fTEr by Sabina Roberts ae
Pee a Fire As socialists - and as women - our contribution to the increasingly popular Nor. "equal rights" campaign should be slanted a perticular way. Althouch we welcome —s all efforts to highlipht our second-class status, we should be careful not to lean towards the old "feminist" cliches which confuse the "sexual" with the "social" =e (and thus fail to touch the great mass of working women). Surely this is the deg reason for the movement's lack of wide support in the past. What we have to stress Thi today is the social nature of the problem: the strike by women workers at Fords bi and Renold's have surely shown us that this is the only perspective for mobilising women (those working women so often brushed aside as "spathetic") on @ mass ‘scale, Of course, we mist conduct struggles and propaganda against discrimination in all 52 aspects of our lives - whether it be in education, at the home or in work, But as ng socialists who see this discrimination beheroeniri from a class society = it is our job to seize on those concrete demanis which will integrete our strurcle, as rs women, into the general struggle of the labour movement. This must not be done artificially - but we should be wary of stressing these "welfare" demands {e.¢, “5 greater facilities for working mothers, free Senta, ete.) which often skirt the social problem and lead back into the middle-class circles of yesterday. For this reason, the demand for "equsl pov" (raised in the last issue of Socialist Woman) becomes central, Let us be frank, however, and say that this demand was | raised for us in a direct way by the magnificent strugeles of the Ford seamstresses ) and Renold's workers - and last, but not least, the fieht by London conductresses for equal sick pay and pension schemes, ‘Ihen we renlise that there are over 6 million women workers in the country, the mjority of which receive not mch more than half the man's equivalent ware, we realise how important the issue! It is one of immediate and democratic .appeal, affecting a lar-a section of traditionally oppressed women, and one which brings them into conflict not with “men" (that old abstraction!) but with the existing social system, Such :a demand -.backed up with others such as preater training facilities, equal benefits and opportunities = provides an immediate bridge between women's particular demands snd the larger struggle of the labour movement. (It unites them, for example, in the struggle against the ‘Incomes Policy').
There are other reasons of course, why this issue assumes the importance. it: does at this time. ive may all remember how Mrs, Castle - that great ex-veteran of cur fight for equal rights! solved the threstened enpineering strike last year. She obtained a settlement partly by separating men from women workers and throwing: the latter to the wolves. If equal pay had been a reality at that time, or if a wide enough struggle had been initiated to achieve it, she would never have been able to pet away with what she did. (Before the settlement, men were efrning on average,
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9/6 an hour and women'5/h...) In other words, ther, the ficht for equal rights
in industry can only achieve a greater sense of unity in the long term between men
and women workers and offers less chance to the employers to split them (besides
of course, being a decisive step forward against female deécrimination aconomically)
We mst not, however, be naive enough to expect that the fight in the factory and
office will noOt rub reactionary trade unionists up the wrong way. Unfortunately,
it will - and has. The reception given London conductresses last year in their
struggle to achieve equal benefits and the richt to go drivinr, was abominable:
after all, it was the militant 'Reps( who refused to concede their demands (even
though the T&G7U is officially in favour of equal rights!) But we mst fight this
prejudice - and it is pure prejudice of the kind employers love to see! - because
we are not only fighting for equality for women but for greater industrial democ-
racy as well.
Finally, as Audrey Wise wrote in the last issue, equal pay by itself is obviously
NOT enough: it does nothing in itself to change the basic problems of men and women
as cogs in an impersonal machine designed to produce profit for a privileged few,
But it CAN be a beginning, it CAN mobilise what are called the "apolitical" working
woman in a struggle which leads her to question the very nature of a society which
degrades and exploits all working people and doubly degrades and doubly exploits her.
This has been shown to us We the initiative of such working women which has given:
the campaign the beginning of a mass besis and away from the select middle-class few.
Pelee yee eee ee oe eed