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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 21, September 6, 1976.

A Critique of Feminism

page 18

A Critique of Feminism

For the last 5 years I've experienced many different types of feminist organisations. I always sign up with enthusiasm; here are people talking about my problems, things I've directly experienced and felt personally affronted by. Yet inevitably three weeks later I become disillusioned and leave. For while I find it inspiring to meet with twenty like-minded women to discuss shared experiences, sooner or later I would begin to feel frustrated because we always seemed to be attacking issues that didn't really concern the so-called "average" women.

Men - the enemy?

Some entrenched feminist groups seemed to be suggesting that the solution lay in getting rid of what they see as being the main cause of all our problems i.e. men. However, this appeared a very superficial approach to the problems women experience because it is obviously not men themselves but rather society which is the basis for discrimination. It would he stupid to go up to a female factory worker and tell her she should protest against her husband/boyfriend when she'll tell you quickly that her main enemy is not her husband hut her boss. However that does not mean there is no relationship between the two different forms of discrimination i.e. between the boss and husband/boyfriend. However to eradicate both these forms of oppression it is necessary to change the basis from which they spring i.e. society.

Trotskyism - a middle class ideology

Some feminists movements claim that they are in fact doing this, e.g. those associated with Socialist Action. However the demands they raise as the basis for their feminist movements appeal in the main and are in the interests of middle class women. "Abortion on Demand" does not have much support among working class women because it does not attack the real problems they face or even why they face them. Will working class women be discussing the 2nd reading of the Gill bill on Monday, or higher rents, lower wages and rising prices?

Drawing of a woman mending clothes

The two aspects of women's oppression

There are 2 aspects to female [unclear: oppression] The main aspect is that the vast majority of women and men are oppressed because they hold no financial power e.g. a female factory worker is oppressed because, like a male factory worker she is dependent on a wage over which she has no control. The second aspect is that women are discriminated against by a society whose dominant ideology is that women are less intelligent, more sympathetic, more irrational and more emotional then men.

One of the splits in the women's movement at varsity is between the feminist socialist and the socialists. The feminist socialist movement has an intellectual middle-class base and raises middle class demands and yet at the same time claims to be reaching the "average" New Zealand woman. The reason for this ambiguity is that feminists do not see it important to ensure that working class ideas lead the women's movement. Middle-class women are discriminated against because of their enforced roles, due to the second aspect of female oppression. Thus they can unite with working class women against the ideology of male supremacy. But this potential unity will be threatened if middle-class ideas predominate because working-class women will not join a movement which does not recognise or represent their demands which reflect both aspects of female oppression.

Working class women doubly oppressed

For example, feminist-socialists concentrate their attack on the family as the principal institution perpetuating the oppression of women. Kay Goodger asserts that "with its thrust against the family institution, the women's movement is profoundly revolutionary." But abolition of the family is not a working class demand, for there is no mass alternative to the nuclear family in capitalist society or even in the first stages of socialist construction. Without the family unit, working women with children would have to abandon even the minimal protection it affords. Rather than attacking the family, organisations such as the Vietnam Women's Union stress the importance of encouraging women to continue the movement for building the family so that it safeguards the rights of women and children.

Thus a women's movement led by the interests of working class women in the course of the struggle for socialism, aims to win jobs for women, emphasizes the daycare struggle and raises the fight for equality within the family, for husbands to share equally in the responsibilities of the home.

Feminists/socialists claim they are building a women's movement amongst the masses. Yet at a time when the rising trend in the women's movement is developing among the working women, particularly in the daycare battles being led by third world working women, feminists focus their attention on women students.

A middle class movement

This means the women's movement becomes middle-class in character and in outlook. For most women students are in a totally different position to working class women; they do not have children, family responsibilities or jobs.

The main reflection of this emphasis on women students is the feminists approach to the struggle to repeal antiabortion laws. Here many feminists have focused on the abortion question as the most important issue of the women's movement, raised it in isolation rather than in conjunction with demands such as child care and job equality.

This single issue approach increases the divisions in the women's movement. The refusal to unite the abortion struggle with the movement for day care, for instance, has the consequence of failing to combat prejudice among some sections of New Zealand society that the women's struggle is against children and aimed at destroying the family.

In the words of Lenin: "The inseparable connection between the social and human position of the woman, and private ownership of the means of production must be strongly brought out. That will draw a clear distinction between our policy and feminism. And it will also supply the basis for regarding the woman question, as apart of the social question, of the workers' problem, and so bind it firmly to the working class struggle and the revolution."