Why Capitalism Needs Women to Work:
Rediscovering Feminist Anti-work Perspectives
by Caroline Laschkolnig
2164 words
2164 words
Abstract
How to mark the beginning of the essay?
I have chosen to take the opportunity of this essay to share with you a bit of me. Now I can explain the views and opinions I have mentioned so often before. Only now, I can finally do it in the way I would want every discussion to go - with my quotes and citations at hand and a list of sources at the end. So, with this essay, I want to playfully invite you into my worldview, what I know and what I have learnt that has led me to have feminist and anti-capitalist views, and how these fit together. The prompt of this assignment is the question "How to live a feminist life?" Although I cannot give one definitive answer, I will outline what feminism means to me and why questioning what seems so natural and inevitable is already the first step. To illustrate my point, I have chosen to discuss work, introducing you to Marxist feminism and some radical (but not scary, I promise) critiques and perspectives on the future. My guiding thesis is that capitalism needs women’s work ... to work, and thus to continue exploiting them and others. Therefore, I would argue, taking an anti-capitalist, anti-work stance is a feminist position and necessity.
Before I dive headfirst into work (wink wink), let me take apart the prompt and the context of my focus. For me, feminism is taking each other's experiences, pain, and joy seriously , without forgetting the structural, and historical conditions that shape our behaviour, expectations and habits . In answering to this prompt, I could never provide one correct answer - I would run the risk of essentialising and universalising a prescriptive lifestyle that could never take into consideration all the different ways we live . My formal definition of feminism also differs somewhat from the perhaps more well-known one. In her book "Living a Feminist Life", Sara Ahmed cites bell hooks to define feminism as "the movement to end sexism, sexual exploitation and sexual oppression" which, alongside racism and colonial history, is key to the "exploitation of labour under capitalism" (2016, p.5). Here she already addresses the intertwined nature of sexism and capitalism, and I agree that these are highly important issues, yet, I have come to adopt a broader definition of feminism.
Inspired by ecological feminism, I believe that the key structural problem is the pervasive logic of domination - the domination of women, non-human nature, people of colour, the poor, and so on (Warren, 1990). In line with Chiara Bottici's "Anarchafeminism", I agree that we must abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression, which are often intertwined and reinforce each other (2022). Firstly, and obviously, because we can all agree that experienced oppression is no fun and should be eliminated. Secondly, black feminism has shown us the importance of intersectionality - how various forms of oppression can result in new, emergent forms of experienced domination when united in an individual or group. For example, a black, poor, trans woman must deal with not only any one of her social disadvantages at a moment, but all of them at once, in a unique way. Thus, when the most disadvantaged person has become free, we know that all systems of domination have been destroyed and neutralised and that we are all free (Combahee River Collective, 2017, p.23).
With this basis established, let us explore the feminist problem with work. Throughout feminist scholarship, the impact of capitalism has been recognised as formative, re-iterative and disciplining - contributing to (gendered) oppression. In fact, the economic disparities between genders have been, and continue to be the most materially obvious forms of inequality, causing dependence and domination. Marxist feminists, such as Silvia Federici, have shown that the division of labour and the corresponding rigidity of gender roles in Europe is historically related to the landed gentry’s necessity for an expanding, cheap peasant class that is willing to work and reproduce, after the dramatic losses of the population due to the black plague. Thus, gendered roles were closely tied to the public sphere in which men worked and ruled, and the private sphere that women were historically confined to. Feminist thought has long identified work as gendered (England & Lawson, 2005, p.77), but has also been reconceptualised as gendering by Kathi Weeks (2011). She argues that the way we are socialized and disciplined to behave at work (and which work to choose or accept – including domestic work) also recreates and reinforces gender roles (2011, p.9).
To understand the position we are in now (for example an average gender pay gap in Europe of 12,7% - and 18,8% in Austria (European Parliament, 2020)), we must understand how we got here. I do not mean to give a comprehensive overview of the history of work emancipation but instead want to focus on specific movements and scholarship to help me question work. Kathi Weeks explains in her seminal book that reintroduced a Marxist critique to the feminist discussion on work, that to contest the status quo, we must question the “neutral” position of work in our world and make it a matter of political discussion again (2011, p.11) .
When considering the historical trajectory of feminism and work, we commonly think of the great progress we have accomplished in gaining more workplace equality. However, this is only one perspective, namely the political project of equality feminism. In her 2019 book, Susan Ferguson lays out three main categories that one can categorise feminist work activism in. The first type, equality feminism originates from the liberal traditions of thought more than two centuries ago, criticising the gendered division of work and claiming that women would only be free once they were financially independent from their husbands and fathers. For this tradition, equality was attainable through ensuring women could engage in waged work (Ferguson, 2019) . But while this perspective, and a lot of other feminist writings over time, have in principle problematised the exploitative and unequal relations of capitalism, the great emphasis on the value of women engaging in work, has often obscured and mystified the nature and necessity of work in the first place (Ferguson, 209, p.66).
A historical movement that has highlighted the limitations of equality feminism are the Italian Marxist Autonomists. They were a radical left-wing group famous for their refusal of work in response to the student and worker uprisings in the late sixties (Boscagli, 2020, p.3). Within the group, the feminist collectives argued that moving women into the labour force was not enough, as it did not recognise all the housework women had to, but did not want to do for free. In Marxist terms one would say that the production at the factory (by men), was only possible because of the reproductive work of women at home that kept the whole system going (Boscagli, 2020, pp.3-4).
The approach chosen to confront the system came about in the form of the demand for “wages for housework” (Federici, 1975; Weeks, 2011, p. 137) . Spreading across nations, the protests and manifestoes aimed to denaturalise housework – women did not clean, cook, nurture and care from the natural goodness of their heart: domestic work was not a “labour of love” (Federici, 1975, p.76). Federici also points out how the reproductive nature of domestic labour was not limited to literally reproducing the workforce by bearing and raising children. Instead, she posits that the housewife’s job also included caring for the husband physically, emotionally and sexually to ensure he would be replenished to return to the factory as productive as possible (Federici, 1975, pp.76-78). Therefore, the wages for housework movement vocally demanded a salary for housewives, to gain independence and finally some recognition for their work.
However, this was not the final goal of the movement. For if one can attain a wage for one’s work, one is in a capacity to bargain for better working conditions, more leisure, more money, and finally to refuse work altogether (Federici, 1975, pp. 81-82) . This is why the title of Silvia Federici’s manifesto is called “Wages Against Housework”, in comparison to the movement's general name of "wages for housework".
And yet, to understand the radical nature of this movement, one must consider what it was reacting to. The Marxist Autonomists of the time were refusing work in a move towards a utopia of experimental life practices. They rejected the orthodox Marxist post-war ideal of productivity and the liberation of the worker through the dignity of their work, as propagated by the Italian communist party or the post-Stalinist Fordism (Boscagli, 2020, p.7). However, the feminist members of the group took clear issue with this form of utopia, as it left domestic housework entirely unaddressed, thus refusing factory work while ignoring the situatedness of women (Boscagli, 2020, pp.3-4). Therefore, to be able to finally refuse the domestic labour imposed upon women, it first had to even be recognized as work.
Yet, there are a few points of critique that must be taken into account. First of all, demanding a wage for women as housewives is essentialising as it reduces women to the same experience . Second, critics argue that by waging housework, the gendered division of labour would be further ingrained. Finally, if housework would also underlie the logic of the salary, this could do more to maintain the current system of having to “earn a living” through work, rather than rejecting work and productivity as a condition for survival in the first place (Weeks, 2011, p.137). Concluding from her analysis, Weeks thus argues against a reuptake of the demand for wages for housework, but instead suggests the refusal to work as a utopian strategy for rejecting both capitalism and the heteronormative nuclear family.
Now I can practically hear your objections and practically sense the question marks floating over your head as you would consider me lovingly but not convinced – what is the alternative you ask? How could an anti-work future look like? First of all, there is a valuable message to take away from the activism of the Autonomist movement. Maurizia Boscagli (2020) describes their approach to utopias as experimental, rejecting the "actually realized, ready-made image of a better world in the prescriptive image of the Leninist or Stalinist state" (p.7). These so-called blueprint utopias impose one correct, constraining path to collective well-being top-down (Boscagli, 2020, p.10; Weeks, 2011, p.212). Therefore I do not think one concrete plan for a future is helpful. Second, I read these texts as pragmatic, they make clear their demands in a rally for a better life, in any way that is attainable - ideally by reaching a communally constructed post-work utopia, that refuses work as much as possible and rejects its position at the centre of life.
Weeks, for example, suggests a universal basic income, and a reduction in working hours with the same compensation. She focuses on these two as they provide tangible relief to workers, as well as help ensure some freedom aside from work (2011, pp.32-33). But there are other perspectives on the future of work, with some traditions of post-work imaginaries existing, especially in conservative circles, since the advent of automation that revealed the (to them menacing) outlook of huge reductions of work and thus jobs (Graziano & Trogal, 2021, p.1134). But the left has also developed ideas of what post-work futures could be like that would address social justice; varying from "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" to fully autonomous private frugal lifestyles .
However, recent feminist scholarship complicates Weeks' placement of the refusal of work as "a marker of the disjunction between antiwork critique and postwork possibility" (2011, p.102). For example, Graziano and Trogal's reading of the "fully automated" or "fully autonomous" post-work imaginaries, deem them as inadequate and instead refer back to the necessity of feminist materialism and autonomous Marxism. This is because these approaches insist on centring political action in regards to (i) questioning of technology as inherently emancipatory as well as (ii) the denaturalisation of work itself (p.1136). Overall, these approaches do not consider the way reproductive work, the family and our social relations constitute and are constituted by capitalist work. This is why contemporary Marxist feminists' suggestions for the refusal of work are so important.
Thus, for me, exploring, sharing and acting to counter and delink from oppressive forms of relating to one another is my approach to living a feminist life. In this case I focused on work as the mediating factor for our social, economic and political cooperation, following the tradition of the recently rediscovered Marxist/anarchist autonomist feminists. Taking the premises of the wages for housework movement seriously can be a valuable tool in directing our attention at how refusing work is a feminist demand, that also needs a feminist perspective to work. I question work here to show that desires for free time, more money, more creative "non-productive" endeavours are valid - far more so than work.
References
Ahmed, S. (2016). Living a feminist life. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11g9836
Bastani, A. (2020). Fully automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto. Verso Books.
Boscagli, M. (2020). Minor apocalypses: Italian autonomia, utopia, and women. Open Library of Humanities, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.257
Bottici, C. (2022). The environment is us: ecofeminism as queer ecology. In Bloomsbury Academic eBooks. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350095892.ch-009
Combahee River Collective. (2017). “The Combahee River Collective Statement” (1977). In K.-Y. Taylor (Ed.), HOW WE GET FREE (pp. 17–26). Haymarket Books.
England, K., & Lawson, V. (2005). Feminist Analyses of Work: Rethinking the Boundaries, Gendering, and Spatiality of Work. A Companion to Feminist Geography, 77–92. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996898.ch6
European Parliament. (2020, March 3). Gender pay gap in Europe: facts and figures. Topics | European Parliament. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20200227STO73519/gender-pay-gap-in-europe-facts-and-figures-infographic
Federici, S. (1975). Wages against housework. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA66677346
Federici, S. (2004a). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8696448M/Caliban_and_the_Witch
Federici, S. (2004b). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL8696448M/Caliban_and_the_Witch
Ferguson, S. (2019). Women and Work: Feminism, labour, and Social Reproduction.
Frayne, D. (2015). The refusal of work. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350251151
Graziano, V., & Trogal, K. (2021). On domestic fantasies and anti-work politics: A feminist history of complicating automation. Theory & Event, 24(4), 1130–1149. https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2021.0062
Warren, K. J. (1990). The power and the promise of ecological feminism. Environmental Ethics, 12(2), 125–146. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics199012221
Weeks, K. (2011). The Problem with Work. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822394723
[1]See for example black feminist writing or feminist phenomenology (Ahmed, 2016, p.10).
Please note, that I will put my more technical/theoretical references in the footnotes that I know you will value, but that would overwhelm my parents with not strictly necessary information, as I would like to indeed share this essay with them. Furthermore, I want to try out the often praised accessible writing style that does not limit important knowledge and opinions to the academic ivory tower – or marble palace in our case ;)
[2]As is particularily highlighted by Marxist feminist approaches – for example Federici’s Caliban and the Witch (2004)
[3]which would actually be historically accurate, as many older feminist approaches have been critiqued for this very problem; for example de Beauvoir and indeed, Marxist feminism.
[4]This is of course a very simplified summary of Federici’s Caliban and the Witch (2005)
[5]"Challenging the present organization of work requires not only that we confront its reification and depoliticization but also its normativity and moralization" (Weeks, 2011, p.11).
[6]This tradition takes roots in the writings of the medieval querelles, and then later particularily Mary Wollestonecraft's rational humanism and her radical democratic feminism. For an excellent discussion see Chapter 1 of Ferguson (2019).
[7]The movement aimed to move beyond the individual escape from the domestic, but was hoped to work as a kind of transformative lever, with simultaneously concrete demands but also flexible expectations (Weeks, 2011, p.137)
[8]The theoretical key to refusing work, is that for the Autonomous Marxists, the essential relation of capitalism is work and is what makes it a form of domination and exploitation - not private property, alienation, or the market (Weeks, 2011, p.97)
[9]Weeks also discusses here how this critique was applied generally to the category of Marxist feminism overall, and in some non-affirmative/historically linear views of reading feminist history is considered "deafeated" as a whole as it was superseded by black and poststructuralist feminism (2011, p.115).
[10]for examples of these see "Fully automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto" by Bastani (2019) and "The Refusal of Work" by Frayne (2015). Notably, written by men.
[11]They argue that neither general approache is suitable for supporting the overcoming of work. Graziano and Trogal also suspect that this is because both approaches maintain some values of the current capitalist relations/ethics - be it the focus on consumption or the specific valuation of "productive" tasks as worthwhile for the autonomous person (2021, p.1136).
[12] in using this term I am indebted to the decolonial movement