence of
women.
The family system is a repressive and conservatising institution that reproduces
within itself the hierarchical, authoritarian relationships necessary to
the perpetuation of the class divisions. It molds the behavior and character
structure of children from infancy through to adolescence. It trains, disciplines,
and polices them, teaching submission to established authority. It then
curbs rebelliousness, nonconformist impulses. It represses and distorts
all sexuality, forcing it into socially acceptable channels of male and
female sexual activity for reproductive purposes and socioeconomic roles.
It inculcates all the social values and behavioral norms that individuals
must acquire in order to survive in class society and submit to its domination.
It distorts all human relationships by imposing on them the framework of
economic compulsion, personal dependence, and sexual repression.
The family under capitalism
Under capitalism, as under previous socio-economic formations, the family
has evolved. But the family system continues to be an indispensable institution
of class rule fulfilling all the economic and social functions outlined.
Among the bourgeoisie the family provides for the transmission of private
property from generation to generation. Marriages often assure profitable
alliances or mergers of large blocks of capital, especially in the early
stages of capital accumulation.
Among the classical petty-bourgeoisie, such as farmers, craftspersons
or small shopkeepers, the family is also a unit of production based on
the labor of the family members themselves.
For the working class, while the family provides some degree of mutual
protection for its own members, in the most basic sense it is an alien
class institution, one that is imposed on the working class, and serves
the economic interests of the bourgeoisie not the workers. Yet working
people are indoctrinated from childhood to regard it (like wage labor,
private property and the state) as the most natural and imperishable of
human relations.
It is absurd to speak of abolishing the family. Democratic socialism
seeks to remove the economic and social compulsion that drives the vast
majority into the family system at the present time, and to give individuals
a far wider and freer range of choices as to how they live. Nevertheless,
a socialist transformation will inherit many of the institutions of the
old society, including the family. The role of the family will only wither
away as society as a whole takes increasing responsibility for people's
needs.
Capitalism has refined and modified the oppression of women to suit
its own needs and ensure economic benefits. Yet the emergence of capitalist
industrialisation contains many contradictory features for the maintenance
of women's oppression:
-
a. With the rise of capitalism and the growth of the working class, the
family unit among workers ceases to be a small scale familial unit of production
although it remains the basic unit through which consumption and reproduction
of labor power are organised. Each member of the family sells his or her
labor power individually on the labor market. The basic economic bond that
previously held together the family of the exploited and oppressed-i.e.,
the fact that they had to work together cooperatively in order to survive-begins
to dissolve. As women are drawn into the labor market they achieve some
degree of economic independence for the first time since the rise of class
society. This begins to undermine the acceptance by women of their domestic
subjugation. As a result, the family system is undermined.
-
b. Thus there is a contradiction between the increasing integration of
women in the labor market and the survival of the family. As women achieve
greater economic independence and more equality, the family institution
begins to disintegrate. But the family system is an indispensable pillar
of class rule. It must be preserved if capitalism is to survive.
-
c. The growing number of women in the labor market creates a deep contradiction
for the capitalist class, especially during periods of accelerated expansion.
They must employ more women to profit from their superexploitation. Yet
the employment of women cuts across their ability to carry out the basic
unpaid domestic labor of child-rearing for which women are responsible.
So the state must begin to buttress the family, helping to assure and subsidise
some of the economic and social functions it used to fulfill, such as education,
childcare, care of the sick and elderly, etc.
-
But such social services are more costly than the unpaid domestic labor
of women. They absorb some of the surplus value that would otherwise be
appropriated by the owners of capital. They cut into profits. Moreover,
social programs of this kind foster the idea that society, not the family,
should be responsible for the welfare of its nonproductive members. They
raise the social expectations of the working class.
-
d. Unpaid work by women in the home-cooking, cleaning, washing, caring
for children-plays a specific role under capitalism. This household work
is a necessary element in the reproduction of labor power sold to the capitalists
(either a woman's own labor power, her husband's, or her children's, or
that of any other member of the family). A recent survey (1990) by the
Australian Bureau of Statistics has estimated that women's unpaid work
in the home is the equivalent to 60% of the Gross Domestic Product.
-
Other things being equal, if women did not perform unpaid labor inside
the families of the working class, the general wage level would have to
rise. Real wages would have to be high enough to purchase the goods and
services which are now produced within the family. (Of course the general
standard of living necessary for this production of labor power is historically
determined at any given time in any country. It cannot be drastically reduced
without a crushing defeat of the working class.) Any general decrease of
unpaid domestic labor by women would thus cut into total profits, changing
the proportion between profits and wages in favor of the working class.
-
It is thus the capitalist class-not men in general, and certainly not male
wage earners-which profits from women's unpaid labor in the household.
-
e. The indispensable role of the family and the dilemma that the growing
employment of women creates for the ruling class becomes clearest in periods
of economic crisis. The capitalist rulers must accomplish two goals:
-
They must drive a significant number of women from the labor force to re-establish
the reserve labor pool and lower wage levels.
-
They must cut the growing costs of social services provided by the state
and transfer the economic burden and responsibility for these services
back onto the individual family of the worker.
In order to accomplish both of these objectives, they must launch an ideological
campaign against the very concept of women's equality and independence,
and reinforce the responsibility of the individual family for its own children,
its elderly, its sick. They must reinforce the image of the family as the
only ``natural'' form of human relations, and convince women who have begun
to rebel against their subordinate status that true happiness comes only
through fulfilling their ``natural'' and primary role as wife-mother-housekeeper.
But since the impact of the second feminist wave, the capitalists are now
discovering that despite appeals to austerity and dire warnings of crisis,
the more thoroughly women are integrated into the workforce, the more difficult
it is to push sufficient numbers back into the home.
-
f. This is different from the early stages of industrialisation when the
unregulated, unbridled, brutal exploitation of women and children went
so far as to seriously erode the family structure in the working class
and threaten its usefulness as a system for organising, controlling, and
reproducing the workforce.
-
This was the trend that Marx and Engels drew attention to in 19th century
England. They predicted the rapid disappearance of the family in the working
class. They were correct in their basic insight and understanding of the
role of the family in capitalist society, but they misestimated the latent
capacity of capitalism to slow down the pace of development of its inherent
contradictions. They underestimated the ability of the ruling class to
step in to regulate the employment of women and children and shore up the
family in order to preserve the capitalist system itself.
-
Under strong pressure from the labor movement to ameliorate the brutal
exploitation of women and children, in the last quarter of the 19th century
the capitalist state intervened in the long-term interests of the ruling
class-even though this cut across the aim of individual capitalists to
squeeze every drop of blood out of each worker for 16 hours a day and let
them die at 30.
-
g. Capitalist politicians responsible for shaping policies to protect and
defend the interests of the ruling class are extremely conscious of the
indispensable economic, social, and political role of the family and the
need to maintain it as the basic social nucleus under capitalism. ``Defence
of the family'' is not only some particular demagogic shibboleth of the
ultraright. Maintenance of the family system is the basic political policy
of every capitalist state, dictated by the social and economic needs of
capitalism itself.
-
Under capitalism, the family system also provides the mechanism for the
superexploitation of women as wage workers:
-
a. It provides capitalism with an exceptionally flexible reservoir of labor
power that can be drawn into the labor force or sent back into the home
with fewer social consequences than any other component of the reserve
army of labor.
-
Because the entire ideological superstructure reinforces the fiction that
women's place is in the home, high unemployment rates for women cause relatively
less social protest. After all, it is said, women work only to supplement
an already existing source of income for the family. When they are unemployed,
they are occupied with their household chores, and are not so obviously
``out of work.'' The anger and resentment they feel is often dissipated
as a serious social threat by the general isolation and atomisation of
women in separate, individual households. Thus in any period of economic
crisis, the austerity measures of the ruling class always include attacks
on women's right to work, including increased pressure on women to accept
part-time employment, exclusion from unemployment benefits for ``house-
wives,'' and the reduction of social services such as childcare, health,
mental and physical retardation, aged facilities.
-
b. Widespread acceptance of the sexist idea that women's place is in the
home enables capitalists to justify the superexploitation of their labor
by:
-
The employment of women in low-paying, unskilled jobs.
-
Unequal pay rates and low pay.
-
The sex segregation of industry.
This fosters deep divisions within the working class itself, weakening
its ability to take united action in defence of its class interests.
-
c. Since all wage structures are built from the bottom up, this superexploitation
of women as a reserve workforce plays an irre- placeable role in holding
down men's wages as well. Women workers are not proportionally integrated
into the trade unions and other organisations of the working class so that
differential working conditions and benefits provide a further base for
capitalism to divide and rule.
-
d. The subjugation of women within the family provides the economic, social,
and ideological foundations that make their superexploitation possible.
Women workers are exploited not only as wage labor but also as a pariah
labor pool defined by sex.
The involvement of large numbers of women in industry generates a contradiction
between the increasing economic independence of women and their domestic
subjugation within the family unit, propelling women to fight against their
superexploitation and the sexist ideology that props it up. Since women's
oppression is fundamental to class society such struggles bring women to
the realisation that in order to achieve their liberation a thoroughgoing
restructuring of society will have to take place.
