The fight for women’s emancipation is not a diversion from the site of class struggle but a vital part of it. Failure to address or prioritise this struggle serves to weaken our movement and betrays our principles. It’s sometimes neglected by the communist movement because of the implicit acceptance of patriarchal ideology, which permeates all aspects of society.
In all arenas of life, many sleepwalk past violence against women and girls and other manifestations of patriarchal ideology, despite knowledge and understanding of these issues. One of the main causes today of this negligence amongst the communist movement, in particular youth, is rooted in ideological confusion or misunderstanding over the relationship of women to class, class struggle, and socialism itself. This results in a situation in which communists take an uncritical acceptance of stances that leads women’s organising to a dead end, namely a lack of prioritisation of the ‘woman question’ in economic, political and theoretical struggles. The woman question is relegated to secondary or tertiary positions or suggested to be subsumed into the general class struggle and structures.
However, women and girls should not write off the communist movement as a fixed, impenetrable, male-dominated structure. As Marxist-Leninists, our goal is building working-class unity, led by the most advanced theory, to understand the world in order to change it. Thus, to combat dangerous tendencies, the Communist Party and YCL has begun to develop a Marxist feminist understanding of the woman question. However, more still needs to be done to enlighten members, the wider movement and young people
.Some see any specific concentration on women’s issues as a deviation from the site of actual class struggle. What they fail to understand is that the key principle underlying the Marxist analysis of the woman question is that the oppression of women is rooted in class exploitation. To explain how sexism maintains capitalist class relations, we must first look at the level of the relations of production whereby the ruling class economically exploits the working class. Women’s oppression serves to maximise the conditions for this exploitation by dividing and conquering the working class. In class society, women’s status is seen as inferior to that of their male peers, which upholds the class relations necessary to maintain capitalist exploitation i.e., through super-exploitation and the double burden. The super-exploitation of women refers to the fact that women have historically and still are exploited greater than their male peers because of substantially lower wages. In Britain, women stop being paid compared to men on 20th November, meaning for the end of the year they essentially work for free due to the gender pay gap. Women face the double burden in that the burden of housework falls mostly to women who have to do paid work alongside domestic work and (child) care. Hence, directly or indirectly insinuating the woman question is a bourgeois deviation from the site of class struggle is utterly absurd. This notion should be challenged in every instance, as failure to do so is complicity with the very sexism that communists are meant to tackle.
Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology that the ruling ideas of any society are the ideas of the ruling class, and patriarchal ideology is exactly that. Sexism as an ideological construct permeates deeply in society, including in the communist movement, the consequences of which are stark. It has propagated to the extent that sexism is separated from its class origins, meaning it has fulfilled ideology’s ultimate goal of representing the ruling class’s interests as the interests of society as a whole. This explains the existence of sexist ideas in the communist movement, particularly amongst young people, whose theoretical and political knowledge is early in its stages of development.
More broadly, capitalism supports sexism materially and ideologically, demonstrated by the gender pay gap, the majority of care responsibilities and other domestic work falling to women, and inadequate reproductive and other legal rights for women. This is facilitated by the fact that the oppression of women has historically been connected with class society for so long that it has become the accepted ‘natural’ order of society, meaning sexism often goes unchecked, leading the communist movement to fail to address it.
The extent to which women’s issues receive attention or prioritisation is too often determined by chance or personal choice, left to women alone to do because it is not viewed or held with much regard by men. Ridiculously, women are often alone tasked with addressing men’s sexist attitudes towards women when the problem lies with men, not women, so why don’t men think about addressing this issue?
On a related note, there is much work to be found on the Marxist view of ideology, nationality, religion, alienation and other topics yet not much by comparison on women’s oppression. The mostly male Marxist intelligentsia, with its generally gender-blind approach to politics and theory, has chosen, like much of its practice, to ignore oppression. The gender-blind approach does not actually overcome sexism, but in failing to pay special attention to women’s struggle, simply ignores it. This enables sexism, an oppressive ideology that maintains the superexploitation of women, allowing it to go unchecked and therefore conceal the contradictions under capitalism. This highlights how successfully sexism has operated as an ideology through the centuries, becoming universalised and unchallenged — achieving the ultimate goal of ideology to represent the ruling class’s interests as the whole of society’s interests. This gender-blind approach to class politics still infects some of the communist movement today.
These communists ignore the woman question perhaps unintentionally, meanwhile there are other so-called communists who seek to ignore or relegate the woman question intentionally. They argue that the woman question should be considered in all areas anyway so there is no need to separate it. Ignoring the fact that the communist movement’s history and current being is male-dominated, let’s imagine an ideal communist movement in which women are participating fully at every level and thus exerting real influence in the communist movement. Never mind that we would require a strong and organised women’s section to get us into this imaginary situation anyway, would there still be a need for the separate organisation of women or a focus on the woman’s question? Yes!
A focus on the woman question would still be necessary and important to include as it draws together women to campaign on issues they share as women, targets the oppressive ideologies that maintain capitalism, and fights for socialism to realise true women’s emancipation. This remains true whether the communist movement is sufficiently onboard with this or not. Therefore, it is necessary for women to organise themselves in a climate where sometimes scant, oftentimes inconsistent attention is given to our needs. Women’s interests are best served by a communist movement with massive female involvement.
Lenin observed that once the material basis of women’s oppression is eradicated, there is still a need for a women’s section, so it is important the woman question is given due consideration under capitalism. Lenin argued that women have to be drawn into politics; that women’s issues have to be addressed; and that working groups, comprising men and women, should be created to work on specific women’s issues. He advocated for the use of propaganda and education to combat and eradicate male prejudice and privilege, and was deeply critical of male communists whose relationships were based upon unexamined patriarchal attitudes.
The struggle to end women’s oppression is no mere optional extra but an intrinsic and essential part of the struggle for socialist political, social, and economic change. We are not pawns to be used when it is convenient or useful to do so. We are half of the working class and we will not remain passive in the fight for equality. Thus it is essential that we are involved in the working class movement if our movement is to succeed.
Attempting to ‘level the playing field’, i.e., proportional representation of women, in the communist, trade union and progressive movements is welcome because it tries to rectify symptoms of women’s oppression; however, it does not cure the disease — the unequal division of wealth, and therefore power, in class society. Young communists must help build a broad-based women’s movement and a strong, organised trade union movement, alongside the Communist Party and Young Communist League, to reject capitalist ideology and set us on the road to socialism. This road to socialism is unattainable without drawing the link between women’s oppression and class exploitation.
The communist movement not only betrays women, but also weakens itself if it refuses to recognise issues and act on them, if it continues to be influenced by patriarchal ideology that has a long history of poisoning society. Doing so compromises the ability of communists to unite the working class and promote their interests, leading the movement to fail to address serious disunity and sexism within our own ranks. Ignoring or relegating women’s issues fuels women’s anger and impatience and thus turns them away from the communist movement.
Young communists must challenge male supremacist ideas and campaign on women’s issues to draw young women into the struggle for socialism. Without challenging patriarchal ideology, socialism is a faraway vision. A strong Marxist feminist theory is required to fight for women’s emancipation because the eradication of class exploitation is a necessary prerequisite for its realisation. Therefore the YCL, in its ideological and practical work, must embrace the cause of women’s liberation in the fight for peace, jobs and socialism.
Georgina Andrews is General Secretary of the Young Communist League
Read more on this topic in the Communist Party pamphlet Women and Class
