Sisterhood, still powerful THE WOMEN'S LIBERATION movement that emerged in the late 1960s did not simply reflect the demands of college- educated women. It was a movement rooted in deep social changes in wo- men's lives. New economic indepen- as married women poured into the labour market. This gave them greater choice over how they lived their lives and who they lived with, prompting legal changes that abolished the most blatant forms of discrimination. Birth control gave women the ability to plan their chil- dren as more and more chose to allo- liberation cate a smaller proportion of their lives with the kids. Rights. Access to higher education gave them the qualifications and skills they had The first four demands of the wo- men's liberation movement - for
LE MEN NOMEN
1 SAY NO TO THE ARMS RACE equal pay and job opportunity, for contraception and abortion on demand, for equal educational opportunity, and for free 24-hour nurseries - expressed the high expectations of social equality. These were in no sense the narrow demands of an elitist movement. In fact, the first demonstrations in Britain were in support of women at Fords for equal pay in 1969. Although bra-burning and the disruption of the Miss World contest stole the headlines, it was this fight of working women that inspired the first women's
campaign, the National Joint Committee for Women's Equal
Understanding these social origins of the women's liberation movement is necessary in order to appreciate what is happening now among women and to explain the response of both the
Under the impact of feminism, the organisation of women in the labour movement, in the mass movements and in liberation struggles around the world continues to grow. So too does the sharp political debate among women. VALERIE COULTAS traces developments in western Europe and the US. ruling class and working class to feminism today.
The ruling class has not attempted, as some predicted, to push women out of the workforce as it did after the last two world wars. Capital is far too dependent on female labour outside the home to do that. The sex segregation of the workforce makes it impossible to simply replace female workers with male. Although women have lost their jobs the overall proportion of women in the workforce in northern Europe and the USA has contined to rise, particularly in the service sector and among part-time workers.
However, the ruling class does need to increase the rate of exploitation and flexibility of the workforce to restore the rate of profit. This means using sexual (and other) divisions in the labour market. New technology is also employed to increase the sex segregation of the workforce and drive down wage levels.
This in turn creates the conditions for the political and ideological offensive against the women's movement. The latter is necessary to legitimise the super-exploitation of women workers, the lack of change towards equality,
'International No 9 March/April 1987
the attacks on maternity and social security rights, the closure and the abortion and nursery facilities.
Political parties in Western Europe and the US have had to take into account in various ways public attitudes on questions of abortion, sexuality and the role of women. example, the modernist wing of the Christian Democrats in West Germany has used radical feminist rhetoric to argue that motherhood and part-time work represent the 'best' choice for the emancipated woman. President Reagan in the US has taken a tough line against the women's movement, opposing the Equal Rights Amendment and giving his full backing to the anti-abortionists. Socialist governments in France, Spain and Greece have attempted to use government funds and ministries to co-opt women into a more parliamentarist framework.
The economic crisis and austerity budgets of the ruling class dictate their political objectives whichever party is in control. Thus the social provisions vital to women's liberation come under fire one by one as the crisis deepens. The status of the family has to be reinforced to make it seem acceptable that the burden on women in the home should increase.
Since the mid-seventies the working class movement has been on the defensive with women finding themselves at the sharp end of the economic, social and political offensive both as workers and as domestic labourers. But they have played a central role in the fightback against austerity and in other mass mobilisations on peace, ecology, racism, abortion and democratic rights.
The Women Against Pit Closures movement in Britain, born out of the miners struggle with the Tory government in 1984-5, developed into a nationally-organised autonomous network of women's support groups and still survives today. In West Germany, women workers played a vanguard role in the 35-hour week campaign. In Denmark's Easter Rebellion in 1985 the unskilled All-Women's Union played an exemplary role in the neargeneral strike.
Some Marxists have insisted that this working class women's movement has nothing to do with the early women's movement - that its goals differ sharply with modern feminism. Yet the struggle for abortion rights, for instance, has continued in such countries as the US, Spain and Greece because the attack on these rights is also clearly part of the package of austerity measures and part of the right-wing backlash.
Moreover many members of the Women Against Pit Closures, International No 9 March/April 1987
ш l M example, see themselves as part of a broader movement of women and took solidarity action at Greenham to prove it. They were clearly influenced by the establishing, as they did, their own autonomous forms of organisation within the fight to defend the pits. Nothing like this emerged in 1926 when the women's movement was in down-
Looking at how the workers' movement responds to women workers act-
specific concerns women in the workforce, it is clear why independent organisation by women is needed to force the labour movement to act on their behalf. In Belgium, women workers were left to fight alone at Galerie Anspacht in Brussels and at Bakaert Cockerill steel plant over the introduction of part-time work.
At Hoovers in South Wales male trade unionists walked past women on the factory gates when they struck for equal pay. The TUC has called for a minimum wage but the leaders of the labour movement in Britain are already backing down on making this a priority. Their failure to Tories' privatisation plans is leaving low-paid workers, a high proportion of whom are black and female,
All this has made women aware of the need to transform the trade unions and political parties themselves if these organisations are ever to take women and rank and file workers seriously. In Britain, women at the TUC women's advisory conference have argued for special measures to force the general council to act in defence of women workers — such as having five resolutions automatically referred to the TUC Congress.
In West Germany, women printing and textile unions have raised the demand for quotas of women on union bodies in proportion to their numbers. In the recent French student revolt, unlike the students uprising in 1968, women male student and took a lead in many areas.
On a West European level, the political party most responsive to the politics of gender is the Greens. Autonomous women's caucuses party have won all-women lists in elections, gender parity in the election of their leaderships and equal speaking
time for women and men at all meetings. Green women parliamentary deputies created an enormous when they