The Poverty of Patriarchy Theory

Ideas

Women were relegated to the lowest paid and least skilled jobs as a consequence of their position in the family. Male workers often tried to exclude women from particular trades, ignored the needs of women workers – even excluding them from their unions – and expressed sexist ideas, as they do today. But society cannot be explained if we begin with the ideas in people’s heads. We have to be able to explain where those ideas came from, otherwise we have to revert to saying men are naturally and inevitably sexist.

Or logically, we would have to say women are responsible for their own and other women’s oppression. Because women themselves are one of the most important agents for the socialisation of children into male and female stereotypes. Women are not free of the prejudices and prevailing ideas about the appropriate role for women. It is more fruitful to see it as Marx did: “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”

The argument that men benefit from women’s oppression is a powerful one, because it describes what seems to be the reality in everyday life. Men can often lounge around drinking with their mates

while their wives are housebound with irritable and demanding children. But again, as Marx said, “if the outward appearance and the essence of things coincided”, we wouldn’t need theory. And Lukács describes this kind of theory, which simply describes the appearance of things under capitalism as “reflex consciousness”.

The point is to locate where real power lies, how the institutionalisation of the sex stereotype which is fundamental to women’s oppression took root in this society, and who benefited from it. Once we recognise the family’s importance in reproducing labour power for the capitalist class, it is easier to see that it is not individual men who benefit from women’s role as housewives and mothers. When women labour at home, they are performing a most important economic function for capitalism. Because it is separated from “work” into the “private” sphere of life, this role has been marginalised and trivialised.

Society says work in the home is not important, has no status, so those who do it are of less use to society than those who work for a wage. The theory which says this work is simply for the gratification of men’s individual needs is (in spite of the intentions of its proponents) a reflection of this prevailing view, because it too denies the extremely important economic role of the family in the reproduction of the labour force.

Rather than concentrating solely on the times when male workers had a wrong response to their fear that women would be used as cheap labour, it is worth pointing out that in light of the vociferous campaigns for the family by “respectable” society, it is surprising that workers ever took a decent stand at all. The fact is, ideas which really only serve the in­terests of the employing class usually penetrate the working class – ideas such as sexism and racism along with homophobia, nationalism and religious sectarianism. This is not surprising when we think of the capitalists’ control over all means of propagating ideas on a mass scale, and their control over the material wealth of society. The acceptance or otherwise of capitalist ideas by workers depends on many factors such as the level of class struggle, the intervention by workers who hold opposing ideas, to name just two very important ones. We do not need a theory of patriarchy to explain why working men took up ideas opposed to the over­all interests of their class.

Racism has plagued the Australian working class. This was another wrong response by workers to the supposed threat of cheap labour, this time by immigrant (especially Asian) workers. To be logical, feminists would have to explain this by another power structure – that of Australian born workers over immigrants. Such a position leads into a morass of power structures – which followers of Foucault accept – that do not clarify, but confuse the issues.

A glaring weakness in the theory of patriarchy is the absence of or­ganisational expressions of patriarchal power. Where are the informal and formal means for co-ordinating and harnessing this power? It is true there are all-male clubs. But the famous ones are inevitably restricted to mem­bers of the ruling class. There are no workers other than waiters, cooks and so on frequenting the Melbourne Club. Even informal gathering places such as pubs are divided by class. Robert Holmes a’Court does not hang around with wharf labourers in the early openers. This is highlighted by the fuss that accompanies a visit by dignitaries to workers’ pubs and the portrayal of the event as a media stunt.

Even the organisations which male workers did have were not suffi­ciently strong to influence the outcome of historic events in the period when the family was being established. Only 20% of workers ever belonged to unions before 1890. In the depression of the nineties, the unions were smashed and most hardly continued to exist. The best or­ganised were the skilled workers who were notorious for trying to keep women out of their trades. But they did not just try to keep women out. They tried to keep out the sons of other workers as well with their restric­tive entrance to apprenticeships.

However, even these relatively well-organised workers could not determine the nature of the workforce in the long run. It was always the employers who determined any fundamental shift in employment patterns. For instance, the boot trade was originally a skilled area of work, mostly done by men. Over the years, the bosses deskilled the work by the intro­duction of new technology. This led to the industry becoming an area of female employment.

Ryan and Conlon give an interesting account of how employers began to break up the work of tailoring, employing women on very low wages and getting around the rules regarding apprenticeships during the depression of the 1890s.⁵⁵ Eventually, by the introduction of machines and continuing this process, the clothing trades came to be dominated by low-paid female labour.

We can see in other ways that it has always been the needs of capi­tal which have determined the nature of work. During the depression of the 1890s, the position of women workers appears to have worsened com­pared with men. But during the 1930s in a similar crisis, often it was women who could continue to work while men spent long periods un­employed. Most accounts of the Great Depression talk of the anguish this role reversal caused for many families. And during the last slump of the early eighties in Australia, it was the traditionally male industries which suffered mass sackings.

During World War II, women were drawn into the workforce in huge numbers, doing work usually restricted to men. After the war, the media launched a huge campaign to re-establish women’s role in the home and to emphasise men’s place in the old, stereotyped jobs again. In the post-World War II boom, women were drawn into the workforce in unprecedented numbers. Because of the nature of some of the fastest ex­panding industries, women were concentrated in clerical jobs which had previously been mainly a male preserve.

It is impossible to interpret these facts from the point of view of patriarchy theory. Why would men decide as a whole to allow women into the workforce sometimes, drive them out at others, concentrate them in certain jobs which men had previously done? Why did male workers agree to let women into some industries? Why did they agree to allow their jobs to be deskilled and working conditions undermined? Why haven’t they demanded that they be given women’s jobs by their male al­lies in the employing class? It does not make sense to even pose the ques­tions this way.

Whether men or women were thrown out of work at any time depended on which industries were hardest hit by a slump. When the ruling class wanted to defend its interests from other national ruling clas­ses in wars, it needed women to replace the male workers they sent off to die for them. Where it was possible to deskill work and lower wages, it was often a useful strategy for bosses to use women. At every point, it was not male interests being furthered, but those of capital with its continual drive for profits.