Renewing Socialist Feminism

Feminist Forum, Sweden May 2011

Need for anti-capitalist alternatives

The womens movement, the leadership, needs to put forward a socialist feminist alternative once again. Issues of system-change and anti-capitalist alternatives not seriously addressed today. The movement subsumed by advocacies.

Why so?
Because of the economic and social conjuncture we face today. Global System of neo-liberal capitalism in deep crisis: Ecological Economic Social Political Renewal of socialism and feminism in Latin America: Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba continues.

Has the system delivered?

For a minority, yes. For a majority of women, No! We have formal equality (anti-discrimination legislation, etc) but not substantive social and economic equality. But the gender gap increasing:
Between women in the industrialised countries and South or Third World The class gap amongst women inside the North and South increased and increasing.

Philippines
Poor children die at three times the rate of the children of the rich, Under-five mortality rates are 66 child deaths to every 1000 live births amongst the poor, compared to 21 child deaths to every 1000 births amongst the rich poor children are three times more likely to dies than the children of the rich We also have one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the region -- 94 for every 100,000 live births RH program opposed by a fundamentalist catholic church

Gender responsive governance

Philippines has one of the largest % of women in parliament -- over 20% -- & several women presidents And yet this has not translated into concrete gains for a majority of working and poor women The system of elite rule that exploits and oppresses working and poor women is still in place. Issue is not one of womens participation, but one of genuine representation in whose political social and economic interests, do these women govern?

How have women fared under neoliberal capitalist globalisation?

7 out of every 10 poor people in the world today are women Most countries in Asia will not achieve the less than minimum MDGs Asia 100 million women missing
The problem of missing girls more boys are born than girls, as girl foetuses are aborted, and women die from health and nutrition neglect is actually growing. China and India together account for more than 85 million of the nearly 100 million missing women

Neoliberalism intensifies the exploitation of women

The cutback to services under neoliberalism through privatization and budget cuts increases womens unpaid reproductive work burden in the home. Asian economic crisis in 1997-98 mass layoffs and closures of light manufacturing industries electronics and garment and textiles. Workforce in these industries 70% to 80% women

Paradox
Unprecedented acceptance and lip service paid to formal gender equality Co-existing side-by-side with the extreme impoverishment, exploitation and marginalisation of a majority of the worlds women.

All issues are womens issues

No artificial divide between womens issues and other issues.

Poverty, economic crisis, job losses, contractualization, health care and reproductive health, education, oil prices, corruption, governance, the illegitimate debt, war, militarism, violence, climate change and the environmental crisis, are all womens issues.

Women are the ones who are the hardest hit

economic crisis, during which a majority of workers laid off in industries such as electronics are women, climate-change induced disasters such as flooding, where the casualty rates tend to be higher for women and children.

How society is organized and in whose interests? Who controls the political system? Who runs the economy? These are life and death issues for women.

Renewal of Socialist Feminism

Puts the question of the alternative to capitalism back on the agenda. Renew Socialist feminism as an inclusive project. All socialist feminists would see class as central to womens lives and womens oppression. Womens oppression, however, is not simply reduced to economic exploitation, i.e. the extraction of surplus value. This also applies to national/ethnic or racial oppression.

 All these aspects of society are inextricably linked, i.e. class is always gendered and raced and impacted upon by imperialism and the national and ethnic questions And gender cannot be taken as an isolated category either, independent of class, race, ethnicity, imperialism Our socialist feminism must be based on class to represent the majority of women working and poor anti-racist, anti-imperialist, environmentalist, anti-heterosexist

Marx and Engels What did they actually say?

There writings do focus on the sphere or production and labor rather than other forms of labor, such as the peasantry or of womens labor in the family, or reproduction. This is because they were trying to understand capitalism and how it functioned. This was at the heart of their theoretical analysis. Marx and Engels believed that if they could understand how capitalism worked and help make workers conscious of their oppression (a class in itself to become a class for itself) they could contribute to workers self-emancipation which would be the basis for the end of all other forms of oppression, i.e. socialism Where class oppression and antagonism would be replaced by an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Marx and Engels

They did attempt a historical analysis of the sphere of reproduction given the specific information in the social sciences that they had access to at the time. Engels in his writings in Family Private Property and the State did look at sex and gender systems and relations. He argued that the sex and gender system, which introduced oppressive gender inequalities in the sexual division of labor, was the patriarchal family system. With the development of labor and labor productivity, the patriarchal family system developed as an institution of class rule. It marked the world historic defeat of the female sex and is the cornerstone of womens oppression. In all their analysis, whether capitalism and the class struggle, the state, human alienation, the family and sexuality they based it on a materialist premise, framework.

Reproductive Labor, Wage Labor & Capital

Feminisation of labor makes the relationship between paid productive labor and unpaid but necessary reproductive labor more important more important than understanding the two spheres separately Major restructuring of the workforce since the 1970s with dramatic changes to womens lives in Asia The newly industrializing economies were built on the nimble fingers of womens labour in garment and textiles and the light manufacturing industries. Must situate our analysis on the basis of such developments

Paid labor and unpaid necessary reproductive labor the relationship

Capital, wants the lowest possible necessary labour but , there is one kind of necessary labour that capital would like to expand -unpaid necessary labour. This labour performed in the household and primarily done by women is work that is generally not recognised or valued. Yet, without this labour within the household, workers would not be available for capital in the labour market. While capital does not pay for this invisible labour, it benefits from it. The more work that is done free in the household, the less the wage has to be. The more free time that men have as a result of womens work in the household, the more capital can intensify the capitalist workday.

Capitalism gains from the unpaid labor of women

As the purchaser of labour power, capital is in a position to gain from the unpaid labour of women within the household. And the more intense and lengthy that work in the household, the more capital can gain. And, likewise, the more capital drives down wages and intensifies the workday for both male and female wagelabourers, the greater the burden placed on the household to maintain workers. In either case women are increasingly exploited as their work burden increases, both in the paid labour force and as primary carers in the home. (GDP data)

 Canada: unpaid work is estimated to be worth up to $319 billion in the money economy or 41% of GDP; Australia: Many studies in the past 20 years have shown that even attributing very low wage values (replacement wage) to unpaid work, the unpaid economy of households contributes output worth at least 60 per cent of market output measured as GDP. Much of this is accounted for by households provision of unpaid child care. It has been shown that the number of unpaid hours of childcare far exceeds the hours worked in any other market or non market industry. Globally the numbers skyrocket to $11 trillion US.

Need a radically different framework to labor

Not from the stand point of capitalist production and profit Socially useful and necessary labor as our starting point and framework Challenges conventional bourgeois economics and stands it on its head

Make a breach in the system

Women need to make a breach in the system of capitalist rule. We need to link our immediate demands to system change and an end to elite rule. We need to have the perspective of mobilizing masses of women, to make a breach in the system. Latin America shows us that this can be done.

Case study: Venezuela

The new Bolivarian Constitution Under Article 88 recognizes reproductive labor as productive labor and guarantees housewives a pension 80% of the minimum wage. The anti-poverty programs have lifted millions of poor, including children, out of poverty. Womens participation in the revolution: empowerment through the local commune structures. 70% of communes headed by women. Other institutional structures:
Womens ministry set up on March 8, 2009 Womens bank: mechanism to transfer of wealth to poor women

Violence against Women campaign

Special local courts with the authority to temporarily arrest
perpetrators of violence against women and prohibit them from leaving the country.

The first dates for the trial should be set ten to twenty days after the act of violence, with sentencing on the same day with penalty and fines. Appeals processes exist. These courts are described as 'specialised organs on violence against women' and as 'weapons in the struggle against violence against women'.

According to Maria Leon, Womens Minister: "Talking is not enough. Laws are not enough. Institutions are not enough. We need a cultural change in our views and outlook." This required mobilising women to become "a real force, a deterrent force, an army to combat violence against women and to change the notion of women as battered victims and weak human beings". To mobilise women some 25,000 'points of encounter' for women are being set up where women have easy access to information and services. These 25,000 'points of encounter' will consist of at least ten women, who will then organise more women to create "an army to combat violence against women ... the point is not only to decrease violence against women, but to eradicate it".

CENESEX in Cuba
In Cuba pathbreaking proposals and measures are being advocated and discussed amongst the entire population to advance gender equality in relation to sexual rights, spearheaded by the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX). The National Assembly (Cubas parliament) will include in its work agenda an initiative to reform the national Family Code, which has been effective in Cuba since 1975 and contains proposals on gender identity and rights of sexual minorities. The initiatives include the legal recognition of the same sex unions, whereby they will enjoy the same rights as consensually united heterosexual couples. In June 2008 a resolution of the Ministry of Public Health leganised the performing of sex change operations on transsexual persons. Resolution 126 establishes the creation of a center for integral healthcare for people who are transsexual, which will be the sole institution in the country authorized to carry out total or partial medical sex change treatments.

Global view
Socialist feminism requires a global perspective. Solidarity critical to socialist feminists

Renew the socialist feminist agenda

Not enter the masters house, but pull down the old structures and build a new home for all! No socialism without womens emancipation, no womens emancipation without socialism!