The Poverty of Patriarchy Theory

Protective Legislation

Hartmann implies that male workers supported protective factory legislation because this restricted the work women could do. This was the result of much protective legislation. But at least here in Australia, it does not seem to have been the motivating force behind union support for it. And once again, middle class reformers saw protective legislation as one way of improving the conditions of working women.

Carol Bacchi argues that “most suffragists favoured special factory legislation for factory women”. She comments that few realised that this placed them under a competitive handicap.⁵² That is why I say the facts have to be distorted and misinterpreted to draw the conclusion that protec­tive legislation was a deliberate ploy by males to limit women’s employ­ment opportunities.

Markey says of the attitudes of workers: “Hopefully, it was the thin edge of the wedge: once protection for some workers was accepted on the statute books, it might be easier to extend it later.”⁵³ Overall, protective legislation did improve working conditions. Children especially gained from restrictions on the hours they could be made to work.

Anne Summers criticises male trade unionists for only supporting unionisation of women for fear of their own conditions being undercut, not for the conditions of the women. Markey replies to this criticism; he says the maritime strike of 1890 taught many workers of the danger of having a mass of unorganised workers.

Similar fears had probably motivated the male tailors in encouraging the organisation of the tailoresses. However, far from denigrating the ‘class solidarity’ of the union movement, this merely emphasises the material basis of class organisation.⁵⁴

Markey makes an important point. Summers expresses a fundamen­tal misunderstanding common not just among feminists: that is, a con­fusion between the material circumstances people react to and the ideas they use to justify their actions. Mostly people act because of their material situation, not simply because of ideas. Whatever the reasons given for trade union organisation, it is a progressive step. So while it is true that unions such as the Printers and the Engineering Union prior to World War II tried to exclude women, other Australian unions had quite a good record of defending women workers. In the early 1890s, a strike by women laundry workers over one worker being victimised at Pyrmont in Sydney got wide support, as did the Tailoresses’ Union in 1882 in Victoria. Neither the actions, nor even the arguments made for the worst posi­tions, paint a picture of some united campaign by male workers in con­nivance with male capitalists to force women to be simply their domestic servants.

While the facts suggest that by and large workers did not show over­whelming enthusiasm for the family, it does seem that this campaign did not fall on completely barren soil. Workers gradually came to see the family as a haven in a cruel world. It offered the prospect of a home where children could have some care, where women could have their children away from the debilitating conditions of the factory. And gradually, the family took root, becoming one of the most important institutions for the maintenance of capitalism. In this way women’s oppression became struc­tured into capitalism.

The family became absolutely central for the reproduction of the labour force – not a minor consideration for the system. It provided a cheap means of reproduction and socialisation of the next generation. In­dividual working class families were forced to take responsibility for child care, the health of their children, teaching them habits of conformity and respect for authority at minimal expense to the state or individual bosses. The existence of the family helps reinforce the relations of production; capitalists buy the labour power of workers like any other commodity, and its price is kept as low as possible by the role of the family. So labour per­formed in the home does not benefit other members of the family – it benefits the capitalist class who buy the labour power of workers.

Apart from this economic role, the family plays an ideological role of central importance for the maintenance and stability of the society. The consolidation of the family entrenched the sexual stereotypes of man and woman, living in married bliss and raising happy, healthy children. This in turn provided an excuse for low wages for women. The assumption was more and more that they would have a male breadwinner. Each generation is socialised to expect marriage and family responsibilities, so getting a job and accepting the drudgery of work seems normal and unquestionable behaviour. At times it forces workers to accept poor conditions for fear of losing their job and not being able to provide for their family.

As the sex stereotypes became established, anyone who stepped out­side this narrow view of life was seen as strange, as challenging the very fabric of society. This was no accident. It was part of the overall campaign to curtail the sexual relations of the “lower orders” and establish a unified, orderly capitalist society in Australia. As the cycle developed, it was increasingly perceived as “natural” for women to stay at home with the children. This was reinforced by the fact that their wages were inevitably lower than what men could earn. So women with small children were often forced out of the workforce and into the home.

Once we look at the development of the family as satisfying a very real need of capitalism itself, and the massive ideological offensive by the ruling class and their supporters, the picture is very different from that painted by the feminists. There was no conspiracy between male workers and capitalists. In as far as workers accepted the family, it was because they expected it to bring an improvement in their living standard. There is no separate power structure of patriarchy. The capitalists and their allies in the middle classes fought for and won very important changes in order to take the system forward. To workers at the time, it seemed like a gain for them too. And in some ways it was. Given the low level of production at the time, the poor methods of contraception and the absence of state wel­fare, it is ahistorical and utopian to expect that workers could have had ex­pectations very different from those of the right to a family wage, and the supposed shelter of the family home.