#12631 - Hartmann The Unhappy Marriage Of Marxism And Feminism - Sociological Theory

Heidi Hartmann - The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union (1979)

• Marxism, though insightful regarding the laws of historical development, is sex-blind

• Feminism reveals the systemic character of relations between men and women, but has been blind to history and insufficiently materialist

  • We need an appropriate synthesis of the two, not a relationship in which Marxism is dominant

Marxism and the Woman Question

• Marxist analysis explore the relationship of women to the economic system, rather than the relationship of women to men, assuming that the latter will be explained by the former

• Why does theorists’ Marxism so dominate their feminism?

  • partly because Marxism has such explanatory power over so many aspects of capitalist society - the structure of production; the generations of a particular occupational structure, the nature of the dominant ideology

    • but although Marxism can explain the existence of positions in capitalist society, it cannot explain who will fill them (e.g. men/women)

Radical Feminism and Patriarchy

• Women’s discontent is a response to a social structure in which women are systematically dominated, exploited, and oppressed

  • women have an inferior position in the labour market, the emotional structure of marriage is male-centred, women’s psyche is understood as neurotic

• According to radical feminists, male character traits are the search for power and domination, egocentricity, individualism, competitiveness and pragmatism

  • females are nurturing, artistic and philosophical

    • the fact that this has not been true of all history shows that feminism is blind to history

      • in spite of this, patriarchy is incredibly resilient and has dominated in one form or another form most human history

Towards a Definition of Patriarchy

• Patriarchy is a set of social relations with a material base which, although hierarchical, creates an interdependence/solidarity among men that enables them to dominate women

  • hierarchies work through those at the top buying off those below with power e.g. in patriarchy men are bought off with control over women

• The material base of patriarchy is men’s control over women’s labour power

  • this is achieved by the exclusion of women from access to production resources (e.g. good wages) and restricting women’s sexuality

    • these can both be achieved through monogamous heterosexual marriage

  • women are controlled, exploited, dominated both ‘personally’ (i.e. in the family setting) and ‘publicly’ (i.e. in employment)

  • just as class society is reproduced by schools, work places, consumption norms etc, so patriarchal relations are reproduced

    • children are raised by women defined as inferior to men

    • churches, schools, sports, clubs, unions, armies, factories, offices, health centres, the media all reproduce patriarchal relations

  • hence the material base of patriarchy rests on all the social structures that enable men to control women’s labour

• Men exercise their control through receiving personal service work from women, not having to do housework or raise children, having access to women’s bodies for sex, and feeling and being powerful

• The current, crucial elements of patriarchy are

  • heterosexual marriage

  • female childbearing/housework

  • women’s economic dependence on men

  • the state

  • other institution e.g. church, clubs, schools etc

• The hierarchy and interdependence among men are systemic

The Partnership of Patriarchy and Capital

• The is a strong and healthy relationship between patriarchy and capital, though it is not a necessary relationship

  • there are ways in which the two might conflict e.g. men want their women to stay home and do housework, whilst capitalists want women in the labour force

Industrialisation and the Development of Family Wages

• Originally after industrialization women and children were in the labour force, which drove down men’s earnings

  • working men opposed this, because reduced their economic control over women, and reduced the sexual division of labour in the household

  • unions excluded women and campaigned for protective labour laws for women (and children)

    • such laws confined women to certain jobs, and hence increased men’s wages, reduced women’s wages, and led to a stable ‘family wage’ equilibrium, whereby men were able to support the whole family, and women were once again confined to dependence and the household

    • this arrangement also benefited capitalists, with working families now better able to reproduce themselves, educated children (as a result of housewife upbringing) etc

  • when children were working, men were granted priority in the case of contested custody

    • when they were removed from the labour force, women were granted priority - reinforcing the economic dominance of men

The Family and the Family Wage Today

• Though women are increasingly part of the labour force, the income gap between men and women ensures that economic dependency still exists, and hence that the family is a necessary pooling unit

  • there is a sexual division of labour in in the labour market - women are given ‘women’s jobs’ in care, catering, service, cleaning

    • these jobs are both low-paid AND low status - reinforcing material and ideological patriarchal relations

  • because both men and women now both earn wages, the wage differential between them will become increasingly important in perpetuating patriarchy

• Some argue that patriarchal relations will dissolve under capitalism, under which social relations become universalized - there is little evidence for this

  • women’s wages allow few women to support themselves and their children

  • the traditional family has barely decayed

  • there are still social forces that make monogamous marriage appealing

    • e.g. burden of child raising

  • sexual division of labour within the household has barely changed

Ideology in the Twentieth Century

• Patriarchy, by allowing men from all groups to control at least some women, reinforces capitalist control

  • capitalist values shape patriarchy - radical feminists describe men in...