Women’s Oppression and Liberation
Women count for a least half of the world’s population. We do more work than men and yet we have less to show for it. Women earn less than 70% of the world’s wealth and own only 5% of the world’s property.
The higher you go up the social scale, the fewer women you see. Ask yourself these simple questions: How many women head multinational corporations? How many women have achieved world-wide recognition as scientists or inventors? How many women Prime Ministers can you name? Not many, I’d imagine.
You can draw two conclusions from these simple observations: Either women just can’t do those types of things, or something is working against us, preventing us us from enjoying an equal footing with men.
I stand by the latter explanation. Something is working against us: it’s called capitalism.
We live in a society that thinks women should stick with what they do best: look after the kids, keep their husbands satisfied, be understanding, and spend a lot of time on our hair. It’s alright to work, as long as it doesn’t interfere with family commitments, which is why so many women are in low paid, part-time jobs.
And of course there are certain things women aren’t supposed to do, like become miners or builders, but we can become nurses, cleaners, teachers, or secretaries. The biggest sin is to go and get pregnant and have the kid all on our own.
Men, however, are encouraged to do little more than change nappies and do ironing. What with men being such strong, rational thinking creatures, they are encouraged to pursue their ambitions. It’s perfectly possible to hold down a job, have a few good nights out with the boys, and be a loving daddy of three. Fixing a babysitter isn’t a problem when the wife will look after the kids.
This may sound like a stereotype, but things haven’t changed a lot for most women. Some values have changed from the days when our mothers were our age.
It’s more acceptable to live with a man without getting married. Because of contraception, especially the “Pill,” more women can make choices about whether they want to have children. Some women have benefited from education and have become solicitors, directors, and doctors.
Some women have even ventured into the almost exclusive male territory of the fire- fighting service but not without a fair share of sexual and verbal harassment.
But despite all of these advances, for the vast majority of women the burden of running the home and looking after the kids still dominates their lives. Women, working or not, still tend to prepare the evening meal, do the washing, ironing, and cleaning. Men have ventured to do a few more dishes and, of course, most of the household repairs.
Being responsible for the bulk of childcare and household chores prevents women from participating in other aspects of life.
Looking after kids is a full-time job. When women try and do other things, like full-time work or education, there are a multitude of barriers that make it very hard for us. How many universities or workplaces provide free, top-quality childcare? In reality, there are very few.
Most working-class women work in low-paid jobs and have to rely on family and friends (most often other women) to look after the children. Other mothers can’t afford to go to work and end up living on poverty benefits.
All this benefits the rich capitalists. Just think about it, women do all that work for nothing.
For the bosses this means that future generations of workers are fed, washed, clothed, and nursed all free of charge. The social function that women provide for society can’t be underestimated. If society as a whole was responsible for providing all of these services, for example, running free crèches, restaurants, and laundries, it would be a massive drain on the profits of the bosses. This is why the capitalists keep things the way they are.
And in order to do that, the capitalists do everything in their power to convince people that this is the way things should stay. To keep women in their place, we are fed all sorts of lies that portray women as inferior.
The media, the church, schools, and our own family all spread reactionary ideas about women. The Catholic Church tells women that divorce is a sin, even if your husband is a wife beater. Contraception is forbidden and abortion is murder. This means that women are denied any rights over their own fertility.
Our bodies are treated as objects by men. We are told that our role is to satisfy the sexual needs of men. Millions of men see images of women as sexual objects and little else. Men are taught to believe that we are their property, and if we get uppity, they can beat, rape, and treat us like animals.
And when women fight back, like Sara Thornton, who killed her husband after years of brutal violence, the courts condemned her to a life sentence. Even now she has not been cleared.
The hypocrisy of the bosses knows no bounds. Prostitutes are portrayed as dirty, immoral women. And yet, not only do company directors and politicians go to brothels and call girls; they create the poverty conditions that drive thousands of women into prostitution in the first place.
For women in the third world, life is particularly brutal. They have to work in the most appalling conditions for pitifully low wages. These countries, sucked dry by debt repayments to the west, provide little or no support to families.
Women end up trying to raise families in the face of famine and terrible exploitation. The growth of religion, in particular, Islamic Fundamentalism, backs up the treatment of women as second-class citizens. In countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan women are considered the property of men to the extent that beating your wife is considered acceptable. Millions of women suffer clitiderectomy (the removal of the clitoris) or infibulation (the sewing up of the vagina until the marriage night).
As long as capitalism exists, women will remain oppressed. Some women can buy themselves out of their oppression. Women with money can afford nannies, giving them the freedom to pursue a career or an education and become financially independent. But for the vast majority of working class women, this is no way out.
But women have never been passive victims. There is a courageous history of women fighting for equal rights.
From the Suffragettes and their campaign for a women’s vote, to the struggles of women workers at Timex against redundancies, women have organized against injustice and oppression.
We cannot separate the struggle against women’s oppression from the struggle against the capitalist profit system. The role of women in the family lies at the heart of the capitalist system. That means smashing the whole system of profit and greed and replacing it with socialism.
Socialism can provide a real solution to the problems women face today. By organizing a society based a democratic plan to meet peoples’ needs, we could provide all the things that women are expected to do on their own. Free, high quality child care would give women and men more freedom to do other things. Communal restaurants and professional cleaning services could be provided collectively.
The bosses moan and tell us there isn’t enough money for such things. They are liars. The truth is they don’t want to share their billions of profits with the likes of us. There’s only one solution to that – take all the wealth from them and run things together for need not greed.
A socialist society would not only allow all women to participate as equal human beings in every aspect of life, it would create a culture of respect and equality so that all the reactionary ideas of the past would be challenged. Sexist behavior in men would not be tolerated, and a massive campaign to promote positive images of women would be used to undermine negative views.
A socialist society would provide free contraception and abortion so that we could make informed decisions about whether we want to have children or not.
Women are different from men. We can have babies, and men can’t. We have breasts and a vagina, and men have a penis.
This is a biological fact. But capitalism tries to make us slaves to our bodies.
Socialism lays the basis for a society that gives us the freedom to control our fertility and our lives. It is a society that will be based upon the best examples of human solidarity and compassion. This is a goal worth fighting for.