On 10/14/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Hypothesis:
>
>Socialist regimes result from a revolutionary movement, and the
>leadership of such states consists (for the most part) in those who
>achieved leadership within the revolutionary movement at an early stage.
>The 'problem'* then is to be found in the conditions which generate the
>leadership of embryonic socialist movements. Hence the question "Why so
>few women in the leadership of socialist states" can be seen to be
>_identical_ with the question, "Why so few women on lbo, pen-l, and
>marxism list?
>
>Carrol
Frankly, I am surprised to see the question posed in this fashion at
all. Back in the 1970s, radical feminists were always taunted with
the examples of Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir et al. At one point I would
have been surprised to hear an echo of that from Yoshie, but after
hearing hear laud Ahmadinejad's call for Iranian women to breed solid
citizens for the Islamic Republic, nothing should surprise me.
That is a lie, for I did not laud Ahmadinejad for using the rhetoric
of women as mothers of good republican citizens. I simply said that
rhetoric has been common across the political spectrum, especially
among nationalists, including in socialist states, in fact, and
pointed out the recognition accorded to women for their professional
accomplishments in Iran.
Beyond rhetoric, policy toward reproduction has also changed according
to states and their national economies' manpower needs. That, too, is
common across the political spectrum.
That said, you evade the question of why socialist states and
movements have had only a few women leaders, fewer than one would
expect, when women have managed to rise to the top in a number of
capitalist states, even ones that are poor or on the Right where one
might not have expected them to do so.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
