Shopsteward Vol8-2: Gender

On 8 March 1857, the first mass demonstration of women workers against abysmal pay and working
conditions took place in New York.

On 8 March each year, men and women across the globe celebrate International Women?s Day. A hundred and forty two years have passed, yet women still face daily hardships and struggles in almost every aspect of their lives.

Although women make up less than half the world’s official workforce, it is estimated that they do two-thirds of the world’s work and receive one tenth of the world’s income. (In Africa they do 80% of the work, and receive less than 1% of the income!) If the ‘household tasks’ done by women - cleaning, cooking, washing, child care etc - were considered productive activity, the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the world would be 24 -30% higher.

It is women who are on the receiving end of the ugliest features of capitalism - mass unemployment, casualisation, the abolition of social security, violence and prostitution. Female earnings have dropped from an average 70% of male earnings to 40%!

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says that the current economic crisis has been particularly hard on women workers. They are more likely to lose their jobs or suffer wage cuts and further deterioration in working and living conditions.

Because they are not regarded as breadwinners, they are the first to be thrown out of work, given reduced hours or put onto casual or ‘flexible’ working contracts.

Millions of women are doing dangerous and poorly-paid work at home on contract to multinational companies.

In 1996, as a result of pressure from women, representatives from 124 countries adopted a charter of rights for home-workers and an agreement on minimum wages and conditions. But, just like the international ‘agreement’ made in 1951 on equal pay for work of equal value, this agreement runs the risk of remaining a dead letter.

No real reforms are won without a fight - on the part of both men and women workers.

Throughout history, women have been heroic participants in uprisings and revolutionary or guerrilla movements. They have been motivated by a burning hatred for the big landowners, the factory bosses and the corrupt and self-seeking politicians who ruin their lives. They are inspired by the prospect of winning real emancipation for themselves and their families, along with that of the working class.

COSATU salutes the women of the world. We pay particular tribute to working class and poor women, who suffer daily. We acknowledge the contribution women have made to South Africa and commit ourselves to championing the gender struggle, both in our own country and across the globe!

Exploitation

Young women workers are ruthlessly exploited in the Free Trade Zones and Export Processing Zones set up by the so-called ‘developing’ counties to attract foreign investment. Women make up 80 - 85% of the workers in these Zones. Transnational Companies operating in the Zones include Philips, Sony, Nike, Reebok, Wrangler.

In China, Thailand and Mexico it is common for women to work 10, 14 or 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week in the sweat shops. They are not covered by labour laws. Sexual harassment is rife. Trade unions are banned and driven underground.

The majority of working women experience sexual harassment at work to some degree or another. This may range from unwanted attention from male workers to demands by management for sexual ‘favours’ on pain of dismissal and the use of rape as a means of humiliation and subjection. At a least a quarter of the women of the world also suffer violence in the home.

What is Feminism?

The answer to this question depends on who you are speaking to. The different schools of feminism all agree on the need to liberate women. However, they differ in their understanding of the root cause of women's oppression. This causes them to adopt different organisational/practical programmes of action.

Because of these differences, not only in end vision, but in organisational methods, it is important to understand the different kinds of feminism.

• Radical feminists – those who identify oppression as relating to biological determinants and hence direct their struggle against men. There has been a growing Africanised radical feminism or ‘sisterhood’ (not to be confused with other trends within feminist politics such as socialist feminism), which speaks to all women on the basis of sisterhood and shared opposition to men (who are also dealt with as a uniform category).

If one transposes the terms white and men; and black and women, one will find a similarity between crude forms of Black Consciousness and this radical feminism. Individuals with a particular biological characteristic (colour of skin in BC, or sex in radical feminism) are categorised as the enemy, irrespective of the position that they hold in the structures and power relations of that society. The organisational and campaigning approach of these feminists tends to be emotional militancy, lacking in political content and dislocated from the context in which these women are living and struggling.

An example of an extreme version of radical feminism is seen in a 1992 poster campaign. At a time when the country was wrecked by violence, with the state and Inkatha on the one side, and the liberation movement and the masses on the other; at a time when forces were arraigned against each other in the negotiation process; when the moral filth of the regime and Inkatha was contrasted by the moral high ground held by the liberation movement, women of this persuasion saw fit to launch a poster campaign under the slogan ‘Panzi (sic) Penis Power’ with photographs of De Klerk, Mandela, and Buthelezi. Because they are men, these three individuals apparently have enough in common to be degraded together.

However, this tendency is also present in a less acute form in some of the approaches to the National Women’s Coalition, where political, ideological and class differences are being swept under the carpet in the name of sisterhood and the rights of a category, ‘women’.

• Bourgeois feminists or liberal feminists identify legal discrimination as the key factor in women’s oppression and hence direct their energies simply at getting a place in the sun alongside their menfolk. Feminists within the neo-liberal paradigm – Dene Smuts’ type Democratic Party approach, Sheila Camerer’s National Party approach – argue that the neo-liberal option permits a solution to racial and gender oppression. It can make the upper strata of society more representative in terms of race and gender. But along with this goes a widening of the socio-economic gap between women of the middle and bourgeois classes and those of the working class. Ultimately, oppressive gender relations remain entrenched.

• Socialist feminists, who see themselves in opposition to Marxism, and particularly to Marxism Leninism which are critiqued as gender blind, male dominated and incapable of theoretical development in relation to gender.

• Marxist feminists- the ‘unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism’ – a school that emerged within academic Western Marxism critical of both Marxism-Leninism and Western Marxism as gender blind. Traditional Marxism-Leninism focussed on the woman question, and not on the relationship between socialism and gender relations. We argue that the woman question is within gender transformation. Gender transformation is broader than the woman question : rooted in Western Marxism, it tends to reproduce the economism and mechanistic approach of Western Marxism. This term covers a range of different contributions, reflecting different tendencies within Western Marxism and different emphases on which aspects of women’s oppression should be analysed, eg, the domestic labour debate, the family wage debate, rural development and women, women under socialism etc.

• Third World Marxist/ Socialist feminists – a growing body of writers that consider gender relations in the Third World and the interconnection between national liberation struggle and women’s struggles.

In 1984 Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) grew amongst Third World feminists, in preparation for the Nairobi UN Decade Conference. Amongst the extensive preparative work, they explored alternative visions and methods for women’s movements. DAWN’s founders met in Brazil in February 1986 to set up a structure that would support the group’s ongoing activities and broaden participation. Over the next two years they focussed on two topics: the food, energy and debt crises in relation to women; and women’s visions and movements in the Third World.

We strongly support the position in this debate that feminism cannot be monolithic in its issues, goals and strategies, since it constitutes the political expression of the concerns and interests of women from different regions, classes, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. While gender subordination has universal elements, feminism cannot be based on a rigid concept of universality that negates the wide variation in women’s experience. There is and must be a diversity of feminisms, responsive to the different needs and concerns of different women, and defined by them for themselves. This diversity builds on a common opposition to gender oppression and hierarchy, but this is only the first step in articulating and acting upon a political agenda. This heterogeneity gives feminism its dynamism and makes it the most potentially powerful challenge to the status quo...

" For many women, problems of nationality, class and race are inextricably linked to their specific oppression as women. Defining feminism to include the struggle against all forms of oppression is both legitimate and necessary. In many instances, gender equality must be accompanied by changes on these fronts.

For them, "feminism is a political movement, which expresses the concerns of women from different regions and backgrounds. Like all political movements, it can be diverse in its issues, immediate goals and methods adopted. But beneath this diversity, feminism has as its unshakeable core a commitment to breaking down the structures of gender subordination and a vision for women as full and equal participants with men at all levels of societal life..."

These feminists identify political mobilisation, legal changes, consciousness raising, and popular education as core activities. At the global level, they look towards a movement of women and the oppressed which can mobilise support for the common goals of a more just and equitable international order, and for disarmament. Coalitions and alliances (possibly cutting across different women’s organisations and political affiliations) are seen as necessary to build a broad based local and national movement, including mixed organisation across gender and class.

The challenge for the Party and the left is to ensure that the gains made in the constitutional struggles, and in the structures of government, do not only benefit the elite women but empower working class and poor women in rural and urban areas. The seeds of transformation can liberate the lives of working class women. Which seeds eventually become rooted and nurtured depends on strategy and struggle based on the current understanding of the interconnection between oppressive gender social relations and women‘s oppression. Such strategy and struggle must go along with the appropriate organisational forms to carry out the objectives. Without this, neither the emancipation of women nor the transformation of society to a non gender-oppressive socialist formation will be realisable. When we ask why some socialist states have failed, we must include the extent to which the lack of gender transformation placed brakes on democratising and socialising society.

Lenin argued that the test of the freedom of a society is the degree of freedom of the women. Our starting point is that the test of freedom of a society is the degree to which gender relations are non-oppressive and liberating to both men and women. It is not possible to build socialism without, in that process, removing gender oppression and transforming gender relations. Gender oppression persists even in socialist structures and states unless it is consciously dismantled. If we ignore gender relations in the transformation process, the result will be neither democratic nor socialist. Continued oppression and exploitation of women through sexism and gender oppression undermines and distorts the building of socialism. Ending exploitation of men and women and eradicating all forms of oppression of men and women are part of building socialism and communism.

GENDER

What is Feminism?