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On: Women's Liberation and the New Politics. By Sheila Rowbotham. May Day Manifesto 2/6 liberation have re-emerged not only in Britain but in several of the advanced capitalist countries. This development can not be understood as an autoof youth, or of greater trade union militancy in some of these countries. involved in these movements would pay lip service at least to the rights of women, experience has shown us the uncertainty of the relationships between women's liberation and the socialist movement. Julremains a normative ideal, an adjunct to socialist theory not structurally integrated with it" (Women: the longest revolution. NIR Nov/Dec '66 - now reproduced as a separate pamphlet), is true at a practical level also. of women has been very effective, and particularly the general notion that women are best in secondary matic part of the growth in radicalism among sections For while most of those Let Mitchell's comment that: "The liberation of women The "cultural" subordination positions, ing of socialists themselves.
are important ones. ways out, and to see how these ways relate to a Marxism has touched upon the situation of women, which of necessity involves phasis of some species of Marxism.
all of the. Instead it concentrates largely on sonal) understanding, which women have of their situation, concentration on this aspect is intentional is of the uncertainties of the present stage of the movement in this country.
and permeates into the actions and think In this context the questions which Sheila Rowbotham asks and sets out to answer in this book Her intention is "to explore thé nature of women's containment, to examine the total social transformation". This also involves an attempt to understand the awkwardness with which questioning the emis introduced as the beginning of enquiry into these The pamphlet issues and it does not itself deal very fully with the complex process by which the subjective (perdevlops and may change. Whether or not not clear, but perhaps in this it does reflect some The pamphlet begins by locating the subordination of women in the general context of the question of authority and subordination, of control, co-operation, competition. "The domination of women is at once the most complex and most fundamental link in the chain." (of capitalism.? oppression generally?) This is clearly recognised by those who hold power and yet women acquiesce in their own subordination; they learn and come to believe that theirs should be an inferior position.
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Thus the first half of the pamphlet gives a very general and often -nute impression of women's situation. But it does not provide the basis for an analysis of that situation: it is an intuitive rather than an analytical picture.
The remainder of the pamphlet is concerned with how the picture might be changed. The importance of learning from the audacity of other oppressed groups is emphasised.
The development of the movement is then traced. Utopian Feminism in which women replace positions of domination is identified in myths and legends and contemporarily: the society for cutting up men, but neither is seen to have much political potential. Rather it is suggested have inherited the religious, than moral radical The development of the movement is then Apart from the variety of feminism The concluding sections seem to summarise the rest of the pamphlet, to re-emphasise the subjective aspects and ways in which these may change: "structural changes will interacts on the way women can can see herself, and will call into question the assumption of social secondariness... The struggle is not simply against the external mechanisms of containment ... It is against the assumption that men make and define the world whether it is capitalist or socialist". In that the subordination of women is so extensive - economie, cutthe inpsychological and so subtly perpetuated, portance of these points is very considerable and yet the tendence to underestimate the structural factors in this pamphlet is a serious weakness which leads to some confusion in the picture of women's liberation which emerges.
One final comment: the style of writing is itself impressionistic, it hints at meaning rather than stating, explaining, clarifying in any precise or substantial way. It may be true that this is an attempt to break out of the constraints of traditional expression, but, for me at least, is to perpetuate the aura of mystery which has been used to perpetuate the subordination of women, and which, if we are to move forward, we have to