Written and illustrated by Din Deng.
A Marxist analysis of labour allows us to see how all workers are exploited by the bourgeoisie. However, labour (work) comes in many different forms, both paid and unpaid. For example, while a cleaner in an office is typically paid a salary, a woman cleaning her family home is not, despite doing the same labour. Therefore, to analyse how this kind of domestic labour is exploitative, we have to adapt Marx’s critique, this is what we call Class-Based Feminism.
Feminised Work & Reproductive Labour
This is the kind of work which contributes to reproducing the conditions for capitalism, sometimes it is paid, while often it is not. When we talk about reproduction, we mean the type of activities which allow the sustaining of life, like rearing children, cleaning homes, feeding families, etc. This kind of work has historically been feminised, this is known as the gendered division of labour, meaning reproductive labour is primarily made the responsibility of women and is, more often than not, unpaid, while “men’s labour” is, more often, paid a wage. Generally, “men’s work” is considered harder than the comparatively “soft” women’s work, therefore it justifies a wage– and normally a higher wage. The difference between paid and unpaid reproductive labour we call Formal and Informal Reproductive Labour.
Formal and Informal Reproductive Labour
Formal Labour – Paid work, such as nurses, cleaners, sex workers and daycare.
Informal Labour – Unpaid work, the same labour as above but unpaid, such as that of a housewife.
Oftentimes, women are expected to fulfil both formal and informal labour roles simultaneously. Like when a woman is paid to clean and take care of someone else’s children, only to return home to clean her own house and care for her own children as well without the salary. This is known as double burden or double shift work.
The entry of women en-mass into the formal labour market is a relatively recent development of capitalism. When women began entering the market, they were not seen as the primary breadwinners for the family, this has justified paying them lower wages than men, a trend which continues to this day in the gender pay gap.
This extends to the global division of gendered labour, which is another means to understand how capitalism is dependent on structural patriarchy. Looking at the global commodity supply chain, we can see how hyper-exploitative industries specifically target women for their labour. Notably, today most factories in the global south employ women on the assembly line, particularly in garment factory sweatshops. This is because, in search of the lowest wage possible in the world, capitalists will target women and even children in the global south.
Women & Class
While many feminists, including liberal feminists, recognise this formal and informal reproductive labour dynamic, the critique can be expanded to see the role of bourgeoisie women in this context. This is when women hire other women to perform their reproductive labour for them, for a wage.
This allows certain women to lean into the capitalist economy, often themselves being exploited, and selling their labour, while simultaneously becoming a form of the hyper-localised bourgeoisie themselves, as they are now the owner of another woman’s labour.
Another extreme example of this kind of exploitation includes paid surrogacy, where a woman’s body is commodified into a kind of factory to produce children for the factory owner. So even though women share many of the same oppressions across different classes, it’s important to highlight the class aspect of feminism when we talk about reproductive labour.
Patriarchy and Capitalism
Through a class-based analysis, we can see that the means through which the capitalist system generates wealth is built on this informal reproductive feminised labour to create, feed, care for and reproduce more workers. Capitalism, as it exists today, is dependent on the patriarchy as one of its pillars to provide it with this free feminised labour for its maintenance.
Various social institutions have been developed to enforce this alliance between patriarchy and capitalism, such as elements within religion, the courts, the education system, etc, all of which contribute to the global internalised culture of patriarchy.
Critique of Liberal Feminism
Where liberal feminism differs from a class-based analysis, is its focus on the individualised exploitation of women, rather than the structural socio-economic conditions which underpin women’s exploitation. A liberal feminist approach to labour would be to empower women within the workplace on an individualised level, for example, encouraging a woman to be the CEO of a company, and contributing to the formal economy. A class-based feminist approach would encourage the abolition of the CEO and worker control of the company, eliminating any feminised working conditions and patriarchal structures within.
With regards to informal reproductive labour liberal feminism, essentially turns a blind eye, arguing that those women who can afford to pay others to do their reproductive labour, like taking care of a child, are fairly remunerated with a wage. This approach completely ignores the double burden of this kind of feminised work.
Class-based feminism sees the liberation of women and the proletariat as being intrinsically tied together. It recognises that while all women are exploited by patriarchal structures, women can also benefit from the exploitation of feminised labour. Hence, class-based feminism calls for the abolition of the capitalist patriarchal structure, so as to truly liberate women from, not only feminised work but all exploitative labour practices as well as patriarchal social structures.
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Wages for Housework Campaign was a campaign to radicalise our conception of work, redefine what constitutes labour and what does not, and emphasise feminised labour, which is usually exploited without pay. The campaign does not necessarily call for feminised labour to be paid, but to recognise other forms of unpaid labour that most women perform domestically.
Sources: Dissent Magazine