At the end of last year I read the influential book Women’s Oppression Today by Michelle Barrett. I’ve be promising a blog post on this book for ages and recently re-read the (rather lengthy) review of the book by Johanna Brenner and Maria Ramas Rethinking Women’s Oppression (if you want a PdF of this article please just ask). So it’s about time.
Writing initially in 1980 Michelle Barrett provides a really interesting analysis of women’s oppression using a Marxist lens. I have to say, first up, that I often found this book a struggle to get through. It is very theoretical and in many places rather jargonistic, which is not my favourite style. Hence below I will actually use a lot of Brenner and Ramas, who I find provide the best summary (and critique) of the book I’ve been able to find.
The most interesting element of Women’s Oppression Today for me, and an issue that Brenner and Ramas deal with most extensively in their review, is the question of what role does capitalism play in women’s oppression. This is the question I want to dive into.
There are two key questions that remain extraordinarily controversial in Marxist-feminist theory. First, to what degree is capitalism responsible for women’s oppression? Are the two inherently linked or are class/capitalist and gender systems separate? Secondly what role does ideology and culture play in women’s oppression. In other words is women’s oppression due to economic conditions, or do our dominant political and cultural ideologies play a role.
In Women’s Oppression Today Barrett tries to find an answer to these two questions. In doing so she critiques much of the Marxist analysis to date, providing her own answers the questions arisen.
Very broadly Marxist-feminist thought argues that women’s oppression, largely linked through the privatisation of domestic labour, is inherent to capitalism. To understand this we need to look at some history.
When capitalism arose the means of production became ‘socialised’. Production moved from households to factories, away from ‘private’ businesses run by families in which one (or a few) people conduct all elements of the production to one of factories where production becomes itemised in a social manner.
In doing so many of the previous economic ties people had with their families were broken. In particular women entered into factories, giving themselves greater economic independence. This, according to many Marxist-feminists (including myself), caused problems for the capitalist class. In particular child mortality rates skyrocketed, largely as women were unable to conduct care duties whilst in the factory. Capitalists were literally watching as their next swathe of workers died in front of them. With this women were largely pushed into the home, given control over the domestic duties, whilst men stayed in the factory and worked.
In turn, women’s oppression is inherently linked to capitalist production. As Brenner and Ramas argue, as capitalists are unwilling to pay for services such as childcare or maternity leave (as it would cut into their profits), women are forced back into conducting the majority of domestic tasks. As women often have more unstable work and are less unionised (due to spending more time out of work due to child rearing) they are unable to compete with men’s wages. This leaves them looking after the home, relying on their partner’s wages.
There is a lot more to these theories, but that largely covers it off. Importantly, Marxist-feminists argue that whilst women’s oppression clearly existed before capitalism, it is *also* inherent to the capitalist system.
Barrett however argues that these theories are too simple. In particular she argues that it cannot be shown that privatised reproduction on the basis of domestic labour (i.e. a system that forces women to look after children in the home with little to no support from the state or capital) is actually the cheapest means for the capitalism to conduct this work. Whilst in the short term it may make sense for capitalists to push women out of the workforce, this does not make long-term sense — particularly as capitalists are losing half their workforce. Beyond this, she argues, there is no clear evidence as to why women end up in these roles. Why is it that women ended up doing all the housework, and not men?
To make this argument Barrett develops a theory of what she calls the ‘family household system’. The ‘family household system’ is a structure in which “a number of people, usually biologically related, depend on the wages of a few adult members, primarily those of the husband/father, and in which all depend primarily on the unpaid labour of the wife/ mother for cleaning, food preparation, child care, and so forth.” (quoted from Brenner and Ramas). The family-household system was developed through a number of means, ranging from the implementation of ‘family wages’ for men (that meant they could cover all the costs of the family) to laws that banned women from working longer hours or working at night. Women were also often barred from unions, leaving them largely unrepresented.
Importantly though, for Barrett, this system is “not inherent to capitalism but has come to form a historically constituted element of class relations. This structure was not inevitable, but rather emerged through a historical process in which an ideology that posited women’s natural connection to domesticity was incorporated into capitalist relations of production.” (quoted from Brenner and Ramas)
In other words capitalism simply incorporated previous sexist ideology in order to accommodate its needs (particularly that of the raising of the next generation). Whilst not necessarily the most logical outcome for capitalists, it was the easiest and most convenient thing to do. In particular this move divided the working class, making any class struggle more difficult to achieve. This is important as it means, according to Barrett, that women’s oppression is not inherently connected to capitalism, and in turn that equality and liberation for women can occur within a capitalist system.
It is here where I have problems with Barrett’s analysis, and in turn largely agree with the critique made by Brenner and Ramas. Barrett uses a number of examples, but let’s look quickly at the rise of family household system. Brenner and Ramas describe Barrett’s theory as such:
The pivot in the formation of the family-household system, Barrett contends, was the mid-19th century struggle between a coalition of capitalists and male workers on the one hand, and female workers on the other, as a result of which the better organized male craft unions and the bourgeois-controlled state were able to override the interests of female workers. The expulsion of women from craft unions and the protective legislation on women’s working conditions passed in Britain in the 1840s–1860s effectively forced women into the domestic sphere and laid the basis for a sex-segregated wage-labour market. Once the family-household system was in place, a sex-segregated labour market was almost inevitable. The sexual division of labour within the house- hold and within the labour market, once established, serve to reinforce each other.
In other words, a sexist ideology, in particular implemented by working class unions, worked to push women out of the workforce and back into the home. Women’s oppression under capitalism was not due to the realities of the system, but because capitalists effectively conspired with working class men against women for their own interests. This ideology then created the economic conditions which perpetuated women’s oppression. As Barrett argues.
“A model of women’s dependence has become entrenched in the relations of production of capitalism, in the divisions of labour in wage work and between wage labour and domestic labour. As such, an oppression of women that is not in any essentialist sense pre-given by the logic of capitalist development has become necessary for the ongoing reproduction of the mode of production in its present form.”
It is this work that makes Barrett’s argument so interesting. Barrett tries to thread a fine needle between materialist and ideological explanations. But I also have, like Brenner and Ramas, serious reservations. I think Barrett is right to discuss the role of ideology in sexist relations, something which I think is potentially even more important today than in her writing. Ideology is extremely important and I do not think we can fight against materialist causes of women’s oppression without also fighting the ideological consequences of them. But I find her causal chain rather difficult.
In particular I want to one of her key question on its head: why is it that women end up oppressed in a capitalist society? Barrett in effect, concludes that it is because men work together to conspire against women, particularly in the workforce. I struggle to believe this. Whilst yes, MANY men have done this, it doesn’t make sense as a strategy for the working class. Brenner and Ramas argue this as such:
To put our criticism slightly differently, Barrett’s analysis, while materialist in approach, fails to identify any material basis for women’s oppression in capitalism. She rejects not only explanations that root this development in capitalist exigencies of the reproduction of labour power, but also radical-feminist proposals that point to biological reproduction as a material basis. Further, Barrett fails to find this system to be unambiguously in the vital material interests of any social group. Certainly it is not in the interests of women. Nor in the class interests of working-class men: a) because it is not clear that women’s domestic labour in the home raises the standard of living of the class as a whole; b) because it divides the working class by creating competition between men and women as wage labourers and within the family, and c) because it has never really been thoroughly established anyway. Moreover, although working-class men have some interest in the family-household system as men, Barrett does not believe that this is as great as some feminists argue. The role of male as breadwinner a) locks men effectively into wage labour, b) has deprived them of access to their children, and c) oppresses them by imposing a rigid definition of masculinity.
In other words there seems to be little reason why men would actively participate in the family-household system, particularly in the early stages of capitalism. Whilst of course many men participated as a whole it simply does not benefit them. In turn Barrett provides too much power to ideology — explaining too many problems through what I consider to be a very weak force.
Okay, even though that hardly covers anything I should end there. Otherwise this will go on forever. I will definitely be blogging more about the connections between capitalism and women’s oppression in the future. So keep your eye out.
In the meantime Women’s Oppression Today was certainly an interesting book and one worth reading. The role Barrett puts onto ideology is certainly importantly, and definitely worth thinking about. But definitely not one without its problems.
