Women are oppressed, not because it’s “natural”, but because the system requires it. In most previous societies, except the earliest forms of hunter-gatherer communities, a woman’s role was determined by the family to which she belonged and the man who “headed” it. The family played an important role in maintaining class divisions, making sure that the rich passed on their wealth and the poor, their humility.
Capitalism wasn’t going to junk a good thing. Early capitalists were keen to make quick profits by employing women and children in their factories on low wages. But this meant high child mortality and less time and energy for women to do all the unpaid labour associated with raising the next generation of wage slaves. The capitalists soon learned that keeping women at home to preserve the family was more profitable.
A 1990 survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that women’s unpaid work in the home — cooking, cleaning, washing and caring for children — is equivalent to 83% of the gross domestic product. The family reproduces the work force that capitalism needs at the cheapest price. Imagine how much profit the capitalists would lose if their factories and workplaces had to provide child care and meals.
Just as importantly, the family perpetuates the social norms that fit with the system. It moulds children to obey authority, respect their “superiors”, be competitive, look after “number one” and “get ahead”. It does this a lot more effectively than the education system because the widespread superstition that the family is “holy”, “natural” and “private” mean that most think the family, unlike education institutions, is “off limits” to pressure from progressive social movements.
The family also enforces society’s moral code. It represses and distorts sexuality, keeping sexual expression within the boundaries of “raising a family”. Gay and lesbian sexuality may be tolerated (in places), but is not considered “natural”. The system needs most to be “straight”, so sexual expression is repressed and distorted from infancy. Sexually active young people have “dirty minds”. As a consequence, sexuality for young people involves many fears, tensions and prejudices.
The family unit also holds capitalism’s reserve pool of labour. Women can be drawn into the work force, as in wartime, and then sent back home “where they belong” when they are not needed. The widespread acceptance of sexist ideas also allows capitalists to give women the least creative jobs with the lowest pay.
Capitalism makes the most of sexism by selling the “beauty myth”. Women not only have to wash and clean; they have to look like the latest fashion model. They have to pay to lose weight, even if it causes them ill health. They have to pay for that special dress, perfume, haircut, underwear or jewellery.
It suits the capitalist system to turn women into objects, to fetishise parts of women’s bodies and keep women as second-class citizens.
Women aren’t even allowed the elementary right to control their own bodies: in Australia, abortion is still on the criminal code in most states. Feminism is about fighting for women’s equality. Only by campaigning against inequality between the sexes will we start to also undermine the divide and rule tactics of the ruling class, and eventually win freedom for all those oppressed under capitalism.
[Reprinted from What Resistance Stands For, available from all Resistance Centres — details on page 2.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 8, 2006.
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