Women are the slaves of slaves
From Peace News 28th August 1970
________________________________
AFRICAN WOMEN'S LIBERATION
________________________________
By Eve Hall
In the last three or four years, women's liberation movements have mushroomed all over the world, spawned offshoots to the right and to the left and given birth to near lunatic groups like SCUM: The Society for Cutting up Men. It's fairly easy to explain the sudden militancy and vocal demands.
Two generations after women wrestled the right to vote from male-ruled society, a hard fact is becoming more and more apparent; that, as votes for men did nothing to shift the power from the Capitalist class to the workers, so votes for women haven't brought the hoped for freedom, equality and better life.
Along with Blacks in America, students all over the world, Tanzanians, Cubans and Vietnamese, women realise that the fight is not for equal rights. The fight is for change in society itself. 'Genuine equality can only be realised in the process of socialist transformation of society as a whole.'
A hundred years ago a US newspaper magnate, James Gorden Bennett, said:
'How did women first become subject to man, as she is now all over the world? By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always will be to the end of time inferior to the white race and, therefore, doomed to subjection; but she is happier than she would be in any other condition, just because it is the law of nature...'
In many parts of the world woman now have the vote, can hold property, work in most jobs, run businesses and write contracts. Through the courts they can often win custody of their children. They can be elected to parliament - if they are sufficiently anti-working class. But, says the Women's Liberation Front, this cannot be seen as an advance towards the emancipation of women.
In the Jewish religion men pray: 'I thank you God that you have not created me a woman.' Until recently, the Hindu wife burned herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre. Women still live in purdah, wear veils or the bui bui as a sign of inferiority. Christian women in Africa still cover their heads in church - a relic of the veil and a symbol of subjection, says the Woman's Liberation Front.
Even now laws, religions, customs and language all keep a woman in her place. Books television, advertisements, magazines, radio, are all geared to cater mainly to women in traditional roles (in spirit, if not in fact) and consuming avidly the infinite number of goods that keep the capitalist economies ticking over nicely.
It boils down to this. Women's fight against oppression was then and is now linked to that of the working class as a whole...The two movements (anti-slavery and women's rights) have always been considered dangerous and upsetting to the social structure for much the same reasons...black people can be paid less. Women can be paid less.
I went to a two-day conference at Oxford held by the Woman's Liberation Workshop feeling little more than curiosity. As a South African I felt the issue of women's liberation to be secondary to the South African struggle.
I came away remembering my experience of five years in independent in Africa and, in the words of Rene Dumont, the agronomist, when he visited Tanzania some years ago. He said: 'The true proletariat of Africa are the women.' Women's liberation it seems to me now, after the workshop, is a vital and central part of the struggle.
Women [in Africa] are told their rightful place is in the home and at the same time they are needed to supply cheap labour. The propaganda is necessary to keep this cheap Labour. Employers can then argue that women leave their jobs when they get married or have a baby, that they cannot be relied upon because their main interest is somewhere else. The Labour is therefore less valuable, say the employers, and they should be paid less.
So women remain in the lowest paid jobs and room is only grudgingly made for them in the professions or as skilled labourers. In countries that have large numbers of the unemployed, women have almost no hope of employment except as domestic servants.
In South Africa, black women can work as domestic servants, farm labourers or factory workers where they form the cheapest of a very cheap labour market. The working class woman is doubly exploited. By her husband and by the capitalist system. The working class man himself, a victim of the system, still fits within it and becomes part of the exploitation pecking order in his attitude towards his wife, whether their personal relationship is a good one, or not.
It is a system centuries old. In The Origins of the Family Engels explains that in the earliest societies there was no sexual dominance or subjection. There was a natural selection of labour with each supreme in his or her own sphere. Housekeeping was communal and whatever was used in common was owned in common by the tribe.
But as herds of cattle became increasingly individual rather than communal property and prisoners of war were enslaved for Labour, society split into classes: masters and slaves. At the same time the family changed.
As the herds which belonged to the men became the new means of existence, along with the slaves and commodities taken in exchange for cattle, woman's economic importance dwindled and her household tasks played no direct part in the ownership of surplus.
With the rise of private ownership women themselves became an object of exploitation of one by another, whether the exploited are slaves, serfs are wage earners. 'The great majority of women became vassals of vassals.'
This is still particularly obvious in countries where there is a very small middle and professional class. If the lot of men in Africa or Latin America is an unenviable one, the lot of 'their' women is worse. Because men, no matter how poor they are can 'own' a wife.
And no matter how fluently, no matter what racially pure argument men use to convince themselves and the world that their traditions, like the bride price and female circumcision have been misunderstood by the white conquerors, the roots of these customs are in that initial exploitation, in the valuation of women as property.
It is no accident that in reactionary countries these conservative attitudes are supported by the neo-colonialists. In much of Africa, for example, the women have traditionally been the farmers. This has been their one source of economic power. Yet the foreign 'aid' programmes initiated and financed by wealthy countries to increase food production have totally disregarded this fact.
Agricultural colleges in Malawi, for example, or Kenya, have only male students. If Rene Dumont is right and women are the proletariat of Africa, then then the neo-colonialists are once again playing their familiar game of undermining the real force for growth and change.
In many societies that are still feudal in character, women remain under the power of the father or husband and do nothing without his consent.Pockets of rural societies exist in the rural areas of all under-developed countries, including South Africa; and it is useful to note that the attitude of the Afrikaner is not only feudal towards Africans but towards Afrikaans women, many of whom are themselves exploited as cheap labour for the factory and retail trade.
Engles pointed out that 'emancipation of women and their equality with men are impossible and must remain so as long as women are excluded from socially productive work and restricted to housework, which is private. The emancipation of women only becomes possible when women are enabled to take part in production on a large scale, and when domestic duties require their attention only to a minor degree.'
This is impossible in any but a socialist society. A capitalist society needs the cheap and supposedly 'casual'labour of women.It also needs the consuming power of women.And women can only be an effective consumer, if she is restricted emotionally, if not physically, to the home.
Throughout the women's liberation movement it seems that one thread holds the majority together.
For a society that eagerly welcomes women's entrance into new fields and lays the economic and legal foundation for a full participation, we must turn to socialism.,' says the Women's Liberation Front.
It calls to working women not only to fight for equal rights and opportunities now, but 'at the same time let us fight shoulder to shoulder with working men to end the system of exploitation of men and women by man.'
*[Original title The True Proletariat of Africa]
From Peace News 28th August 1970
________________________________
AFRICAN WOMEN'S LIBERATION
________________________________
By Eve Hall
In the last three or four years, women's liberation movements have mushroomed all over the world, spawned offshoots to the right and to the left and given birth to near lunatic groups like SCUM: The Society for Cutting up Men. It's fairly easy to explain the sudden militancy and vocal demands.Two generations after women wrestled the right to vote from male-ruled society, a hard fact is becoming more and more apparent; that, as votes for men did nothing to shift the power from the Capitalist class to the workers, so votes for women haven't brought the hoped for freedom, equality and better life.
Along with Blacks in America, students all over the world, Tanzanians, Cubans and Vietnamese, women realise that the fight is not for equal rights. The fight is for change in society itself. 'Genuine equality can only be realised in the process of socialist transformation of society as a whole.'
A hundred years ago a US newspaper magnate, James Gorden Bennett, said:
'How did women first become subject to man, as she is now all over the world? By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always will be to the end of time inferior to the white race and, therefore, doomed to subjection; but she is happier than she would be in any other condition, just because it is the law of nature...'
In many parts of the world woman now have the vote, can hold property, work in most jobs, run businesses and write contracts. Through the courts they can often win custody of their children. They can be elected to parliament - if they are sufficiently anti-working class. But, says the Women's Liberation Front, this cannot be seen as an advance towards the emancipation of women.
In the Jewish religion men pray: 'I thank you God that you have not created me a woman.' Until recently, the Hindu wife burned herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre. Women still live in purdah, wear veils or the bui bui as a sign of inferiority. Christian women in Africa still cover their heads in church - a relic of the veil and a symbol of subjection, says the Woman's Liberation Front.
Even now laws, religions, customs and language all keep a woman in her place. Books television, advertisements, magazines, radio, are all geared to cater mainly to women in traditional roles (in spirit, if not in fact) and consuming avidly the infinite number of goods that keep the capitalist economies ticking over nicely.
It boils down to this. Women's fight against oppression was then and is now linked to that of the working class as a whole...The two movements (anti-slavery and women's rights) have always been considered dangerous and upsetting to the social structure for much the same reasons...black people can be paid less. Women can be paid less.
I went to a two-day conference at Oxford held by the Woman's Liberation Workshop feeling little more than curiosity. As a South African I felt the issue of women's liberation to be secondary to the South African struggle.
I came away remembering my experience of five years in independent in Africa and, in the words of Rene Dumont, the agronomist, when he visited Tanzania some years ago. He said: 'The true proletariat of Africa are the women.' Women's liberation it seems to me now, after the workshop, is a vital and central part of the struggle.
Women [in Africa] are told their rightful place is in the home and at the same time they are needed to supply cheap labour. The propaganda is necessary to keep this cheap Labour. Employers can then argue that women leave their jobs when they get married or have a baby, that they cannot be relied upon because their main interest is somewhere else. The Labour is therefore less valuable, say the employers, and they should be paid less.
So women remain in the lowest paid jobs and room is only grudgingly made for them in the professions or as skilled labourers. In countries that have large numbers of the unemployed, women have almost no hope of employment except as domestic servants.
In South Africa, black women can work as domestic servants, farm labourers or factory workers where they form the cheapest of a very cheap labour market. The working class woman is doubly exploited. By her husband and by the capitalist system. The working class man himself, a victim of the system, still fits within it and becomes part of the exploitation pecking order in his attitude towards his wife, whether their personal relationship is a good one, or not.
It is a system centuries old. In The Origins of the Family Engels explains that in the earliest societies there was no sexual dominance or subjection. There was a natural selection of labour with each supreme in his or her own sphere. Housekeeping was communal and whatever was used in common was owned in common by the tribe.
But as herds of cattle became increasingly individual rather than communal property and prisoners of war were enslaved for Labour, society split into classes: masters and slaves. At the same time the family changed.
As the herds which belonged to the men became the new means of existence, along with the slaves and commodities taken in exchange for cattle, woman's economic importance dwindled and her household tasks played no direct part in the ownership of surplus.
With the rise of private ownership women themselves became an object of exploitation of one by another, whether the exploited are slaves, serfs are wage earners. 'The great majority of women became vassals of vassals.'
This is still particularly obvious in countries where there is a very small middle and professional class. If the lot of men in Africa or Latin America is an unenviable one, the lot of 'their' women is worse. Because men, no matter how poor they are can 'own' a wife.
And no matter how fluently, no matter what racially pure argument men use to convince themselves and the world that their traditions, like the bride price and female circumcision have been misunderstood by the white conquerors, the roots of these customs are in that initial exploitation, in the valuation of women as property.
It is no accident that in reactionary countries these conservative attitudes are supported by the neo-colonialists. In much of Africa, for example, the women have traditionally been the farmers. This has been their one source of economic power. Yet the foreign 'aid' programmes initiated and financed by wealthy countries to increase food production have totally disregarded this fact.
Agricultural colleges in Malawi, for example, or Kenya, have only male students. If Rene Dumont is right and women are the proletariat of Africa, then then the neo-colonialists are once again playing their familiar game of undermining the real force for growth and change.
In many societies that are still feudal in character, women remain under the power of the father or husband and do nothing without his consent.Pockets of rural societies exist in the rural areas of all under-developed countries, including South Africa; and it is useful to note that the attitude of the Afrikaner is not only feudal towards Africans but towards Afrikaans women, many of whom are themselves exploited as cheap labour for the factory and retail trade.
Engles pointed out that 'emancipation of women and their equality with men are impossible and must remain so as long as women are excluded from socially productive work and restricted to housework, which is private. The emancipation of women only becomes possible when women are enabled to take part in production on a large scale, and when domestic duties require their attention only to a minor degree.'
This is impossible in any but a socialist society. A capitalist society needs the cheap and supposedly 'casual'labour of women.It also needs the consuming power of women.And women can only be an effective consumer, if she is restricted emotionally, if not physically, to the home.
Throughout the women's liberation movement it seems that one thread holds the majority together.
For a society that eagerly welcomes women's entrance into new fields and lays the economic and legal foundation for a full participation, we must turn to socialism.,' says the Women's Liberation Front.
It calls to working women not only to fight for equal rights and opportunities now, but 'at the same time let us fight shoulder to shoulder with working men to end the system of exploitation of men and women by man.'
*[Original title The True Proletariat of Africa]
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