One of the most entertaining battles in last week's election was the three-way fight between outgoing Fianna Fáil TD Mary Hanafin, Labour Senator Ivana Bacik and People Before Profit Councillor Richard Boyd-Barrett for the last seat in Dun Laoghaire. It was nail-biting stuff, but after 11 counts and a partial recount, Boyd-Barrett was elected by a relatively narrow margin.
A short time later, in an interview for RTÉ's election programme, Boyd-Barrett was asked, among other things, whether he felt bad for winning a seat at the expense of two female candidates. The implication of this question, as well as much of the discussion on gender-balance during the election coverage, was that having more female voices in parliament is in itself a good thing for women, regardless of what those voices are actually saying. So, for example, it would have been better for women for right-wing anti-choice ultra-Catholic Mary Hanafin to have been elected than a pro-choice socialist who happened to be a man.
This is liberal feminism: an ideology that seeks an abstract on-paper 'equality of opportunity', which does nothing to improve the lives of the vast majority of women. Bacik herself is very much the archetypal proponent of this ideology: she has strong views on gender equality in politics, abortion rights etc., but is nonetheless perfectly happy to be a member of a party which will spend the next five years imposing savage austerity measures on Irish women and their families. Under the Fine Gael/Labour regime, the actual lived reality for working-class women in Ireland will be one of wage cuts and job losses; of collapsing public-sector infrastructure, which will increasingly struggle to provide adequate healthcare, education etc.; of an increasingly desperate struggle to make ends meet while maintaining a decent standard of living; and the heartbreak of watching their children emigrate one-by-one.
To take another example, the election in 1997 of Mary Harney as the first female Táiniste is widely seen as a victory for women. The fact that as Minster for Health she was responsible for a devastating and concerted attack on public healthcare, which has caused and will continue to cause the needless death and suffering of countless women, is somehow irrelevant.
In this context, then, the inadequacy of 'equality of opportunity' as a goal of feminism is clear. Having more women in the Dáil chamber, or the stock-exchange floor, or the boardroom does nothing to change the lives of the vast majority of women, whose lives are characterised by exploitation, alienated waged-labour and powerlessness. In particular, the Bacik brand of liberal feminism, which embraces neoliberal ideology, can offer nothing in the struggle against the expansion and normalisation of precarious labour under the neoliberal project (in which women are significantly over-represented*), other than to suggest that more men should be subject to precarity. Nor, for example, can it adequately deal with the sex industry, whose primary cause - the existence of (comparatively) wealthy men who can use their economic power to coerce women into sex - is ultimately rooted in the class structure of our society.
Clearly then, feminism, properly understood as the struggle to improve women's lives in the face of oppression, exploitation, violence and misogyny, is necessarily a class struggle. As feminists, we should not fight for greater representation of women in the upper echelons of inherently oppressive and exploitative institutions, but rather the abolition of these institutions and the creation of a society based on genuine equality, freedom and empowerment for women and men alike.
*For more on the gendered nature of precarious work see the 'Precarious Work and Women' section of Global Action Against Precarious Work by the International Metalworkers' Federation
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1. Having more women in politics would very likely have significant impacts in terms of equality, which I outlined in my facebook note where you posted this. I don't think anyone, "liberal feminist" or not believes it will automatically improve or fix everything in society, just that it would improve or solve on certain issues. It's a bit ridiculous to rule out any attempts at reducing discrimination or inequality purely because it doesn't automatically improve the quality of life for every member of the disenfranchised group, in areas not related to the attempt. This kind of negative, hole-picking arguments are typical of the internet of course!
ReplyDelete(I do think the question to Boyd Barrett was a bit silly, especially in its phrasing, but I think he could have offered a more thorough answer on the idea of gender equality in politics, though it was count day so understandable!)
2. Ivana Bacik has done an awful lot for women, and for men, in her time as an activist, barrister and senator. She worked for most of last year on issues such as legislation to criminalise FGM, and to develop a national action plan on gender based violence - both issues that are important to feminists, and also to people who hold progressive views more generally. I think it's a bit harsh to diminish her input, and her achievements with etc. Just because someone doesn't fit a narrow ideological mould, doesn't make their contributions less valid, and it doesn't strengthen your arguments to disparage them.
3.I really don't see the point of the Labour bashing this blog and others engage in. I'm no hard core fan of Labour policy myself, but I really have no time for this. It seems to follow a logic that if labour compromises at all it becomes a sell out and is no longer worth of the left label, because said compromises make life harder for ordinary people. If you follow that same logic, the behaviour of those on the hard left who often refuse to engage with mainstream politics can be accused of the same thing - lessening the potential for improvements for ordinary people for their own idealogy or political gain. They are then just as culpable as Labour. (I'm not saying this is true, but that the logic is flawed in both cases.)
I guess I just believe compromise is better than strident opposition when the results are people enduring slightly less cuts, or hearing about how they could have no cuts if only reality was altered. I know which I'd choose.
I really have nothing to say on the end of this article, I quite like our institutions, but I get that I'm not likely to get anywhere defending them :P
The point is: we're dealing with two different and largely mutually exclusive approaches to feminism here. One, liberal/middle-class feminism, which is happy to preserve the class structure of society, as long as more women have the chance to be bosses and another, Marxist/working-class feminism, which seeks the abolition of both patriarchy and capitalism simultaneously. As I said in the article, the former "does nothing to change the lives of the vast majority of women, whose lives are characterised by exploitation, alienated waged-labour and powerlessness". A lot of the really important struggles for women (such as the struggle against precarious labour which I mentioned in the article) are necessarily not addressed by Labour-brand liberal feminism (because Labour actually accepts the neoliberal drive to destroy job security).
ReplyDeleteThat said, there are certainly areas of commonality between the two ideologies, opposition to violence against women obviously being one of them, so my intention wasn't to diminish the work that the likes of Bacik have done on that issue, but rather to point out the limitations of her ideology.
We agreed, until you said feminism was an issue of class struggle, which cnsidering women occupy all levels of society at some level seams factually incorrect, feminism is about seeking equal rights for women, or such would be any common or dictionary definition of it iv ever heard or read. As a proponent of gender equality (regardless of gender or sexulaity) i fail to see the logic in trying to divide an allready defined demographic in a way that turns elements of it against each other. I dont think it helps us achieve equal rights, i think it generates needless barriers. In order for society to progress we need to work together, not against each other. Why have a class struggle when we can accomplish so much without it. Logical argument and pursuasion can allow us to build a progressive society with everyone involved, we dont need to divide ourselves based on race or gender or class.
ReplyDeleteWorking class and ruling class women aren't divided in my head, they're divided by class antagonisms that exist in reality. There are some feminist issues, like precarious labour, which can only be dealt with through class struggle, because its not in the interests of bourgeois women to deal with them.
ReplyDelete