http://workersolidarity.org/?p=283Not Free and Equal
Review of Women and Revolution, edited by Lydia Sargent, South End Press.Why is it that women have been discriminated against, not treated equally, oppressed? Is this due to the workings of the capitalist system? Is there, apart from the workings of the capitalist system, a separate system of male power, a “patriarchy”? And what is the role of patriarchy under capitalism?
Heidi Hartmann’s essay “
The Unhappy Marriage of Feminism and Marxism” provides a coherent, plausible answer to these questions as well as a clear overview of a number of alternative views. It was originally co-authored with Amy Bridges in the mid-’70s. It appears in
Women and Revolution in its most recent form, together with twelve replies by feminists from a variety of viewpoints.
The starting point of Hartmann’s essay is her dissatisfaction with Marxism. She doesn’t believe that Marxist theories can explain the subordinate, unequal position of women in modern capitalist society. On the other hand, Hartmann is not an opponent of socialism. She believes that socialist economic ideas, such as Marx’s analysis of capitalism in
Capital, can “provide essential insight” into the workings of capitalism and how society has been transformed. Her goal is libertarian: “a non-patriarchal, non-hierarchical socialist” society.
The problem is, she says, Marxist economic analysis is “sex blind.” It is a “theory of the development of certain ‘positions’,” such as wage-worker and capitalist. The categories that Marxism employs in analyzing capitalist society, such as wage-labor, capital, class, utility, exchange value and so on, have nothing to do with gender. As such, she believes that Marxism “gives us no clue as to why women are subordinate to men inside and outside the family.”
I think Hartmann’s objection applies not only to Marx’s views but to the traditional socialist movement in all its forms, anarchism included. In her reply to Hartmann in
Women and Revolution, Carol Ehrlich suggests that anarchism has a more deep-rooted analysis than Marxism since it sees class oppression (subordination of workers to the dominant economic class) as but one form that hierarchy (subordination of some people to others) takes, and thus allows that there are forms of oppression other than class oppression, such as patriarchy. Though I agree that anarchism has this advantage, it still doesn’t answer Hartmann’s criticism since the category of “hierarchy” or “seeking power over others” is also sex-blind.
Engels: The Withering Away of SexismTo show the inadequacies of Marxist views of sexism, Hartmann discusses three Marxist views that she considers to be representative. What they have in common is that they “see the cause of women’s oppression in their relation — or lack of relation — to [capitalist] production” instead of explaining sexism in terms of the direct relations between men and women.
Frederick Engels — and other 19th century socialists — attributed the inferior status of women to the institution of private property.(1) In Europe in the middle ages, before the advent of capitalism, the labor of most people of the populace was still required for agricultural production. Control over the land was what gave power in society. Since male peasants and landlords had control over the use of the land, daughters of peasants had little chance of surviving unless attached to a male peasant (husband or father). This was the real basis of the oppression of women under pre-capitalist society.
In its early development, capitalism was built up as the mass of small-holding peasants were forced off the land. Without land to provide for their needs, these ex-peasants had little choice but to work for the rising class of businessmen. This was a brutal process but it did have the effect of equalizing somewhat the relations between men and women. It was during this breakup of the pre-capitalist agrarian order that Western women achieved the right to marry whomever they wanted to instead of the man their fathers told them to marry.
Although Engels believed that women were still oppressed in the 19th century working class family, he believed that the process of converting peasants and self-employed artisans into property less wage-earners meant that there was no longer any “material base” for working class sexism. That was because, Engels thought, wage-earners did not own or control society’s productive land and equipment. Most males were thus deprived of any material means of control over women.
As women were drawn into wage work along with men, Engels believed, the relations between the sexes would eventually be equalized. Capitalism would provide the conditions for the withering away of sexism. The only remaining struggle would be the liberation of working class women (and men) from class oppression.
The political implications of this Marxist view are clear enough:
Women’s liberation requires, first, that women become wage workers like men, and second, that they join with men in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. Capital and private property…are the cause of women’s…oppression just as capital is the cause of the exploitation of workers in general.Engels — and traditional socialism generally — did not believe that male proletarians had any material stake in the continued subordination of women. Since sexual inequality wasn’t required by male workers’ own material interests, a male worker’s sexist attitudes were merely “false consciousness” — that is, mistaken ideas propagated by, and picked up from, the dominant society but contrary to the worker’s own interests.
If, however, male workers have no material stake in maintaining the existing oppression of women, why would there be any need to organize a struggle for the specific interests of women? Why would there be a need for a women’s movement distinct from the general movement of the working class?
Thus the traditional socialist view has at times led Marxists (and some anarchists) to oppose organizing of an independent women’s movement on the grounds that it would “divide the working class.” Since class is “the framework within which to understand women’s position, women should be understood as [simply] part of the working class. The working class’ struggle against capitalism should take precedence over any conflict between men and women. Sex conflict must not be allowed to interfere with class solidarity.” In the case of “Marxist-Leninist” groups, like the Revolutionary Communist Party, this analysis has its most conservative interpretation, and such groups have been, as Hartmann points out, “committed anti-feminists in both doctrine and practice.”
Contrary to the traditional socialist analysis, Hartmann argues that male workers do gain certain material advantages in the existing situation from the subordination of women: “Men benefited from not having to do housework, from having wives and daughters to serve them, and from having better places in the labor market.”
This provided men with a higher standard of living. And instead of the withering away of sexual inequality within the working class, as Engels predicted, “patriarchal relations…have survived and thrived alongside” capitalist social relations.
Public vs PrivateThe second Marxist view that Hartmann examines is the “capitalism and everyday life” analysis of Eli Zaretsky.(2) Unlike Engels, who argues that capitalism tends to make the situation of men and women in the working class more equal, Zaretsky focuses on how the lives of men and women are rendered decidedly different by capitalism.
Marx and Engels were overly optimistic, Zaretsky argued, in that capital had failed to incorporate men and women into the labor force on equal terms. Zaretsky maintains that, while men are oppressed by having to do wage-labor, women have been oppressed by exclusion from wage-work. In the agricultural communities that existed before capitalism, there was a “sexual division of labor” in that women and men did different types of work, yet the “workplace” was the same location for both sexes: the peasant’s farm, or the artisan’s house/shop.
Capitalism, on the other hand, creates a division between the “public” sphere of capitalist production — a tough world of business competition and class conflict — and the “private”, nurturant sphere of home life. Capital creates this division not only to ensure a future generation of wage-workers but also to take care of the adult, male workforce. Cooking, sewing, taking care of children, providing an island of intimacy in an ocean of alienating, money-based relations — all of this helps to ensure a functional and plentiful workforce for the system.
Since the work that women do in the home keeps the system going, women are really working for capital, Zaretsky argues. Work in the home only appears to be done for men. The implication is that women should put their energies into struggles against capitalism.
Hartmann points out that, like traditional Marxism, Zaretsky’s view fails to acknowledge that men, and not just capital, get a material benefit from the subordination of women:
Even if capitalism created the private sphere, as Zaretsky argues, why did it happen that women work there, and men in the labor force? Surely this cannot be explained without reference to patriarchy, the systemic dominance of men over women.Though women’s work in the home does help to sustain capital, Hartmann insists that it is work done for who it appears to be for, viz. men.
Wages for HouseworkThe third Marxist view that Hartmann considers is the “wages for housework” view of Mariarosa Dalla Costa.(3) Dalla Costa argued that the housework that women do in reality helps the system to amass more profit: Since women perform this work for the system’s workforce for free, capital doesn’t have to pay for it.
Though Dalla Costa’s essay made an important contribution to feminism in that it focused for the first time on the value of housework, Dalla Costa’s analysis is not about the relations of women and men as illustrated in housework, but about the relations of women to capital and the role of housework in capitalist society. Like Zaretsky, Dalla Costa is saying that work that appears to be done for men is really done to benefit capital. And Hartmann’s objection is the same: housework many benefit capital but, nonetheless, it is work that is done for who it appears to be for, i.e. men.
Dalla Costa concludes that women should demand to be paid for their housework rather than be forced into wage labor, which would impose the burden of having “two jobs.” The demand for “wages for housework” is part of the “revolt against work” outlook. In some versions, the “revolt against work” ideology holds that the system is subverted, not by wage-earners on-the-job organizing and struggle to take over the existing production system, but by people withdrawing from wage-work as much as possible, until the system collapses.
The problem is, wage-work is not like some sort of addiction that workers can break free of. If you want food, a place to live, a night at the movies, and so on, you’ll need money. Unless you own a business or have property income, you’ll have to market your job skills to an employer. Women who enter the workforce do so out of necessity.
Also, Dalla Costa’s view doesn’t challenge the traditional sexual division of labor, with women as housewives and childrearers. As such, it leaves intact the basis of male supremacy.
Finally, the picture that we get from Zaretsky and Dalla Costa of sexual roles in society is based on the traditional family, with a male breadwinner and non-working housewife. Yet this type of household has rapidly diminished as a proportion of all households. Neither Dalla Costa nor Zaretsky have much to say about the activity of women as wage-earners, yet today women make up half the workforce.
Radical FeminismThe weakness of traditional socialist views about women was that they failed to recognize how men have certain material advantages from sexism under the present system. Thus traditional socialist politics had a hard time recognizing the need for independent organizing by women and struggles around the specific concerns of women. As a result, a purely feminist politics — that is, independent of traditional Marxist or anarchist concerns about working-class politics — can seem to provide a better answer. That’s because it recognizes that men receive a material benefit from sexual inequality and that this generates conflict and male resistance to change — and, hence, the need for women to have their own movement.
Starting from a purely feminist standpoint, an alternative explanation for sexism is provided by “Radical Feminist” theory. (”Radical feminism” is not necessarily radical in the sense of being anti-capitalist or socialist, but in comparison to more mainstream forms of feminist politics.) Radical Feminism holds that “the original and basic class division is between the sexes, and that the motive force of history is the striving of men for power and domination over women, the dialectic of sex.”
Radical Feminism has tended to focus mainly on the psychological, and thus, has a tendency to ascribe certain traits as inherently male or female. Shulamith Firestone, in The Dialectic of Sex, for example, lists egocentrism, individualism, competitiveness, pragmatism, and seeking power over others as male traits. The female, on the other hand is nurturant, artistic, and philosophical. Technology is male whereas the “aesthetic mode” is female. It’s worth noting that Firestone’s description of “male” traits fits characteristically capitalist behavior. Isn’t it likely that the existence of these traits is related to the economic system which encourages them? Says Hartmann:
No doubt the idea that the aesthetic mode is female would have come as quite a shock to the ancient Greeks. Here lies the error of radical feminist analysis: the dialectic of sex as radical feminists present it projects male and female characteristics as they appear in the present back into all history.A weakness of radical feminism’s concept of “the Patriarchy” (male power structure), as Hartmann points out, is that it “applies to most societies we know of and cannot distinguish between them. The use of history by radical feminists is typically limited to providing examples of the existence of patriarchy in all times and places.” This means their theory can’t account for the differences in character or degree of sexual inequality, or the different forms that sexism has taken, in different epochs and regions. If the oppression of women is based on inherent male and female traits, and is the same system in all times and places, then it would seem that the subjugation of women could only be explained as the product of the biologically determined “natures” of the two sexes. Radical feminism is thus an “essentialist” theory in that sense.
The concept of workers solidarity in the struggle against capital — central to Marxist or anarcho-syndicalist politics — is hard to square with this theory since it’s hard to see any basis for solidarity between men and women. The only motive for male support for women’s liberation would seem to be self-sacrificing idealism — rather like a capitalist supporting workers’ revolution.
If the cause of sexism is inherent in men, how could sexism be eliminated? Presumably the “male power” could only be overthrown by women organizing themselves as women — as a “class”. Yet what is the scenario for this? Even if equality between the sexes could somehow be achieved within the present framework, most women would still be oppressed since the oppression of the working class would remain.
Hartmann’s Dual Systems TheoryThe crucial weakness in Radical Feminism, Hartmann suggests, is its preoccupation with the psychological and, thus, its failure to tell us what the “material base” of sexism is. The “material base” of society is the way it has organized to provide for people’s needs from the raw physical environment. If sexism is rooted in how society is organized to satisfy needs, then it is possible to explain the historical changes in sexism that have taken place since the way in which production is organized has changed very greatly over the centuries.
Despite her criticisms of the Radical Feminist outlook, Hartmann’s analysis of sexism accepts the feminist concept of “patriarchal system,” independent of workings of capitalism, but instead of grounding it in psychological traits, as Radical Feminism does, she tries to show how it has a “material base”:
The material base upon which patriarchy rests lies most fundamentally in men’s control over women’s labor power. Men maintain this control by excluding women from access to some essential productive resources (in capitalist societies) and by restricting women’s sexuality.Women have been excluded from wage-labor, especially from higher-paying jobs, and this, along with childbearing, has resulted in their dependence upon men. Thus women have been forced to serve men — doing housework, satisfying men sexually, and bearing children.
Whenever it talked about “production,” traditional Marxism assumed that “production” was always the production of commodities — goods and services produced for sale. Yet there has been another crucial “sphere of production”: the production of people in the family.
The way in which the rearing of children is organized in society is important in shaping expectations about what men and women do. A person’s “gender identity” — their sense of what it means to be male or female — isn’t just a product of biology. Observes Hartmann:
Rearing children is…a crucial task in perpetuating patriarchy. In our society children are generally reared by women at home, women socially defined as inferior to men, while men appear in the domestic picture only rarely. Children raised in this way generally learn their place in the gender hierarchy….The strict division of labor by sex,…common to all known societies, creates two very separate genders and a need for women and men to get together for economic reasons.In order to explain the workings of patriarchy, as a system independent of capital, Hartmann employs Gayle Ruben’s concept of a “sex/gender system.” As Rubin explains in “
The Traffic in Women”:
A sex/gender system is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.Taken together, the system of capitalist production of commodities and the production of people in the “sex/gender system” determine the way the whole society is. Iris Young, in her contribution to
Women and Revolution, calls Hartmann’s viewpoint a “Dual Systems Theory” because Hartmann believes that capital and patriarchy each have their own “laws of motion,” which renders each system somewhat autonomous of the other. Sexism is thus not explainable by the workings of capitalism by itself.
The sexism of male workers is not entirely “false consciousness” since sexual inequality does give males certain immediate advantages under the existing system.
On the other hand, all workers are exploited by the system. “Men and women share a need to overthrow capitalism,” says Hartmann. Thus sexism is in conflict with the interests of male workers, Hartmann suggests, since it divides the working class. The advantages to male workers from the creation of an egalitarian, non-patriarchal socialist society, in which workers collectively control society’s production, would outweigh the advantages that can be attained by accommodation to the status quo.
The benefits that men receive from the present society’s subordination of women are real enough — not having to do housework, avoiding most responsibilities of childcare, having better job opportunities than women, etc. These advantages may be small in comparison to the advantages that men would gain from the creation of an egalitarian, libertarian socialism. Nonetheless, they are tangible to many men right now whereas libertarian socialism, if it is even considered at all, will seem “impractical” in the absence of a mass, self-managed workers movement that would give workers a sense of their power to create a more egalitarian, non-hierarchical society.
Hartmann deduces the following “strategic consideration” from her “dual systems theory”:
A struggle to establish socialism must be a struggle in which groups with different interests form an alliance. Women should not trust men to liberate them after the revolution, in part, because there is no necessity for them to do so. In fact their immediate self-interest lies in our continued oppression. Instead, we must have our own organizations and our own power base.Origin of the “Family Wage”If Hartmann could not show how the workings of patriarchy are distinct from capitalism, then it might be argued that sexism is simply a product of capitalism, and not an autonomous system of patriarchal oppression. To back up her contention that patriarchy is a system with its own laws of motion, Hartmann tries to show how the creation of the “family wage” system in the 19th century exhibits the conflict between the two systems, patriarchy and capitalism.
Hartmann believes that the rise of the factory system in the early 19th century created a direct conflict between patriarchal interests and capitalist interests: The majority of men wanted to keep their wives at home to serve them. But the business class wanted to hire women to work in their factories.
At first the industrialists were successful. Wages were extremely low and 14-hour days were not uncommon. Factory production was driving artisans out of work, and, at the same time, many rural people were being driven off the land. Though conditions were harsh, factory work provided the only alternative for many. Children, women and men all had to work in the factories to survive.
Male workers fought back by demanding the “family wage” — a wage for males that would be sufficient to support a non-working wife and children. Instead of fighting for equal wages for women, men tried to exclude women from working in their trades. The intention was not just to ward off competition from “cheap labor, Hartmann contends, but to keep “their” women in the home. So-called “protective” laws were advanced by men not only to meliorate brutal conditions but to ensure a male monopoly over certain trades.
Male workers were eventually able to impose the family wage on capital. The rapid industrialization of the late 19th century enabled capital to pay the higher male wage.
The family wage system “secured the material base for male domination in two ways”:
Men have better jobs and earn higher pay than women. The lower pay that women receive in turn “encourages women to choose wifery as a career.”
Women do the housework, childcare, and perform other services at home which benefit men directly and also “reinforce…the inferior labor market position” of women.Hartmann concludes:
In the absence of patriarchy a unified working class might have confronted capitalism, but patriarchal social relations divided the working class, allowing one part (men) to be bought off at the expense of the other (women).Is Hartmann right?There is no doubt that the family wage set-up imposed bleak conditions on women: the enforced role of woman as domestic servant and childrearer. Yet even though it is all too true that males wanted this arrangement, and benefited from it, was it “the male part of the working class” who imposed this situation, as Hartmann contends? If the family wage happened because male workers had the power to impose this patriarchal compromise, what was the basis of their power?
Hartmann argues that it was the superior access of men to organization (especially the unions) and political skills that allowed them to project working class demands that were in the interest of their gender. Men sought to exclude women from union membership and to prevent their employment. Hartmann refers to the policy of the National Typographical Union to not “encourage the employment of female compositors.” She quotes the head of the Cigarmakers Union who proposed (in 1879) to “restrict the…quota [of female workers] through factory laws.”
However it’s not clear that 19th century unions had the sort of power that Hartmann’s theory requires. In the 19th century unions were only in their infancy and faced the intransigent hostility of employers and governments. By the turn of the century only about 5% of the workforce in the U.S. belonged to unions. Unions were mainly limited to skilled trades and certain “strategic sectors” such as the railroads. And in fact the union efforts at female exclusion were not always very effective. Despite the opposition of the Cigarmaker’s Union to female employment in their trade, the percentage of women working in their industry rose from 17% in 1879 to 37% in 1900. Although the Moulders Union (a craft union of foundry workers) barred women from union membership, 25% of the coremakers in Pittsburgh area foundries were women in 1900.
Also the 19th century unions were not universally hostile to women wage-workers. For example, then the woman-dominated Collar Laundry Union of Troy, New York went on strike in 1869, the Molders Union voted $500 strike support and pledged “to continue the same for weeks to come rather than see such a brave set of wenches crushed under the iron heel of the laundry nabobs.”(4) The famous shirtwaist workers general strike in New York City in 1909, which built the Ladies Garment Workers Union, was organized by women rank and filers, but received support from labor organizations throughout the U.S.
The seeming contradiction is resolved when we remember that American craft unionism was based on the “job trust” mentality, that is, a policy of limiting competition for your job by limiting access to your trade. The craft unions of the American Federation of Labor didn’t just exclude women but immigrants, blacks, the mass of unskilled. In the absence of a larger mass movement against the system, skilled workers have tended to adopt a narrow strategy of simply protecting their own jobs.
Thus, the male-dominated unions did not usually oppose female employment in trades that were already recognized as “women’s work.” Though the AFL’s narrow, exclusionary policy was (at best) not very helpful to the interests of women, it’s also true that the AFL’s policy disregarded the interests of most male workers as well, since most were unskilled.
Hartmann’s explanation of the family wage also assumes that a more egalitarian solution to family survival was within the power of a “united working class” in the 19th century. How realistic is this assumption?
Nowadays we take for granted the existence of various forms of household technology that didn’t exist in the 19th century — washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, disposable diapers, and so on. And today many of the tasks that were formerly done in the home have been replaced by businesses: laundries, dry cleaners, fast food joints, etc. All of this has facilitated the increased labor force participation of women.
But in the 19th century this was all very much in the future. The low level of household technology made the work of maintaining a household a more time-consuming task. Also women still had other ways to get money income without working outside the home — taking in boarders, doing other people’s laundry, canning, etc. Of course this does not explain why it was women who stayed home rather than men.
Certainly society was imbued with patriarchal attitudes that had been inherited from the pre-capitalist agrarian past. But the main factor that pushed women rather than men into performing the domestic role was childbearing. The lack of effective birth control meant that women had little control over when or how often they would get pregnant, or whether they would have children at all. The fact that women would be pregnant and nursing a lot of the time made wage-labor, especially in the harsh conditions of the 19th century workshop, much more difficult for women than men.
To equalize childrearing and family burdens, a very extensive system of social support for child-rearing would have been necessary: paid maternity and paternity leaves, flexible work scheduling to allow for parental responsibilities, job-site nursing and childcare, full-day childcare that workers could afford, and so on. But how possible was it for wage-earners to gain such concessions from the employing class in an era of dawn-to-dusk work days, terrible working conditions and scant medical care, universal employer hostility to unions, no health insurance, no unemployment compensation, and no “workmen’s compensation”? It seems that the sexual division of labor was difficult to avoid under the conditions of 19th century capitalism.
The reproduction of the workforce is obviously required by capitalism. If creating a new generation of workers were somehow hindered, employers’ competition for workers would drive up wage rates and perhaps threaten the profitability of the system. Yet the employing class have no way to ensure the reproduction of the workforce by their own actions.
The system is thus dependent on the childrearing activities of the working class yet does nothing directly to support or pay for the costs of childrearing. This follows from the logic of the system: Because each enterprise is concerned with its own profits, it will attempt to avoid responsibility, as much as possible, for social costs associated with doing business, whether this is pollution of the air, wear and tear on the health of workers, or the costs of rearing a new generation of workers.
As a result, the costs and responsibilities for children fall on the shoulders of the individual families. In the specific conditions of the 19th century, this had the effect of imposing a domestic role on women.
The tendency of individual employers to ruthlessly exploit women and children in the early factory system had the effect of hindering the raising of a new generation of workers in the numbers, and with the level of education, required by capital. This is another of those cases where the uncoordinated action of individual enterprises pursuing their private interests has a combined effect that is not healthy for the system as a whole. This is precisely why capitalism requires government regulation.
In the early 19th century the individual entrepreneur may have resented “protective” laws as an unwelcome restraint on his God-given right to exploit women and children. But these laws were helpful to the system as a whole. They facilitated a more stable home life in which a plentiful supply of young workers could be reared. Thus, it’s not so clear that “protective” laws were simply a case of patriarchy imposing its will on capital.
It seems that we can explain the origins of the “family wage” in the 19th century, and the division between male breadwinner and female homemaker, without assuming the existence of a separate system of patriarchy. Capitalism, in the specific conditions of the 19th century, generated the family wage system.
The Situation TodayHowever, the traditional basis of the sexual division of labor has been eroding during the last several decades. The rapid expansion of the economy in the 1950s and ’60s opened up new opportunities for wage-labor for women. In part this happened because the sectors that expanded employment most rapidly in the postwar period — clerical and service work — were areas where women had already gained a foothold.
The development and wide distribution of new birth control technologies and legalization of abortion have enabled women to gain control over their childbearing ability. And, finally, the development of business enterprises that make money by doing tasks formerly done in the home, and the development of household technology have facilitated greater participation of women in wage-labor.
Since women still do most housework, wage-work has meant that most married women have the burden of “two jobs.” Despite this, the incorporation of women into wage-work in increasing numbers has given women some increased independence in relation to men.
This relative increase in women’s access to an independent life has formed the basis for the increasing divorce rate, and the growing proportion of families headed by women. It also formed the ground for the rise of the feminist movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. Women can dare to take men on, to demand changes from men, because they have a basis in practice for a life independent of men.(5)
Nonetheless, sexual inequality and sexism persist. How does Hartmann’s “dual systems theory” account for this persistence? Says Hartmann:
Though women’s increased wage-work may cause stress for the family…, it would be wrong to think…the concepts and realities of the family and and the sexual division of labor will soon disappear. The sexual division of labor reappears in the labor market, where women work at women’s jobs, often the very jobs they used to do only at home — food preparation and service, cleaning of all kinds, caring for people, and so on. As these jobs are low-status and low-paying, patriarchal relations remain intact, though their material base shifts somewhat from the family to the wage differential, from family-based to industrially-based patriarchy.This “industrially based patriarchy” shows up in the fact that women are paid less simply because female-dominated occupations are paid less than male-dominated occupations, irrespective of skill or training. And this sexual division of labor within the job market keeps women financially dependent on men.
In order for Hartmann’s “dual systems” approach to work out, we must be able to distinguish the workings of two separate systems, capitalism and patriarchy, each with its own mechanisms. However, the “industrially based patriarchy” that imposes lower pay on women is hard to separate out from the capitalist power structure: The people who make the decisions about pay and conditions for women are the capitalist bosses.
“Patriarchal Capitalism”: A Single System?Iris Young, in her contribution to
Women and Revolution(6), says that capitalism and patriarchy can’t be isolated:
“If patriarchy and capitalism are manifest in identical social and economic structures, they belong to one system, not two.”Young believes that it is possible to explain the real social basis of sexism without asserting the existence of a system of patriarchy apart from capitalism. She argues sexism is inherent to capitalism: “Capitalism does not merely use or adapt to gender hierarchy….From the beginning it was founded on gender hierarchy which defined men as primary and women as secondary.” Young argues that the marginalization of women’s labor, including both lower wages in female-dominated occupations and the imposition of a domestic role on women, have been essential to capitalism as it has developed historically.
Capitalism incorporated the sexual division of labor in part because of its need for a “reserve army of labor” — a “pool of workers who can be drawn into areas of production without dislodging those already employed, and. . . used to keep both the wages and militancy of all workers low.” Women have been the ideal reserve army of labor since they could be brought into wage-labor during a boom period and then sent back to the family when no longer needed. Since women’s wage-work has been defined as secondary and their domestic role as primary, it was easier for women than men to be dismissed by employers.
For example, in the l940s women were incorporated into industry in vast numbers, and were welcomed with open arms, as male workers were mobilized to kill proletarians of other nationalities in the inter-imperialist conflict of 1939-45. But when the war was over, women were bombarded with a propaganda campaign that encouraged them to seek fulfillment in home life, and their employment was no longer welcome in many industries.
Thus, Young suggests that the social relations that are the basis of capitalism are not in reality as “sex-blind” as traditional Marxist analysis would lead one to believe.
Sexual HarassmentYoung suggests that the struggle for reproductive rights is an area where it is possible to see that women’s fight is against a single system: “In light of the. . . supreme court ruling on the Hyde Amendment [banning federal payments for abortion] we know more than ever that the reproductive rights of poor and Third World women are more seriously threatened….In raising the issues of women’s reproductive freedom, women confront the reality of the capitalist patriarchal medical system.”
Also, “sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace,” says Young, “cannot be separated from the total system of hierarchy and subordination essential to contemporary capitalist production relations.”
When workers seek jobs, what we’re supposed to be doing is simply “renting” the employer our ability to do work. But a woman’s economic value in the job market is also partly a question of selling her sexuality. Many employers have a conscious practice of hiring women on the basis of how young and “sexy” they look. According to an Office Management Study,(7) 30 % of 2,000 major firms gave serious consideration to sexual appeal in the hiring of secretaries and other visible personnel. Since women are hired partly on the basis of their sexual attractiveness, as determined by (white male) employers, this means that equally qualified but non-white, older or less attractive women are discriminated against. Once sexuality enters into the hiring equation, it doesn’t stop there. Promotions, pay raises, etc. can be conditioned on submitting to unwanted sexual advances. As in rape, speaking out against harassment can lead to further victimization, such as dismissal. Thus, sexual harassment functions to keep workers intimidated.
Sexual harassment is a factor in lower job satisfaction, lower productivity, absenteeism, and high turnover among female workers. As such, it reinforces the inferior labor market position of women. The employing class will refer to the higher turnover and less experience of women workers as a justification for lower wages.
The power that male managers have to sexually harass can’t be separated from the power they have as bosses.(8) It is the coercive nature of employment that makes sexual harassment possible.
But sexual harassment is not limited to executives; male workers participate as well. Subordinated and exploited by the bosses, the male worker has the system’s permission to abuse his wife at home and sexually hassle female co-workers. The belief that this is a “man’s world,” and that men should dominate women, promotes in male workers a false sense of power and a false sense of identity with the (male) bosses.
However, it is ultimately the employing class who are responsible for the existence of sexual harassment in the workplace. They have the power to hire and fire and make the rules. Male co-workers have no such power and can participate in others’ sexual harassment only because it is condoned by the system. Any privilege that a male worker may get from this is paltry compared to the benefit that accrues to the bosses from their power over women,which makes sexual harassment possible.
Feminists who also want to strengthen the position of workers against bosses, have at times argued that women can and should appeal to co-workers, both male and female, to fight harassment on the job.Where unions exist, the issue can be raised there. Workers can get together to demand a boss’s dismissal for sexual harassment. This way of dealing with harassment enables workers to express their solidarity and challenge management prerogative.
“Comparable Worth”The struggle for equal pay for jobs of comparable worth is another area of feminist concern where it makes sense to see the struggle as a fight against a single system.
The sexual division of labor in wage-work, which defines certain occupations as “men’s work” and others as ‘”women s work” provides, as Hartmann says, an “industrial basis” for sexism today. It also explams the ineffectiveness of the demand, for “equal pay for equal work.” Despite the passage of the federal Equal Pay Act in 1963 and employer “affirmative action” plans, the income of women wage-earners has been stuck at roughly 60% of male pay for years.
Though the principle of “equal pay for equal work”could eliminate discrimination within the same job category (if carried out consistently), it still doesn’t address the situation of the majority of women workers who work in female-dominated occupations. In the 1970s over 40% of all women wage-earners were concentrated in only ten occupations, in the fields of nursing, clerical and secretarial work, teaching and food service.
Hence, the more recent feminist demand for “equal pay for jobs of comparable worth.” This has at times been fought for through so-called “objective job evaluations” or lawsuits, which have definite drawbacks. Both methods rely on experts and do little to involve the rank and file. In some cases professional management consultants have been brought in to do evaluations of jobs to determine the alleged “objective worth” to the employer of the various categories of jobs.
The idea here is that different occupations can be evaluated and compared on the basis of the skill, training, and responsibility that the job requires. On this basis, jobs such as secretary, bank teller or librarian-typically held by women — might be judged to be of comparable worth to an employer as such (higher-paying) jobs as truck driver, stock clerk, or gardener — jobs traditionally held by men.
However, conventional job evaluations have built-in biases. For not example, “responsibility for others” is usually over-rated (precisely to justify the high salaries of managers) while downplaying the “responsibility for others” involved in a childcare worker’s job.
In categorizing some jobs as “more worthy” than others, these evaluations can legitimize the existence of pay hierarchies, in which some workers are paid more than others. Though it may be just as tedious and difficult for a typist to show up for work in the morning and follow orders all day, “objective job evaluations” may say it is legitimate to pay her less than a librarian or recreation specialist. These pay hierarchies can in turn generate jealousies and divisions within the workforce.
Despite their weaknesses, job evaluation studies have often recommended significant pay raises for women workers. Though “comparable worth” efforts have often relied on lawyers and job evaluation experts, it has at other times inspired a more grassroots effort. A recent, successful struggle of this sort was the 10-week strike last fall at Yale University, which resulted only in an average pay increase of 35% system for the university’s clerical and technical employees (82% women). The strikers also won a “seniority bridge,” that is, a policy of not penalizing workers who take leaves of absence (such as a maternity leave). In their efforts to build a workers organization and sustain a strike the Yale union’s strategy, says one of the participants, “has not been to say, ‘I’m a secretary and I should make as much as a truck driver,’ but rather, ‘I do important work and it is not valued’.”
“Comparable worth,’ makes a head-on challenge against the patriarchal assumption that women do not need to be paid as much as men. It not only asserts the right of women to financial autonomy but also undermines the basis of male supremacy outside the workplace since the equalization of male and female wage levels would reduce the economic pressure on women to find husbands. The large numbers of women in poverty bears testimony to the pressures that keep women dependent on men, and which provide an economic basis for sexual inequality in the home.
Childcare: A Collective ResponsibilityAn underlying reason for the persistence of sexism in society is the fact that women are still tied to childrearing. This has been a main factor preventing women from being equal to men in the labor market. Since many women must care for children, they will often seek part-time work since this can be more easily combined with domestic responsibilities. The time off that women usually take when they have children, and the periods of part-time work, make it harder for women to gain the experience, training and job skills that would enable them to compete equally with men.
Also, the fact that most married women have a “second job,” doing unpaid labor in the home, makes it more difficult for women to organize on the job. Thus unions are less likely to exist in female-dominated occupations. (Women workers currently constitute 27% of union membership, up from 21% in the ’70s.)
In short, women’s role in the family has determined their relative lack of success in the labor market. And in turn, their lower pay and lesser prospects in the job market reinforces the position of women’s labor as “secondary” to that of men. Since a woman contributes less to a family’s income, her job is more likely to be sacrificed first. For example, she is more likely to take time off if a child is sick, or to quit if her husband gets a job offer that requires moving to another town.
The fact that women have the main responsibility for children is thus a major reason for the economic inequality between the sexes, and for the financial dependence of women upon men that results from this economic inequality.
But why are women still tied to childcare responsibilities? For one thing, it is certainly true that men resist sharing childcare responsibilities. But as long as couples are left to fend for themselves in rearing children, it is likely that the problem will remain. And why should couples have sole responsibility for rearing children? Children are not their parents’ personal property but the society’s future generation.
Yet, the present social system does not assume collective responsibility for the raising of children but “privatizes” what is in fact a social function. Childcare that is of reliable quality is not readily available at a price that most people can afford. Employers are not often very flexible in allowing for the parenting responsibilities of workers. As long as society does not take a more collective responsibility for childrearing, there is going to be pressure on women to continue to be the primary childrearers, and this will continue to reinforce sexual inequality in society.
Thls is why women’s liberation hinges upon socialization of childcare. This means that the community must provide free childcare that is as good as that provided by the parents themselves. It also would mean complete flexibility of workplaces in allowing for both men and women to deal with parental responsibilities; paternity and maternity leaves, job-site childcare and so on.
The traditional family was based on the idea that the role of women was to cook the meals, take care of the children, do the laundry, and so on. Sexual equality implies the abolition of this “domestic role.” But this can only happen if these various services are provided socially instead of being provided privately by someone working in the home. But for capitalism, the system of family production” has been beneficial since it means that capital does not have to pay the full cost of providing these services because they are provided through the unpaid labor of women.
Since capitalism imposes the costs and responsibilities of childrearing on private individuals, it creates a major barrier to women’s liberation The socialization of childcare not only runs against the individualistic logic of the system it is hard to see how the major changes and transfer of resources that this would entail could be wrung from the economy except through a period of widespread struggle and upheaval.
In fact, it is likely likely that the socialization of childcare could only be achieved as part of a social transformation in which working people are able to completely reorganize the economy to meet their own needs, and move in the direction of workers’ power over the organization of production and the use of society’s resources.
ConclusionsFor the reasons set forth above, I’m sympathetic to Iris Young’s view that the oppression of women is due to the workings of a single system, “patriarchal capitalism,” rather than a system of patriarchy apart from capitalism.
Though I’ve argued that capitalism has a built-in logic that favors sexual inequality, it might be replied that capitalism is a system that is constantly changing, constantly adapting and coming up with surprises. If capital is constantly making changes in production, and in how people live, isn’t it possible that it might adapt to socialization of childcare and complete equalization of the status of men and women?
This is hard for me to imagine, but even if it were true, it would [not?] invalidate Young’s point about presently existing capitalism: Capitalism was historically founded upon sexism. From its origins down to the present time, capital has incorporated a patriarchal division of labor. Moreover, equalizing the relations between the sexes within capitalism would not complete the liberation of women. Most women are workers, and the class oppression of workers would continue.
As Young points out, the “dual systems theory arose as a response to a left that “was male dominated, blatantly sexist and [which] dismissed feminist concerns as merely bourgeois.” Thus “angry and frustrated socialist women began forming all-women’s groups and arguing for the need for an autonomous women’s movement to correct the problems of the left and to develop the practice and theory of feminism ” The dual systems theory thus arose as part of the justification for an autonomous women’s movement.
Yet, it is possible to maintain that sexism ls generated by capitalism and still understand the basis for an independent women’s movement. The problem with the traditional left was its failure to recognize material advantages that males have within the system. Men benefited from having wives to serve them and from being able to avoid most childcare responsibilities. Men also benefited from having a better position in the labor market.
These immediate advantages have been the basis of male sexism and resistance to change. It is because men are a barrier to the liberation of women that it has been necessary for women to organize their own movement. But because it failed to recognize the material basis of sexism within the present system, traditional socialism couldn’t see any point to an independent women’s movement.
The struggle for a libertarian society requires struggle for women’s liberation as well as workers power. I’ve argued that the struggle for socialism is necessary for women’s liberation, but the history of socialism demonstrates that it is not sufficient.
No matter which theory of the basis of sexism is best, it’s reality is clear enough. It is this reality that legitimates feminism, not a particular theory.
–
Tom Wetzel
Notes1. See Engels,
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.
2. Zaretsky’s view was expounded in “
Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life,” published as a series in the magazine Socialist Revolution, now called Socialist Review, in 1973-74.
3. “
Women and the Subversion of the Community,” 1973.
4. Johanna Brenner, “
Women’s Self-Organization,” Against the Current,No. 1, p. 29. Brenner’s article is, in part, a reply to Hartmann’s essay.
5. Brenner, “Women’s Self-Organization,” p. 30.
6. Iris Young, “
Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of the Dual Systems Theory,” Women and Revolution, p. 43.
7. Cited in Enid Eckstein, “
The Politics of Sexual Harassment,” Changes, Jan. 1980.
8. There have been cases of sexual harassment of male workers by female bosses. But these have been few since (1) there are relatively few women in management and (2) there is not a wider social practice and history of female domination that it would fit into. However, it does demonstrate the problem of how the power that bosses wield over people is not just expressed in a narrowly economic way.
