It was forwarded..
Doug wrote:
> >
> >>>Like I said yesterday, the relation between sex/gender oppression
> >>>and capitalism is extremely complicated, with capitalism
> >>destabilizing received gender hierarchies as much as it thrives on
> >>>them. The entry of women into waged labor profoundly transforms
> >>>societies in the early phases of capitalist development.
> >>>Recognizing this is one of the things that distinguishes a Marxist
> >>>feminism from other kinds.
> >
> >
It does not make any sense. What distinguishes marxist feminism from
other feminisms is not the mere recognition of women's entry into labor
force. That women's wage labor "profoundly" transforms societies is a
modernization perspective. It sounds like nothing but a typical
non-communist theory of stages argument proposed by Rostow's
modernization ideology. Obviously, a society can undergo a transition
from feudalism to capitalism, for example, but still remains patriarchal,
even though patriarchy gets simultaneously transformed by capitalism in
the end. What distinguishes marxist- feminism is the CRITICAL
recognition of women's double oppression at home *and* in the labor
market, which is what liberal analysis lacks.. To the extent that women's
participation in the labor market is overstated as progressive, we ignore
housework, which is basically a personalized and inegalitarian service at
home. If a more serious distinction is necessary, unlike other feminisms,
marxist- feminism stresses the fact that *not only men* but also a
*capitalism as gender/class system* have a material interests in women's
continued oppression in the family and market place.
>Feminist contributions to labor history tell us that the first wage
> >laborers at the beginning of the "industrial revolution" in the most
> >crucial industry were often predominantly female, not male, textile
> >workers. (Even mining was not the all male or predominantly male
> >industry either.) For instance, see E. Patricia Tsurumi, _Factory
> >Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan_, Princeton: New
> >Jersey: Princeton UP, 1990:
>
It may be true for Japan as it may be for other late capitalist
developers. I don't think that Tsurimi's analysis applies to advanced
capitalist countries though. For example, Heidi Hartmann's analysis of
women's entry into waged labor during the early phases of capitalist
development in Britain suggests that not only the British labor force was
predominantly male but also trade unions were highly exclusionary of
women. There were also significant wage differentials between men and
women (Signs, _Capitalism, Primitive Accumulation, Patriarchy_?). Not
only women lost the limited economic power they had under household
production, as primitive accumulation plundered the country side, argues
Hartmann, they were also excluded by capitalists from "access to
essential productive resources" such as "jobs that pay living wages".
Mine
--
Mine Aysen Doyran
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222
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