Marxist feminism is a philosophical variant of
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
that incorporates and extends
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
theory. Marxist feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
and the individual ownership of
private property
Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
.
According to Marxist feminists,
women's liberation
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...
can only be achieved by dismantling the capitalist systems in which they contend much of women's labor is uncompensated.
Marxist feminists extend traditional Marxist analysis by applying it to unpaid domestic labor and sex relations.
Because of its foundation in historical
materialism
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...
, Marxist feminism is similar to
socialist feminism
Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles ...
and, to a greater degree,
materialist feminism
Materialist feminism highlights capitalism and patriarchy as a central aspect in understanding women's oppression. It focuses on the material, or physical, aspects that define oppression. Under materialist feminism, gender is seen as a social con ...
. The latter two place greater emphasis on what they consider the "reductionist limitations"
of Marxist theory but, as Martha E. Gimenez
notes in her exploration of the differences between Marxist and materialist feminism, "clear lines of theoretical demarcation between and within these two umbrella terms are somewhat difficult to establish."
Theoretical background in Marxism
Marxism follows the development of
oppression
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination w ...
and
class division
Class or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently ...
in the evolution of human society through the development and organization of wealth and production, and concludes the evolution of oppressive societal structure to be relative to the evolution of oppressive family structures, i.e., the normalization of oppressing the female sex marks or coincides to the birth of oppressive society in general.
In ''
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State
''The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan'' (german: Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) is an 1884 philosophical treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is p ...
'' (1884),
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' inheritance
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, Title (property), titles, debts, entitlements, Privilege (law), privileges, rights, and Law of obligations, obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ ...
.
When agriculture first became abundant and the abundance was considered male wealth, as it was sourced from the male work environment away from the home, a deeper wish for male
lineage
Lineage may refer to:
Science
* Lineage (anthropology), a group that can demonstrate its common descent from an apical ancestor or a direct line of descent from an ancestor
* Lineage (evolution), a temporal sequence of individuals, populati ...
and inheritance was founded. To achieve that wish, women were not only granted their long-sought monogamy but forced into it as part of domestic servitude, while males pursued a hushed culture of "
hetaerism
Hetaira (plural hetairai (), also hetaera (plural hetaerae ), ( grc, ἑταίρα, "companion", pl. , la, hetaera, pl. ) was a type of prostitution in ancient Greece, prostitute in ancient Greece, who served as an artist, entertainer and conve ...
". Engels describes this situation as coincidental to the beginnings of forced servitude as a dominant feature of society, leading eventually to a European culture of
class oppression
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination ...
, where the children of the poor were expected to be servants of the rich.
Engels rewrites a quote in this book, by himself and Marx from 1846, "The first division of labor is that between man and woman for the propagation of children", to say, "The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male."
Gender oppression is
reproduced culturally and maintained through
institutionalized inequality. By privileging men at the expense of women and refusing to acknowledge traditional domestic labor as equally valuable, the working-class man is socialized into an oppressive structure which
marginalizes the working-class woman.
Productive, unproductive, and reproductive labor
Marx categorized labor into two categories:
productive and unproductive.
*Productive labor is labor that creates surplus value, e.g. production of raw materials and manufacturing products.
*Unproductive labor does not create surplus value and may in fact be subsidized by it. This can include supervisory duties, bookkeeping,
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
, etc.
Marxist feminist authors in the 1970s, such as
Margaret Benston
Margaret "Maggie" Lowe Benston (1937–1991) was a professor of chemistry, computing science, and women's studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was a respected feminist and labour activist, as well as ...
and Peggy Morton, relied heavily on analysis of productive and unproductive labor in an attempt to shift the perception of the time that consumption was the purpose of a family, presenting arguments for a state-paid wage to
homemakers
Homemaking is mainly an American and Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery or household management. It is the act of overseeing the organizational, day-to-day operations of a house ...
, and a cultural perception of the family as a productive entity. In capitalism, the work of maintaining a family has little material value, as it produces no marketable products. In Marxism, the maintenance of a family is productive, as it has a service value, and is used in the same sense as a commodity.
Wages for Housework
Focusing on exclusion from productive labor as the most important source of female oppression, some Marxist feminists advocated for the inclusion of domestic work within the waged capitalist economy. The idea of compensating reproductive labor was present in the writing of socialists such as
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (; née Perkins; July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935), also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, advocate for social reform, and eugenicist. She wa ...
(1898) who argued that women's oppression stemmed from being forced into the private sphere.
Gilman argued that conditions for women would improve when their work was located, recognized, and valued in the public sphere.
Perhaps the most influential effort to compensate reproductive labor was the
International Wages for Housework Campaign, an organization launched in Italy in 1972 by members of the International Feminist Collective. Many of these women, including
Selma James
Selma James (born Selma Deitch; formerly Weinstein; August 15, 1930) is an American writer, and feminist and social activist who is co-author of the women's movement book ''The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community'' (with Mariarosa ...
,
Mariarosa Dalla Costa,
Brigitte Galtier, and
Silvia Federici
Silvia Federici (born in Parma, Italy, 1942) is a scholar, teacher, and feminist activist based in New York. She is a professor emerita and teaching fellow at Hofstra University in New York State, where she was a social science professor. She al ...
published a range of sources to promote their message in academic and public domains. Despite beginning as a small group of women in Italy, the Wages for Housework Campaign was successful in mobilizing on an international level. A Wages for Housework group was founded in Brooklyn, New York, with the help of Federici.
As
Heidi Hartmann
Heidi I. Hartmann is an American feminist economist who is founder and president of the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a research organization created to conduct women-centered, public policy research. She is an e ...
acknowledges (1981), the efforts of these movements, though ultimately unsuccessful, generated important discourse regarding the value of housework and its relation to the economy.
Domestic Slavery
![Angela Davis Moscow 1972 cropped 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Angela_Davis_Moscow_1972_cropped_2.jpg)
Many Marxist feminist scholars analyzing modes of oppression at the site of production note the effect that housework has on women in a capitalist system. In
Angela Davis
Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...
' ''
Women, Race and Class'', the concept of housework is utilized to deconstruct the capitalist construct of gendered labor within the home and to show the ways in which women are exploited through "domestic slavery".
To address this, Davis concludes that the "socialisation of housework – including meal preparation and child care – presupposes an end to the profit-motive's reign over the economy."
In this manner, domestic slavery upholds the structural inequities faced by women in all capitalist economies.
Other Marxist feminist have noted the concept of domestic work for women internationally and the role it plays in buttressing global
patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males a ...
. In Paresh Chattopadhyay's response
to Custer's ''Capital Accumulation and Women's Labor in Asian Economies'', Chattopadhyay notes the ways in which Custer analyzes "women's labor in the garments industry in West Bengal and Bangladesh as well as in Bangladesh's agricultural sector, labor management methods of the Japanese industrial bourgeoisie and, finally, the mode of employment of the women laborers in Japanese industry"
in demonstrating the ways in which the domestic sphere exhibits similar gender-based exploitation of difference. In both works, the gendered division of labor, specifically within the domestic sphere, is shown to illustrate the methods the capitalist system exploits women globally.
Responsibility of reproductive labor
Another solution proposed by Marxist feminists is to liberate women from their forced connection to reproductive labor. In her critique of traditional Marxist feminist movements such as the Wages for Housework Campaign,
Heidi Hartmann
Heidi I. Hartmann is an American feminist economist who is founder and president of the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a research organization created to conduct women-centered, public policy research. She is an e ...
(1981) argues that these efforts "take as their question the relationship of women to the economic system, rather than that of women to men, apparently assuming the latter will be explained in their discussion of the former."
Hartmann believes that traditional discourse has ignored the importance of women's oppression as women, and instead focused on women's oppression as members of the capitalist system. Similarly,
Gayle Rubin
Gayle S. Rubin (born January 1, 1949 in South Carolina) is an American cultural anthropologist best known as an activist and theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism, sadomasochism, prostitut ...
, who has written on a range of subjects including sadomasochism, prostitution, pornography, and lesbian literature, first rose to prominence through her 1975 essay "
The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex",
in which she coins the phrase "sex/gender system" and criticizes Marxism for what she claims is its incomplete analysis of sexism under capitalism, without dismissing or dismantling Marxist fundamentals in the process.
More recently, many Marxist feminists have shifted their focus to the ways in which women are now potentially in worse conditions as a result of gaining access to productive labor.
Nancy Folbre
Nancy Folbre (19 July 1952) is an American feminist economist who focuses on economics and the family (or family economics), non-market work and the economics of care. She is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
...
proposes that feminist movements begin to focus on women's subordinate status to men both in the reproductive (private) sphere, as well as in the workplace (public sphere).
In an interview in 2013, Silvia Federici urges feminist movements to consider the fact that many women are now forced into productive ''and'' reproductive labor, resulting in a
double day.
Federici argues that the emancipation of women cannot occur until they are free from the burden of unwaged labor, which she proposes will involve institutional changes such as closing the wage gap and implementing child care programs in the workplace.
Federici's suggestions are echoed in a similar interview with Selma James (2012) and have even been touched on in recent presidential elections.
Affective and emotional labor
Scholars and
sociologists
This is a list of sociologists. It is intended to cover those who have made substantive contributions to social theory and research, including any sociological subfield. Scientists in other fields and philosophers are not included, unless at least ...
such as
Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt (born 1960) is an American political philosopher and literary theorist. Hardt is best known for his book ''Empire'', which was co-written with Antonio Negri.
Hardt and Negri suggest that several forces which they see as domin ...
,
Antonio Negri
Antonio "Toni" Negri (born 1 August 1933) is an Italian Spinozistic- Marxist sociologist and political philosopher, best known for his co-authorship of ''Empire'' and secondarily for his work on Spinoza.
Born in Padua, he became a political ...
,
Arlie Russell Hochschild
Arlie Russell Hochschild (; born January 15, 1940) is an American professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and writer. Hochschild has long focused on the human emotions that underlie moral beliefs, practices, and ...
and Shiloh Whitney
discuss a new form of labor that transcends the traditional spheres of labor and which does not create product, or is byproductive.
Affective labor focuses on the blurred lines between personal life and economic life. Whitney states, "The daily struggle of unemployed persons and the domestic toil of housewives no less than the waged worker are thus part of the production and reproduction of social life, and of the biopolitical growth of capital that valorizes information and subjectivities."
The concept of
emotional labor
Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers, clients and man ...
, particularly the emotional labor that is present and required in
pink collar
A pink-collar worker is someone working in the care-oriented career field or in fields historically considered to be women's work. This may include jobs in the beauty industry, nursing, social work, teaching, secretarial work, upholstery, or ...
jobs, was introduced by Arlie Russell Hochschild in her book ''
The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling'' (1983)
in which she considers the affective labor of the profession as flight attendants smile, exchange pleasantries and banter with customers.
Equal pay for equal labour
In 1977 the British feminist sociologist
Veronica Beechey
Veronica Beechey (born 1946–2021) was a British feminist sociologist and patient's rights advocate.
Early life and education
Beechey was born in Hastings and grew up in Battle, Sussex. She attended Ashford School for Girls and Hastings ...
published 'Some Notes on Female Wage Labour', which argued that women should be understood as an unrecognised 'reserve arm of labour'. In response, Floya Anthias published 'Woman and the Reserve Army of Labour: A Critique of Veronica Beechy', to query Beechey's arguments, while also recognising that it Beechey's was "the most sophisticated and influential attempt to analyse women's wage labour by using or reconstituting the categories of Marx's Capital". In 1987 Verso published Beechey's collected essays on women's participation in labour as the book ''Unequal Work''.
Intersectionality and Marxist feminism
With the emergence of
intersectionality
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...
as a widely popular theory of current feminism, Marxist feminists remain critical of its reliance on bourgeois
identity politics
Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these i ...
.
Intersectionality operates in Marxist feminism as a lens to view the interaction of different aspects of identity as a result of structured, systematic
oppression
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination w ...
.
Accomplishments and activism
The nature of Marxist feminists and their ability to mobilize to promote social change has enabled them to engage in important activism.
As activist, Marxist feminists insist "on developing politics that put women's oppression and liberation, class politics, anti-imperialism, antiracism, and issues of gender identity and sexuality together at the heart of the agenda." Though their advocacy often receives criticism, Marxist feminists challenge capitalism in ways that facilitate new discourse and shed light on the status of women.
These women throughout history have used a range of approaches in fighting
hegemonic
Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over other city-states. ...
capitalism, which reflect their different views on the optimal method of achieving liberation for women.
A few women that contributed to the development of Marxist Feminism as a theory were Chizuko Ueno, Anuradha Ghandy, Claudia Jones, and Angela Davis. Chizuko Ueno is well known for being one of the first women to introduce Marxist Feminism in Japan.
Additionally, Chizuko Ueno was also one of the primary developers of feminist theories across Japan.
Among other renowned Marxists Feminists, their influence impacted nations such as Ukraine, India, Russia, United States, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Marxist feminist critiques of other branches of feminism
Clara Zetkin
Clara Zetkin (; ; ''née'' Eißner ; 5 July 1857 – 20 June 1933) was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights.
Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She then joined the ...
and
Alexandra Kollontai
Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (russian: Алекса́ндра Миха́йловна Коллонта́й, née Domontovich, Домонто́вич; – 9 March 1952) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Theoretician ...
were opposed to forms of feminism that reinforce class status. They did not see a true possibility to unite across economic inequality because they argue that it would be extremely difficult for an upper-class woman to truly understand the struggles of the working class. For instance, Kollontai wrote in 1909:
For what reason, then, should the woman worker seek a union with the bourgeois feminists? Who, in actual fact, would stand to gain in the event of such an alliance? Certainly not the woman worker.
Kollontai avoided associating herself with the term "feminism" as she deemed the term to be too closely related to that of the bourgeois feminism that shut out the capability of other classes to benefit from the term.
Kollontai was a prominent leader in the Bolshevik party in Russia, defending her stance on how capitalism had shaped a rather displeasing and oppressing position for females that are part of its system.
She recognized and emphasized the difference between the proletariat and bourgeoise women in society, though it has been expressed by Kollontai's thought that all women under a capitalist economy were those of oppression.
One of the reasons Kollontai had a strict opposition of the bourgeois women and proletariat or working-class women to have an alliance is because the bourgeois was still inherently using the women of the working class to their advantage, and therefore prolonging the injustice that women in a capitalist society are treated.
She theorized that a well-balanced economic utopia was ingrained in the need for gender equality, but never identified as a feminist, though she greatly impacted the feminist movement within the ideology of feminism within and throughout socialism.
Kollontai had a harsh stance on the feminist movement and believed feminists to be naïve in only addressing gender as the reason inequality was happening under a capitalist rule.
She believed that the true issue of inequality was that of the division of classes that led to the immediate production of gender struggles, just how men in the structure of the classes shown a harsh divide as well.
Kollontai analyzed the theories and historical implications of Marxism as a background for her ideologies, which she addressed the most profound obstacle for society to address be that of the gender inequality, which could never be eradicated under a capitalist society.
As capitalism is inherently for private profit, Kollontai's argument toward the eradication of women suffrage within society under a capitalist rule also delved into how women cannot and will not be abolished under a capitalist society because of the ways in which women's "free labor" has been utilized. Kollontai criticized the feminist movement as also neglecting to emphasize how the working class, while trying to care and provide for a family and being paid less than that of men, was still expected to cater to and provide for the bourgeois or upper-class women who were still oppressing the working-class women by utilizing their stereotypical type of work.
Kollontai also faced harsh scrutiny in being a woman leader in a time of a male dominated political stance during the Bolshevik movement.
In keeping with her unusual position during her time, she also kept diaries of her plans and ideas on moving towards a more "modern" society where socialism would help uproot that of capitalism and the oppression that different groups of gender and class had been facing.
Kollontai was a great example of a woman who was indeed still oppressed by the times and was removed from her own ideologies and progress for the mere fact she was a woman in times where being so in a powerful position was frowned upon and "great women" were only allowed to be placed alongside "great men" in history.
Kollontai's most pertinent presence in feminist socialism was her stance on reproductive rights and her view on women being allowed the same luxuries that men have in finding love not only to be stable and supported, and to also be able to make their own money and be secure on their own two feet.
She focused her attention on opening up society's allowance of women's liberation from a capitalist and bourgeois control and emphasizing women's suffrage in the working-class.
Critics like Kollontai believed
liberal feminism
Liberal feminism, also called mainstream feminism, is a main branch of feminism defined by its focus on achieving gender equality through political and legal reform within the framework of liberal democracy. It is often considered culturally ...
would undermine the efforts of Marxism to improve conditions for the working class. Marxists supported the more radical political program of liberating women through socialist revolution, with a special emphasis on work among women and in materially changing their conditions after the revolution. Additional liberation methods supported by Marxist feminists include radical "Utopian Demands", coined by
Maria Mies
Maria Mies (born 1931, Steffeln, Rhine Province, Prussia, Germany) is a German professor of sociology and author of several feminist books, including ''Indian Women and Patriarchy'' (1980), ''Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale'' (1986 ...
.
This indication of the scope of revolution required to promote change states that demanding anything less than complete reform will produce inadequate solutions to long-term issues.
Notable Marxist feminists
See also
References
Further reading
*
::''Cited in'':
:::
::* Federici, S. B. (2014).
Caliban and the witch' (2., rev. ed). New York, NY: Autonomedia.
::*
::* Marxist & Materialist Feminism - The Feminist eZine. (n.d.). Retrieved October 3, 2019, from http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/philosophy/Marxist-Materialist-Feminism.html
::*
::* Hennessy, R., & Ingraham, C. (1997). ''Materialist Feminism: A reader in Class, Difference, and Women's lives.'' Routledge.
::*
::*
External links
Marxism, Liberalism, And Feminism (Leftist Legal Thought)New Delhi, Serials (2010) by Dr.Jur. Eric Engle LL.M.
Silvia Federici, recorded live at Fusion Arts, NYC. 11.30.04Feminism of the Anti-Capitalist Leftby Lidia Cirillo
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Feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
Feminist theory
*