women working outside the home will almost equal the numberol men. Engels, writing in the 1880s, predicted that as lemale workers were integrated into the workforce, the conomic freedom they gained would provide the basis for their liberation. Reality, however, has proved to be more complex; although modern capitalism opens its arms to women workers, it decepts them into the labour marker on a gender-segregated basis.
The dual role of woman as housewife and worker outside the home is reflected in the pattern of female employment. Women do different jobs from men, in different industries, for different hours and for different rates of pay. To serve their own needs in the cconomic recession, the employers have increased the gender segregation of the worktorce in order to avoid equaliny legislation and to maximise the flexibility of female labour.
in forming poncy objectves, the left must begın to come to grips with this pattern of female employment and the way the ruling « lass is so ruthlessly exploiting the divisions in the labour loree.
This article examines the pattern of female employment in Britain today, discusses its effects on the radicalisation of women in society, and begins a discussion on the solutions the
Transport and General Workers' Union HIS NOT PIN MONEY WE HAVE THIVE ON carlos Augusto Guarita/Reflex left should be advocating in the period leading up to the next general election. The new pattern of female employment The rise in female employment can be accounted for by the entry of large and increasing numbers of married women into the worktorce during the post-war years. About 60 per cent of married women are economically active today, which is twice the number working outside the home in the 1950s. In Sweden, more than 80 per cent of mothers with children under seven were in waged work in 1985.
There were seven million women in waged work in Britain in 1951. By 1990 the figure is expected to rise to 9.6 million. Male employment reached a peak of 14.7 million in 1966, since
'by 1990 the number of women
working outside the home will almost
equal the number of men' when it has declined. By 1990 it is expected to be 11.2 million. In Wales it is likely that women will comprise over halt the workforce before the end of the decade.
The pattern of employment has changed in other ways that affect women: full-time employment has fallen by two million, while part-time work has increased by the same amount. One in five employees worked part-time in 1980, and by 1990 the number is likely to be one in four. The vast bulk of these part-time workers are women.
Part-time works means low pay. The pay of workers in Britain is between 20 to 35 per cent lower than men's. It is a gap that is widening despite Equal Pay legislation. But this does not reflect the total difference in wage packets because it is calculated on an hourly rate, ignoring the fact that men work much longer hours than women. This difference is dramatic, because the male manual worker in Britain works much longer hours and has less time off for holidays than his European counterpart. Despite the huge levels of unemployment, ten 21
hours a weck on top of the basic weck remains the norm for most men working in manual jobs in Britain because of the low wages paid it those hours are not worked. Thus not only the gap in hourly pay has to be taken into account but also the enormous difference in hours worked outside the home each week.
Self-employment is also on the rise in Thatcher's Britain. Not selt employment to launch successful small businesses, but the growth of casualisation of cleaning and catering work, with its low wages, few benefits and lack of job security. In 1979, 600.000 workers were employed like this; temporary fixed term contract work is on the increase as well.
Nor has the much heralded new techmology brought interesting, better paid work to women: new office hierarchies are being created which place women in repetitive jobs in the lowest grades. According to recent surveys, women just do not have the necessary "promotional characteristics' ¡talitications, an unbroken service record, geognphical mobil-
Wto take advantage of the now administrative managerial opportunities, orto gain access to high-level training in computer science. VDUs are even being set up in the home to rake huge profits off women, many of whom are black or disabled and are tied to young children in their own homes.
Given the large numbers of women in waged work and the gender segregation in employment, cmployers scck not to shed female labour but to substitute female labour on a part time, casual basis for male labour on a full time, permanent basis, is part of their response to che economic crisis. In carrying through the restructuring and lengthoning the dole quenc», the employers are deepening the segregation of the workforce on the basis of gender as well as of race and age.
Women now have greater access to employment than at and time since the industrial revolution (other than the war rears). With improved control over their fertility, more women are choosing to go out to work to gain cconomic independence. But their access to paid employment limited the lowest paid, least-skilled jobs with the worst promotion prospects, and i is getting harder for women to escape the female emplovment ghetto. A fresh look at Engels
implications of these now features of the emplorment pattern of temale workers lor the predictons lingels made about the basis lor women's hbcration? "The first promise for the emancipation of woman', wrote Engels in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, is the reintroduction ofthe entire female sex into public industry; and this again demands that the quality possessed by the individual tamily of being the economic unit of society be abolished.'
Too otten, tominist critics have reduced Engels' statement to banality. Heidi Hartmann, for instance, says that the carly Marxists argued that capitalism would abolsh sex ditferences and treat all workers equally' in her essay "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism".
The problem with Angels' statement, however, is that while the tamil has not been abolished as the cconomic unit of society, women have been integrated into the worktorce. The patriarchal family has structured the options in women's lives and their position in the labour marker. As a strategic goal, Engels challengeto the family remains valid, but it is inadequate in answering the debates of the feminist movement on solutions for the struggle to end women's double exploitation.
More attention must be paid by the Marxist movement to theissue of the unpaid domestic labour that women pertorm in the home. Men absent themselves trom domestic labour partly because it is conceived of as women's work and partly because of the long hours that men work. Demands for i shorter working day can begin to challenge the sexual division of labour in the home; paternity leave does the same.
But it is crucial that, within the framework of achieving the goal of the socialisation of domestic labour, demands ard articulated which make it clear that men must share and not abrogate these responsibilities. The socialist movement has given support to programmes for positive action in training and employment for women, but it has been slow to tackle the
questions raised by feminists about domestic labour. This isond of the reasons why the women's movement has always put such stress on the fact that women do work in the home and that thes produce usc-values there that go unrecognised and unrewarded by male-dominated society The response of labour leaders There have been numerous struggles by women workers over the last two decades - and specitically under the Tory government — for equal pay, against low par and in detence of women's jobs. There was a huge response trom female trade unionists, particularly in the public-sector manual unions, when the TU sponsored a demonstration in (ctober 1979 against the John Corrie anti-abortion bill. There have also been consistent campaigns by women worker to make the unions more representative of women. The recruitment of women workers has prevented a dramatic decline in trade union membership of the kind experienced during the 1930s. (Nevertheless, according to the latest ligures, over a seven-ycar penod trade union membership has fallen by 2.2 million.) Despite women's pressure from below, however, the conservative leaders of the
'the patriarchal family has structured
women's lives and their position in the labour market' unions in Britain have failed to halt the emplovers offensive and have proved incapable of producing a strategy to challenge the institutional divisions the emplorers are attempting to drive through the labour movement
The initiative within the trade umon movement, with the exception of the miners' strike, has lain with the right-wing leaders of the LETPU and the Allen. Ther have bern allowed to plough ahead with then single amon, no sook deals that thes detend in comms of the realito od moden capualism The emplorers have consequents been given the green lasht to go ahead and walk over the more vulnerable secuons of the worktorce: it don decept the logic of Thatcherism, you cannot solve the problems of the mose oppressed sections of the working class.
As cach group of workers has moved into struggle against the Tories, the au has come behind them not to support, but to get them back to work. Such misleadership by the The has produced a crisis of political perspective noe only in the trade unions but in the movements that were allied to them, in this case the women's liberation movement The unit and consensus among women in the 1970s around the tust tour demands of the women's liberation movement has gone forever (Even that unity was rather tenuous as it avoided the specific demands of losbians and black women.) Todas, the women's liberation movement is fragmented: ir is no longer one. organised national movement New forms of organisation by women However, while the organised tenumst movement bagmented. the cadre of the feminist movement remamed actre and the ideas of feminism penetrated ever more deepls men the consciousness of the mass of women. This was graphicalls demonstrated with the birth of the women's peace movement and thic Women Against Pit Closures during the miners' strike, and the support these campaigns reccived from thousands of women. The 1983 clection results confirmed that a gender reversal had taken place in voung patterns: more women than men were now voting against the Tones. Unfortunately, the Labour Party only attracted halt of the anti-Tory vote among women: nevertheless, this confirmed that women, exploited at work and bearing the brum of theouts, were moving to the icte
Socialise feminists began to address themselves do the labour movement's complacene over women's issues bo challenging its domination by men. An entry project took place into the women's sections of the Labour Party. Quite spontancously, from 1980 onwards, women started to join the
party to try and feminise it. This project was linked to the Bennite revolt against the Wilson/Callaghan record in govern ment which called for the leaders of labour Parliamentary leadership of the Part -tobecome decoumable to the ranks of the movement.
Women, led by the Labour Women's Action Commine. quickly won the case for positive action and greater represent ton among women. Let Labour administrations localls also responded, in most cases, by establishing women's comminees It Wasto prove a much harder battle to convince the men on the
'The unity around the first four
demands of the women's liberation movement has gone forever' NEC and the main trade union leaders, who wickded the decise conference votes, that ther shoukd give was do women.
This brings as to discuss what solutions denon necessars. Feminists in the Labour Party are confronted be a leadership moving further to the right cach day. How can me figh lor a policy that really tackles institutionalised discrimination agained women at work and in socice? Some false starts The blank wall that women have usually come up against encourages support for the idea that it is not a problem of confronting the male bureaucrats but men in gencral. Bea Campbell has developed this idea since her first articles on a feminist incomes policy in Red Rag in the late 19700. Her solution is simples take from the privileged males and giveto the underprivileged females.
Campbell's approach falls neadly in line with the arguments of the centre, right and now 'left' leaders like Ron Todd. who say Labour'sonly chance of power lies in an agrecment that puts jobs and low pay above incomes. The experience of labour's INTERNA NA!
social contract "l 1971.7° is pushed under the carper. The Positin workers deteriorated, the gap between
widened and unemployment rosc leaders agreed not to challenge the pri
have responded to Bea Camphiell rejecting fominism itself. This is clear with the Winem but wah checlosuroof Women's Voice, it
with the sill. In the name of Marxist mistepresent) these groupings recruit general radicalisation only to innoculate then agames the ideas ol 'middle class teminism'. Inevitably, thes the enouges deminist women to turn away from Marxiss
Theseece therefore seem important for the attention of thedominis wingod the hard left it the emplovers offensive and both retorism and false orthodory are to be countered: poles: "it one mistion: and niass action initiatives. A Ministry for Women's Rights Do Raised les circulated a discussion document on the worked a are dinary dor Women's Rights. It argues that babess comradent on women's rights must be central to our best Cineral Blestion Manifesto and must have the full backing ed the leadership. "Modelledon the French example and the e!!. aponence the document demands a new highpossered Miner tich representation in the cabinet. Richardso propose dons equalies legislation, a minimum wage; free choke are tos all dee and lour per-olds; an end to discrimina dion it so dad been benefias; abolition of the married man's Cordelion shere predes dion of the male retirement age to 60, and a more Hsible working wech with shorter working days and better paid parental leave.
Much of chi will be welcomed by women, but there arc amassons and are ed concern. Labour and trade union policy on fertilins control and abortion rights is completely left out. Noposite iction programme on employment is laid out which would comped empirers, through quotas, to hire women and 23
ORKSHI /0l20 ARE A A TIL MANSTONE WOMEN'S Women organised autonomously during the miners' strike ethnic minorities. The introduction of the minimum wage appears dependent tu agreement. The provision of day-care for three- and four-scar-olds only is inadequate. The proposal tor a shorter working day is good, but what about pav evels? And how is job segregation to be tackled if no quotas in training and employment are called tor. Above all, the
'how is job segregation to be tackled if
Ono quotas in training and employment are called for' references to support from the party leadership and adequate resources, when Kinnock is doing his utmost to re-assure capitalism that he isn't going to implement Clause 4, seem unduly optimistic. A fighting strategy Wenced an offensive strategy against the emplovers in order to roll back gender segregation in emplopment. Such a strategy would have to have totally dillerent priorities from those of the capitalist class, To create jobs and resourer welfare services, we need to have a maximum wage as well as a minimum one; we need a wealth cas and control of the banks and finance houses to stop capital fleeing the country. Feminists much turn their attention to the debate on cconomic policy to make Labour tackle women's oppression effectively and ensure that our demands aren't ignored bo the left.
Secondly, as the majority vote be Labour MI's in favour of 24 Powell's embryo rights bill clearly expressed, the Parliamentary
WNES SUPRE WOM GROUP leadership remains committed to ignoring what women and the Party want. Similarly, trade union burcaucrats voted down the NECrecommendation at last party conference to put at least one woman on every shortlist. This year's Labour Party women's conterence will clect a shadow slate of women for the tive place on the NEC. The lett must campaign tor this slate to make the case, not only for women to choose women, but for the trade union block voto to be democratised. This will give War an opportunity to establish strong links with women activists in the unions — an opportunity missed during the miners' strikc, because most of WAC's leaders have been too keen on waiting for crumbs from Kinnock's table.
Finally, the left must continue to participate in the initiatives and debates of the feminist movement, arguing for a presence on the streets to counter the backlash against the gains in sexual freedom and women's rights won in the late sixties and carly seventies. The offensive against women controlling their own fertility is growing, and the mobilisation against some of these attacks must be stepped up. The new reproductive technology is being used against the interests of women in the case of surrogacy. The institutionalisation of pornography as a central feature of mass culture is offensive to women, and the left - which has opposed censorship — has to work out alternatives.
The political crisis on the left has produced an internalisation of all sections of the movement as the inspiration of 1968 and the hopes of the Bennite revolt of 1981 have faded away. The left cannot afford to turn its back on women or the debates of the feminist movement for women will play a central role in the political recomposition now taking place in the labour movement because of their increasing participation at all levels. That is the now reality, and the left has to come to terms with it in every aspect of political debate.
INTERNATIONAL No. 4. Maylon 1486
From dutiful daughter to fearless feminist Simone De Beauvoir, new and shocking (and are by no means to De Beauvoir, and they must become 1966, De Beauvoir had already explained willnot be buried with her. Her writing and born women, we become it. The book ends individually and a way of fighting together'. the beginningod the endot male domination. how she saw feminism asia way of living heractivity in file marked theendof an era-
1908-1986
Simone de Beauvoir died in
March this year. JUDITH
ARKWRIGHT pays