Feminist inquiry into labor seems infinite. A current trend is to use Marxism as an entry point into critiques of labor, although not necessary. Hartman[i] reminds feminists that:
“The struggle against capital and patriarchy cannot be successful if the study and practice of the issues of feminism is abandoned. A struggle aimed only at capitalist relations of oppression will fail, since their underlying supports in patriarchal relations of oppression will be overlooked” (Hartman, 1981, p. 180).
Additionally, Angela Davis[ii] contributes to the conversation by adding that:
“The objective oppression of black women in America has a class, and also a national origin. Because the structures of female oppression are inextricable tethered to capitalism, female emancipation must be simultaneously and explicitly the pursuit of black liberation and of the freedom of other national oppressed peoples” (Davis, 1998, p. 185).
Thus, we can learn from Hartman, than when investigating issues of sex and gender as they are concerned with labor, one can’t just use Marxism. Instead, feminism must also be included. What is missing from this – Davis makes up for. Davis reminds us that when studying oppression and inequality in labor, we must not just turn to Marxism and feminism alone, but that we must turn to black liberation.
McClintock[iii] (1995) also contributes to ideas of labor within feminist theory in her project titled Imperial Leather. In chapter three she asks “what kind of agency is possible in situations of extreme social inequality” (McClintock, 1995, p. 163)? And she finds that in her study of Cullwick and her relationship with Munby, that
“while Cullwick may well have received erotic pleasure from her fetishism, understanding her cross-dressing and fetish rituals as an erotics of the castration scene serves only to reduce her life to a masculinist narrative of sexual interest. Instead, I suggest that her fetishism amounted to a sustained attempt to negotiate the perils attending the Victorian erasure of women’s work” (McClintock, 1995, p. 174).
Thus, she finds that even in situations of extreme social inequality, that agency is possible- even if at times it is part of a double bind.
What all three of these authors have in common are their interest in labor inequalities and sexism. An important contribution of these works are that they are reminders that as feminists we shouldn’t study labor solely within a Marxist lens, without feminism, and even without a critical eye to race, and liberation for those who suffer under labor oppressions. To do so, would be a disservice to women, and women of color, as well as society.
Below you will find some quotes from these books that struck me as worth sharing in a discussion of labor.
“Women should not trust men to liberate them after the revolution…instead we must have our own organizations and our own power base. Second, we think the sexual division of labor within capitalism has given women a practice in which we have learned division of labor within capitalism has given women a practice in which we have learned to understand what human interdependence and needs are” Hartman, 1981, p. 180).
“As feminist socialists, we must organize a practice which addresses both the struggle against patriarchy and the struggle against capitalism. We must insist that the society we want to create is a society in which recognition of interdependence is liberation rather than shame, nurturance is a universal, not an oppressive practice, and in which women do not continue to support the false as well as the concrete freedoms of men” (Hartman, 1981, p. 180).
“In the warped sexual equality foisted upon the black woman by slavery and subsequent national oppression, there is a revealing hint of the latent but radical potential of the attack on the productive apparatus. The singular status of black people from slavery to the present, has forced the woman to work outside the home- at first as provider of profit for the slave-master, but later as provider for her own family. Certainly, as female, she has been objectively exploited to an even greater degree than the black man. It would therefore be cruel and extravagant to claim that the black woman has been released from the social stigma attached to women in general and particularly to the women of the laboring classes” (Davis, 1998, p. 183).
“The objective oppression of black women in America has a class, and also a national origin. Because the structures of female oppression are inextricable tethered to capitalism, female emancipation must be simultaneously and explicitly the pursuit of black liberation and of the freedom of other national oppressed peoples” (Davis, 1998, p. 185).
“Clearly the most damaging burden of the erasure of domestic labor fell on the servants. The housewife’s labor of leisure found its counterpart in the servant’s labor of invisibility” (McClintock, 1995, p. 163).
[i] Heidi Hartmann. (1981). “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union”. pp. 169-183. From McCann, C. R., & Kim, S-k. (Eds). (2010). Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives 2nd Ed. New York, NY: Routledge.
[ii] Davis, A. (1998). Women and Capitalism: Dialectics of Oppression and Liberation, pp. 161-192. In The Angela Davis Reader (Ed. Joy James). MA: Blackwell Publishing.
[iii] McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial Leather. Ch 3: Imperial Leather: Race, cross-dressing and the cult of domesticity. pp. 132-180.
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