movement. Tory Reality ery am of In reality 13 years them under Britain's first woman Prime Minister have systematically eliminated women's choices. The gulf between rich and poor has been sharply cut across and magnified by the gender divisions of si ciety. Commentators now talk of the feminisation of poverty.
Crushing The crushing burden of holding families together, under the assaults of redun dancy, repossessions, evictions, Poll Tax, and falling benefits, generally falls on women. And, contrary to pronouncements of Tory ministers, single mothers consistently appear at the bottom of poverty league tables.
Over the last decade, the proportion of women in waged work has increased. But deciding to work, is often not the positive choice that the women's movement envisaged, but the product of sheer economic necessity.
Theaverage woman's wagecompared to the average man's - has fallen again. Furthermore, women are systematically de nied rights as part-time kers and as the vast majority of the rapidly expanding population of homeworkers.
The terms of women's employment have not been shaped y women themselves. They havebeenshaped by employers operating within the parameters of economic recession and Bitty of lonal variation in the availasublicly-funded abor ions. It has resulted in ar charities, themselves feeling the pinch.
The practical and ideological measures in the Embryology Act 1990, concerning access to donor insemination (Di), have led to the closure of one of the only two non-discriminatory These latter moves were part of a central project of Thatcher years - thestrengthening and buttressing of the nuclear family. It runs like a thread through such diverse pieces of legislation as Section 28 and the abolition of benefit for 16 to 19 year olds. It shows itself in govemment propaganda around AIDS, and has frequently erupted in the speeches of Tory
Monument
Finally - Margaret Thatcher herself. Attacked by both right and left - including some feminists and the macho wings of anarchism, such as Class War - for being a woman. Uccasionally her sex has been offered as her defence.
But she should be seen as a monument to the complexity of real life. Testament and proof to the fact that capitalist society is not only divided along one line be it class, sex or whatever -but divided along many All constantly intersect, interact and form part of a unitary whole. The battle to be waged, not only to reverse the defeats of the Thatcher years but to start to nake progress towards equality and liberation, has got to be fought on many fronts!