“She has two kinds of work to do, the work of a producer in the factory and the work of a housekeeper” – Eleanor Marx-Aveling1
The epochal technology has touched every aspect of our lives. In some instances, where it has created heroic dissolutions of social evils, there are also instances where it has advertised in favor of the disruptions of human development and deformations of ideologies. Talking about the heroisms and positivity that science has brought to our lives would be direful and wastage of time, we all are familiar with the groundbreaking developments and upliftments that it has brought down on us. But, rather we should spend time talking about the anomalies that science carries with itself, courtesy the authoritarian control of the media by a few people and countries, supporting a wanton belief that they can shape the world as they deem fit. And one such ideology, which has massively faced the cut by this attitude, is “Feminism”. The digital Moghul has diverted this major progressive ideology into the clutches of “Radicalism” and “Pessimism”.
The pursuit of radicalism has led to an incessant confusion among many regarding the subject of their struggle and the rationality of their demands. Since the time of its inception feminism has attracted the progressive masses of the society. But with the advent of the strands of feminism, the feminists of the world have got divided in their approach to the pursuit of their ultimate dream, the dream of women’s suffrage. Along with the division of strands, new words came up on the cards, “sexism” being one of the many along with “black feminism”, “eco-feminism”, and ”liberation movement”. And with the globalization technology, the task of embodying more and more masses into its bows has become easy.
The feminists of today, mainly the radical ones, have constantly tried to convert the struggle of classes to a struggle of the sexes. This has created grand Pernod with the ideas of sectarism and feminism getting mixed up. The radicals are blinded by the grandiloquence of the speeches they deliver, they forget that the path they lay down in front of their listeners is not of that leading to total emancipation but rather to a world bereft of the harmony of nature. The total dissolution of heretical traditions, as suggested by them, like marriage, and heterosexual relations, will only lead to an utter destruction of social beliefs and natural balance. Though, issues like same sex marriage and homosexuality should be dealt with care and deserve out heartfelt support, but the tendency of hatred and incredulity towards traditionalistic believes in is dangerous at the same time, at least at the present time.
The excessive stress on biological differences needs to be done away with too. They need to understand the root of the matter; the biological differences addressed by them are too shallow to be the primary causes of oppression of women. The poignant biological difference is the man’s power to impregnate a woman. This power has given the man an inimitable power to dominate the female sex. It is not plausible on anyone’s part to change nature’s law, but a proper system to regulate the same is the need of the hour. This is a basic problem which the radical feminists suffer from, separating women as a separate class of entities. The great feminist Evelyn Reed once said regarding this platitude shown by the radicals, “In short, women, like men, are a multiclass sex. This is not an attempt to divide women from one another but simply to recognize the actual divisions that exist. The notion that all women as a sex have more in common than other members of the same class with one another is false.”2 this ardent weapon deployed with the male sex is the basic case of rapes and molestation. In contrary to the traditional beliefs, that clothes and attitude create rape, it is rather the prerogative of the male power that is causing it.
The radicals, lost in their utopian dream, miss the crucial points frequently. One such important issue to be taken up is women’s unpaid labor. The female sex, burdened down with the society’s heretical responsibility of “Child bearing” stung on them, finds itself at a crucial juncture. At a time, when social portents like rape, molestation and domestic violence on the rise, this issue achieves more significance. The recognition of their labor done at the home will not only provide them with an additional impetus to rebel against the diabolism of the society, but also to empower themselves. In the wake of the massive pull of capitalism, where the main aim is the creation of a future labor force through the female sex, it is only through the recognition of woman’s unpaid labor, like that of the immense pain endured during “child birth” (obviously it is no less than the worker toiling under the glowing Sun) that there can be a total liberation of the female sex. For the rulers, the institution of the family becomes the basic tool for controlling the female sex’s activities and inflicting social customs 3.This attitude also creates the base for familial tensions and domestic violence.
In the same way, as the media guided by the oppressive forces have turned the tide towards radicalism, it has also created a wave of negligence for feminism within the female sex. Coverage of issues like rape and molestation with an honest intention has decreased considerably. The negativity surrounding the judicial system has also created a deep line of separation between the masses and true feminism. The ruling classes constantly try to use the media for their own purposes.
In our context that is in India the struggle for liberation of women has to be more extensive. Our society, backed by heretics, has embodied in itself evils like witch hunting and dowry. The practices of witch hunting and dowry, though illegal, carry on unabated. The system of dowry has a deep link with female infanticide. The poor farmer, struck by the decreasing subsidies is only concerned about the inclusion of a new active member in the family, who can provide him with active labor, which he can use to bring in some extra income. And since boys fulfill this criterion, naturally he commits female infanticide. It should be remembered clearly that he does not murder the child in the embryo by his own free will but because of the situation that our society has put him in. The radicals as well as the neglectors remained silent on this matter for decades. It is only and only through the economic independence of the poor, that practices like dowry can be eradicated. The socialist feminists have been putting a valiant fight for the issue and its proper situation for decades. Similar is the case of witch hunting, for as long as we don’t eradicate superstition, this evil practice will remain, if not in its full glory but among dimwits. And with the recent promotion of unscientific education and illogical beliefs by the government, this is a daunting task ahead for the feminists.
As we can see, the main cause of female oppression is not the male, as proposed by the radicals, it is the system, this very system which has since long been trying to segregate the women from the men. The proposal of unequal wages for women by Justice HB Higgins in 1912 distinguishing ‘men’s work from women’s’, and establishing the legal basis for women’s lower wages is a milestone for the growing bureaucracy proposing the idea of oppressing the women. He declared that the ‘normal needs’ of men were greater than those of women, for a man was paid to support a family and a woman only to support herself4. Women, a multiclass sex, is not at all a class in itself, hence it cannot fight for its emancipation alone. It will need the men, while the men will need the women. It is only through the collective efforts of both the sexes that the society can get its release from the Abaddon that the diabolic society has inflicted on humans.
The path ahead is not a bed of roses for the feminists. They will surely be ably abetted by the progressive masses, but they will need to retain their calm. The men too will soon understand that it is only through the active involvement of women that they can achieve what they wish for. The feminists in their historic endeavor will have to fight inequality, superstition and the growing hands of “controlled” media. They will have to understand the links between the same for chalking out a strategy that lands itself in class struggle rather than the abasing sex struggle. During the course of their revolutionary struggle, they can draw some optimism from the heroic words of Martha H. Foley,
“The sun is shining in a clean blue sky, leaves and grass of young, vivid green stir in warm breeze, the call of spring is in the air and one thrills to its challenge. A new world is in birth.”5
Notes and References:
1 Eleanor Marx-Aveling
The Proletarian in the Home
Source: Justice, 21 November 1896, p.6
2 Evelyn Reed
Women: Caste, Class or Oppressed Sex
Source: International Socialist Review, September 1970, Vol.31, No. 3, pp. 15-17 and 40-41
3 Laurel Limpus
Liberation of Women: Sexual Repression and the Family
Published: New England Free Press, 1979
4 Lynn Beaton
The importance of women’s paid labour: Women at work in World War II
Source: Worth Her Salt. Women at Work in Australia,
Published: Hale and Ironmonger 1982
5 Martha H. Foley
Red May Day in Prison
Published: The Revolutionary Age Sunday, May 17, 1919;
