Marxist theory of womens' oppression

[BobKKKindle$]

I know that, according to the Marxist theory of womens' oppression, the proletarian (distinct from the bourgeois) nuclear Family (and, in turn, the ideology supporting the domestic division of labour - sexism) supports the interests of the bourgeoisie. From what I have read, I know that this is because the nuclear family reproduces the labour power of workers (and, through sexual reproduction provides a continual supply of workers) at no cost to the Capitalist - apparently, it would be too 'expensive' to provide services like social childcare and communal eating.

Assuming I have a decent understanding of Marxist feminism, this is what I don't understand - I can't see why the Capitalist system is 'unable' to provide social care. Surely if there is a profit to be made, a service will be provided, especially when other industries suffer a declining rate of profit and so the capitalist is forced to develop new forms of commodity production?

[Raúl Duke]

Maybe the social care in question was free social childcare? ( don't some jobs provide this...especially in the federal {US} government?).

Aren't their already day-cares you can pay for? So they are already gaining profit out of this right?

[BobKKKindle$]

Maybe the social care in question was free social childcare? ( don't some jobs provide this...especially in the federal {US} government?).

Aren't their already day-cares you can pay for? So they are already gaining profit out of this right?

Ah, this makes sense. Care as a commodity is available, which can enable a small group to attain financial independence from men, but it is too expensive for most women who have to manage the double responsibilities of childcare (and domestic labour in general) and waged employment to support the family economically.

I still think we need to critique this underlying assumption though. What if it were in the interests of capital to allow women to participate in the non-domestic sphere - for example, if the system required a new influx of workers during a period of economic expansion, as occured during the 60s? Would it be possible for the state (or even employers) to provide social care just as the provision of healthcare free of charge preserves the physical wellbeing of the working class? What would be the impact of such a reform on the family - given that Engels previously predicted the disintegration of the nuclear family as children and women became integrated within capitalism as wage-labourers and the family ceased to be an important productive unit? Are there other ways the nuclear family serves the interests of capital?

[Radek]

It's currently very important for capital to get women involved in the labour force, due to the falling number of workers and the rising number of expensive elderly. This is why female employment is rising (almost) across the board in OECD countries (and why you hear politicians lamenting the fall in birth rates, etc).

However, it should be noted that this is being done differently in different countries, and so more successfully in some than others. The Scandinavian countries, for example, have taken to increasing public employment (which largely employs women), subsidising child care, giving good maternity leave, etc -- this ability to increase employment for women (which has put their female unemployment rate at lower than for men) is what, to many, has saved their welfare state from the pressures (directly or indirectly) of globalisation. Other countries have focused more on increasing part-time employment or simply forcing women into the workplace through market pressures and expecting them to deal with it on their own eg. UK/USA (I once read a journal article which called this the "superwoman approach").

The countries that have been having the biggest problems with increasing female participation have been the European continental and particularly the southern continental countries, and this is in large part due to the historical influence of religion. The continental welfare state was largely developed by Christian Democratic parties and this led to active policies that aimed at keeping the male breadwinner family set-up.

So increasing female participation in the workforce can be extremely important to capital in order to increase the pool of labour they can draw from (or utilise in order to keep wages low). However, I would not argue that it is not also true that capitalism has historically been responsible for attempting to keep women out of the labour market, both as a holdover from old cultures and as a means of reproducing labour power. However, with current policies that can be implemented this is no longer seen as having the utmost importance to capital, and so new policies are being brought in to increase female employment and shift the family into a 'dual breadwinner' system based on a more equal taking of responsibility for children and private child care.

As Marx said, eventually everything melts away to capital, and the concepts of the male breadwinner family and child care are just two more parts of that which, thanks to a crisis in capital, have seen their time pass.

Edt: Obviously that wasn't much of a post on the "Marxist theory of womens' oppression," but I thought it might be interesting to you nonetheless.

[TC]

What the original post described really is not the theory.

Marxism (and the reality of society) is not so simple that any social phenomenon serves the singular interest of the ruling class. There are other powerful interests.

The patriarchal family is a social institution that predates capitalism that arouse from the gendered division of agricultural labour.

The principle people who perpetuate it are not capitalists but the individual husband/fathers and their institutions (the church) who have an independent financial stake in it.

The capitalists don't ultimately care about the patriarchy, however sometimes their interests conflict with it (as in the case of women in the work force, women's property rights, voting rights etc) and sometimes they align with it (as in the case of preserving a positive birth rate, indoctrinating children for the workforce, etc).

Because capitalist interests are more powerful than patriarchal interests, patriarchal relations tend to be preserved where there interests align with capitalisms and tends to be dismantled where they conflict...the areas where they neither conflict nor align (like say, the patriarchal interest in surpressing teen sexuality and homosexuality, which neither hurts nor helps capitalism) are precisely where the mainstream 'culture war' is played out because their are minor economic interests of individuals at stake but no major business interests.