Socialist Revolution and the Struggle for
Women's Liberation
The basic Marxist positions on women's oppression are
part of the programmatic foundations of the Fourth International. But this is
the first full resolution on women's liberation adopted by the international.
Its purpose is to set down our basic analysis of the character of women's
oppression, and the place the struggle against that oppression occupies in our
perspectives for all three sectors of the world revolution: the advanced
capitalist countries, the colonial and semi-colonial world, the workers states.
I. The Character of Women’s Oppression
The New Rise
of Women’s Struggles
1. Since the late 1960s a growing revolt by women
against their oppression as a sex has emerged. Throughout the world, millions
of women, especially young women- students, working women, housewives - are
beginning to challenge some of the most fundamental features of their
centuries-old oppression.
The first country in which this radicalization of
women appeared as a mass phenomenon was the
But the new wave of struggles by women in
The new women’s liberation movement came on the
historical scene as part of a more general upsurge of the working class and all
exploited and oppressed sectors of the world population. This upsurge has taken
many forms, from economic strikes, to struggles against national oppression, to
student demonstrations, to demands for environmental protection, to an
international movement against the imperialist war in
In many countries the new rise of women's struggles
preceded any widespread changes in the combativity of organized labor. In
others, such as
The swift growth of the women's liberation movement,
and the role it has played in the deepening class struggle, both
internationally and in specific countries, confirm that the fight for women's
liberation must be regarded as a fundamental component of the new rise of the
world revolution.
2. This radicalization of women
is unprecedented in the depth of the economic, social, and political ferment it
expresses and in its implications for the struggle against capitalist
oppression and exploitation.
In country after country,
growing numbers of women are taking part in large-scale campaigns against
reactionary abortion and contraception statutes. Oppressive marriage laws,
inadequate child-care facilities, and legal restrictions on equality. They are
exposing and resisting the ways in which sexism is expressed in all spheres
-from politics, employment, and education to the most intimate aspects of daily
life, including the weight of domestic drudgery and the violence and
intimidation that women are subjected to in the home and on the street.
Women are raising demands that
challenge the specific forms their oppression takes under capita1ism today, and
are calling into question the deep-rooted traditional division of labor between
men and women, from the home to the factory.
More and more they are demanding affirmative action to open the doors
previous1y closed to women in all arenas and overcome the legacy of centuries
of institutionalized discrimination.
They are insisting upon the right to participate with
complete equality in all forms of social, economic and cultural activity -
equal education, equal access to jobs, equal pay for equal work.
In order to make this equality possible, women are
searching for ways to end their domestic servitude. They are demanding that
women's household chores be socialized and no longer organized as "women's
work." The most conscious recognize that society, as opposed to the
individual family unit, should take responsibility for the young, the old, and
the sick.
At the very center of the women's liberation movement
has been the fight to decriminalize abortion and make it available to all
women. The right to control their own bodies, to choose whether to bear
children, when, and how many, is recognized by millions of women as an
elementary precondition for their liberation.
Such demands go to the very heart of the specific
oppression of women exercised through the family and strike at the pillars of
class society. They indicate the degree to which the struggle for women's
liberation is a fight to transform all human social relations and place them on
a new and higher plane.
3. The fact that the women's liberation movement began
to emerge as an international phenomenon even prior to the exacerbation of
capitalism’s worldwide economic contradictions in the mid-1970s only serves to
underscore the deep roots of this rebellion. It is one of the clearest symptoms
of the depth of the social crisis of the bourgeois order today.
These struggles illustrate the degree to which the
outmoded capita1ist relations and institutions generate deepening
contradictions in every sector of society and precipitate new expressions of
the class struggle. The death agony of capitalism brings new layers into direct
conflict with the fundamenta1 needs and prerogatives of the bourgeoisie,
bringing forth new allies, and strengthening the working class in its struggle
to overthrow the capitalist system. The development of the struggle by women
against their oppression has already begun to deprive the ruling class of one
of the principal weapons it has long used to divide and weaken the exploited
and oppressed.
4. Women.s oppression has been an essential feature of
class society throughout the ages. But the practical tasks of uprooting its
causes, as well as combating its effects, could not be posed on a mass scale
before the era of the transition from capita1ism to socialism. The fight for
women's liberation is inseparable from the workers' struggle to abolish
capita1ism. It constitutes an integral part of the socialist revolution and the
communist perspective of a classless society.
The replacement of the patriarchal family systern
rooted in private property by a superior organization of human relations is a
prime objective of the socialist revolution. This process will accelerate and
deepen as the material and ideological foundations of the new communist order
are brought into being.
The development of the women's liberation movement today advances the
class struggle, strengthens its forces, and enhances the prospects for
socialism.
5. Women can achieve their liberation only through the victory of the
world socialist revolution. This goal can be realized only by mobilizing and
organizing masses of women as a powerful component of the class struggle.
Therein lies the objective revolutionary dynamic of the struggle for women's
liberation and the fundamental reason why the Fourth International must concern
itself with, and help to provide revolutionary leadership for, women struggling
to achieve their liberation.
Origin and Nature of Women's Oppression
1. The oppression of women is not determined by their
biology, as many contend. Its origins are economic and social in character.
Throughout the evolution of pre-class and class society, women's childbearing
function has always been the same. But their social status has not always been
that of a degraded domestic servant, subject to man's control and command.
2. Before the development of
class society, during the historical period that Marxists have traditionally
referred to as primitive communism (subsistence societies), social production
was organized communally and its product shared equally. There was therefore no
exploitation or oppression of one group or sex by another because no material
basis for such social relations existed. Both sexes participated in social
production, helping to assure the sustenance and survival of all. The social
status of both women and men reflected the indispensable roles that each of
thern played in this productive process.
3. The origin of women's oppression is intertwined
with the transition from pre-class to class society. The exact process by which
this complex transition took place is a continuing subject of research and
discussion even among those who subscribe to a materialist historical view.
However, the fundamental lines along which women’s oppression emerged are
clear. The change in women's status developed along with the growing
productivityof human labor based on agriculture, the dornestication of animals,
and stock raising; the rise of new divisions of labor, craftsmanship, and
commerce; the private appropriation of an increasing social surplus; and the
development of the possibility for some humans to prosper frorn the
exploitation of the labor of others.
In these specific socioeconomic conditions, as the
exploitation of human beings became profitable for a privileged few, women,
because of their biological role in production, became valuable property. Like slaves and cattle, they were a source of
wealth. They alone could produce new human beings whose labor power could be
exploited. Thus the purchase of women by men, along with all rights to their
future offspring, arose as one of the economic and social institutions of the
new order based on private property.
Women's primary social role was increasingly defined as domestic servant
and childbearer.
Along with the private accumulation of wealth, the
patriarchal family developed as the institution by which responsibility for the
unproductive mernbers of society- especially the young- was transferred frorn
society as a whole to an identifiable individual or small group of
individuals. It was the primary
socioeconomic institution for perpetuating from one generation to the next the
class divisions of society- divisions between those who possessed property and
lived off the wealth produced by the labor of others, and those who, owning no
property, had to work for others to live. The destruction of the egalitarian
and communal traditions and structures of primitive communism was essential for
the rise of an exploiting class and its accelerated private accumulation of
wealth.
This was the origin of the patriarchal family. In fact, the word family itself, which is
still used in the Latin-based languages today, comes from the original Latin famulus,
which means household slave, and familia, the totality of slaves
belonging to one man.
Women ceased to have an independent place in social production. Their
productive role was determined by the family to which they belonged, by the man
to whorn they were subordinate. This economic dependence determined the
second-class social status of women, on which the cohesiveness and continuity
of the patriarchal family has always depended. If women could simply take their
children and leave, without suffering any economic or social hardship, the
patriarchal family would not have survived through the millennia.
The patriarchal family and the subjugation of women thus came into
existence along with the other institutions of emerging class society in order
to buttress nascent class divisions and perpetuate the private accumulation of
wealth. The state, with its police and armies, laws and courts, enforced this
relationship. Ruling class ideology, including religion, arose on this basis
and played a vital role in justifying the degradation of the female sex.
Women, it was said, were physically and mentally inferior to men and
therefore were “naturally” or biologically the second sex. While the
subjugation of women has always had different consequences for women of
distinct classes, all women regardless of class were and are oppressed as part
of the female sex.
4. The family
system is the fundamental institution of class society that determines and
maintains the specific character of the oppression of the female sex.
Throughout the history of class society, the family
system has proved its value as an institution of class rule. The form of the family
has evolved and adapted itself to the changing needs of the ruling classes as
the modes of production and forms of private property have gone through
different stages of development. The family system under classical slavery was
different from the family system during feudalism (there was no real slave
family). Both were quite different from what is often called the urban
"nuclear family" of today.
Moreover, the family system simultaneously fulfil1s
different social and economic requirements in reference to classes with
different productive roles and property rights whose interests are
diametrically opposed. For example, the "family" of the serf and the
"family" of the nobleman were quite different socioeconomic
formations. However, they were both part of the family system, an
institution of class rule that has played an indispensable role at each stage
in the history of class society.
In class society the family is the only place most
people can turn to try to satisfy some basic human needs, such as love and
companionship. However poorly the family may meet these needs for many, there
is no real altemative as long as private property exists. The disintegration of
the family under capitalism brings with it much misery and suffering precisely
because no superior framework for human relations can yet emerge.
But providing for affection and companionship is not
what defines the nature of the family system. It is an economic and social
institution whose functions can be summarized as follows:
a. The family is the basic mechanism through which the
ruling classes abrogate social responsibility for the economic well-being of
those whose labor power they exploit - the masses of humanity. The ruling class
tries, to the degree possible, to force each family to be responsible for its
own, thus institutionalizing the unequal distribution of income, status and
wealth.
b. The family system provides the means for passing on
property ownership from one generation to the next. It is the basic social mechanism for perpetuating
the division of society into classes.
c. For the ruling class, the family system provides
the most inexpensive and ideologically acceptable mechanism for reproducing
human labor. Making the family responsible for care of the young means that the
portion of society's accumulated wealth - appropriated as private property-
that is utilized to assure reproduction of the laboring classes is
minimized. Furthermore, the fact that
each family is an atomized unit, fighting to assure the survival of its own,
hinders the most exploited and oppressed from uniting in common action.
d. The family system enforces a social division of
labor in which women are fundamentally defined by their childbearing role and
assigned tasks immediately associated with this reproductive function: care of
the other family members. Thus the family institution rests on and reinforces a
social division of labor involving the domestic subjugation and economic
dependence of women.
e. The family system is a repressive and conservatizing
institution that reproduces within itself the hierarchical, authoritarian
relationships necessary to the maintenance of class society as a whole. It
fosters the possessive, competitive, and aggressive attitudes necessary to the
perpetuation of class divisions.
It molds the behavior and character structure of
children from infancy through adolescence. It trains, disciplines, and polices
them, teaching submission to established authority. It then curbs rebellious, nonconformist
impulses. It represses and distorts all
sexuality, forcing it into socially acceptable channe1s of male and female
sexual activity for reproductive purposes and socioeconomic roles. It
inculcates all the social values and behaviora1 norms that individuals must acquire
in order to survive in class society and submit to its domination. It distorts
all human relationships by imposing on them the framework of economic
compulsion, persona1 dependence, and sexual repression.
5. Under capita1ism, as in previous historica1 epochs,
the family has evolved. But the family system continues to be an indispensable
institution of class rule, fulfilling all the economic and social functions
outlined.
Among the bourgeoisie, the family provides for the
transmission of private property from generation to generation. Marriages often
assure profitable a1liances or mergers of large blocs of capital, especially in
the early stages of capital accumulation.
Among the classica1 petty bourgeoisie, such as
farmers, craftsmen, or small shopkeepers, the family is also a unit of
production based on the labor of family members.
For the working class, while the family provides some
degree of mutual protection for its own members, in the most basic sense it is
an alien class institution, one that is imposed on the working class, and
serves the economic interests of the bourgeoisie not the workers. Yet working
people are indoctrinated from childhood to regard it (like wage labor, private
property and the state) as the most natural and imperishable of human
relations.
a. With the rise of capitalism and the growth of the
working class, the family unit among the workers ceases to be a petty-bourgeois
unit of production although it remains the basic unit through which consumption
and reproduction of labor power are organized. Each member of the family sells
his or her labor power individually on the labor market. The basic economic bond that previously held
together the family of the exploited and oppressed - i.e., the fact that they
had to work together cooperatively in order to survive - begins to dissolve. As
women are drawn into the labor market they achieve some degree of economic
independence for the first time since the rise of class society. This begins to
undermine the acceptance by women of their domestic subjugation. As a result,
the family system is undermined.
b. Thus there is a contradiction between the
increasing integration of women in the labor market and the survival of the
family. As women achieve greater
economic independence and more equality, the family institution begins to
disintegrate. But the family system is an indispensable pillar of class rule.
It must be preserved if capitalism is to survive.
c. The growing number of women in the labor market
creates a deep contradiction for the capitalist class, especially during
periods of accelerated expansion. They must employ more women to profit from
their superexploitation. Yet the employment of women cuts across their ability
to carry out the basic unpaid dornestic labor of child-rearing for which women
are responsible. So the state must begin to buttress the family, helping to
assure and subsidize some of the economic and social functions it used to
fulfill, such as education, child care, etc.
But such social services are more costly than the
unpaid domestic labor of women. They absorb some of the surplus value that
would otherwise by appropriated by the owners of capital. They cut into
profits. Moreover, social programs of this kind foster the idea that society,
not the family, should be responsible for the welfare of its nonproductive
members. They raise the social expectations of the working class.
d. Unpaid work by women in the home - cooking,
cleaning, washing, caring for children - plays a specific role under
capitalism. This household work is a necessary element in the reproduction of
labor power so1d to the capitalists (either a woman's own labor power, her
husband's, or her children's, or that of any other member of the family).
Other things being equal, if women did not perform
unpaid labor inside the families of the working class, the general wage level
would have to rise. Real wages would have to be high enough to purchase the
goods and services which are now produced within the family. (Of course, the
general standard of living necessary for the reproduction of labor power is a
historically determined given at any time in any country. It cannot be
drastically reduced without a crushing defeat of the working class.) Any
general decrease of unpaid dornestic labor by women would thus cut into total
profits, changing the proportion between profits and wages in favor of the
proletariat.
However useful it may be, a woman's household work
produces no commodities for the market and thus produces no value or surplus
value. Nor does it directly enter into the process of capitalist exploitation.
In value terms, unpaid domestic work in the family affects the rate of
surplus value. Indirectly, it increases the total mass of social surplus value.
This holds true whether such labor is performed by women, or shared by men.
It is the capitalist class, not men in general, and
certainly not male wage earners, which profits from, women's unpaid labor in
the household. This “exploitation” of the family of the toilers, the burden of
which fal1s overwhelmingly on women, can be eradicated only by overthrowing
capitalism and socializing domestic chores in the process of socialist
reconstruction.
e. The indispensable role of the family and the
dilemma that the growing employment of women creates for the ruling class
becomes clearest in periods of economic crisis. The rulers must accomplish two
goals.
They must drive a significant number of women from the
work force to reestablish the reserve labor pool and lower wage levels.
They must cut the growing costs of social services
provided by the state and transfer the economic burden and responsibility for
these services back onto the individual family of the worker.
In order to accomplish both of these objectives, they
must launch an ideological offensive against the very concept of women's
equality and independence, and reinforce the responsibility of the individual
family for its own children, its elderly, its sick. They must reinforce the
image of the family as the only “natural” form of human relations, and convince
women who have begun to rebel against their subordinate status that true
happiness comes only through fulfilling their “natural” and primary role as
wife-mother- housekeeper. To their dismay, the capitalists are now discovering
that despite appeals to austerity and dire warnings of crisis, the more
thoroughly women are integrated into the work force, the more difficult it is
to push sufficient numbers back into the home.
f. In the early stages of industrialization the
unregulated, unbridled, brutal exploitation of women and children often goes so
far as to serious1y erode the family structure in the working class and
threaten its usefulness as a system for organizing, controlling, and reproducing
the work force.
This was the trend that Marx and Engels drew attention
to in nineteenth century
g. Capitalist politicians responsible for shaping
policies to protect and defend the interests of the ruling class are extremely
conscious of the indispensable economic, social, and political role of the
family and the need to maintain it as the basic social nucleus under
capitalism. “Defense of the family"
is not only some peculiar demagogic shibboleth of the ultraright. Maintenance of the family system is the basic
political policy of every capitalist state, dictated by the social and economic
needs of capitalism itself.
6. Under capitalism, the family system also provides the
mechanism for the superexploitation of women as wage workers.
a. It provides capitalism with an exceptionally
flexible reservoir of labor power that can be drawn into the labor force or
sent back into the home with fewer social consequences than any other component
of the reserve army of labor.
Because the entire ideological superstructure
reinforces the fiction that women's place is in the home, high unemployment
rates for women cause relatively less social protest. After all, it is said,
women work only to supplement an already existing source of income for the
family. When they are unemployed, they are occupied with their household
chores, and are not so obviously "out of work”. The anger and resentment
they feel is often dissipated as a serious social threat by the general
isolation and atomization of women in separate, individual households. Thus in
any period of economic crisis, the austerity measures of the ruling class
always include attacks on women's right to work, including increased pressure
on women to accept part-time employment, cutbacks in unemployment benefits for
“housewives”, and the reduction of social services such as child-care
facilities.
b. Because women’s “natural” place is supposed to be
in the home, capitalism has a widely accepted rationalization for perpetuating:
1) the employment of women in low- paying, unskilled
jobs. "They aren’t worth training
because they'll only get pregnant or married and quit."
2) unequal pay rates and low pay. They're only working to buy gadgets and
luxuries anyway.”
3) deep divisions within the working class
itself. “She's taking a job a man should
have.”
4) the fact that women workers are not proportionally
integrated in the trade unions and other organizations of the working
class. “She shouldn't be running around
going to meetings. She should be home taking care of the kids.”
c. Since all wage structures are built from the bottom
up, this superexploitation of women as a reserve work force plays an
irreplaceable role in holding down men's wages as well.
d. The subjugation of women within the family system
provides the economic, social, and ideological foundations that make their
superexploitation possible. Women workers are exploited not only as wage labor
but also as a pariah labor pool defined by sex.
7. Because the oppression of women is historically
intertwined with the division of society into classes and with the role of the
family as the basic unit of class society, this oppression can only be
eradicated with the abolition of private ownership of the means of production.
Today it is these class relations of production - not the productive capacities
of humanity- which constitute the obstacle to transferring to society as a
whole the social and economic functions borne under capitalism by the
individual family.
8. The
materialist analysis of the historical origin and economic roots of women's
oppression is essential to developing a program and perspective capable of
winning women's liberation. To reject this scientific explanation inevitably
leads to one of two errors:
a. One error, made by many who claim to follow the
Marxist method, is to deny, or at least downplay the oppression of women as a
sex throughout the entire history of class society. They see the oppression of
women purely and simply as an aspect of the exploitation of the working class.
This view gives weight and importance to struggles by women only in their
capacity as wage workers on the job. It
says women will be liberated, in passing, by the socialist revolution, so there
is no special need for them to organize as women fighting for their own
demands.
In rejecting the need for women to organize against
their oppression, they only reinforce divisions within the working class, and
retard the development of class consciousness among women who begin to rebel
against their subordinate status.
b. A symmetrical error is made by those who argue that
male domination of women existed before class society began to emerge. This was
concretized, they hold, through a sexual division of labor. Thus, patriarchal
oppression must be explained by reasons other than the development of private
property and class society. They see patriarchy as a set of oppressive
relations parallel to but independent of class relations.
Those who have developed this analysis in a systematic
way usually isolate the fact of women's role in reproduction and concentrate on
it alone. They largely ignore the
primacy of cooperative labor, the essence of human society, and place little
weight on women's place in the process of production at each historical stage.
Some even go so far as to theorize a timeless patriarchal mode of reproduction
with male control over the means of reproduction (women). They often put
forward psychoanalytical explanations which readily fall into ahistorical
idealism, rooting oppression in biological and/or psychological drives torn out
of the materialist framework of social relations.
This current, sometimes organized as ‘radical
feminists’, contains both conscious anti-Marxists and others who consider
themselves to be making a “feminist redefinition of Marxism." But the view that women's oppression is
parallel to, not rooted in, the emergence and development of class exploitation
leads the most consistent to pose the need for a political party of women based
on a “feminist” program that pretends
to be independent of the class struggle. They are hostile to and reject the
need for women and men to organize together on the basis of a revolutionary
working-class program to end both class exploitation and sexual oppression.
They see little need for alliances in struggle with others who are oppressed
and exploited.
Both of these one-sided approaches deny the
revolutionary dynamic of the struggle for women's liberation as a form of the
class struggle. Both fail to recognize that the struggle for women's
liberation, to be successful, must go beyond the bounds of capitalist property
relations. Both reject the implications this fact has for the working class and
its revolutionary Marxist leadership.
Roots of the New Radicalization of Women
1. The women's liberation movement of today stands on
the shoulders of the earlier struggles by women at the turn of the century.
With the consolidation of industrial capitalism throughout
the nineteenth century, increasing numbers of women were integrated into the
labor market. The gap between the social and legal status of women inherited
from feudalism and their new economic status as wage workers selling their
labor power in the market produced glaring contradictions. For women of the
ruling class, too, capitalism opened the door to economic independence. Out of
these contradictions arose the first wave of women's struggles aimed at winning
full legal equality with men.
Among those fighting for women's rights were different
political currents. Many of the suffragist leaders were women who believed the
vote should be won by showing the ruling class that they were loyal defenders
of the capitalist system. Some linked tbe suffragist struggle to support for
imperialism in World War I and often opposed the right to vote for propertyless
men and women, immigrants, Blacks.
But there was also a strong current of socialist women
in a number of countries who saw the fight for women's rights as part of the
working-class struggle and mobilized support from working-class women and men
on that basis. They fought for the right to vote and played a decisive role in
the suffrage struggle in countries like the
Even some of the semicolonial countries such as
Through struggle the women ofthe most advanced
capitalist countries won, to varying degrees, several important democratic
rights: the right to higher education, the right to engage in trades and
professions, the right to receive and dispose of their own wages (which had
been considered the right of the husband or father), the right to own property,
the right to divorce, the right to participate in political organizations. In
several countries this first upsurge culminated in mass struggles for the right
to vote.
2. Women's suffrage, following or sometimes
accompanying universal male suffrage, was an important objective gain for the
working class. It reflected, and in turn helped advance, the changing social
status of women. For the first time in class society, women were legally
considered citizens fit to participate in public affairs, with the right to a
voice on major political questions, not just private household matters.
Even though the underlying cause of the subordinate
status of women lies in the very foundations of class society itself and
women's special role within the family, not in the formal denial of equality
under the law, the extension of democratic rights to women gave them greater
latitude for action and helped later generations see that the sources of
women's oppression lay deeper.
3. The roots of the new radicalization of women are to
be found in the economic and social changes of the post-World War II years,
which have effected deepening contradictions in the capitalist economy, in the
status of women, and in the patriarchal family system. To varying degrees the
same factors were at work in every country that remained within the world
capitalist market. But it is not surprising that the resurgence of the women's
movement today first came about in the most advanced capitalist countries -
such as the
a. Advances in medical science and technology in the
field of birth control and abortion have created the means by which masses of
women can have greater control over their reproductive functions. Control by
women over their own bodies is a precondition for women's liberation.
While such medical techniques are more widely available, reactionary
laws, reinforced by bourgeois customs, religious bigotry, and the entire
ideological superstructure of class society, often stand in the way of women
exercising control over their own reproductive functions. Financial, legal,
psychological, and “moral” barriers are fabricated to try to prevent women from
demanding the right to choose whether and when to bear children. In addition,
the limits placed on research due to capitalist profit considerations and
sexist disregard for the lives of women have meant continuing health hazards
for women using the most convenient methods of birth control.
This contradiction between what is possible and what actually exists
affects the lives of all women. It has
given rise to the powerful abortion rights struggles, which have been at the
center of the women’s movement on an international scale.
b. The prolonged boom conditions of the postwar expansion significantly
increased the percentage of women in the labor force.
To take the
Equally important, the percentage of working women with children
increased dramatically, as did the percentage of working women who were heads
of households.
In
In
Only some countries that still had a high percentage of agricultural
workers after the Second World War have experienced a decline in female
employment over the postwar period. This
was due to the fact that with the migration to the cities, many women were not
reintegrated into the so-called active population. In
In extremely depressed regions such as southern
As the influx of women into the labor force has taken
place, there has been no substantial change in the degree of wage
discrimination against women. In many countries this differential between the
sexes has actually widened.
This is primarily because the increased employment of
women has not been spread evenly over all job categories. In nearly all
countries women represent from 70 to 90 percent of the work force employed in
textiles, shoes, ready-to-wear clothing, tobacco, and other light industry -
that is, sectors in which wages are lowest. Women also account for 70 percent
or more of people employed in the service sector, with the greatest majority of
women occupying the least remunerative positions: secretaries, file clerks,
health workers, teachers in primary schoo1s, keypunch operators.
Discrimination in sectors of employment - exacerbated
by unequal pay for the same work in many cases - is the fundamental reason why,
even in those countries where the labor movement has fought the hardest on this
question, the average wage for women barely exceeds 75 percent of the average
wage for men. This also explains why the differential may even widen with the
massive entry of women into the lowest-paid sectors of the economy. This is the
case in the
Despite their growing place in the work force, women
are still forced to assume the majority, if not the totality, of domestic tasks
in addition to their wage labor. As a consequence, they often quit working
temporarily when they have children, especially when they are faced with many
hours of forced overtime, and then have difficulty finding new jobs later. If
they continue to work they are obliged to stay home when a child is sick.
This has led to a significant increase in part-time
work by women - either because they cannot find fulltime employment, or because
they cannot otherwise cope with their domestic chores. But part-time work
invariably brings with it lower wages, less job security, few social security
benefits, and less likelihood of unionization.
The growing weight of women in the work force has had
a strong impact on the attitudes of their male fellow workers. This is
especially true where women have begun to fight their way into jobs in basic
industry from which women were previously excluded.
But women workers still face many forms of
discrimination and sexist abuse, promoted, organized and maintained by the
bosses. Their fellow workers are often not aware of them, and sometimes express
the same backward attitudes. And the
labor bureaucracy blocks the use of union power to overcome the special
obstacles women face-such as the refusal to give paid time off for matemity
leaves, health hazards that are doubly dangerous for pregnant women, and
harassment by foremen and supervisors who use their control over jobs to try to
pressure women into sexual relations.
c. The rise in the average educationa1 level of women has further heightened
the contradictions. As labor productivity increases and the general cultural
level of the working class rises, more women finish their years of secondary
education. Women are also accepted into institutions of higher education on a
qualitatively larger scale than ever before.
Yet, as the employment statistics indicate, the percentage of women
holding jobs commensurate with their educational level has not kept pace. In
all areas of the job market, from industry to the professions, women with
higher educationa1 qualifications are usually bypassed by men with less
education. Moreover, throughout primary and secondary school, girls continue to
be pushed-through required courses of study or through more indirect pressures
- into what are considered women's jobs and roles.
As they receive more education and as social struggles raise their
individua1 expectations, the stifling and mind-deadening drudgery of household
chores and the constrictions of family life become increasingly unbearable.
Thus the heightened educational level of women, combined with an
intensification of the class struggle, has deepened the contradiction between
women's demonstrated abilities and broadened aspirations, and their actua1
social and economic status.
d. The functions of the family unit in advanced capitalist society have
continua1ly contracted. It has become less and less a unit of petty production
- either agricultural or domestic (canning, weaving, sewing, baking, etc.). The
urban nuclear family of today has come a long way from the productive farm
family of previous centuries. At the same time, in their search for profits,
consumer-oriented capitalist industry and advertising seek to maximize the
atomization and duplication of domestic work in order to sell each household
its own washer, dryer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, etc.
As the standard of living rises, the average number of children per
family declines sharply. Industria1ly prepared foods and other conveniences
become increasingly available. Yet, in spite of the technologica1 advances,
surveys in a number of imperia1ist countries have shown that women who have
more than one child and a full-time job must put in 80 to 100 hours of work per
week - more hours than similar surveys conducted in 1926 and 1952 revealed. While
appliances have eased certain domestic tasks, the shrinking size of the average
family unit has meant that women are less able to ca11 on grandparents, aunts,
or sisters to help.
With all these changes, the objective basis for confining women to the home
becomes less and less compelling. Yet the needs of the ruling class dictate
that the family system be preserved. Bourgeois ideology and social conditioning
continue to reinforce the reactionary fiction that a woman's identity and
fullfillment must come from her role as wife-mother-house-keeper. The
contradiction between reality and myth becomes increasingly obvious and
intolerable to growing numbers of women.
This state of affairs is frequently referred to as "the crisis of
the family”, which is expressed in the soaring divorce rates, increased numbers
of runaway children and rising domestic violence.
4. Greater democratic rights and broader social opportunities have not
"satisfied" women, or inclined them to a passive acceptance of their
inferior social status and economic dependence.
On the contrary, they have stimulated new struggles and more
far-reaching demands.
It was generally the young, college-educated women, those who enjoyed a
relatively greater freedom of choice, and those most affected by the youth
radicalization of the 1960s, who first articulated the grievances of women in
an organized and outspoken way. This led some who consider themselves Marxists
to conclude that women's liberation is basically a middle-class or bourgeois
protest movement that has no serious interest for revolutionists or the masses
of working-class women. They could not be more wrong.
The initial development of the women's liberation movement served only
to emphasize the depth and scope of women's oppression. Even those with many
advantages in terms of education and other opportunities were and continue to
be propelled into action. The most oppressed and exploited are not necessarily
the first to articulate their discontent.
5. Contributing to the growth of the women's liberation movement in
recent years, and increasing the involvement of working-class women, has been
the drive to cut back social expenditures in most advanced capitalist
countries. After the Second World War, in a context of heightened demands by the
working class that more social services be provided by the state, the
bourgeoisie, especially in
Today, faced with deepening economic problems, the
ruling class is s1ashing social expenditures and trying to shift the burden
back onto the individual family, with all the consequences that has for women.
But resistance to being driven out of their newly acquired places in the work
force, and broad female opposition to social cutbacks such as the closing of child-care
centers, have created unexpectedly thorny problems for the rulers in many
countries. Imbued with a growing
feminist consciousness, women have been more combative and less willing than
ever before to shoulder a disproportionate burden in the current economic
crisis.
6. While the women's radicalization has an independent
dynamic of its own, determined by the specific character of women's oppression
and the objective changes that have been described, it is not isolated from the
more general upsurge of the class struggle taking place today. It is not
directly dependent on other social forces, subordinate to their leadership, or
beholden to their initiative. At the same time, the women's movement has been
and remains deeply interconnected with the rise of other social struggles, all
of which have likewise affected the consciousness of the entire working class.
a. From the beginning, the new upsurge of women's
struggles has been strongly affected by the international youth radicalization and
the increased challenge to bourgeois values and institutions that accompanied
it. Young people -both male and female - began to question religion; to reject
patriotism; to cha1lenge authoritarian hierarchies from family to school, to
factory .to army; to reject the inevitability of a lifetime of alienated labor.
Radica1ized youth began to rebel against sexual repression and to challenge the
traditional morality equating sex with reproduction. For women, this involved a
challenge to the time-honored education of fema1es to be sexually passive,
sentimental, fearful, and timid. Masses of youth, including young women, became
more conscious of their sexual misery and tried to search for more fulfilling
types of persona1 relationships.
b. One of the factors contributing to the intemationa1
youth radicalization has been the role played by the liberation struggles of
oppressed nations and nationa1ities, both in the colonial world and in the
advanced capitalist countries. Moreover, these have had a powerful impact on
the consciousness conceming women's oppression in general. For example, the
Black struggle in the
As the feminist movement has developed in the advanced
capitalist countries, women of the oppressed nationa1ities have begun to play
an increasingly prominent role. As oppressed nationalities, as women, and
frequent1y as superexploited workers, these women suffer a double and often
triple oppression. Their objective place in society means they are in a
position to play a strategically important role in the working class and among
its allies.
But there has generally been a lag in the pace with
which women of oppressed nationalities have become conscious of their specific
oppression as women. There are several reasons for this. For many, the depth of
their national oppression initially overshadows their oppression as women. Many
radical nationalist movements have refused to take up the demands of women,
calling them divisive to the struggle for national liberation. The organized
women's movement has often failed in its obligation to address itself to the
needs of the most oppressed and exploited layers of women and understand the
special difficulties they face. In addition, the hold of the family is often
particularly strong among women of the oppressed nationalities, since the
family sometimes seems to provide a partial buffer against the devastating
pressures of racism and cultural annihilation.
Nevertheless, once the radicalization begins
experience has already shown it takes on an explosive character, propeIling
women of oppressed nationalities into the leadership of many social and
political struggles including struggles on the job, in the unions, on campuses
and in the communities, as weIl as the feminist movement. They rapidly come to
understand that the struggle against their oppression as women does not weaken
but strengthens the struggle against their national oppression.
c. Contributing to the rise of the women's movement
has been the crisis of the traditional organized religions, especially the
Catholic church. The weakening hold of the church (accompanied by a growth in
occultism and mysticism) is a dramatic manifestation of the ideological crisis
of bourgeois society. AlI organized religion, which is part of the
superstructure of class society, is predicated on and reinforces the notion
that women are inferior, if not the very incarnation of evil and animality.
Christianity and Judaism, which mark the cultures of the advanced capitalist
countries, have always upheld the inequality of women and denied them the right
to separate sexuality from reproduction.
In countries where the Catholic church has had a
particularly strong hold, it is often radicalizing women who are spearheading
the challenge to the power and ideological hold of the church, as shown in the
demonstrations of tens of thousands for the right to abortion in ltaly, or the
demonstrations in 1976 against the anti- adultery laws in Spain.
In 1srael, too, the fight for abortion rights shook
the stability of the Begin government.
In many oppressed nations such as Québec, Ireland, and
Euzkadi (the Basque country), and among the Chicano people, the repressive
ideology of the Catholic church has combined in a particularly oppresive way
with the myth of the “woman-mother,” the center of the family, as the only pole
of social, emotional, and political stability, the only refuge from the ravages
of national oppression. In Québec for years this amalgam was expressed in the concept
of the “revenge of the cradle," suggesting the Québécois women must save
the nation from assimilation by having many children.
d. The lesbian-feminist movement emerged as an
interrelated but distinct aspect of the radicalization of women.
Lesbians have organized as a component of the gay
rights movement, generally finding it necessary to fight within the gay
movement for their specific demands as gay women to be recognized. But
lesbians are also oppressed as women. Many radicalized as women first and felt
the discrimination they suffered because of their sexual orientation was only
one element of the social and economic limitations women face in trying to
determine the course of their lives. Thus many lesbians were in the forefront
of the feminist movement from the very beginning. They have been part of every
political current within the women's liberation movement, from
lesbian-separatists to revolutionary Marxists, and they have helped to make the
entire movement more conscious of the specific ways in which gay women are
oppressed.
Because of the lesbian movement's insistence on the
right of women to live independent of men, they often become the special target
of attacks by reaction. From hate propaganda to violent physical assaults, the
attacks on lesbians and the lesbian movement are really aimed against the
women's movement as a whole. Attempts to divide the women's movement by
lesbian-baiting must be rejected in a clear and uncompromising way if the
struggle for women's liberation is to move forward.
e. In many of
the advanced capitalist countries immigrant women workers have also played a
special role. Not only are they superexploited as part of the work force. They
are the victims of special discriminatory laws. As women, they often have no right
to accompany their husbands to any given country unless they have been able to
secure employment for themselves prior to immigrating. If they find work, they
are often obliged to give it up to follow their husbands elsewhere. Government
measures adopted in recent years to reduce the number of immigrant workers in
many advanced capitalist countries have made these laws even more
discriminatory.
In a country like
7. The fading of the postwar boom and the deepening
economic, social, and political problems of imperialism on a world scale,
highlighted by the 1974-75 international recession, led to an intensification
of the attacks on women's rights on al1 levels. This did not lead to a decline
in women's struggles, or relegate them to the sidelines as more powerful social
forces came to the fore. Far from diminishing as the struggles of the organized
working class sharpened in recent years, feminist consciousness and struggles
by women continue to spread and to become more deeply intertwined with the
developing social consciousness and political combativity of working-class
women and men. Women’s resistance to the economic, political, and ideological
offensive of the ruling class has been stiffened by the heightened feminist
awareness. Their struggles have been a powerful motor force of social protest
and political radicalization.
Responses
from the Bourgeoisie and from Currents in the Workers Movement
1. Divisions rapidly appeared inside the capita1ist
class over how best to respond to the new rise of women's struggles in order to
blunt their impact and deflect their radical thrust. After initial attempts to
dismiss the women's movement with ridicule and scorn, however, the prevailing
view within the ruling class has been to give lip service to the idea that
women have at least some just grievances. There has been an attempt to appear
concerned - by setting up some special govemment departments, commissions, or
projects to catch women's attention, while working assiduously to integrate the
leadership of the women's movement into the accepted patterns of class
collaboration. In most countries, the ruling class was forced to make a few
concessions that seemed least harmful economically and ideologically - and then
steadily tried to take them back.
In each case the aim has been the same, whatever the
tactics: to contain the nascent radicalization within the framework of minimal
reforms of the capitalist system.
In many European countries, there have been moves to
liberalize maternity benefits by extending leaves, raising the percentage of
pay women receive while on leave, or by guaranteeing work after a maternity
leave without pay. In other countries,
governments have ostentatiously debated the justice of promises for equal pay
laws, or liberalized divorce laws. In the United States both capitalist
political parties have gone on record for passage of an equal rights amendment
to the constitution while in practice they sabotage each attempt to muster
enough votes to make it law.
But when it comes to social programs that would have
immediate and significant economic impact-such as the expansion of child-care
facilities - the gains have been virtually nonexistent.
The most serious gain extracted by the international
women's movement in the decade since it arose has been the significant
expansion of access to legal abortion. In more than twenty countries there has been
a marked liberalization of abortion laws.
In
every country where women have made measurable progress toward establishing
abortion as a right, it has rapidly become clear that this right is never secure
under capitalism. Wherever women begin to fight for the right to control their
own reproductive functions, the most reactionary defenders of the capitalist
system have immediately mobilized to prevent that elementary precondition of
women's liberation from being established. The right to choose is too great a
challenge to the ideological underpinnings of women's oppression.
However,
it is politically important to see clearly that far-right organizations such as
“Laissez les vivre”, “Oui a la vie," "Right to Life," and
“Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child,” which are linked to xenophobic, clerical,
racist, or outright fascist currents, are nourished by official govemmental
policies. They function as fanatical protectors of the status quo, attempting
to appeal to and mobilize the most backward prejudices that run deep in the
working class and petty bourgeoisie and they render a valuable service to the
rulers. But without the backhanded - and sometimes open - encouragement of the
dominant sectors of the ruling class, their role would be far less influential.
2.
The emergence of the women's liberation movement has posed a profound challenge
to all political currents claiming to represent the interests of the working
class.
The
Stalinists and Social Democrats especially were taken aback by the rapid
development of a significant radicalization that did not look to them for
leadership.
The
responses given by the two mass reforrnist currents in the working class varied
from one country to another depending on numerical strength, base in the
working class and in the trade-union bureaucracies, and proxirnity to
responsibility for the govemment of their own capitalist state. But in every
case the reflexes of both Stalinists and Social Democrats have been determined
by two sometimes conflicting objectives: their commitment to the basic
institutions of class rule, including the family; and their need to maintain or
strengthen their influence in the working class if they are to contain working-class
struggles within the bounds of capitalist property relations.
The
rise of the women's liberation movement forced both the Sta1inists and Social
Democrats to adapt to the changing political situation. The year
3. Under pressure from part of their own rank
and file, Social Democratic parties have generally responded to the rise of the
feminist movement more rapidly than the Communist parties. Even though the SPs
officially have been reluctant to recognize the existence of the independent
women's movement, individual women members of the SPs have often participated
actively in the new organizations that have emerged.
The
formal positions taken by the SPs have frequently been more progressive than
those of the Stalinist parties, especially in regard to abortion as a woman's
right. Wherever Socialist parties have had the opportunity to polish up their
image at low cost by coming out in favor of liberalized abortion laws, they
have not hesitated to do so. Kreisky in
But
when confronted with the first signs of reaction from sectors of the
bourgeoisie, the Social Democratic parties have been quick to retreat.
While the Labour
Party in
Only in 1977,
after a massive campaign by the independent women’s movement, organized through
the National Abortion Campaign (NAC), and under the pressure of its own ranks,
did the Labour Party conference adopt a resolution defending the 1967 law.
The Social
Democrats have proved especially useful to the bosses when it comes to imposing
austerity measures to reduce the standard of living of the working class. While loudly protesting their commitment to
easing the burdens of working-class women, Social Democratic governments have
not hesitated to make the cuts in social services demanded by the
bourgeoisie. In
4. From the 1930s on, after the Stalinist
bureaucracy consolidated its control of the
However demagogic
they may be at times concerning women’s double day of work, the demands raised
by the CP today are most often proposals to rearrange things so women have an
easier time meeting the tasks that fall on them in the home. From better maternity leaves, to shorter hours,
to improved working conditions for women, the fight is often justified by the
need to free women for their household chores – rather than from them by
socializing the domestic burdens women bear.
The other solution, which they sometimes propose, is to demand that men
share the work load more equitably at home.
But the rise of
the women’s movement, the attempts of the bourgeoisie to capitalize on it, the
responses of other currents in the workers movement, and the pressure of their
own ranks have all compelled the Communist parties to modify and adjust their
line. Even the most hidebound and rigid
followers of the Kremlin, like the American Communist Party, have finally been
forced to abandon some of their most reactionary positions such as opposition
to an equal rights amendment to the constitution.
The
deeper radicalization, the more adroitly the CPs have had to maneuver by
throwing themselves into the movement and adopting more radical verbiage.
The
CP’s have let women members engage in public discussion and develop scathing condemnations
of capitalism’s responsibilities for the miserable status of women. But when it comes to program and action, the
CPs opposition to women’s liberation duplicates their opposition to a class
struggle fight for other needs of the working class. They are ready to shelve any demand or derail
any struggle in the interests of consolidating or preserving whatever
class-collaborationist alliance they are working for. Thus, despite the Italian CPs formal shift
and decision to support liberalization of abortion laws, in 1976 the CP
parliamentary deputies made a bloc with the Christian Democrats to kill
abortion law reform because it was an obstacle to advancing toward the
“historic compromise”.
Moreover,
there is often a conflict between the positions taken by the CP locally – where
they sometimes express support for struggles to establish child-care centers or
abortion-contraception clinics – and the actions of the CP nationally – where
they support austerity measures to cut back on such social programs.
The
discrepancy between the formal positions of the Communist parties and their
betrayals in the clsss struggle, have already brought about some sharp tensions
within those parties and in the trade unions they dominate. This is especially
true because the absence of intemal democracy deepens the frustrations of many
women who begin to see the contradictions between their own persona1 commitment
to women's liberation and the line of their party. They have no way to
influence the positions of their organization. Thus, when the Spanish CP signed
the c1ass-col1aborationist Moncloa pact, women formed an opposition group in
the Madrid CP to fight for interna1 democracy.
In
Organizationally,
too, the Stalinists have been forced to adjust.
In a number of countries the Stalinists formed their own women's
organizations after the Second World War. Faced with the new radicalization of
women, they have invariably tried to pass these organizations off in the eyes
of the working class as the only real women's movement. The independent
movement threatens their pretense of being the party that speaks for
working-class women, and their initial reaction has been to deepen their
sectarian stance.
In
5.
Involvement in the women's movement has brought similar contradictions for the
Social Democratic parties as well. But at the same time, the ability of both
the Stalinists and Social Democrats to adapt to some of the issues raised by
radicalizing women has enhanced their ability to influence the general course
of the movement. When these parties decide to support one or another mass
mobilization, as they have in a number of countries recently on the abortion
question, their reformist positions have all the more impact on 1arge numbers
of women. It would be a mistake to underestimate their political weight.
6. The Maoists and centrist organizations have
most often adopted sectarian, economist positions on the women's liberation
movement, considering it to be petty bourgeois and in conflict with their
concept of the workers movement. Among these organizations, however, there have
been basically two types of response. Some have refused to participate in the
independent organizations and activities of the women's liberation movement.
Many of these sectarian groups have set up their own auxiliary women's groups,
which they counterpose to the living women's movement, arguing that such a
course is the only genuinely communist strategy.
Other
Maoist and centrist groups have oriented toward participating in the women's
movement. But they have no understanding of the relationship between the class
struggle and the fight for women's liberation. They reject a policy of
united-front action, and simply tail-end the women's movement. This was an
important factor contributing to the crises that tore many such groups apart at
the end of the 1970s.
7.
The trade-union movement has also feIt the impact of the radicalization of
women and its bureaucracies have been obliged to respond to the pressures from
women inside and outside the organized labor movement.
Like
the Stalinists and Social Democrats, even in the best of cases labor officials
try to limit union responsibility for women's demands to economic questions,
such as equal pay or matemity leaves. As long as possible, they resist
involving labor in fighting for issues such as abortion. However, the mass character of the unions,
the growing number of women in their ranks, many of whom are increasingly
active in women's commissions, makes such a stance by the union bureaucracies
more difficult. This was clearly seen in October 1979 when the British Trades
Union Congress, under growing pressure from its own ranks, called for a
national demonstration in defense of abortion rights. Some 50.000 men and women
tumed out. Questions such as child care and the socialization of domestic work,
conditions for part-time workers, and affirmative action programs for women are
raised with greater frequency today in the union movement. In some cases women
are explicitly posing these demands in the general framework of the need to
break down the traditional division of labor between men and women.
By
forcing these issues, women workers are calling into question the reformists'
attempts to maintain a division between economic and political issues and
otherwise limit whatever struggles develop. They are helping the working class
to think in broad social terms and encouraging the ranks of the unions to turn
to and use their basic class organizations to fight for all their needs.
As
women try to win the union ranks and leadership to support their demands, they are
obliged to take up the question of union democracy as we1l. They have to fight
for the right to express themselves freely, to organize their own Commissions
or Caucuses, to be represented in the union leaderships, and for the union to
provide the kinds of facilities, such as childcare during meetings, that will
permit women to be fully active in the workers organizations.
Some
unions have put out special literature, reactivated moribund women's
commissions, organized meetings of women unionists, or established special
training courses for women union leaders. In a number of countries special
inter-union committees of women have been organized by the trade-union
leadership on national, regional, or local levels. Elsewhere committees have
been created under the impetus of the rank and file. The radicalization of
women and the deepening economic crisis have also led to an increase in the
rate of unionization of women workers in some advanced capitalist countries.
By
and large, the creation of women's commissions within the unions has occurred
with the blessing of the union bureaucracies. They hope to contain the
radicalization of women in the unions and direct their energies in a way that
will not threaten the comfortable status quo on any level - from the male
monopoly of union leadership posts to the understanding between the bureaucracy
and the bosses that the particular needs of women workers be ignored.
But
this development reflects the huge impact that the women's liberation movement
has already had on the organized labor movement. Such women's commissions
within the unions are today more and more products of the women's movement as
well as part of the labor movement. They stand at the intersection of the two
and, if properly led, can help show the way forward for both.
Women's Liberation in the Colonial
and Semicolonia1 World
1.
Women's liberation is not a matter of interest only to women of the advanced
capitalist countries with their relatively high educational level and standard
of living. On the contrary, it is of vital concern and importance to the masses
of women throughout the world. The colonial and semicolonial countries are no
exception.
There
is great diversity in the economic and social conditions and cultural
traditions in the colonial and semicolonial countries. They range from
extremely primitive conditions in some areas to considerable industrialization
in countries such as Puerto Rico and
Imperialist
domination has meant that capitalist relations of production have been
superimposed on, and have combined with, archaic, precapitalist modes of
production and social relations, transforming them and incorporating them into
the capitalist economy. In
Using
torture, extermination, rape, and other forms of terror on a mass scale, and in
Africa through the outright enslavement of the native peoples, expanding
European capitalism brutally colonized Latin America and parts of Asia and
For
women in the semicolonial and colonial world the penetration of the capitalist
market economy has a contradictory impact: on the one hand it introduces new
economic relations that begin to lay the basis for women to overcome their
centuries old oppression. But on the other hand, it takes over and utilizes the
archaic traditions, religious codes, and antiwoman prejudices, initially
reinforcing them through new forms of discrimination and superexploitation.
In
general, the situation of women is directly related to the degree of
industrialization that has been achieved. But uneven and combined development
in some societies can produce startling contradictions, such as relative
economic independence for women who dominate very primitive agriculture in some
areas of
2.
In the colonial countries, the development of capitalist production proceeds
according to the needs of imperialism. For this reason, industrialization takes
place only slowly and in an unbalanced, distorted way, if at all. In most semicolonial countries, the majority
of the population still lives on the land and is engaged in subsistence
farming, utilizing extremely backward methods. The family -which generally
includes various aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and grandparents - is the
basic unit of petty agricultural production.
Women
play a decisive economic role. Not only do they work long hours in the fields
and home, but they produce children to share the burden of work and provide
economic security in old age. They marry at puberty and often give birth to as
many children as physically possible. Their worth is generally determined by
the number of children they produce. A barren woman is considered a social
disgrace and an economic disaster. Infertility is often grounds for divorce.
Because
of its productive role, the hold of the family on all its members, but
specifically on women, is strong. Combined with a primitive level of economic
development, this brings about extreme deprivation and degradation for peasant
women in the rural areas. In practice, they scarcely have any legal or social
rights as individuals, and are often barely considered human. They live under
virtually total domination and control by male members of their family. In many
cases the restricted resources of the family unit are allocated first of all to
the male members of the family; it is not uncommon for female children to
receive less food and care, leading to stunted growth or early death from
malnutrition. Female infanticide, both direct and through deliberate neglect,
is still practiced in many areas. Often illiteracy rates for women approach 100
percent.
3.
The incorporation of the colonial and semicolonial countries into the world
capitalist market inevitably has an impact on the rural areas, however. Inflation and the inability to compete with
larger units utilizing more productive methods lead to continuous waves of
migration from the countryside to the cities. Often this migration begins with
the males of the family, leaving the women, children, and elderly with an even
heavier burden as they try to eke out an impoverished existence from the land
on their own.
The
desperate search for a job eventually leads millions of workers to leave their
country of birth and migrate to the advanced industrial countries, where if
they are lucky enough to find a job, it will be under miserable conditions of
superexploitation.
The
isolation and backward traditions of the rural areas tend to be challenged and
broken down not only by migration to and from the cities but also by the
diffusion of the mass media, such as radio and television.
4. With migration to the cities, the new conditions of
life and labor begin to challenge the traditional norms and myths about the
role of women.
In
the cities the petty-bourgeois family as a productive unit rapidly disappears
for most. Each family member is obliged to sell his or her labor power on the
market as an individual. However, due to the extremely precarious employment
situation, and the financial responsibilities that the semiproletarian city
dwellers often have vis-a-vis their rural realtives, the immediate family often
still includes aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters and their children,
besides father, mother, and children.
Among
the urban middle class and the more stable sectors of the proletariat, however,
the family unit begins to become more restricted.
As
they migrate to the cities, women have greater opportunity for education, for
broader social contact, and for economic independence. The needs of capitalism, which bring
increasing numbers of women out of family isolation, come into conflict with
the old ideas about the role of women in society. In taking jobs as industrial
or service workers, women begin to occupy positions that were previously
forbidden them by backward prejudices and traditions. Those able to secure an
education that permits them to break into professions, such as teaching and
nursing, also serve as examples that contradict traditional attitudes, even in
the eyes of those women who don't work. The myth of women's inferiority is
increasingly called into question by this reality, which challenges their
time-honored subordination.
Even
for women who are not able to get an education or to work outside the home,
city conditions help provide the possibility of escaping the mental prison that
the rural family's isolation imposes on them. This happens through the greater
impact of the mass media, the proximity of political life and struggles, the
visibility of modern household appliances, laundries, etc.
5. In the colonial and semicolonial countries,
women generally comprise a much lower percentage of the work force than in the
imperialist countries. It tends to vary between 8 and 15 percent, although
sometimes as high as 20 percent, as opposed to the advanced capitalist
countries, where women make up roughly 30 to 40 percent.
As
would be expected, women are concentrated in jobs that are the least skilled,
lowest paying, and least protected by laws on safety conditions, minimum wages,
etc. This is especially true for agricultural work, piecework in the home, and
work as domestics, where a high proportion of women are employed. The average
wage of female workers tends to be one-third to one-half of that of male
workers. When women are able to get an education and acquire some skills, they
are confined even more strictly than in the advanced capitalist countries to
certain “female" occupations, such as nursing and teaching.
But
women are also concentrated in industries such as textile, garment, food
processing, and electrical parts and often make up a majority of the labor
force employed there. Given the overwhelming predominance of such light
industry in the more industrialized colonial countries, this means that,
although they are a low percentage of the work force as a whole, women workers
can occupy a strategically important place.
In
The
employment of women in such industries is crucial for the superprofits of the
imperialists, both because they are a source of cheaper labor and also because
the employment of women at lower wages or in lower-paying jobs allows the
capitalists to divide and weaken the working class and keep down the overall
wage scale. The process of imperialist
accumulation cannot be fully understood without explaining the role of the
superexploitation of women workers in the semicolonial countries.
Throughout
the colonial world, unemployment and underemployment are of crisis proportions,
and much of this burden fal1s on women. To help their family survive, women are
often forced to resort to such desperate and precarious sources of income as
selling handicrafts or home-cooked food in the streets, or taking in
laundry. Prostitution is frequently the
only recourse. The endemic unemployment also exacerbates alcoholism and drug
addiction, which results in greater violence against women as well as even more
desperate poverty.
6.
In many colonial and semicolonial countries, women have not yet won some of the
most elementary democratic rights secured by women in the advanced capitalist
countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Numerous countries still
retain laws that place women under the legal control of their male relatives.
These include, for example, laws that require the husband's permission for a
woman to work, laws that give the husband control over his wife's wages, and
laws that give the husband automatic guardianship of his children and control
over the residence of his wife. In some countries women are still sold into
marriage. They can be murdered with impunity for violating the “honor" of
their men.
In
countries where reforms have been made in the legal code, providing women with
more rights, these often remain largely formal. Women are unable to assert
these rights in practice because of the crushing weight of poverty, illiteracy,
malnutrition, their economic dependence, and backward traditions that
circumscribe their lives. Thus imperialism in its death agony stands as an
obstacle to the most elementary democratic rights for women in the colonial
world.
7.
The power and influence of organized religion is especial1y strong in the
colonial and semicolonial countries, because of the prevailing economic
backwardness and because of the reinforcement and protection of the religious
hierarchies by imperialism. In many countries there is no separation of
religious institutions and state. Even where there is official separation,
religious dogma and customs retain great weight. For example, many of the most
barbaric antiwomen laws are based on religious codes. In
8. Violence against women, which has been inherent in
their economic, social, and sexual degradation throughout all stages of
development of class society, becomes accentuated by the contradictions bred
under imperialist domination. The greater access of women to education and
jobs, along with their broader participation in society in general, gives women
the opportunities to lead a less protected, more public life, in violation of
the old traditions and values. But attempts by women to take advantage of these
opportunities and break out of the old roles often lead to reactions by male
relatives or others, which can take the form of ostracization, beatings,
mutilations, or even murder. Such barbaric violence against women is frequently
sanctioned by law. Even where illegal,
it is often so widely sccepted in practice that it goes unpunished.
9.
Educational opportunities for women in the colonial and semicolonial countries
remain extremely limited by comparison with the advanced capitalist countries.
This is reflected in the high female illiteracy rate. From the level of primary
school to the university level, female enrollment is lower than male, and the
gap generally increases the higher the educational level.
The
educationsl system in the colonial and semicolonial countries is organized-
often more blatantly than in the imperialist countries - to reinforce the
exclusion of women from social life and to bolster the imposition of the role
of mother-housekeeper-wife on all female children. Coeducation is notably less
prevalent, with the schoo1s for gir1s invariably receiving smaller budgets,
fewer teachers, and worse facilities.
Where coeducation exists, gir1s are still required to pursue separate
courses of study such as cooking, sewing, and homemaking.
Within
the framework of these disadvantages, however, the pressure of the world market
has brought some changes in the educational opportunities open to women. The
need for a layer of more highly trained technicians has opened the doors to
higher education for at least a small layer of women.
10.
Women in the colonial world have even less control over their reproductive
functions than women in the imperialist countries. The poor educational
opportunities for females, combined with the strong influence of religion over
the content of education, means that women have little or no access to
scientific information about reproduction or sex. Economically and socially
they are under personal pressure to produce more, not fewer children. When
there is access to birth control information and devices, this is almost always
in the framework of racist population control programs imposed by imperialism.
In some countries forced sterilization of masses of women has been carried out
by the govemment. In Puerto Rico the forced sterilization policies promoted by
the
Even
in countries where forced sterilization is not official policy, the racist
population control propaganda permeates society and constitutes an obstacle to
the fight by women to gain control of their own bodies.
Women
in semicolonial and colonial countries have been widely used as unwitting
guinea pigs for testing birth control devices and drugs. And access to abortion,
too, is tied to coercion, not freedom of choice. Each year, millions of women
throughout the colonial world are forced to seek illegal abortions under the
most unsanitary and degrading conditions possible, leading to an unknown number
of deaths.
In
all these ways, women are denied the right to choose when and if to bear
children.
Under
conditions of economic crisis, population control schemes will become more
widespread and there will be more cases like
Racism
and sexism are also imposed on the colonial world through the propagation of
alien cultural standards. If the cosmetics merchants, standards of
"beauty" for women in Europe and
11.
The strong influence of religion reinforces extreme backwardness regarding
sexuality, which results in a special deprivation and degradation of women. The
general proscription that women are supposed to be asexual themselves, but at
the same time be a satisfying sexual slave to their husbands, is imposed more
brutally on women in the colonial and semicolonial countries than in the
imperialist countries, through traditions, laws, and the use of violence
including the sexual mutilation of female children. Women are supposed to save
their virginity for their husband. In many instances, if women do not provide
sexual satisfaction to their husbands, or if they are charged with not being a
virgin at the time of marriage, this is ground for divorce. The dual standard
of sexual conduct for men and women is more strictly enforced than in the
imperialist countries. The practice of polygamy is merely an extreme example.
Another
reflection of the backwardness regarding sexuality is the harsh oppression of
homosexuals, both male and female.
12.
The fact that capitalist development in the colonial world incorporated
precapitalist economic and social relations, many of which survive in distorted
forms, means that to win their liberation, women, as well as all the oppressed
and exploited, are confronted with combined tasks. The struggle against imperialist domination
and capitalist exploitation often begins with the unresolved problems of
national independence, land reform, and other democratic tasks.
Elementary
democratic demands, such as those that give women rights as individuals
independent of their husband’s control, will have great weight in the struggle
for women’s liberation in the colonial and semicolonial countries. At the same time, they will immediately pose
and be combined with social and economic issues whose solution requires the
reorganization of all of society along socialist lines. Among such issues are rising prices,
unemployment, inadequate health and educational facilities, and housing. They also include all the general demands
that have been raised by the women’s movement in the advanced capitalist countries,
such as child-care centers, rights and medical facilities that would assure
women the ability to control their reproductive lives, access to jobs and
education. But none of these demands,
including the most elementary democratic ones, can be won without the
mobilization and organization of the working class, which constitutes the only
social force capable of leading such struggles through to a victorious
conclusion.
13. Because of the relative weakness of
capitalism and of the ruling capitalist classes in the colonial and semicolonial
countries, civil liberties, where they exist, are in general tenuous and often
shortlived. Political repression is
widespread. When women begin to
struggle- as when other sectors of the population begin to rebel – they are
often rapidly confronted with repression and with the necessity to fight for political liberties such as the
right to hold meetings, to have their own organization, to have a newspaper or
other publications, and to demonstrate.
The struggle for women’s liberation cannot be separated from the more
general struggle for political freedoms.
The
increased participation of women in social and political struggles has meant that women are a growing proportion of
political prisoners in the colonial and semicolonial countries. In the prisons, women face particularly
humiliating and brutal forms of torture.
The struggle for freedom of all political prisoners, exposing the plight
of women in particular, has been and will be an important part of the fight for
women’s liberation in these countries.
This
struggle has an especially clear international dimension. Political prisoners exist not only in the
colonial world but in the imperialist countries as well. Demands for their freedom will continue to be
a rallying point for international solidarity within the women’s movement.
14. The struggle for women’s liberation has
always been intertwined with the national liberation struggle. Whatever women do, they come up against the might
of imperialist control, and the need to throw off the chains of this domination
is an urgent and overriding task for all the oppressed in these countries, as
the examples of Iran and Nicaragua have once again clearly demonstrated. Large numbers of women become politically
active for the first time through participation in national liberation
movements. In the process of the
developing struggle, it becomes evident that women can and must play an even
greater role if victory is to be won.
Women become transformed by doing things that were forbidden to them by
the old traditions and habits. They
become fighters, leaders, organizers, and political thinkers. The deep contradictions they live will
stimulate revolt against their oppression as a sex, as well as demands for
greater equality within the revolutionary movement. In
In
In
The participation
of women in the national liberation struggle also begins to transform the
consciousness of men about women’s capacities and role. In the process of struggling against their
own exploitation and oppression, men can become more sensitized to the
oppression of women, more conscious of the necessity to combat it, and more
aware of the importance of women as an allied fighting force.
15. There also exist oppressed national
minorities within the colonial and semicolonial countries. In
The demands of
women and of oppressed nationalities will often be intertwined and reinforce
one another. For example, the demand of
all women for the right to an education will be combined with the demand of men
and women of the oppressed nationalities for the right to education in their
own languages.
16. Since the rise of the colonial revolution at
the beginning of this century, women have participated in anti-imperialist
upsurges, but there has not been a tradition of women organizing as women,
around their specific demands, as a distinct component of there struggles. However, the development of the world
capitalist system since World War II has sharpened the economic, social, and
political contradictions in the colonial and semicolonial countries which will
more and more propel women into struggle around their own demands.
a. In the period following World War II there
was a rise in industrialization in the colonial and semicolonial countries,
although the extent of this industrialization varied greatly in different
countries and was distorted to fit the needs of the imperialist powers. This meant increased access by women to
education and jobs.
b. Technological improvements in the areas of
household tasks and control of reproduction – even though much less widely
available than in the advanced ountries – began to be known and showed the
possibility of freeing women from domestic drudgery and allowing them to
control their reproductive function.
c. The economic crisis of world capitalism which
was signaled by the international depression of 1974-75 has had a magnified
effect on the colonial world, as the imperialists attempted to foist the burden
of this crisis onto the backs of the
masses in these countries. A
disproportionate weight of the economic crisis falls on women, in the form of
rising prices, cutbacks in the rudimentary health and education facilities that
exist, and increased misery in the countryside.
Thus the gap between what is possible for women and what exists is
widening.
d. The impact of this contradiction on the
consciousness of women is reinforced today by the impact of the international women’s
liberation movement, which has inspired women around the world and popularized
and legitimized their demands.
These factors
point to the conclusion that struggles by women will become a more important
component of the coming revolutionary struggles in the colonial and
semicolonial countries.
This struggle by
women can take on explosive dimensions due to the gap between the archaic norms
and values and the possibilities for the liberation of women opened up by the
technological advancements of capitalism.
At the same time, the religious and traditional norms and values upheld
by the imperialists and their servitors are in constant contradiction with the
lives of growing numbers of women. This
means that once women begin to challenge their oppression, even on an
elementary level, it can combine with other social ferment and lead very
rapidly to the mobilization of masses of women in struggles that take on a
radical, anticapitalist direction.
17.
Attitudes and policies conceming the demands and needs of women in colonial and
semicolonial countries are one of the acid tests of the revolutionary caliber,
perspective, and program of any.organization aspiring to lead the struggle
against imperialism. The role and importance that we ascribe to the fight for
women's liberation in these countries, and the program we put forward for
achieving it, separate us from nonproletarian forces contending for leadership
of the national liberation struggle.
This
has long been a distinguishing feature of the program of revolutionary Marxism,
as was reflected in the resolutions of the Third and Fourth Congresses of the
Communist Intemational. These resolutions drew special attention to the
exemplary work of the Chinese Communists in organizing and leading
mobilizations of women that preceded the second Chinese revolution of 1925-27.
If
the revolutionary Marxist party does not see the importance of organizing and
mobilizing women and winning the leadership of the struggle for women's
liberation, the field will be open for bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces to
succeed in gaining the leadership of women's movements and diverting them into
reformist channels, or even into anti-working class movements.
18. Only the road of the socialist revolution can
open the way to a qualitative transformation in the lives of the masses of
women of the semicolonial countries. The examples of
Once
capitalism is eliminated, unemployment and underemployment become scourges of
the past. On the contrary a shortage of labor draws women out of the home and
into productive labor of all kinds in massive numbers. Social mores and
traditions rooted in precapitalist and capitalist modes of production
progressively disappear as this transformation develops and the working class
becomes larger and more powerful.
19.
Because of the extreme oppression they face, and the fact that there is no
perspective for improving their lives under capitalism, women in the colonial
and semicolonial countries will be thrust into the vanguard of the struggle for
social change. Through intemal classes and similar educational activities,
sections of the Fourth Intemational must systematically prepare their own
members to understand the importance of the fight for women's liberation, even
if there are no mass struggles on the political horizon as yet. We must take a
conscious attitude toward winning women to socialism and training and
integrating the most determined as leaders of our movement.
Women in the Workers States:
Liberation Betrayed
1.
The October 1917 revolution in
Between
1917 and 1927 the Soviet goverment passed a series of laws giving women legal
equality with men for the first time. Marriage became a simple registration
process that had to be based on mutual consent. The concept of illegitimacy was
abolished. Free, legal abortion was made every woman's right. By 1927, marriages did not have to be
registered, and divorce was granted on the request of either partner. Antihomosexual laws were eliminated.
Free,
compulsory education to the age of 16 was established for all children of both
sexes. Legislation gave women workers special matemity benefits.
The
1919 program of the Communist Party stated: "The party's task at the
present moment is primarily work in the realm of ideas and education so as to
destroy utterly all traces of the former inequality or prejudices, particularly
among backward strata of the proletariat and peasantry. Not confining itself to
formal equality of women, the party strives to liberate them from the material
burdens of obsolete household work by replacing it by communal houses, public
eating places, central laundries, nurseries, etc.” This program was implemented to the extent
possible given the economic backwardness and poverty of the new
A
conscious attempt was made to begin combating the reactionary social norms and
attitudes toward women, which reflected the reality of a country whose
population was still overwhelmingly peasant, where women were a relatively
small percentage of the work force, and in which the dead weight of feudal
traditions and customs hung over all social relations. As would be expected
under such conditions, backward attitudes toward women were reflected within
the Bolshevik Party as well, not excepting its leadership. The party was by no
means homogeneous in its understanding of the importance of carrying through
the concrete and deepgoing measures necessary to fulfill its 1919 program.
2.
The decimation and exhaustion of the working-class vanguard, and the crushing
of the postwar revolutionary upsurges in Westem Europe, laid the basis for the
triumph of the counterrevolutionary bureaucratic caste, headed by Stalin, in
the 1920s. While the economic foundations of the new workers state were not destroyed,
a privileged social layer that appropriated for itself many of the benefits of
the new economic order grew rapidly in the fertile soil of
By the late 1930s
the counterrevolution had physically annihilated the entire surviving Bolshevik
leadership and estab- lished a dictatorship that to this day keeps hundreds of
thousands in prison camps, psychiatric hospitals, and exile, and ruthlessly
crushes every murmur of opposition.
For
women, the Stalinist counterrevolution led to a policy of reviving and
fortifying the family system.
Trotsky
described this process as follows: "Genuine emancipation of women is
inconceivable without a general rise of economy and culture, without the
destruction of the petty-bourgeois economic family unit, without the
introduction of socialized food preparation and education. Meanwhile, guided by its conservative
instinct, the bureaucracy has taken alarm at the ‘disintegration' of the
family. It began singing panegyrics to the family supper and the family
laundry, that is, the household slavery of women. To cap it all, the
bureaucracy has restored criminal punishments for abortions, officially
returning women to the status of pack animals. In complete contradiction with
the ABC of communism the ruling caste has thus restored the most reactionary
and benighted nucleus of the class regime, i.e., the petty-bourgeois
family" (Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1937-38, 2nd ed., 1976, p. 129).
3. The most important factor facilitating this
retrogression was the cultural and material backwardness of Russian society,
which did not have the resources necessary to construct adequate child-care
centers, sufficient housing, public laundries, and housekeeping and dining
facilities to eliminate the material basis for women's oppression. This
backwardness also helped perpetuate the general social division of labor
between men and women inherited from the tsarist period.
But
beyond these objective limitations, the reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy
consciously gave up the perspective of moving in a systematic way to socialize
the burdens carried by women, and instead began to glorify the family system,
attempting to bind families together through legal restrictions and economic
compulsion.
As
Trotsky pointed out in The Revolution Betrayed, "The retreat not
only assumes forms of disgusting hypocrisy, but it also is going infinitely
farther than the iron economic necessity demands."
The
bureaucracy reinforced the family system for one of the same reasons it is
maintained by capitalist society - as a means of inculcating attitudes of
submission to authority and for perpetuating the privileges of a minority. Trotsky explained that "the most
compelling motive of the present cult of the family is undoubtedly the need of
the bureaucracy for a stable hierarchy of relations, and for the disciplining
of youth by means of forty million points of support for authority and
power."
As
part of this counterrevolution, the old tsarist laws against homosexuality were
dusted off and reintroduced.
Reinforcement
of the family enabled the bureaucracy to perpetuate an important division
inside the working class: the division between man, as "head of the family
and breadwinner," and woman, as responsible for tasks inside the home and
shopping - in addition to whatever e1se she might do. On a more general level,
it meant maintaining the division between private life and public life, with
the resulting isolation that affects both men and women. Bolstering of the
nuclear family a1so reinforced the bureaucracy through encouraging the attitude
of "each family for itself," and within the framework of a policy of
overall planning that has little to do with satisfying the needs of the workers,
it allows the bureaucracy to minimize the costs of social services.
The
conditions created by the proletarian revolution and Stalinist
counterrevolution in the Soviet Union have not been mechanically reproduced in
all the deformed workers states of Eastem Europe and
4.
According to the official 1970
The
perpetuation of the responsibility of women for the domestic chores associated
with child-raising, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and caring for the personal needs
of other members of the family unit is the economic and social basis for the
disadvantages and prejudices faced by women and the resulting discrimination in
jobs and wages. This deeply affects the way women view themselves, their role
in society, and the goals they seek to attain.
A
survey made in
While
50 percent of the wage earners in the
In
In
the
In
the Soviet Union and
In
the last decade, these potentially explosive resentments have forced the
various bureaucratic castes to plan expanded production in consumer goods and
increased social services. But the supply of consumer goods continues to lag
behind the needs and growing expectations. Social services also remain sorely
inadequate. For example, while child-care facilities are more widespread than
in advanced capitalist countries, according to official figures in early 1978,
child-care facilities in the Soviet Union could accommodate only 13 million of
the more than 35 million pre-school age children.
In
The
number of public laundries is insignificant - in
Similarly,
the number of men and women workers who eat in public cafeterias has sharply
decreased since the 1950s. Because of high prices and bad quality, only 20
percent of the population in
All
these conditions go in the direction of burying women in the home, a tendency
fostered by the propaganda of the bureaucracy in favor of part-time work for
women. This is expressed in
In
October 1977 the same reactionary tendency was, in fact, incorporated into the
revised Soviet constitution as an amendment to Article 35 that is supposed to
guarantee equal rights to women. The amended constitution projects “the gradual
shortening of the work-day for women with small children." Soviet leaders
explained that this new constitutional provision reflected the line of the
party and the Soviet state to improve the position of “women as workers,
mothers, childraisers, and housewives."
This
reinforcement of the social division of labor between men and women is a1so
expressed through government policies in these countries aimed at increasing
the birth rate to alleviate labor shortages. (
In
fact, the Stalinist bureaucracies have repudiated the view of Lenin and other
leaders of the Russian revolution that unrestricted access to abortion is a
woman's elementary democratic right. While legal abortion is generally
available in the Soviet Union and Eastem Europe, the ruling castes have
repeatedly curtailed this right, frequently placing humiliating conditions as
well as economic penalties on women seeking abortions (such as denial of paid
sick-leave time to obtain an abortion or refusal to cover abortions as a free
medical procedure).
With
the exception of
In
In
all the Eastem European countries and in
5.
Women in the deformed and degenerated workers states will not win their full
liberation short of a political revolution that removes the bureaucratic caste
from power and restores workers democracy. Although there are as yet few signs
of any rising consciousness conceming the oppression of women, there is no
impenetrable barrier between the advanced capitalist countries and the workers
states. Women in the workers states will inevitably be affected by the
radicalization of women elsewhere and the demands they are raising.
The
struggle of women for their liberation will be a significant component of the
process of challenging and overturning the privileged bureaucratic regimes and
establishing socialist democracy. Demands for the socialization of domestic
labor in particular are an important aspect of the transitional program for the
coming political revolution.
In
some respects, in comparison with the capitalist countries, the economic
independence and status of women in the workers states provide a positive
contrast. But Soviet history also strikingly confirms the fact that the family
institution is the cornerstone of the oppression of women. As long as women's
domestic servitude is sustained and nurtured by economic and political policy,
as long as the functions of the family are not fully taken over by superior
social institutions, the truly equal integration of women in productive life
and all social affairs is impossible. The responsibility of women for domestic
labor is the source of the inequalities they face in daily life, in education,
in work, and in politics.
6.
The Stalinist counterrevolution in respect to women and the family, the vast
inequality of women in the
II. The Fourth International and
the Struggle tor Women's Liberation
Our Perspective
1.
The Fourth Intemational welcomes and champions the emergence of a new wave of
struggles by women to end their centuries-old oppression. By fighting in the
front lines of these battles, we demonstrate that the world party of socialist
revolution can provide a leadership capable of carrying the struggle for
women's liberation through to its conclusion. Our goal is to win the confidence
and leadership of the masses of women by showing that our program and our
class-struggle policies will lead to the elimination of women's oppression
along the path of successful proletarian revolution and the socialist
reconstruction of society.
2. The
perspective of the Fourth International stands in the long tradition of
revolutionary Marxism. It is based on the following considerations:
a.
The oppression of women emerged with the transition from preclass to class
society. It is indispensable to the maintenance of class society in general and
capita1ism in particular. Therefore, struggle by masses of women against their
oppression is a form of the struggle against capitalist rule.
b.
Women are both a significant component of the working class, and a potentially
powerful ally of the working class in the struggle to overthrow capitalism.
Without the socialist revolution, women cannot establish the preconditions for
their liberation. Without the mobilization of masses of women in struggle for
their own liberation, the working class cannot accomplish its historic tasks.
The destruction of the bourgeois state, the eradication of capitalist property,
the transformation of the economic bases and priorities of society, the
consolidation of a new state power based on the democratic organization of the
working class and its allies, and the continuing struggle to eliminate all
forms of oppressive social relations inherited from class society - all this
can ultimately be accomplished only with the conscious participation and
leadership of an independent women's liberation movement.
Thus
our support for building an independent women's liberation movement is part of
the strategy of the revolutionary working-class party. It stems from the very character of women's
oppression, the social divisions created by capitalism itself and the way these
are used to divide and weaken the working class and its allies in the struggle
to abolish class society.
c.
All women are oppressed as women. Struggles around specific aspects of women's
oppression necessarily involve women from different classes and social layers.
Even some bourgeois women, revolting against their oppression as women, can
break with their class and be won to the side of the revolutionary workers
movement as the road to liberation.
As
Lenin pointed out in his discussions with Clara Zetkin, action around aspects
of women's oppression has the potential to reach into the heart of the enemy
class, to "foment and increase unrest, uncertainty and contradictions and
conflicts in the camp of the bourgeoisie and its reformist friends. … “Every
weakening of the enemy is tantamount to a strengthening of our forces."
Even
more important from the point of view of the revolutionary Marxist party is the
fact that resentment against their oppression as women can often be the
starting point in the radicalization of decisive layers of petty-bourgeois
women, whose support the working class must win.
d.
While all women are oppressed, the effects of that oppression are different for
women of different classes. Those who suffer the greatest economic exploitation
are generally those who also suffer the most from their oppression as women.
Thus the women's liberation movement provides an avenue to reach and mobilize
many of the most oppressed and exploited women who might not otherwise be
touched so rapidly by the struggles of the working class.
e.
While all women are affected by their oppression as women, the mass women’s
liberation movement we strive to build must be basically working-class in
composition, orientation, and leadership.
Only such a movement, with roots in the most exploited layers of
working-class women, will be able to carry the struggle for women’s liberation
through to the end in an uncompromising way, allying itself with the social
forces whose class interests parallel and intersect those of women. Only such a
movement will be able to play a progressive role under conditions of sharpening
class polarization.
f.
In this long-term perspective, struggles by women in the unions and on the job
have a special importance, reflecting the vital interrelationship of the
women's movement and the workers movement and their impact on each other.
This
is testified to by the deepening radicalization of working-class women today,
the growing understanding of forces in the women's liberation movement that
they must orient to the struggles of working women, and the willingness of
sections of the trade-union bureaucracy in some countries to begin to take a
few initiatives around women's demands. All these developments point to the
future character and composition of the women's liberation movement and the
kind of class forces who will come forward to provide leadership.
g.
Struggles by women against their oppression as a sex are interrelated with, but
not totally dependent on or identical with, struggles by workers as a class.
Women cannot win their liberation except in alliance with the organized power
of the working class. But this historical necessity in no way means that women
should postpone any of their struggles until the current labor officialdom is
replaced by a revolutionary leadership that picks up the banner of women's
liberation. Nor should women wait until the socialist revolution has created
the material basis for ending their oppression. On the contrary, women fighting
for their liberation must wait for no one to show them the way. They should
take the lead in opening the fight and carrying it forward. In doing so, they will play a leadership role
within the workers movement as a whole, and can help create the kind of class
struggle leadership necessary to advance on all fronts.
h.
Sexism is one of the most powerful weapons utilized by the ruling class to divide
and weaken the workers movement. But it does not simply divide men against
women. Its conservatizing weight cuts across sex lines, affecting both men and
women.
Its
hold is rooted in the class character of society itself, and the manifold ways
in which bourgeois ideology is inculcated in every individual from birth. The
bosses pit each section of the working class against all others. They promote
the belief that women's equality can be achieved only at the expense of
men-by taking men’s jobs away from them, by lowering their wages, and by
depriving them of domestic comforts. The reformist bureaucracy of the labor
movement, of course, also plays upon these divisions to maintain its control.
Educating
the masses of workers, male and female, through propaganda, agitation, and
action around the needs of women is an essential part of the struggle to break
the stranglehold of reactionary bourgeois ideology within the working class. It
is an indispensable part of the politicalization and revolutionary education of
the workers movement.
i.
The full power and united strength of the working class can only be realized as
the workers movement begins to overcome its deep internal divisions. This will
only be achieved as the workers come to understand that those at the top of the
wage-scale do not owe their relative material advantages to the fact that
others are discriminated against and specially oppressed. Rather it is the
bosses who profit from such stratification and division. The class interests of
all workers are identical with the demands and needs of the most
oppressed and exploited layers of the class - the women, the oppressed
nationalities, the immigrant workers, the youth, the unorganized, the
unemployed. The women's movement has a particularly important role to play in
helping the working class to understand this truth.
j.
Winning the organized labor movement to fight for the demands of women is part
of educating the working class to think socially and act politically. It is a
central axis of the fight to transform the trade unions into instruments of
revolutionary struggle in the interests of the entire working class.
In
countering the efforts of the employers to keep the working class divided, we
strive to win the ranks of the unions, and especia1ly the young, combative
rebels. The more successful we are in winning this battle, the more we will see
the labor bureaucracy divide. Those who refuse to defend the interests of the
great majority of the most oppressed and exploited will be progressively pushed
aside.
The
struggle by the revolutionary party to win hegemony and leadership in the
working class is inseparable from the battle to convince the working class and
its organizations to recognize and champion struggles by women as their own.
k.
The struggle against the oppression of women is not a secondary or peripheral
issue. It is a life-and-death matter for
the workers movement, especially in a period of sharpening class polarization.
Because
women’s place in class society generates many deep-seated insecurities and
fears, and because the ideology that buttresses women's inferior status still
retains a powerful hold, especially outside the working class, women are a
particular target for all clerical, reactionary, and fascist organizations. Whether it is the Christian Democrats, the
Falange, or the opponents of abortion rights, reaction makes a special appeal
to women for support, claiming to address women's particular needs, taking
advantage of their economic dependence under capitalism, and promising to
relieve the inordinate burden women bear during any period of social crisis.
From
the “kinder-kirche-kueche" propaganda of the Nazi movement to the
Christian Democrats' mobilization of middle- class women in Chile for the march
of the empty pots in 1971, history has demonstrated time and again that the
reactionary mystique of motherhood-and-family is one of the most powerful
conservatizing weapons wielded by the ruling class.
The
objective changes in women's economic and social role, the new radicalization
of women and the changes in consciousness and attitudes this has brought about,
make it more difficult for reaction to prevail. This is a new source of revolutionary
optimism for the working class. The mass explosion of feminist consciousness in
1.
While the victorious proletarian revolution can create the material foundations
for the socialization of dornestic labor and lay the basis for the complete
economic and social equality of women, this socialist reconstruction of
society, placing all human relations on a new foundation, will not be
accomplished immediately or automatically. During the period of transition to
socialism the fight to eradicate all forms of oppression inherited from class
society will continue. For example, the
social division of labor into feminine and masculine tasks must be eliminated
in all spheres of activity from daily life to the factories. Decisions will
have to be made concerning the allocation of scarce resources. An economic plan
that reflects the social needs of women, and provides for the most rapid
possible socialization of domestic tasks, will have to be developed. The
continuing autonomous organization of women will be a precondition for
democratically arriving at the correct economic and social decisions. Thus even
after the revolution the independent women's liberation movement will play an
indispensable role in assuring the ability of the working class as a whole,
male and female, to carry this process through to a successful conclusion.
Our
class-struggle strategy for the fight against women's oppression, our answer to
the question of how to mobilize the working class on the side of women, and the
masses of women on the side of the working class, has three facets: our
political demands, our methods of struggle, and our class independence.
Our
Demands
Through
the totality of the system of demands we put forward - which deal with every
issue from freedom of political association, to unemployment and inflation, to
abortion and child care, to workers control and the arming of the proletariat -
we seek to build a bridge from the current needs and struggles of the working
masses and their level of consciousness to the culminating point of socialist
revolution. As part of this transitional program we put forward demands that
speak to the specific oppression of women.
Our
program points to the issues around which women can begin to struggle to loosen
the bonds of their oppression and challenge the prerogatives of the ruling
class. It recognizes and provides answers for all aspects of women's
oppression- legal, economic, social, sexual.
We
direct our demands against those responsible for the economic and social
conditions in which women's oppression is rooted - the ruling class, its
government and agencies. We orient the women's liberation movement toward clear
political goals. We present our demands and propaganda in such a way as to show
how a society no longer based on private property, exploitation, and oppression
would radically transform the lives of women in all spheres.
Our
interlocking set of tasks and slogans includes immediate, democratic, and
transitional demands. Some can and will be wrested from the ruling class in the
course of the struggle leading toward the socialist revolution. Such victories
bring inspiration, increasing confidence, and self- reliance. Other demands
will be partially met. The most fundamental will be resisted to the end by
those who control the property and wealth. They can be won only in the course
of the conquest of power and the socialist reconstruction of society.
In
fighting for these demands - both those providing solutions to the specific
oppression of women and those answering other needs of the oppressed
nationalities and working class as a whole - masses of women will come to
understand the interrelationship of their oppression as victims of class rule.
Our
demands directed toward eliminating the specific oppression of women are
centered on the following points:
1. Full legal, political, and
social equality for women
No
discrimination on the bases of sex. For the right of all women to vote, engage in
public activity, form or join political associations, live and travel where
they want, engage in any occupations they choose. An end to all laws and
regulations with special penalties for women, The extension to women of all
democratic rights won by men.
2.
The right of women to control their own bodies.
A
woman has the sole right to choose whether or not to prevent or terminate
pregnancy. This includes the rejection of population-control schemes which are
tools of racism or class prejudice and which attempt to blame the evils of
class society on the masses of working people and peasants.
a.
An end to all government restrictions on abortion and contraception, including
for minors, immigrant workers, and other noncitizens.
b.
Free abortion on demand; no forced sterilization or any other govemment
interference with the right of women to choose whether or when to bear
children. The right to choose whatever method of abortion or contraception a
woman prefers.
c. Free, widely
disseminated birth control information and devices. State-financed birth
control and sex education centers in schools, neighborhoods, hospitals, and
factories.
d. Priority in
medical research to development of totally safe, 100 percent effective
contraceptives for men and women; an end to all medical and drug
experimentation on women without their full, informed consent; nationalization
of the drug industry.
3.
An end to the hypocrisy, debasement, and coercion of bourgeois and
feudal family laws.
a.
Separation of church and state.
b.
An end to all forced marriages and the buying and selling of wives. Abrogation
of all laws against adultery. Abolition
of laws giving men "conjugal rights" over their wives. An end to all laws, secular or religious,
sanctioning penalties, physical abuse, or even murder of wives, sisters, and
daughters for so-called crimes against male “honor”.
c.
Abolition of all laws forbidding marriage between men and women of different
races, religions, or nationalities.
d. Marriage to be a voluntary process of civil
registration.
e. The right to automatic divorce on request of either
partner. State provision for economic welfare and job training for the divorced
woman.
f.
Abolition of the concept of “illegitimacy.” An end to all discrimination against
unwed mothers and their children. An end to the prisonlike conditions that
govern special centers set up to take care of unwed mothers and other women who
have nowhere else to go.
g.
The rearing, social welfare, and education of children to be the responsibility
of society, rather than the burden of individual parents. Abolition of all laws
granting parents property rights and total control over children. Strict laws
against child abuse.
h.
An end to all laws victimizing prostitutes. An end to all laws reinforcing the
double standard for men and women in sexual matters. An end to all laws and
regulations victimizing youth for sexual activities.
i.
An end to the mutilation of women through the practice of infibulation or
clitorectomy.
j.
Abrogation of all antihomosexual laws. An end to all discrimination against
homosexuals in employment, housing, child custody. An end to the insulting
stereotyping of homosexuals in textbooks and mass media, or portrayal of
homosexual relations as perverted and against nature.
k.
Violence against women- often sanctioned by reactionary family laws - is a
daily reality that all women experience in some form. If it is not the extreme
of rape or beatings, there is still the ever present threat of sexual assault
implicit in the widespread circulation of pornographic literature, and the
obscene comments and gestures women are constantly subjected to in the streets
and on the job.
We
demand the elimination of laws predicated on the assumption that female rape
victims are the guilty party; establishment of centers - independent of the
police and courts - designed to welcome, counsel, and help battered wives, rape
victims, and other female victims of sexual violence; improvement of public
transportation, street lighting, and other public services that make it safer
for women to go out alone.
Violence
against women is a vicious product of the general social and economic
conditions of class society. It inevitably increases during periods of social
crisis. But we strive to educate women and men that sexual violence cannot be
eradicated without changing the foundation from which the economic, social, and
sexual degradation of women flows. We expose the racist and anti-working class
use of antirape laws to victimize men of oppressed nationalities. We oppose
demands raised by some feminists to inflict drastic penalties on convicted
rapists or to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state, whose cops are
among the most notorious brutalizers of women.
We
oppose any kind of censorship of literature, even under the guise of campaigns
against pornography.
4. Full economic independence for women.
a.
Guaranteed jobs at union wages for all women who want to work, coupled with a sliding
scale of hours and wages to combat inflation and unemployment among men and
women. A shorter work -week for all.
b.
Elimination of laws that discriminate against women's right to receive and
dispose of their own wages and property.
c.
Equal pay for equal work. For a national minimum wage based on union scale.
d.
No discrimination against women in any trade, profession, job category,
apprenticeship, or training program.
e.
Preferential hiring, training, job upgrading, and seniority adjustments for
women and other superexploited layers of the labor force in order to overcome
the effects of decades of systematic discrimination against them. No
preferential hiring for men in traditionally female-dominated trades and
industries.
f.
Paid maternity leaves for father and mother with no loss of job or seniority.
g.
Paid work leaves to care for sick children to be given to men and women alike.
h.
The extension of beneficial protective legislation (providing special working
conditions to women) to cover men, in order to improve working conditions for
both men and women and prevent the use of protective legislation to
discriminate against women.
i.
A uniform retirement age for men and women, with each individual free to take
retirement or not.
j.
Part-time workers to be guaranteed the same hourly wages and benefits as
full-time workers.
k.
Compensation at union rates throughout periods of unemployment for all women
and men, including youth who cannot find a place in the work force, regardless
of marital status, or previous employment record. Unemployment compensation to
be protected against inflation by automatic increases.
5. Equal educational
opportunities.
a.
Free, open admissions for all women to all institutions of education and all
programs of study, including on-the-job training programs. Special preferential
admissions programs to encourage women to enter traditionally male-dominated
fields and learn skills and trades from which they have previously been
excluded.
b.
An end to all forms of pressuring women to prepare themselves for "women's
work," such as homemaking, secretarial work, nursing, and teaching.
c.
Special education and refresher courses to aid women reentering the job market.
d.
An end to portrayal in textbooks and mass media of women as sex objects and
stupid, weak, emotionally dependent creatures. Courses designed to teach the
true history of women's struggles against their oppression. Physical education
courses to teach women to develop their strength and be proud of their athletic
abilities.
e.
No expulsion of pregnant students or unwed mothers, or segregation into special
facilities.
6. Reorganization of society to
eliminate domestic slavery of women.
The
family as an economic unit cannot be "abolished" by fiat. It can only
be replaced over time. The goal of the socialist revolution is to create
economic and social altematives that are superior to the present family
institution and better able to provide for the needs currently met, however
poorly, by the family, so that personal relationships will be a matter of free
choice and not of economic compulsion. To ultraleft propaganda and agitation
for the "abolition" of the family, we counterpose:
a.
Free, government-financed twenty- four-hour childcare centers and schools,
conveniently located and open to all children from infancy to early adolescence
regardless of parents' income, employment situation, or marital status; trained
male and female personnel; elimination of all sexist educational practices;
child-care policies to be decided by those who use the centers.
b.
Free medical care for all and special child-care facilities for children who
are ill.
c.
Systematic development of low-cost, high-quality social services such as cafeterias,
restaurants, and take-out food centers available to all; collective laundry
facilities; housecleaning services organized on an industrial basis.
d.
A crash, government-financed development program to provide healthful,
uncrowded housing for all; no rent to exceed 10 percent of income; no
discrimination against single women or women with children.
***
These
demands indicate the issues around which women will fight for their liberation,
and show how this fight is interrelated with the demands raised by other
oppressed sectors of society and the needs of the working class as a
whole. It is in struggle along these
lines that the working class will be educated to understand and oppose sexism
in all its forms and expressions.
The
women’s liberation movement raises many issues.
The development of the movement has already demonstrated that not all
will come to the fore with equal force at any given time. Which demands to raise at any particular time
in the course of a particular struggle, the best way to formulate specific
demands so that they are understable to the masses and able to mobilize them in
action, when to advance new demands to move the struggle forward – the answer
to those tactical problems is the function of the revolutionary party, the art
of politics itself.
Our Methods of Struggle
1. We utilize the proletarian methods of
mobilization and action in order to achieve these demands. Everything we do is
geared to bring the masses themselves into motion, into struggle, whatever
their current levelof consciousness. The masses do not learn simply by being
exposed to ideas or by the exemplary action of others. Only through their own
direct involvement will the political consciousness of the masses develop,
grow, and be transformed. Only through their own experience will millions of
women be won as allies in the revolutionary struggle and come to understand the
need to get rid of an economic system based on exploitation.
Our
goal is to teach the masses to rely on their own united power. We utilize
elections and other institutions of bourgeois democracy to clearly present our
program to the broadest possible numbers of workers. But we counterpose
extraparliamentary mass action - demonstrations, meetings, strikes, occupations
- to reliance on elections, lobbying, parliaments, legislatures, and the
bourgeois and petty- bourgeois politicians who haunt them.
Our
class-struggle methods are geared to awakening the initiatives of the great
majority of women; to bring them together; to destroy their dornestic isolation
and their lack of confidence in their own abilities, intelligence,
independence, and strength. Struggling together with them, we aim to show that
class exploitation is the root of wornen's oppression and its elimination the
only road to emancipation.
Just
as we strive to develop the class consciousness of the women's liberation
movement, we try to win the workers movement to take up the struggle against
each aspect of women's oppression.
In
every struggle, we aim to educate women to understand the class inequality that
sharpens the oppression of the most exploited. We try to lead the movement to
address itself first and foremost to mobilizing wornen of the working class and
oppressed nationalities. Through the system of demands we advance and the
propaganda we put forward, we strive to move the struggle in an anticapitalist
direction. We highlight the social implications of demands and expose the logic
of profit and the conditions of class society that limit the capacity of the
ruling class to implement in practice even the concessions wrung from it
through struggle.
2.
The oppression of women as a sex constitutes the objective basis for the
mobilization of women in struggle through their own organizations. For that reason
the Fourth International supports and helps build the women's liberation
movement.
By
the wornen's movement we mean all the women who organize themselves at one
level or another to struggle against the oppression imposed on them by this
society: women's liberation groups, consciousness-raising groups, neighborhood
groups, student groups, groups organized at workplaces, trade-union
commissions, organizations of women of oppressed nationalities,
lesbian-feminist groups, action coalitions around specific demands. The women's
movement is characterized by its heterogeneity, its penetration into all layers
of society, and the fact that it is not tied to any particular political
organization, even though various currents are active within it. Moreover, some
groups and action coalitions, though led and sustained by women, are open to
men as well, such as the National Organization for Women in the
While
most women's groups initially developed outside the mass organizations of the
working class, the deepening radicalization has led more and more working-class
women to find ways to organize themselves within their class organizations. In
But
all these are forms of the turbulent and still largely unstructured reality
called the independent or autonomous women's movement.
By
independent or autonomous we do not mean independent of the class struggle or
the needs of the working class. On the contrary, only by fusing the objectives
and demands of the women's movement with the struggle of the working class will
the necessary forces be assembled to achieve women's goals.
By
independent or autonomous we mean that the movement is organized and led by
women; that it takes the fight for women's rights and needs as its first
priority, refusing to subordinate that fight to any other interests; that it is
not subordinate to the decisions or policy needs of any political tendency or
any other social group; that it is willing to carry through the fight by
whatever means and together with whatever forces prove necessary.
Clearly,
not every group within the movement measures up to those criteria fully or
equally, but such is the character of the independent women’s liberation
movement we seek to build.
3. The dominant
organizational form of the women's movement has been all- female groups. These
have emerged in virtually all arenas from the schools and churches to the
factories and trade unions. This expresses the determination of women to take
the leadership of their own organizations in which they can learn and develop
and lead without fear of being put down or dictated to by men or having to
compete with them from the start.
Before
women can lead others they must throw off their feelings of inferiority and
self-deprecation. They must learn to lead themselves. Feminist groups that
consciously and deliberately exclude men help many women to take the first
steps toward discarding their own slave mentality, gaining confidence, pride,
and courage to act as political beings.
The
small "consciousness raising" groups that have emerged everywhere as
one of the most prevalent forms of the new radicalization help many women to
realize that their problems do not arise from personal shortcomings, but are
socially created and common to other women.
If
they remain inward-turned and limit themselves to discussion circles as a
substitute for joining with others to act, they can become an obstacle to the
further political development of the women involved. But they most often lay
the groundwork for women to break out of their isolation for the first time, to
gain confidence, and to move into action.
The
desire of women to organize themselves in all-female groups is the opposite of
the practice followed by many mass Stalinist parties that organize separate
male and female youth organizations for the purpose of repressing sexual
activity and reinforcing sex-stereotyped behavior- i.e., the inferiority of
women. The independent all-female groups that have emerged today express in
part the distrust many radicalizing women feel for the mass reformist
organizations of the working class, which have failed so miserably to fight for
their needs.
Our
support for and work to build the independent women's liberation movement
distinguishes the Fourth International today from many sectarian groups that
claim to stand on Marxist orthodoxy as represented by their interpretations of
the resolutions of the first four congresses of the Third International. Such
groups reject the construction of any women's organizations except those tied
directly to and under the politicaI control of their party.
To
those "Marxists" who claim that women's liberation groups organized
on the basis of women only divide the working class along sex lines, we say it
is not those fighting against their oppression who are responsible for creating
or maintaining divisions. Capitalism
divides the working class-by race, by sex, by age, by nationality, by skilI
levels, and by every other means possible.
Our job is to organize and support the battles of the most oppressed and
exploited layers who are raising demands that represent the interests of the entire
class and who will lead the struggle for socialism. Those who suffer most from
the old will fight the most energetically for the new.
4. The forms through which we work can vary
greatly depending on the concrete circumstances in which our organizations find
themselves. Our tactics are dictated by our strategic aim, which is to educate
and lead in action forces much broader than ourselves, especially the decisive
forces of the working class, to help build a mass women's liberation movement,
to strengthen a class-struggle wing of the women's movement, and to recruit the
best cadre to the revolutionary party.
Factors
that must be taken into account include the strength of our own forces; the
size, character, and political level of the women's liberation forces; the
strength of the liberal, Social Democratic, Stalinist, and centrist forces
against whom we must contend; and the general political context in which we are
working. It's a tactical question
whether we should organize women's liberation groups on a broad socialist
program, work through existing organizations of the women's liberation
movement, build broad action coalitions around specific issues, work through
trade-union commissions or caucuses in other mass organizations, combine
several of these activities, or work through some altogether different forms.
No
matter what organizational form we adopt, the fundamental question to be
decided is the same: what specific issues and demands should be raised under
the given circumstances in order to most effectively mobilize women and their
allies in struggle?
5. There is no contradiction between supporting
and building all-female organizations to fight for women's liberation, or for
specific demands relating to women's oppression, and simultaneously building
mass action coalitions involving both men and women to fight for the same
demands. Campaigns around the right to abortion have provided a good example of
this. Women will be the backbone of such
campaigns, but since the fight is in the interests of the working masses as a
whole, our perspective is to win support for the movement from all
organizations of the working class and the oppressed.
6. Our perspective of trying to mobilize masses
of women in action can often best be achieved in the present period through
united-front-type action campaigns, which mobilize the broadest possible
support around concrete demands. This is all the more true, given the relative
weakness of the sections of the Fourth International and the relative strength
of the liberals and our reformist, class-collaborationist opponents. For many women and men, participation in the
actions organized by such campaigns has been their first step toward support
for the political goals of the women's liberation movement. The united-front-type
abortion campaigns in numerous countries provide an example of this type of
action.
Through
such united-front-type actions we can bring the greatest power to bear against
the capitalist government and educate women and the working class concerning
their own strength. Insofar as the liberal "friends" of women, the
Stalinists, Social Democrats, and trade-union bureaucrats refuse to support
such united campaigns for women's needs, they will isolate and expose
themselves by their own inaction, opposition, or willingness to subordinate
women's needs to their search for an alliance with the supposedly
“progressive" sectors of the ruling class. And if mass pressure obliges
them to support such actions, this can only broaden the mass appeal of the
campaigns and increase the contradictions within the reformist and liberal
forces.
As
we have already seen so clearly around the abortion question, such united-
front-type action campaigns are of particular importance in deepening the
interaction between the independent women's movement and the labor movement,
since they put the greatest pressure on the labor bureaucracy to respond.
7.
Because our orientation is to build a women's movement that is basically
working-class in composition and leadership, and because of the interconnection
between the fight for women's liberation and the transformation of the trade
unions into instruments that effectively defend the interests of the whole
class, we give special importance to struggles by women in the unions and on the
job. Our aim is to organize women to actively participate in their unions and
in the women's liberation movement.
Here
as elsewhere in capitalist society, women are subject to male domination, to
discrimination as an inferior sex that is out of its “natural place." But
the growing number of women in the work force and their deepening consciousness
of their double oppression, have already brought significant changes in the
attitudes of working women, strengthening their inclination to organize, unionize,
and fight for their rights.
Women
workers are involved in many struggles for general demands relating to the
economic needs and job conditions of all workers. They also frequently raise the
special needs of women workers such as equal pay, maternity benefits,
child-care facilities, and preferential hiring and training. Both are central to the struggle for women's
liberation as well as to the working class in general. Such struggles and demands
by women workers will assume a greater weight as the class struggle deepens
under the impact of the economic crisis. They will have a greater and greater
impact on the women's liberation movement.
Most
women who enter into such struggles do not think of themselves as
feminists. They simply think they are
entitled to equal pay for doing the same job as a man, or believe they have a
right to be employed in some traditionally "masculine" line of work. They
often protest vigorously that they are not feminists.
Working
women who become involved in struggles on the job confront the same issues and
conditions that have given rise to the independent women's movement.
They
often face sexist harassment and abuse which is organized and promoted by their
foremen and supervisors. Even when it comes from their fellow workers, it is
often the result of an atmosphere fostered by the employer. Women face the
sometimes difficult job of fighting to convince the union to defend them
against serious harassment and victimization by management personnel. They have
to convince fellow workers that when they give women a hard time on the job,
they are only doing the boss's job for him, and playing into his
divide-and-rule tactics.
As
women begin to play an active role, to take on leadership responsibilities, to
prove their leadership capacities to themselves and others, to gain confidence
and play an independent role, they develop a greater understanding of what the
women's liberation movement is fighting for. The correct presentation of clear,
concrete demands and objectives by the feminist movement is indispensable in
reaching and involving millions of working women whose conscious political
development begins as they try to confront their problems as women who must
also work a job to earn a living.
8.
The growing weight and role of women in the labor movement has an important
impact on the consciousness of many male workers, who begin to see women more
as equal partners in struggle and less as weak creatures who must be coddled
and protected.
In
this context, demands for preferential hiring, training, and job promotion for
women in the traditionally male-dominated sectors of the economy have a special
importance.
a.
They challenge the division within the working class along sex lines, divisions
that are fostered and maintained by the bosses in order to weaken the working
class and hold down the wages and working conditions of the entire class.
b.
They help educate both male and female workers to appreciate the material effects
of discrimination against women, and the need for conscious measures to
overcome the effects of centuries of enforced subjugation.
c.
As women begin to break down the traditional division of labor along sex lines
and establish their equal right to employment and their ability to perform
"male" jobs as well as men, sexist attitudes and assumptions within
the working class are undercut and the social division of labor in all spheres
is challenged.
Struggles
that open the doors for women to enter the educational, occupational, and
leadership realms previously dominated by men pose in the clearest possible
manner the eradication of women's inferior social status. Along with demands
that raise the basic democratic rights of women, and those that go toward
socializing the domestic labor women perform, such as the expansion and
improvement of child-care facilities, they have a powerful educational impact
within the working class.
9.
Such demands also have a special importance as part of thé fight to transform
the unions into revolutionary instruments of class struggle and challenge the
sexist bias of the labor bureaucracy. The union bureaucracy bases itself on the
most privileged layers of male workers, who usually see preferential demands as
a threat to their immediate prerogatives. The most conscious elements of the
bureaucracy thus adamantly oppose those demands raised by the most oppressed
and exploited sectors of the working class which are aimed at eradicating the
deep divisions within the class.
An
important part of our strategic orientation to develop a class-struggle left
wing in the trade-union movement is to utilize the growing weight of forces
like the women's liberation movement to pose the key social and political
issues on which the labor movement should be playing a leadership role.
As
the ranks of the unions are won to support such struggles the reactionary
antiwoman and therefore anti-working class policies of the labor bureaucracy
will be exposed and new forces will come forward to lead.
10.
There are many difficulties in organizing women workers. Precisely because of
their oppression as women, they are less likely to be unionized or to have a
strong class consciousness. Their participation in the labor force is
frequently more sporadic. Their double burden of responsibilities and chores at
home is fatiguing and time-consuming, leaving them less energy for political
and trade-union activity. The gross inadequacy of child-care facilities makes
participation in meetings especially difficult.
For
these reasons, the fight to convince the trade unions to take up the special
demands of women is inseparable from the fight for trade-union democracy.
Trade-union democracy includes not only issues such as the right of the
membership to vote on all question, election of all leadership bodies and
personnel, and the right to form tendencies. It also implies special measures
that permit women to participate with full equality-child-care facilities
organized by the union during meetings, union commissions that deal
specifically with women's needs, the right to meet in women's caucuses when
necessary, special provisions to meet during working hours, and measures to
assure adequate representation of women on all leadership bodies. Within the
workers movement, challenging sexist attitudes and practices is an integral
part of the fight for trade-union democracy and class solidarity.
11.
If we give special importance to the struggles of women working outside the
home it is not because we deprecate the oppression suffered by housewives. On
the contrary, we understand and put forward a program that answers the deep
problems faced by women in the home, the overwhelming majority of whom are
working-class women, who will spend some part of their life in the labor market
in addition to carrying out their domestic responsibilities. We offer a
perspective of escape from the mind-deadening drudgery of housework, the
iso1ation it imposes on each individual woman, the economic dependence of
housewives, and the fear and insecurity this produces. We counterpose our
program of socialization of housework and the integration of women into the
productive labor force on an equal basis to the alternatives offered by
reaction - a glorification of housework and motherhood and proposa1s to
compensate women for their domestic slavery through wages for housework or
similar superficially alluring schemes.
As
capitalism in crisis shifts more and more economic burdens onto the individual
family, it is often housewives, responsible for trying to stretch the family
income to cover the basic necessities, who first take to the streets in protest
over food shortages and soaring inflation. Such movements can be a first step
toward political consciousness and collective action for thousands of women.
They offer an opening and a challenge to the labor movement to join with and
help provide leadership and direction for such protests - which can develop
with explosive rapidity. Demands for joint worker-consumer price surveillance
committees provide common ground for the labor movement, protesting housewives,
and other consumers.
Unlike
housewives, however, working women are already semiorganized by the labor
market. Their place within the working class, within the workers movement, and
their economic status put them in a position to play a pivotal leadership role
in the struggles of women and of the working class as a whole.
12.
There is no contradiction between building the independent women's liberation
movement, building trade unions, and building a revolutionary Marxist Party of
women and men.
The
struggle for socialism requires all three. They serve different functions. The
mass feminist movement mobilizes women in struggle around their needs and
through their own independent forms of organization. The trade unions are the
basic economic defense organizations of the working-class. The mass
revolutionary Marxist party, through program and action, provides leadership
for the working class and its allies, including women, and uncompromisingly
orients all facets of the class struggle toward a combined drive to establish a
workers government and abolish capitalism.
There
is no objective basis for a separate revolutionary Marxist women's organization.
Unless women and men share equally in the rights and responsibilities of
membership and leadership in a party that develops a political program and
activities that represent the interests of all the oppressed and exploited, the
party can never lead the working class to accomplish its historic tasks.
We
maintain that there are no exclusively "women's issues." Every
question of concern to the female half of humanity is likewise a broader social
question of vital interest to the working class as a whole. While we raise
demands that deal with the specific oppression of women, we have no separate
program for women's liberation. Our demands are an integral part of our
transitional program for the socialist revolution.
13.
The program of the revolutionary party synthesizes the lessons of struggles
against all forms of economic and social exploitation and oppression. The party
expresses the historic interests of the proletariat through its program and
action. Thus it not only learns from the participation of its members in the
women's liberation movement. It also has an indispensable role to play. Through
our work to build the independent women's movement, we deepen the party's
understanding of women's oppression and the struggle against it. And we also
strive to win ever greater forces to an effective strategy for women's
liberation, that is, to a class-struggle perspective.
We
do not demand agreement with our program as a precondition for building the
independent women's movement. On the contrary, a broad-based movement, within
which a wide range of personal experiences and political perspectives can
contend in a framework of democratic debate and discussion, can only strengthen
the political confidence and combativity of the movement. It enhances the
possibility of developing a correct perspective.
However,
we do not strive for the organic unity of all components of the women's
movement at all costs. We fight for the broadest possible unity in action on
the basis of demands and activities that genuinely reflect the objective needs
of women, which is also the program in the interests of the working class.
We
try to build the strongest possible wing within the women's liberation movement
of those who share our class-struggle perspectives. A consistent struggle
against all aspects of women's oppression means resolutely combatting all
attempts to divert women's struggles into the reformist deadend of managing the
rulers' austerity programs, or towards a search for individual solutions. We
strive to recruit the most conscious and combative to the revolutionary party.
Our
goal is to win the leadership of the women's liberation movement by showing
women in practice that we have the program and perspectives that can lead to
liberation. This is not a sectarian stance. Nor does it indicate a manipulative
attempt to dominate or control the mass movement. On the contrary, it reflects
our conviction that the struggle against women's oppresssion can be won only if
the feminist movement develops in an anticapitalist direction. Such an
evolution is not automatic. It depends on the demands put forward, the class
forces toward which the feminist movement orients, and the forms of action in
which it engages. Only the conscious intervention of the revolutionary party and
its ability to win the confidence and leadership of women fighting for their
liberation offers any guarantee that the women's struggle will ultimately be
victorious.
14.
We are concerned with all aspects of women's oppression. However, as a
political party based on a program that represents the historic interests of
the working class and all the oppressed, our prime task is to help direct the
women's liberation movement toward political action that can effectively lead
to the eradication of private property in which that oppression is rooted.
Around every facet of women's oppression we strive to develop demands and
actions that challenge the social and economic policies of the bourgeoisie and
point toward the solutions that would be possible were it not for the fact that
all social policies are decided on the basis of maximizing private profits.
Our
approach to the struggle for women's liberation as an eminently political
question often brings us into conflict with petty-bourgeois radical-feminist
currents, who counterpose the development of new individual
"life-styles" to political action directed against the state. They
blame men instead of capitalism. They counterpose reforming men as individuals,
trying to make them less sexist, to organizing against the bourgeois govemment
which defends and sustains the institutions of class society responsible for
male supremacy and women's oppression. They often attempt to build utopian
"counterinstitutions" in the midst of class society.
As
revolutionists we recognize that the problems many women seek to resolve in
this way are real and preoccupying. Our criticism is not directed against
individuals who try to find a personal way out from under the intolerable
pressures capitalist society places on them. But we point out that for the
masses of workers there is no "individual" solution. They must fight
collectively to change society before their "life-style" will be
significantly altered. Ultimately there are no purely private solutions for any
of us. Individual escapism is a form of utopianism that can only end in
disillusionment and the dispersal of revolutionary forces.
Our
Class
1.
Political independence is the third facet of our class-struggle strategy for the
fight against women's oppression. We do not defer or subordinate any demand,
action, or struggle of women to the political needs and concerns of either the
bourgeois or reformist political forces with their parliamentary shadowboxing
and electoral maneuvers.
2.
We fight to keep women's liberation organizations and struggles independent of
all bourgeois forces and parties. We oppose attempts to divert women's
struggles toward the construction of women's caucuses inside of or oriented to
capitalist parties or bourgeois politics, as has occurred in the
Women's
liberation is part of the historic struggle of the working class against
capita1ism. We strive to make that link a conscious one on the part of women
and of the working class. But we do not reject support from bourgeois figures
or politicians who voice their agreement with any of our demands or goals. That
strengthens our side, not theirs. It is their contradiction, not ours.
We
strive for united-front action on specific demands and campaigns with the
broadest possible forces, especially the mass reformist parties of the working
class. But we reject the political perspectives of the Stalinist and Social
Democratic parties.
The
policies and conduct of both these currents within the working-class movement
are based on preserving the institutions of the capitalist system, including
the family, regardless of any lip service they may pay to the struggles of
women against their oppression. Both are ready to subordinate the needs of
women to whatever class-collaborationist deal they are trying to negotiate at
the moment, whether it be with the monarchy in
4.
It is only through an uncompromising programmatic and organizational break from
the bourgeoisie and all forms of class collaborationism that the working class
and its allies, including women struggling for their liberation, can be mobilized
as a powerful and self-confident force capable of carrying the socialist
revolution through to the end. The task of the revolutionary Marxist party is
to provide the leadership to educate the working masses, including the women's
movement, through action and propaganda in this class struggle perspective.
Tasks
of the Fourth Internationa1 Today
1.
The new rise of the women's liberation movement has proceeded unevenly on a
world scale, and feminist consciousness has had varying degrees of impact. But
the speed with which revolutionary ideas and lessons of struggle are
transmitted from one country to another, and from one sector of the world
revolution to another, ensures the continuing spread of women's liberation
struggles. Increasingly widespread questioning of the traditional role of women
creates an atmosphere conducive to Marxist educationand propaganda, as well as
concrete action in support of the liberation of women. Through our press and
propaganda activities the Fourth International has growing opportunities to
explain the source and nature of women's oppression, our program for
eradicating that oppression along with the class society in which it is rooted,
and the revolutionary dynamic of women's struggle for liberation.
2.
The involvement of our sections and sympathizing organizations in the women's
liberation movement in numerous countries has shown that considerable potential
exists for helping to organize and lead action campaigns around issues raised
in the struggle against women's oppression. Such campaigns often provide
opportunities especially for our women comrades to gain valuable experience and
to play a leadership role in the mass movement. They are frequently an avenue
through which even relatively small numbers of comrades can play a significant
political role and win influence among much broader forces. Our support for and
active participation in the women's 1iberation movement has already won us many
new members.
The
orientation of the sections and sympathizing organizations of the Fourth
Intemational is to commit our forces to building the women'sliberation movement
and action campaigns around specific issues like abortion, child care, the
right to a job, and other aspects of our program.
We
also encourage intemational solidarity in the women's movement, and where
possible, international coordination of action campaigns around common issues.
The intemational campaign on abortion in which our sections have frequently
played a decisive role, is a good example of the type of international
coordination that is possible.
3. In addition to participating in all the
various independent organizational forms that have emerged as part of the
radicalization of women, we must integrate women’s liberation propaganda and
activity into all our areas of work, from the trade unions to the student
milieu. It is especially among the youth
– students, young workers, young housewives – that we will find the greatest
receptivity to our ideas and program and readiness for action.
Women’s
liberation work is not the responsibility of women comrades alone, although
they will have to lead it. As with every
other question, the entire membership and leadership of the party must be
knowledgeable about our work, collectively participate in determining our
political line, and take responsibility for carrying our campaigns and
propaganda into all areas of the class struggle where we are active. Male as
well as female comrades will help to drive this forward.
4.
To organize and carry out systematic women's liberation work, sections of the
Fourth International should establish commissions or fractions composed of
those involved in this work. Such fractions would include male as well as
female comrades depending on the activities in which we are involved.
They
should help the appropriate leadership bodies to give regular attention to all
aspects of our work around issues and demands raised by the women's liberation
movement, including proposals for internal education of our own membership. By
establishing such commissions and fractions which - together with the
leadership bodies - are responsible for discussing and implementing systematic
work we can take maximum advantage of the opportunities and openings, and make
our own membership fully aware of the political importance of the struggle for
women’s liberation.
5.
Systematic education about the history of women’s oppression and struggles, and
the theoretical and political questions involved, should be organized within
the sections of the Fourth International. This education should not be limited
to special schools from time to time but must become part of the daily life of
the organization. It must be part of the basic political education of each
member as they acquire and deepen their understanding of the fundamental
positions of revolutionary Marxism.
We
have no illusions that sections can be islands of the future socialist society
floating in a capitalist morass, or that individual comrades can fully escape
the education and conditioning absorbed from the everyday effort to survive in
class society. Sexist attitudes can and do sometimes find expression within the
ranks of the Fourth International. But it is a condition of membership in the
Fourth International that the conduct of comrades and sections be in harmony
with the principles on which we stand. We educate the members of the Fourth
International to a full understanding of the character of women's oppression
and the pernicious ways in which it is expressed. We strive to create an
organization in which language, jokes, personal violence, and other acts
expressing chauvinist bigotry toward women are not tolerated anymore than acts
and expressions of racist bigotry would be allowed to pass unchallenged.
6.
Women members of our organizations face special problems, both material and
psychological, stemming from their oppression in class society. They often face
the same time-consuming domestic responsibilities as other women, especially if
they have children. They are marked by the same lack of self-confidence,
timidity, and fear of leadership that all women are educated from birth to
consider as "natural." These obstacles to the recruitment,
integration, and leadership development of women comrades must be discussed and
consciously dealt with within the party.
As
on all other questions, the leadership has the responsibility to take the lead:
Conscious
attention must be given to the education, political development, and leadership
training of women comrades. This should be a constant concem of all leadership
bodies at all levels of the sections and the intemational. Consideration should
be given to assuring that women are encouraged and, more importantly, helped to
take on assignments that challenge them to develop their full capacities -
teaching classes, writing articles, giving political reports, being public
spokespersons and candidates for the organization, leading areas of work. Only
by taking such deliberate and conscious measures can we maximize the
development of our women cadre and assure that when they are elected to
leadership bodies at all levels, this reflects a genuine expansion of a
self-confident and strong political leadership cadre, not an artificial measure
that can prove destructive to both individual comrades and the organization as
a whole.
Within
such a general framework of conscious leadership development, we strive to
maximize the number of women in the central leadership bodies of our sections
and sympathizing organizations and international.
This
process will be facilitated by the fact that a growing number of comrades will
be in the vanguard of women fighting their way into non-traditional jobs as
part of the industrial working class. The self- confidence they gain from being
part of the most powerful and organized sectors of the proletariat, the respect
they earn from both male and female workers, and the experience they acquire as
leaders of our class, are a crucial part of transforming the conscioussness of
our organization and developing party leaders who are women.
For
women comrades especially the difficulties created by the gross inadequacy of
state-funded child-care facilities are often a barrier to their full
participation in meetings and other activities. As our sections grow and become
more working class in composition, we wil1 be recruiting more comrades who have
children.
In
our public activities and through our intervention in the mass movement, we
strive to make broader social forces conscious of the need for organized child
care. We try to win the labor movement to support and put high priority on the
fight for socially organized and funded child-care services. We demand that
mass workers organizations such as trade unions organize meeting times to
facilitate the participation of women members, and utilize their resources to
provide child-care facilities.
Internally
our comrades must be constantly aware of the extra burdens and obstacles that
stem from social and economic inequality generated by capitalism, especially
for women and comrades of oppressed nationalities. We make allowances for this.
In this perspective the leadership has the obligation to work with comrades who
have family responsibilities to try to find collective so1utions that will
enable them to minimize the obstacles to their political activity. For example,
when a comrade with children is asked to take on a full-time assignment, the
leadership has the responsibility to discuss and try to resolve the special needs,
financial or otherwise.
At
the same time, we recognize that there are limits to what the party can do. The
party itself cannot assume the material obligation to eliminate the economic
and social inequalities among comrades created by class society. We cannot
assure the social services capitalism does not provide. The party does not have
a generalized obligation to provide child care in order to equalize the
personal situations of all comrades, nor can child-care duties be imposed on
any comrade.
Such
an approach would change the very purpose and character of the party as a
political organization. What binds us together is our common determination to
destroy the system that perpetuates inequality, our agreement on the program to
accomplish that aim, and our loyalty to the party based on that program.
The process of
educating our own members will take place along with, and be facilitated by,
the growing involvement of our sections in the struggle for women's liberation.
The impact of this struggle on the consciousness and attitudes of all comrades
has already been profound. The transformation of the women cadre of the
international, reflecting our involvement in the struggle for women's
liberation, is a development of historic dimensions. The growing self-confidence,
political maturity, and leadership capacities of the women comrades of the
Fourth International constitute a significant expansion of the effective forces
of revolutionary leadership on a world scale.
The new rise of
women’s struggles internationally and the emergence of a strong women's
liberation movement prior to revolutionary struggles for power is a development
of prime importance to the world party of socialist revolution. It increases
the political power of the working class and the likelihood that the
international revolution will be successful in carrying through to the end its
task of socialist reconstruction. The rise of the women’s liberation movement
is an additional guarantee against the bureaucratic degeneration of future
revolutions.
The struggle to
liberate women from the bondage in which class society has placed them is a
struggle to free all human relationships from the shackles of economic
compulsion and to propel humanity along the road to a higher social order.
November 1979
Resolution on
Internal Women’s Caucuses[1]
In
recent years a number of sections of the Fourth International have adopted
resolutions permitting the organization of women's caucuses - that is, internal
meetings open to women comrades only.
While
we support and fight for the right of women to form such caucuses in
non-Leninist organizations, we are opposed to such groups within the
revolutionary party.
The emergence of women's caucuses in
some sections has reflected very real political problems and leadership
defaults.
There has been insensitivity to the depth of the special problems women
comrades face, failure to understand the political importance of the women’s
liberation movement and its place in the class stuggle, slowness in responding
to the rise of the feminist movement, or reluctance to assign comrades to
women’s liberation work and integrate it into all arenas of our political
activity. Because of these errors we
have unnecessarily lost valuable cadres and political opportunities. This kind of situation has frequently led to
an explosion of resentment by comrades, especially women, who recognize that
sexist attitudes often underlie these errors and make them more difficult to correct.
In
an effort to change this kind of situation, women comrades in a number of
sections have demanded the right to meet together in caucuses, from which all
male comrades are excluded, to discuss the internal situation in the party.
Our
support for the right of women to caucus in organizations in the mass movement
flows from the fact that other organizations are not based on a revolutionary
Marxist program that represents the historical interests of women and the
working class. Their leaderships are not democratically elected to defend such
a program. There is a contradiction, for example, setween the interests of the
trade-union sureaucracy and the needs of the union membership and of women. In
that situation the right to organize women's caucuses becomes a question of
elementary democracy and part of the struggle to put the union on a
class-struggle political course.
But
the revolutionary Marxist party can accomplish the historic tasks it has set
itself only if it is capable of uniting in its ranks and leadership the most
conscious and combative representatives of the working class and especially its
most oppressed and exploited layers. To do this it must overcome the deep
divisions fostered by capitalism and forge a cadre that has profound confidence
in its common commitment and understanding of the tasks. This is concretized in
the program of the revolutionary Marxist party, which synthesizes the
experiences, demands, and interrelation between the struggles of all the
exploited and oppressed and integrates them in a strategic line of march toward
the proletarian revolution.
From
this program we derive our organizational norms. Just as we have only one
program, we have only one class of membership. Every comrade, male or female,
Black or white, worker or petty bourgeois, young or old, literate or
illiterate, has the same rights when it comes to determining the party's
program and activity, the same responsibilities for implementing those
decisions. The party's political program, line of intervention, and intemal
functioning must be democratically discussed and decided with all members
participating. All intemal fractions, commissions, tendencies, or other
formations must be organized democratically-i.e., open to all members assigned
to a particular area of work or all members who agree on the platform of a
tendency , regardless of sex, race, age, language, class origin, or whatever.
In
a revolutionary Marxist party, whatever its shortcomings and weaknesses may be,
there is no inherent contradiction between program, leadership, and ranks. Thus
the organization of women-only caucuses cuts across the intemal democracy of
the party and the construction of the kind of organization we need to realize
our working-class program.
Since
they are usually established for the express purpose of discussing internal
problems only, women's caucuses are incapable of charting a course to
resolve internal contradictions. That can only be done by charting a correct
course of intervention in the mass movement to build the party. In the process the membership
is educated and transformed.
Repeated
experiences have shown - in practice as well as in theory - that the formation
of women's caucuses does not help to resolve the problems that led to their
formation. Rather they create centrifugal dynamics, fostering the impression
that the party is a federation of conflicting interest groups each one fighting
for its own program and priorities rather than an organization united on the
basis of a common program and assessment of tasks. Often the caucuses reinforce
the attitude that it is only the women comrades who are responsible for
resolving the problems. They turn the women in on themselves in a destructive
way. They deepen the frustration and political disorientation of both male and
female comrades, and often hasten rather than prevent the departure of women
from the organization.
Because
they are not based on internal democracy caucuses also undermine our centralism
in action. They stand in contradiction to our program and our democratic
centralist organizational norms.
Strong
pressure to organize such caucuses is a danger sign that the leadership has
failed to meet the political challenge of educating the party on all aspects of
the struggle for women's liberation and its place in the work of the party. The
problems cannot be resolved by condemning the women comrades who are seeking a
solution. The response must be fundamentally political, not organizational, and
the leadership must take the responsibility for correcting errors, and
educating and leading.
The
problems that exist can be resolved only through a full political discussion
leading to (a) the implementation of consistent work on women's liberation,
integrated into all areas of activity; and (b) conscious measures of cadre
development which can integrate women comrades and overcome sexist habits and
attitudes.
November 1979
[1] This resolution was submitted by
the United Secretariat. The vote of delegates
and fraternal observers was: 63 for, 36.5 against, 3 abstentions, 10.5 not
voting.