Four years ago, Juliet Mitchell wrote an article in the New Left Review entitled "Women The Longest Revolution", which offers one of the most comprehensive approaches to the problem of subordination of women to have appeared recently. The article began: —
'The problem of the subordination of women and the need for their liberation was recognized by all the great socialist thinkers in the nineteenth century. It is part of the classical heritage of the revolutionary movement. Yet today, in the West, the problem has become a subsidiary, if not an invisible element in the preoccupations of socialists. Perhaps no other major issue has been so forgotten." (Mitchell, 1966).
Clearly the introductory remarks which were appropriate in 1966 are not appropriate today. The problem is no longer invisible. In Britain, the strike of Ford women workers in 1968 prompted the re-emergence of the campaign for equal pay and equal rights for women, and since then an increasing number of women's liberation groups has developed as well. There have been similar developments in the United States, and in other capitalist countries, most recently in France. Socialists can no longer ignore the question of the subordination of women; nor is the ritual passing of resolutions recognizing the rights of women, or the assurance that all will be well after the revolution, acceptable as an adequate response.
Within this situation, to analyse the various aspects of the position of women is not simply an academic exercise, but one which has practical implications for the orientation of socialists today.
1. A General Framework for understanding the subordination of women must consist of an examination of the ways in which the economic structure of a particular society and the biological structure of the human species are interrelated at a particular time, and of the role of cultural factors in reinforcing the relationships between the two. In developing her analysis, Mitchell argues that production, reproduction, sex and the socialization of children are the key elements and that 'the variations of women's condition throughout history will be the result of different combinations of these elements.' This article will attempt to examine the interrelation of these structures and the elements of which they are composed, and to relate these to the levels of consciousness of subordination which may develop at a particular time.
The exploitation and oppression of women has probably been a feature of most societies throughout history. Engels wrote in 1884:-
'The first class antagonism which appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage and the first class oppression with that of the female sex by the male." (Engels, 1968, p.66).
Drawing from the anthropological works of Lewis Morgan, Engels tried to interpret the trends in human history which gave rise to this exploitation. Engels' work has been criticized because of the almost exclusive emphasis he places on economic and property relationships and because Morgan's work is no longer considered reliable by many contemporary anthropologists, but it does provide the beginnings of an approach which has yet to be more comprehensively developed. At least his analysis does not maintain that the biological characteristics of women naturally and inevitably give rise to their subordination - a view which has been very popular among many social scientists. (For example, Evans Pritchard, 1965, p.54).
Physical weakness and their role in reproduction has not prevented women from working in general, and in many societies from doing most of the work, including heavy work - though it has restricted their participation in certain types of work in certain types of society (hunting societies for example). Margaret Mead (1950) in a very well-known study, describes three societies, one ex-head hunting, one trading and one agricultural, in which the personal characteristics expected of men and women and the types of relationships between them contrast quite markedly with one another and with our own conventions. Certainly, a cross cultural approach that is statistical may show in most societies "that males are sexually active, more dominant, more deferred to, more aggressive, less responsible, less nurturant, less emotionally expressive than females.' But 'the extent of these differences varies by culture. And in some cultures these differences do not exist (and occasionally the trend is actually reversed). These differences are related to and presumably influenced by which sex controls economic capital, the extent and kind of division of labour by sex, the degree of political 'authoritarianism', and family composition'. (D'Andrade, 1970),
It is the considerable range of social/economic/political relationships between the sexes which is important to our argument, not the statistical fact (see for example Murdoch, 1937) that in most societies men do the 'most important' jobs and dominate over women. In each human society, biology is interpreted culturally within a particular socio-economic structure.
Thus, when we come to consider the relevant biological factors - the process of reproduction, the helplessness (and hence needs) of human infants, and human sexuality, we have to consider these in relation to a specified context, and to look at the particular social meanings attached to each within that context ... and to examine the ways in which these are interwoven with economic and political structures. The context for most of the remaining discussion will be contemporary capitalist society.
2. The Economic Position of Women in Capitalist Societies.
(i) Do women as such have a particular structural position? It can be argued that they do, Benston (1969) identifies the material basis for the inferior status of women in the fact that they, as a category, are expected to undertake household work unpaid; they produce use values outside of the money economy and thus are in a different relation to the means of production;
a society in which money determines value, women are a group who work outside the money economy. Their work is not worth money, is therefore valueless, is therefore not real work. And women themselves who do this valueless work can hardly be expected to be worth as much as men, who work for money." (p16).
This argument is weakened by the confusion over the source of value in capitalist society, but its implication is clear - for Benston, housework is the real work of women, whatever they may do additionally, whoever they may be.
Lenin's view of the effect of housework on those who do it is relevant here:-
'Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating woman she continues to be a domestic slave because petty housework crushes, strangles stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and the nursery and she wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty nerve racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery.' (Lenin, 1969, p.492).
Today, much of the physically exhausting effort has gone out of housework for many women, but the stultifying effect may remain. For instance, some American studies have suggested that labour saving gadgets in themselves have not reduced the time spent on housework (the outside employment of the wife being a far more crucial factor), Secondly, psychologically housework can have an octopus like hold over those responsible for it, involving an endless string of decisions to be taken: what to cook for dinner, how to 'make do' till next pay day, etc., are questions which may constantly intrude into the consciousness, and even provide a continuous mental preoccupation.
The woman's responsibility for housework has general economic significance, as well as political, social and cultural:-
'As an economic unit, the nuclear family is an invaluable stabilizing force in capitalist society. Since the production which is done in the house is paid for by the husband-father's earnings, his ability to withold his labour from the market is much reduced. Even his flexibility in changing jobs is limited. The woman, denied an active place in the market, has little control over the conditions that govern her life. Her economic dependence is reflected in emotional dependence, passivity, and other 'typical' female personality traits. She is conservative, [illegible] of the status quo." (Benston, 1969, p.20).
This general position of women involves considerable Isolation from others in like position. One woman, one husband, 2.5 children, one house as an average. And the real vulnerability of the woman's economic position is obscured by the family set up, and consequently is most clearly revealed where the man is missing from this family group, in the case of unmarried mothers, of widows, divorced and deserted wives. (Holman 1970; Wimperis 1960, Wynn 1964).
Benston in fact lays greater stress on this aspect of the situation of women than has been indicated so far. She is prepared tentatively to define women 'as that group of people who are responsible for the production of simple use values in those activities associated with the home and family', and to argue, "In structural terms the closest thing to the condition of women is the condition of others who are also outside of commodity production, i.e. serfs and peasants', Such an analysis leads to the claim that, qualitatively at least, all women suffer the same subordination - that Jackie Kennedy Onassis, or Mrs. Thatcher, or any working class housewife or woman factory worker suffer in the same way. It provides some backing, though not necessarily intentionally, to the feminist side of the liberation movement.
Benston draws attention to one general condition, but she is mistaken in playing down the significance of very vast differences according to social class, and in ignoring the role of women in the labour force itself. These three aspects of the economic position of women have to be integrated, inter-related, or we start from a distorted view of the economic situation of women today.
(ii) Women in Employment.
(a) The Need for Women in the Labour Force.
Women have for long provided a reserve pool of labour, to be drawn into productive work in times of war, or full employment, and so on. However, they are not only this. Women are also a necessary part of the labour force, and in the most recent period there has been a clear trend towards an increase in the proportions of women at work.
Between 1881 and 1951, the proportion of women in employment in Britain was fairly stable at about 25 - 27%; by 1961, it had risen to 37% (Yudkin & Holme, 1969, p.25). The Survey of Women's Employment carried out in June-September, 1965 showed 34% of women between 16 and 64 in full time employment, 17.9% in part time employment and a total of 54.3% as coming within the category of the 'economically active'. Nearly 2/3 of the working women were married (Hunt, 1968).
A similar increase can be seen elsewhere. For example, in the United States in 1947, 28.1% of the civilian labour force were women, but by 1968 this had risen to 37.1% (Rowntree, 1970, p.27). Using the significance of such trends to show the inadequacies of Benston's article, J. & M. Rowntree correctly point out that it is difficult to treat women simply as unpaid producers of use values in the home when more than 2/5 of them are in the labour force'. The United States National Manpower Council stated in 1958, 'The answer to the question - what would happen if all working wives would give up their jobs - is that we would not be able to perform the essential services needed. It would be a catastrophe, a disaster of the first magnitude.' (Quoted in Yudkin & Holme, 1969, p.30). That many women should be in paid employment seems necessary to capitalist economy at the present time. And the wage from a woman's employment has become an important contributor to the standard of living of many families, besides protecting some from poverty. The idea that a woman should work, except, perhaps, for a few years while she looks after her young children, has become widely accepted, and thus many women will be occupied as full time housekeepers and child minders only for a limited number of years; for much more time they may be both employed workers and houseworkers.
(b) Inequality in Work.
At work, women are in an inferior position in comparison with male workers. Some aspects of this inequality have been quite widely publicised over the past few years, especially where action campaigns and publications have drawn attention to this situation, as in the case of unequal pay. Thus we have seen Barbara Castle prepare a bill apparently offering equal pay in five years (though at the same time removing most of the protective legislation governing the employment of women). Even the Tories and the C.B.I. have had to pay lip service to the desirability of equal pay. However, these gestures should not obscure the nature and extent of inequality in work, nor mislead us into thinking that the inequalities must be diminishing. The main aspects can be summarised as follows:
(i) Unequal Work. Women tend to be employed in a very much narrower range of occupations than men. The Survey of Women's Employment showed that most of the jobs done by women 'were at a low level in the Registrar General's classification' of occupations. The same would be true of other capitalist countries. In the U.S.A. "Most women workers are to be found in a relatively small number of occupations which are generally considered to be 'women's work". (Yudkin & Holme, 1969, p.31). In Sweden, Baude and Holmberg point out:- 'According to the 1960 Census, 71% of all gainfully occupied women are concentrated in slightly more than 20 occupations. By contrast, only 11.7% of all male workers are listed in these job categories. The vast majority of occupations are in consequence almost exclusively 'male'. (Dahlstrom, 1967, p.113-4). In Britain it is not only that women's work tends to be traditionally within a narrow range of low status and low paid occupations, but also that while the numbers of women at work increase, the proportions of them in skilled, technical, supervisory and managerial work is decreasing. An ATTI pamphlet summarising a Department of Employment and Productivity survey, 1968, shows this trend:-
"Between 1951 and 1961, the proportion of women proprietors, managers, administrators and executives fell from 19.4% to 18.6%; in clerical and allied work it rose from 55.7% to 60.1%, in higher professional technical occupations, the percentage of women fell from 33.9 to 31.1%, and in lower professional technical from 46.4 to 43.2%; there was a fall in the proportion of women skilled workers from 15.5 to 13.9% but a rise in semi-skilled and unskilled of 40.5 to 41 and 28.7 to 32.7% respectively'. (ATTI, 1970).
It appears that the increasing numbers of women drawn into employment are coming predominantly into work requiring little skill.
(ii) Unequal Pay. Women's work is associated with low rates of pay. The survey of women's employment carried out in 1965 showed that 31.2% of working women earned less than 4/- an hour, 53.3% earned less than 5/-; only 3.6% earned as much as 10/- per hour and 1.5% as much as 14/- an hour (Hunt 1968). The D.E.P. Survey of earnings of Sept. 1968 showed that the median wage for male manual workers was £22.4, while for women it was £10.8. For non-manual workers, the median for men was £27.8, for women £14.1, for a full week's work in all cases. This reflects the low economic value which has been attached to the categories of work done mainly by women, as well as the lower rates of pay for women doing the same jobs as men in many cases. Despite the publicity and recent campaigns on this issue, these inequalities also seem to be widening. For example, in October 1960, average earnings for women in full time manual employment were 49% of the equivalent male earnings; in 1968 they were 48%, in October 1969 they were 47%'. (Morning Star, 18/12/70).
In addition, wage offers in connection with productivity proposals during this year have been such as to increase the differential between male and female rates for jobs within the same grade, the discrimination against women who have to work for lower rates of pay is particularly obvious. But systems of job grading, which are arbitrary and unscientific anyway, tend consistently to under-rate women's jobs. An agreement drawn up for Rootes, Linwood, in 1968 classified all the jobs in the factory into five grades, with different rates of pay for each grade; a sixth grade with pay equal to grade 5 involved no job or skill specifications at all, but simply consisted of "all females except cleaners'. (Labour Research, Aug. 1968). (It is relevant to remember that Ford women struck initially not simply because they received only 85% of male rates of pay but because they saw that their skills were being deliberately down graded).
In this general context it can be seen that the establishment of legislation requiring equal pay for equal work could be, of only limited value. The experience of other countries which already have such legislation is instructive. In France, for example, equal pay for equal work has been accepted in principle since 1948. In practice however, 'the basic wage for women is 7% less than that for men and the difference in take home pay can be as much as 33%. (Guardian, 23/11/70).
(iii) Unequal Education and Training. The system of education in Britain is supposed to provide for equality of opportunity; but, as in the case of working class access to education, so with girls. The removal of crude economic and other barriers only reveals subtler ones at work (to paraphrase Jackson & Marsden, 1964). Only one or two aspects of this will be listed here, but the relation of educational experience and opportunity to work experience and opportunity is very important.
Educational provision is not always equal. In many schools, the curriculum for girls tends to be biased more towards arts and domestic subjects, while for boys it tends to include more science, and in some cases mechanical and technological subjects. Standards for the equipment of girls schools have reflected this - less laboratory space for girls schools than for boys' housecraft space for girls and none for boys (see for example, Ministry of Education Bulletin 2A, 1954).
After school the differences become more apparent. The proportions of girls getting day release is low:- in 1962-3, while 30.3% of boys under 18 got day release, only 7.4% of girls did so; of 18-20 year olds, the percentages were 16.7 and 1.7 respectively. (Henniker Heaton, 1964). In 1964, only 6% of girls compared to 36% of boys went into apprenticeships and the range of apprenticeships open to girls is itself very narrow. Although the proportions of girls getting university places has increased, they still only make up about 44 of the student body, which is even lower than the proportion for many other countries. A UNESCO report in 1966 gave the following proportions:- U.K. 24%, Finland 47%, France 41%, USA. 37%, Sweden 34%, Italy 29%.
The examples outlined above are intended to indicate some of the inequalities in education, training, work and pay which characterize the situation of women in this society. However, their situation is more complex than this. To be in a position of equality as wage workers, women would require an equal cultural freedom with men to enter into the wage relationship. Because of their domestic, maternal, wifely 'duties', they lack this. 'In this society, the father's family role is a market one, that of 'provider'. This role is compatible with his role as free wage worker. But the mother's culturally defined role is a non market one, the practical day to day care of children. While men can comfort themselves with the thought that 'at least I'm providing for my family', working women fear that 'I'm neglecting my children too'. As a result, women experience all the alienation faced by any worker under capitalism, plus a conflict rather than a reinforcement of cultural values, and are not even financially rewarded for their discomfort'. (M. & J. Rowntree, 1970, p.28).
Thus there are very real contradictions between home and work, and these are likely to be most acute for working class working mothers.
3. These Cultural Constraints must now be examined; in this we are considering the social evaluations which have been attached to reproduction, sexuality and the relative helplessness of human infants; and which have the effect of preparing women for, and reinforcing them in a position of general secondariness which, despite the contradictions within it, most women accept.
(a) Reproduction and the care of children.
Reproduction and the physical and social dependence of infants and small children have been very widely interpreted as interdependant features of motherhood. Mead comments of this:- "We have assumed that because it is convenient for a mother to wish to care for her child, this is a trait with which women have been more generously endowed by a careful teleological process of evolution. We have assumed that because men have hunted, an activity requiring enterprise, bravery and initiative, they have been endowed with these useful aptitudes as part of their sex temperament." (Mead, 1950).
The part played by women in productive work has been restricted by their role in reproduction - having babies necessitates some withdrawal from work. But this has been built into a powerful ideology in which having and caring for babies and maintaining a home are seen as the natural vocation of women, the main path for them to personal fulfillment. It is important to notice that during a period in which the amount of time spent in child bearing and rearing has considerably decreased (Titmus estimates that in the 1890s a woman would spend on average 15 years in a state of pregnancy or nursing a child through the first year of life compared with 4 years for the average mother today (1963, p.91)), the mystification of motherhood has not been similarly reduced. In fact the latter is supported by statements and reports from diverse sources: religious leaders, industrialists and advertising experts, psychologists and sociologists, educationalists, etc., and thereby inferior opportunities and rewards for women (unequal because 'different') can be sustained.
For example, in the field of education, Sir John Newsom has written:- 'We try to educate girls into becoming imitation men and as a result we are wasting and frustrating their qualities of womanhood at great expense to the community. I believe that in addition to their needs as individuals, our girls should be educated in terms of their main social function - which is to make for themselves, their children and their husbands a secure and suitable home, and to be mothers'. (The Observer, 6/9/64).
This identification of a specific period and particular aspect of [illegible]'s lives as their 'major social function' is consistent with the unending moralistic, religious and emotionally loaded platitudes which are attached to the questions of motherhood, and of working mothers (e.g. Billy Graham, 1970, Frieden, 1965, Ch.2). Thus, the work of Bowlby and other psychologists on the effects of maternal (not of course parental or social) deprivation has been used to attack mothers who go out to work at least as much as it has been used to condemn impersonal residential institutional care for children. The popularized versions of this work are innumerable and often emotionally highly charged. An article in the Guardian warned, 'there is a sixth sense which warns us that although the widespread employment of mothers by small children might be to the nation's economic good, it may not be to the good of the nation's children ... A child is happiest with its mother. Deep down the average mother is happiest with her child ...' (O'Neill, 1967). The article fails to examine the source of that 'sixth sense', which must derive from socialization, and thus involved assumptions about relationships of men, women and children which are related to the particular economic and social structure of this society.
Further reinforcement for this view is provided by Parsons, who has argued that the child 'needs' an expressive model (mother) and an instrumental model (father) for 'adequate socialization' (Parsons, 1946). More recently, other sociologists have suggested that modern families have become 'little democracies', and that the subordinated and restricted position of women is a thing of the past (Fletcher, 1962, McGregor, 1968). To reach such conclusions it is however necessary to ignore even the obvious negative results of family relationships: baby battering and other types of personal violence, scapegoating, etc. (Blackburn, 1969, Laing & Esterton, 1963).
The advertising media, concerned with women as major consumers, have made a strong contribution. Frieden quotes one advertising expert:- 'Most of the manufacturers we deal with are producing things which have to do with home making. In a free enterprise economy, we have to develop the need for new products. We help (women) to re-discover that home making is more creative than to compete with men.' (Frieden, 1965, p.199f.)
Although maternity is seen as the ultimate fulfillment for women, in the occupational sphere it is treated as a sort of deviation for which women may be punished by loss of pay, loss of job, loss of opportunity for promotion, etc; the right to work after the baby is born is called into question. This is well illustrated by the Plowden Report's recommendation for increased provision of nursery education:- "We consider that mothers who cannot satisfy the authorities that they have exceptionally good reasons for working should have low priority for full time nursery education for their children.' (Plowden, 1967, p.128, my italics).
However, the acceptance of some 'exceptions' is also necessary and important. In world war II, the 'duty to work' overrode the 'duty' to children, and creches and nurseries were established in greater numbers than exist today, to ease this sudden change. Today we see that a positive virtue can be made out of not providing enough full time care facilities, even though it is recognized that this will drive many women to make unsatisfactory arrangements for their children (Plowden, 1967, p.127, Yudkin, 1967). Nevertheless, the main source of unused labour within this country is married women, many of whom will have children, and some of them must be drawn back into employment. Economic pressures and the desire for adult social contact ensure that some mothers do so, but at the expense of flouting the dominant ideology of motherhood, and of (generally) coping without the necessary services for the care of children. The 'expressive' qualities of true motherhood are widely understood as women's compensation for her economic and sexual dependency.
(b) Sex can be discussed separately from reproduction to a greater extent than in the past. The technical means of separating sexual intercourse from pregnancy are now more reliable and more available and more within the control of women; in particular, the pill and somewhat easier access to abortion have been important factors in this. But the idea that women have the right to control their own bodies and to define their own sexuality is strongly resisted. Although traditional standards of sexual morality have, to a considerable extent been questioned and rejected (the marked increase in illegitimate births in Britain during the 1960s can be interpreted as one indication of this (Ilisley & Gill, 1968)), we inherit at least the remnants of a dual morality with a great heritage of complex ideological rationalizations to support it, and the assumptions of dual standards have become a part of the English language, just as racist assumptions have become built into our patterns of speech.
Two aspects of this will be discussed here.
(i) Men define women's sexuality - and they have defined it as a response to men. This can be traced through a range of traditional cliches - ladies don't move, men act, women react, etc. Freud's interpretation of the problems of his female patients lies within this tradition and at the same time has been used to justify it. Freud's women patients may have been unable to reconcile themselves to the fact that they were not men, may have suffered from penis envy, may have been unable to achieve 'mature' sexual relationships (i.e. vaginal orgasm). However, their neurotic condition, thus diagnosed may either be interpreted as telling us something about women, and about female sexuality in general, or about certain types of response to a social situation in which the opportunities and openings for women were absolutely and narrowly delimited, whereas for men, that is, for middle class men, they were not. But an increase in the range of opportunities available to women, at least in a general sense and for some women, has not undermined the dominance of this view of female sexuality, although it is questioned. A recent example from a book on the 'Sexuality of Women' illustrates this, one of the authors sees 'man as the nurturer of sex, a gardener cultivating the blossoms of sensuality, which flower or fade according to his dexterity.' (my italics, from review of Gebhard, Ruboch & Liese, 1970 in New Society, 7/5/70).
Male definitions of women's sexuality are also reflected in the ways in which women try to make themselves into what they - or their mothers - think men want them to be. In terms of appearance, their shape, weight and decoration is exploited by whole industries. But this also applies to personal characteristics and abilities. One of the few more interesting studies of behaviour in American colleges demonstrated that American college girls were pressured into appearing more stupid than their dates (Komarovsky, 1946). Such processes, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, are part of the process of socialization - involving many contradictory elements - experienced by girls within societies such as ours. Female sexuality, seen as something which is intrinsically passive, submissive, dependent on the definitions and actions of men is vulnerable to distortion and manipulation not only in personal relationships, but through, for example, the uses that can be made of it through advertising and the media generally. It provides a further means of reinforcing the differences between people.
(ii) Female sexuality is used as a thing, separate and separable from the person. This is commonly reflected in speech - a picture of a nude woman is 'a pair of tits', and the English swearing vocabulary shows the same characteristic. These traditions of speech help to reinforce the separation of men and women into different social and psychological worlds (e.g. Dennis, et. al., 195 ). The more obvious instances are thrown at us through advertising and the media generally. A few sexy dollies - or appropriate portions of them - can be attached to almost any commodity to enhance sales appeal. Advertising also distorts male sexuality in this way, though it is to a lesser extent frequently used. In relation to this a great deal of advertising directed at women plays upon contradictions and uncertainties in Women's situations - thus the purchase of the right toothpaste makes one sexually desirable, the right drink guarantees popularity, the right washing powder marks out the 'good mum', etc.,etc. The parade of female bodies in 'beauty' contests, of which the Miss World contest is merely the most publicised example, suggests that female 'beauty' can be judged in a show ring in much the same way as the quality of cattle at a dairy show: the body is not part of a person, but a set of proportions to be compared with other sets of proportions. The sexual oppression of women is expressed in numerous and pervasive ways, some of which are very crude. It is not surprising that some writers have focussed almost exclusively on this aspect of the subordination of women - most recently Greer (1970). Such an approach, however, fails to make the crucial links between this, and the other aspects of exploitation.
The social interpretation of pregnancy and child bearing, of the dependency of children, of the sexual characteristics of women, all this is such as to confirm women in a position of economic and social subordination. Thus we have noted the cultural identification of physical maternity with an elaborate and mystified social concept of motherhood, the characterization of female sexual identity as dependant and subordinate, the uses of female sexuality as an object; all of which combine to produce the cultural subordination of women, which both reflects and provides an ideological justification for exploitation. The particular set of relationships between economics, biological and cultural factors determines the position of women in any society. Of these, the structural factors are dominant, but the superstructural factors have a special significance because they encompass biological characteristics, so that many aspects of the subordination of women can be made to appear inseparable from the physiology of womanhood. Because of this, the liberation of women is not possible without a transformation of economic and political structures, but we cannot be sure that these will provide a guarantee of liberation either.
4. Women in Post Capitalist Society.
At this point it is relevant to comment briefly on the position of women in the USSR, and on how this has developed since 1917. While Russian women have in some respects greater equality than women in Britain or other capitalist societies, they are by no means liberated. Recent translations from Soviet sociology illustrates this very clearly (Osipov, 1969). In them, the ideological-theoretical framework for the sociology of the family is moralistic and reactionary. A specific study of a Moldavian village shows - through tables, not the text - the continuing exploitation of women, whose working hours decreased from 13.2 in 1964 to 12.2 in 1960, compared with a decrease from 11.7 to 7.8 hours for men. This situation has to be understood in relation to the specific historical circumstances of the Russian Revolution. In the years immediately following 1917, legislation was directed at undermining the traditional family structure with its exploitation of women and of children. Legal equality was established, marriage became a matter of state registration, divorce was available on demand by either party, abortion was free, the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children was removed, Lenin continued to emphasize the need to free women from 'chattel slavery', and creches and communal dining rooms were set up (Carr, 1970, ch.2.). However, these measures were introduced within that context of revolutionary isolation and economic backwardness which provided a basis for the development of Stalinism. It is against this background that the erosion and in some respects reversal of progressive family policies should be located:- "The actual liberation of women is unrealizable on the basis of generalized want', wrote Trotsky (1957 ed., Ch. VII), tracing and explaining the betrayal of this aspect of the revolution. Within the overall degeneration of the revolution, the 'functional' need for a traditional type of family has been re-affirmed and the re-mystification of motherhood probably reached its peak in the 1940s when producing children became almost a political duty.
The early developments show us the potentialities for liberation which may follow from a change in economic relationships, but the subsequent history of the USSR also shows how, in that specific situation, the old cultural forms could be recalled to a considerable extent, and women set back in a secondary, though formally equal position.
5. Consciousness of Subordination.
As with other structurally disadvantaged groups, so with women, the existance of subordination is not automatically recognized by those who suffer it, although subjective awareness will be related to structural position in some way. Indeed, women have proved to be important pillars of their own oppression. From infancy, they learn of their own inferiority, and learn to measure their lives within it; they have been champions of the 'equal but different' view which divides the world into men's things and women's things. Many have learned to find some identity in the mystique of motherhood, in the power that a woman can wield in the home, and indirectly through her husband or her children. Yet few women can totally avoid the conflicting expectations which surround their contemporary situation. The vast majority of women marry, and in effect see no alternative to doing so; getting a man is an achievement even if the long term implications are often unclear - one study of the projected life histories of teenage girls as told in stories revealed that a significant proportion of them had 'got rid of' their husbands by the age of 40 (Veness, 1962). Most withdraw from work to have and bring up children, and yet, according to Cavron's small study, many experience 'motherhood as a kind of captivity'. (Gavron, 1968, p.151). As children grow up, most women now hope to return to work (Gavron, 1966, Hunt, 1968); and yet the idea that women have a right to work is still hardly developed, and Klein did not find it at all in her investigation of women and work (Klein, 1960). Restricted opportunities, unequal economic recognition and reward, a secondary position in the family, contradictory expectations have given rise to dissatisfactions, frustrations and confusions among women but generally at a vague and fragmented or incoherent level. Women as a whole do not appear to identify themselves as a group who share a common situation of exploitation and oppression; and as the experience and significance of belonging to the category woman varies very greatly according to class position, it would not necessarily be a progressive step if they came to do so. The clearest and greatest exploitation is that of working class women, whether at home, where they may be the targets for the antagonisms and frustrations which their husbands derive from their work situations, or at work, where they will be amongst the most exploited of workers. Probably for working class working mothers the contradictions are most extreme. Particularly outside the long established working class communities where relatives may live near enough to provide help, support and company, the need for adequate (in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense) child care facilities is particularly important and the provision almost always inadequate. At work, the potential for organization and action is often considerable. The need for organization seems to be becoming more widely recognized amongst women - the proportion joining trade unions has exceeded male recruitment in the last two years.
The veneer of educational and social equality and family 'democracy' may impress many middle class women, but those who become aware of their secondary position may develop a sense of being psychologically contained by their situation within the home and by their unequal chances at work. Their cultural background may lead them to search (initially at least) for personal solutions or for sympathetic others with whom problems can be talked out (either a man who will half the housework, or a group of women with the same problems). But in most cases the material pressures are likely to be less acute, and the possibilities of finding some measure of individual relief are probably greater (au pair girls, play groups, etc., etc.,).
Let us evaluate briefly the various perspectives of those who are more articulate about and against the subordination of women today. Firstly, there are those who want more women to get a share of the rewards which are available in this society. They want more women to be able to get directorships, or they see the (not irreversible) trend to co-educational comprehensive schools as a threat to the promotion prospects of female teachers, or they want married women in highly paid jobs to be taxed separately from their husbands, and hence less heavily. Such issues have little to do with women's liberation; they are concerned, at least in the immediate sense, with admitting more women to that small proportion of society which participates most advantageously in capitalism.
A second perspective is feminist; in its most extreme form seeking to replace men by women in positions of dominance, often identifying men as the oppressors of women. The American 'Society for Cutting Up Men' is probably the most frequently quoted example of such an orientation: the confusion which it represents is that of identifying men, who are the main agents of the oppression of women, with the causes of that oppression. In a less extreme form, those who hope to build a movement which will appeal to all women (which is the logic of Benston's analysis mentioned earlier) imply the same confusion. Some women, as noticed above, are looking for a greater chance to exploit or contain others - female or male - and not for general liberation. Sexual exploitation, and responsibility and provisions for the care of young children are the issues which have been most frequently emphasized within this orientation. Most women's liberation groups in Britain have so far tended to develop such an emphasis, though groups vary very much and some campaign on economic issues as well. They have been largely, though not exclusively supported by middle class women and have often provided a kind of therapeutic environment in which personal frustrations could be articulated as well as - sometimes - a basis for action or protest. Women's liberation groups will not spontaneously move from introversion and from the main concern with sexual exploitation to action and a more integrated and extensive opposition to all aspects of the exploitation of women. Such developments are possible, but they are only likely to become consistent where understanding develops from a personal or impressionistic or group therapeutic level to that of a structural and super-structural analysis; that is from a feminist to a socialist perspective.
Thirdly, there are the campaigns - struggles which have developed around the campaigns for equal pay and equal rights. After the strike of Ford women workers in 1968, it seemed that there was a considerable potential of mass support, mainly from working women for such a campaign. However, this has not been realized, although there was a demonstration in 1969 with considerable trade union support, resolutions were passed at several trade union conferences, and a number of industrial struggles have taken place on the equal pay/equal grading/equal rights and the right to unionization issues.
Whether or not the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equal rights can recapture the potentialities of 1968/69 is uncertain. But the major significance of this aspect of the rejection of subordination is that it is industrially based. Working women, and particularly working class working women have the potential power of an organized group, or a potentially organized group. Women have traditionally been regarded as a backward sector of the labour movement but that this tradition should be broken is important both to the struggles of women and of workers generally; that it can be broken has been indicated by the militancy of women involved in struggles such as those mentioned above, and in others not only concerned with women. But if these struggles are to develop progressively, the demands for equal pay and the right to unionization must extent to full and equal control in union affairs, to the right to those provisions which would give women cultural equality with men in entering into work, to a general questioning of the basis of capitalist relationships, which tie women to general subordination. For it is clear that the situation of most men within our society is not enviable - to be in an inferior position is worse, of course, but equality is not enough. The liberation of women (or most men) is not possible within the structure of this society.
Thus, both the fundamental need to change the structure of society and of attacking the tenacious superstructural factors must be recognized if women are to be liberated. What are the implications of this for the orientation of socialists to this movement? Firstly, their orientation must reflect the centrality of economic structure as the lynch pin of the subordination of women in capitalist society; so overall priority is to the situation and to the struggles of working class working women, without whose militancy and consciousness alongside that of male workers, the necessary structural changes cannot be made within which the movement towards liberation - for women and for men - becomes possible.
In practice this may involve support for any women workers on strike, taking part in picketing, interviewing strikers, explaining their case, for example to students, and getting solidarity support, offering to work with them to produce leaflets explaining demands and the development of the struggle; developing contacts with shop stewards and their women workers (often more direct approaches are possible than in the case of male workers, as there appears to be less hostility from such women towards female students), and working with them on such questions as unequal of low pay, working conditions and ties, nursery provision, unequal work, etc., and as such contact is developed, it may be possible to link such campaigns to other issues, such as sexual exploitation. Propaganda work based on pay opportunities, conditions, facilities in the local situation can be built up and can be used to explain and extend the campaign. Such local demands must be linked to the general situation, and must be extended from questions of economic equality to developing an understanding of the necessity of changing those cultural conditions without which potential equality cannot be made real. While support must be built up for the demands for free abortion and contraception, and against sexual exploitation, and the significance of these matters as a part of the subordination of women should be explained, campaigns on such issues are not the central ones in the work of women socialists.
In addition, we need further analysis and investigation of the inter-relation of the various aspects of the position of women as it exists. However, action must be linked to discussion and analysis. There is a marked tendency in many existing women's groups for action to be replaced by it.
The significance of the women's liberation movement today is that it forces socialists to remember their support for issues which have for long been considered of secondary importance. Lip service has been paid to the rights of women but both within the theory and the practice of the socialist movement this issue has often been treated as periferal. The time has come for socialists who are women to challenge this tradition; it must be recognized that the liberation of women is a crucial part of any socialist programme towards which demands must be raised now. At the present stage the means to this is the development of Socialist Woman groups around the sort of programme outlined above. If political organization is to be related to an examination of the nature of the political problem faced, the import of the analysis in this paper is that neither by immersing themselves in a feminist dominated women's liberation movement, an attraction to some socialists, nor by refusing to organize a women's movement at all, as others argue, can advance be achieved. The socialist women's groups can be the base, both for a re-orientation of the feminist groups, and for the development of the understanding of the broader implications of the problem, both for working class women, and for many male trade unionists and socialists.
Margaret Coulson.
NOTES
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