Socialism and Feminism: An Explainer
Katie and the Grabbing Back Team
With many thanks to Sohela Nazneen of IDS for lecture on this topic, and the writings of Shelia Rowbotham, both of which helped us understand the topic more.
** This article is mainly about the arguments for socialist feminism. However, it’s important to note that there are objections and alternative arguments which supporters of liberalism/neoliberalism might present, but which we don't have space for. If you want to write about them for us, get in touch!**
Introduction:
As we’ve seen in our other articles this season, there are a number of different kinds of ‘feminism’, and while all versions of feminism are broadly based around the simple idea that women are equal to men, there are different ways people like to get into the nitty gritty of this.
Socialist feminism is a kind of feminism which looks not only at gender, but also capitalism and class, and argues we can’t achieve true gender equality without examining class inequality. It therefore tackles two specific intersections of identity: class and gender.
Socialist feminism can only be understood when placed in contrast to another form of feminism; liberal (or ‘neoliberal’) feminism. In this explainer, I will break these down into key features, before reflecting on what these mean today. As ever, there are so many different perspectives on all of these kinds of feminisms, and these are a starting point for explaining them. We’d encourage you to listen to people discussing these and giving their own perspectives on them – for instance in our podcast episodes this month.
(neo)-liberalism:
This is a pretty Western view and narrative of feminism.
Liberalism as a whole is a worldview which prioritises freedom and equality. It’s a key way of thinking many people embrace, from across the right/left political spectrum. It emerged mainly as a way of thinking with the Enlightenment, which happened in the 18th century. The Enlightenment movement was really the Western world’s first move away from more religious, spiritual, mystical ways of thinking about the world, and towards the idea of ‘seeing is believing’. It saw rational thought, and the importance of individuals and their individual freedoms, as key virtues of the world.
With this way of thinking emerged what we might call English ‘proto-feminism’, brought about with the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (check out our article about this cool lady here) and the famous playwright Aphra Benn.
This kind of feminism followed on from wider public discussion which emphasised the individual rights (later framed as universal human rights) and responsibilities of *man* - such as the French Revolution’s famous text ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’. It’s key point is made best by Eliza Reynolds in Hamilton musical,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, imma compel him to include WOMEN in the sequel.”
On the left and right of the image is Silvia Federici, a socialist feminist involved in the Wages for Housework campaign (you’ll find out more below!) In the middle is the Schuyler sisters from the musical Hamilton.
In other words, liberal feminism emerged initially with the first wave of feminism, and argued that women needed to be included in existing efforts and legislation to provide a set of freedoms to all citizens. It focused on removing barriers to equality, such as the right to economic independence. However, this form of feminism failed to recognise that existing efforts at this time in countries like England and France to provide male citizens with rights were extremely racist, colonialist, and classist in their approach.
This view emerged and developed as centuries rolled on, all the way into the 1980s and the emergence of 2nd wave feminism. At this time, liberalism faded and Neoliberalism emerged. This is a fundamentally different worldview to liberalism, but joint in the basic belief of personal freedom trumping all things, and joint in the way this can be seen to relate to modern feminism.
The 1980s and the rise of neoliberalism was the beginning of the #GirlBoss era of feminism (though no one called it that then). Thatcher was in power, giving rise to celebrations of Britain’s first female prime minister: what a win for feminism! A woman at last! Representation at the top! What people often failed to account for, was that she was seen by the working classes of Britain – especially in coal mining towns in the North or England and Welsh Valleys – as having abandoned them. Neoliberalism brought the idea of personal liberty and so-called freedom of economic markets on steroids. The focus was on money and profit.
For feminism, this meant a focus on improving women’s economic freedom; their ability to join the paid workforce and leave their roles as housewives. A freedom to start a business. Freedom in sex. This liberal view of feminism echoed around the world too, as the West became more involved in the newfangled idea of ‘international development’ which had emerged after WW2. It was the idea of improving international rights and freedoms, and from a feminist liberal point of view, the focus was on integrating women into public life, including their involvement in the workplace and the growing economies across the world. After all, both liberal and neoliberal feminism were united in their belief that women could do anything a man could do, and be just as good… couldn’t she?
socialist feminism:
Socialist feminism in many ways emerged in opposition to the above types of liberal and neoliberal feminism. Before we lay it out, we want to make one thing clear. We here at Grabbing Back are not writing to convince you either way. It is up to you to read about these theories and decide for yourself, and we welcome any perspectives, of any political stripes. There are certainly strengths to both approaches, and weaknesses too.
Unlike liberal and neoliberal feminism, socialist feminism has slightly later roots in the famous class theories of Karl Marx. Marx viewed the world through the idea of class; there is the ruling class and the working class. The ruling class make all the money. The working class sell the labour of their bodies to make money for the ruling class, and they can’t survive without doing this. Marx wrote with his buddy Engels at the turn of the 19th Century about this idea. He called these two classes the ‘bourgeoisie’ (ruling class) and ‘proletariat’ (working class). The main ideas put forward by Marx are that the proletariat are being exploited by the bourgeoisie, and aren’t paid enough for the work they do. Ruling classes skim off wages to make themselves nice fat profits, and this creates what is known as ‘capital’.
Crucially, much like the male Enlightenment thinkers above, Marx made a bit of a boohoo and forgot to talk about women. Socialist feminists were nice enough to come along and fix that up for him.
Socialist feminists point out that Marx only spoke about paid wage; the work men (and working women, but the focus was always on men in writing) did outside the house; working in factories, ploughing fields, and all that other hard labour you got paid for at the end of the week or month. However, this didn’t factor in all the unpaid work women did inside the house to make sure people could go out and do that paid work. Think of things like cooking the food, cleaning the house, washing laundry (which took FOREVER before washing machines – a whole day a week!), birthing and raising babies who would go on to eventually be the new workforce, and so on and so on. Socialist feminists label these two kinds of work productive (ie paid) and reproductive (ie unpaid) labour.
A big movement of socialist feminists argued that the way the current capitalist economy is set up means reproductive labour, which has historically almost entirely been performed by women, gets ignored, unpaid, and therefore, not valued in society as much as productive labour. This led to the “Wages for Housework” movement, a movement in the 1970s led in part by socialist feminist Silvia Federici among others. A quote on a pamphlet in New York as part of the campaign read “A woman’s home is not her castle. Is it her work place.”
Wages for Housework march and Silivia Federici
Socialist feminism then, critiques two systems of power which it sees as interlinked; capitalism and patriarchy. Socialist feminists argue that the two systems prop each other up, and that lots of women’s oppression comes from class-based oppression. Dawn Foster explained this very powerfully in her recent book ‘Lean out’:
“The benefit of having women in [the UK’s government] cabinet remains to be seen for migrant, low-paid, or abused women [...] The idea that getting more women into positions of power automatically benefits women as a whole seems logical, but curtly overlooks competing interests of class, race, and social and economic position. Whilst parliaments and cabinets continue to be predominantly white, male, pale, and stale, the women who do elbow their way in tend not to be acutely underrepresented, but those who fit into a similar culture’”
Socialist feminists argue that there are different ways people, and women especially, are dominated and suppressed, and that we neeed to understand all these forms to achieve women’s liberation; both in the marriage (or relationship – marriage assumed of course a ‘straight’ or ‘heteronormative’ situation of a cis man and cis woman) and at the workplace. This view presented itself contrary to the liberal perspective, which failed to consider class and capitalism as a factor in feminism, and saw freedom as a simpler aim, discounting the role of reproductive vs. productive labour.
TLDR:
Socialist feminism believes that female oppression comes not just from the patriarchy, but capitalist systems of class hierarchy too. This point of view can be seen as a clear contrast to liberal and neoliberal feminism. Socialist feminists have focused their activism on working class women, and have really pushed to recognise all the invisible, unpaid ‘reproductive’ labour that mostly women are expected to do outside their official jobs. This includes work like childcare and housework.
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