Male Labour With Cheaper Female Workers example essay topic

Joseph Carol an Masters in Equality Feminist Theory Exam Question 4. Men gain a dividend from patriarchy not only in terms of honour, prestige and the right to command, but also in material terms. The subordination of women to men is a profoundly materialist matter, but in its generation and its perpetuation. Discuss with reference to gender relations in employment.

INTRODUCTION There is an argument within Feminism that men, regardless of their class background, benefit from the oppression of women materially. For the male capitalist, this can be in the form of women workers as a cheap, casual ised "reserve army of labour", to borrow from the language of Marxism. For the male worker, there are supposed benefits in the form of certain industries being protected as male preserves, historically through protective legislation, or in the granting of the "family wage". In this short text, I would like to counter these assumptions, instead arguing that male workers benefit by uniting with their female counterparts in fighting for rights and liberation. At the end of the 1960's, a radical feminist document was published in the United States called the Redstockings Manifesto.

Its second point proclaimed- "Women are an oppressed class. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants and cheap labour. We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance men's lives. Our prescribed behaviour is enforced by the threat of physical violence. Because we have lived so intimately with our oppression in isolation from each other, we have been kept from seeing our personal suffering as a political condition.

This creates the illusion that a women's relationship with her man is a matter of interplay between two unique personalities, and can be worked out individually. In reality, every relationship is a class relationship, and the conflicts between individual men and women are political conflicts that can only be solved collectively". (Vintage, 1970) Again, borrowing from the language of Marxism, the Redstockings Manifesto paints a world in where women line up on one side, and men on the other, with woman as "proletariat" and man as "bourgeoisie" in a class struggle of the sexes. However, such a scenario ignores the huge class divisions both between capitalist and working class men, and capitalist and working class women. Do they have common interests? Interestingly, since their class models are being borrowed from, what do Marxists say on the subject?

ORIGINS OF WOMEN'S OPPRESSION Patriarchy theory claims that male domination is trans- historical, as the oppression of women existed before the advent of capitalism. It also claims that a cross class alliance of men has since benefited from women's oppression, and that a cross class alliance of women can overthrow it. But where did this patriarchy originate from- is it merely rooted in biological differences? In opposition to this view Frederick Engel's "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" (1884) looks at how the discovery of agriculture and the rise of private property with the first surpluses of production led to the division of society into classes AND, what he calls, "the world historical defeat of womankind". Previously, in hunter gatherer societies, there had been no oppressions and women's status in the tribe was high- witness the prehistoric global worship of the earth goddess, manifested in Ireland by many still existing Sheila na Gigs.

The rise of the first class societies saw the beginnings of the early socially constructed family as a way for the ruling classes to pass property from one generation to the other. The legitimacy of children as rightful heirs to private property meant the need to ensure virginity, monogamy and motherhood as the new norms of femininity. Thus, the beginnings of women's oppression had material roots which benefited the world's first ruling classes. These oppressions continued, changed and evolved as historical modes of production changed, from the early societies and slave states to Feudalism. In the modern mode of production, capitalism, the production of goods is a social process undertaken by both male and female workers. Reproduction of people (the next generation of workers) is a private process, which takes place largely within the family.

The modern oppression of women is rooted in the dichotomy between the two- for Engels, the fight for women's liberation cannot be separated from the fight against this social system. EARLY INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM AND THE "FAMILY WAGE" There is an argument that men of all classes went into alliance during the industrial revolution to maintain control over women. Working class men campaigned for "the family wage" and protective legislation forbidding women from employment, keeping women in the home. However, in "The Condition of the Working Class in England" (1845), Engels records the near destruction of the working family in the early industrial revolution. Life had been brutalized by the wholesale recruitment of women and children into factories, satanic mills and coal mines.

Low wages forced everyone- fathers, mothers and children- to slave at backbreaking, exhausting work Indeed, Engels mistakenly believed that the family was disappearing. In Manchester, more than a quarter of all infants died before the age of one in the early 1860's (p 24, Sex, Class and Socialism, Lindsey German Bookmarks 1989) However, under such horrific conditions with whole families working long hours without respite, and childbirth resulting in more deaths than healthy children, it was in capitalism's own class interests to stabilise the working class family. From the mid 19th century onwards, wages rose enough to allow married women stay at home and make childbearing a priority. This had been one of the central demands of the massive Chartist movement for workers rights. Capitalism stabilised itself and re- invented the ideology of the family around privatised reproduction, with the male worker as "breadwinner" and the female worker as "housewife".

WOMEN WORKERS AND THE BETRAYALS OF BUREAUCRATS However, not all labour organisations were beyond reproach in later years. Many elite craft unions refused to organise unskilled women workers, and an emerging labour bureaucracy within the trade union movements moved away from militancy and class struggle to seek accommodation with the employers. Oftentimes these bureaucrats used the ideology of the family to justify their betrayal of working women, as can be seen by the Irish case of the infamous Section 16. Goretti Horgan in her work "Changing Women's Lives in Ireland" (International Socialism 99, SWP) documents this betrayal in harrowing detail. Helena Moloney was a shop steward with the Irish Women Workers Union who fought Section 16 of the Conditions of Employment Act. Introduced in 1935- it allowed the Minister for Industry to prohibit and control employment of women in a wide number of industries, also introducing the marriage bar in the civil service and teaching.

In the history of the IWWU, Helena tells of her betrayal by the trade union bureaucrats- and in particular IT GWU senator Tom Kennedy, who in defence of Section 16 claimed "it is the first measure to gave male labour their rightful place in the new industries". This was a clear attempt by the State to reduce male unemployment during the Depression by removing female workers. Helena Moloney responded "It was terrible to find such reactionary opinions expressed by responsible leaders of labour in support of a capitalist minister in setting up a barrier against one set of citizens". Quoted in M Jones, "These Obstreperous Lassies: A History of the IWWU", Dublin 1998 The IWWU campaigned to stop section 16, with the Irish Trade Union Congress eventually backing them in exchange for certain compromises. "The Labour Party, however, gave it complete support in the Dail and argued against the introduction of equal pay for women as a means of ensuring that women would not be used as cheap labour in preference to men.

When Section 16 was passed, the International Labour Organisation in Geneva placed Ireland on a blacklist" Horgan, "Changing Women's Lives in Ireland" Thus, in response to these betrayals, Heidi Hartmann describes socialism as "sex blind", and offers a materialist analysis of patriarchy, by arguing that "the material base upon which patriarchy rests lies most fundamentally is men's control over women's labour power". Heidi Hartmann "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism" Capital and Class (London) no 8, Summer 1979 That even the ILO would blacklist Ireland shows that not all organisations of labour supported this outrageous sexist legislation in the workplace. By this stage of history, Labour parties and the bureaucrats in trade unions had made compromises with capitalism, no longer desiring its overthrow but rather a place at the table of power. To this day, ideologies of "Partnership" and reformism, not Marxism, are dominant on the left. Genuine socialists, then and now, opposed such sell outs as they divided the workforce.

THE REVENGE OF HISTORY- THE FEMINIZATION OF THE WORKPLACE Since the 1970's, the workforce globally has been swelled by women workers. Many anti capitalist commentators such as Barbara Einricht (The Global Woman, 2003), Naomi Klein (No Logo, 1999) and Arundathi Roy have claimed that the face of corporate globalisation is increasingly female. In this development, Ireland is no exception. In 1996, there were 488,000 women at work, an increase of 213,000 since 1971. Men had increased by only 23,000. In 1996 half the female workforce was married- there were 241,400 married women working outside home, an increase of 600% since 1971.

Between 1996 and 2000, a further 128,000 women joined workforce. Many are mothers struggling to combine paid jobs with childcare. In the decade from 87 to 97, number of working mothers in Ireland doubled, from 120,600 to 253,300.75,000 working mothers had one dependent child 79,800 had two. 59,300 three or more. In Ireland, mothers were by far largest group entering workforce.

(Source for figures-Central Statistics Office, Quarterly National Household Survey, Dec 2000) As the Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai argued- "The class conscious worker must understand that the value of male labour is dependent on the value of female labour and that, by threatening to replace male labour with cheaper female workers, the capitalist can put pressure on men's wages. Only a lack of understanding could lead one to see this question as purely a 'woman's issue'. - "- Alexandra Kollontai, Russian Congress of Trade Unions, 1917 Where the worker's movement is divided, wages are lower than where they are united. In Northern Ireland where workers are divided into Catholic and Protestant, wages are far lower than in the rest of the UK. Similarly, black AND white workers who are united in unions in the Northern states of the USA have higher wages than white workers in the South, despite the fact that the Southern white worker is paid more than a black. Workers, both in Ireland and globally, are increasingly female and exploited.

Male and female workers need politics to fight low pay, exploitation and the worst childcare provision in Western Europe. Kollontai's appeal for justice makes tactical as well as moral sense, as oppressions only seek to divide and rule the workforce, and if they benefit anyone, benefit a tiny minority of increasingly arrogant and exploitative bosses... Redstockings Manifesto, (Vintage, 1970) Frederick Engel's "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" (1884) and "The Condition of the Working Class in England" (1845) Sex, Class and Socialism, Lindsey German (Bookmarks 1989) Goretti Horgan in her work "Changing Women's Lives in Ireland" (International Socialism 99, SWP) M Jones, "These Obstreperous Lassies: A History of the IWWU", Dublin 1998 Heidi Hartmann "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism" Capital and Class (London) no 8, Summer 1979.