Keeping women under control

The Report on Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion also puts women in a powerless position. Both Reports call for armies of social workers to persuade people to accept what they are being forced to do anyway. The Committee wants to maintain the 'stable' two-parent family. They are concerned that it is in jeopardy. But why all this pressure to keep women under control in the traditional family? It is not simply a matter of saving government money because restricted abortion will mean more children to educate and feed while the money saved from paying out benefits will be spent on all those social workers.

Women's dependence on men has several results. Women do work which is vital to the community, without pay. They form a reserve pool of cheap labour When the economy is booming, they are wooed into the workforce. When it slackens off the message is 'Your proper place is in the home looking after your man and his children'. They are less able to understand the day-to-day struggles of their mates, nor can their mates understand their frustrations at home. A lot of the time, they couldn't even care. If women are dependent on men with no real sense of their own importance, they are much less likely to back up their husbands in their struggles with the boss. Their resentment against the man in the house gets transferred to his Union, so that women are easily used against Unions. We saw this when women demonstrated in Auckland against the trade unions' actions against the gaoling of Bill Anderson for defying a Court injunction. These reports appear now when our economy is in serious difficulties. There are not enough jobs to go round and women must be persuaded to go home where they won't bother anybody. The fact that one income won't support a family is just one of those problems we are expected to put up with.