Реферат: Women’s movement in Australia

The story so far is a sorry tale of oppression and division. And yet, socialists are confident we can fight women’s oppression. Contrary to the caricature of us promoted by many of our critics, we do not think we have to wait around until after a revolution to make improvements in women’s lives. It was socialists who were central to the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s. According to Ann Curthoys, a participant in those heady days, «ideologically, at first, the socialist tradition was dominant».

Because Socialist Alternative recognises the way sexism diminishes women’s lives and the divisive role sexist ideas play in the working class, it is imperative that we take a stand against it wherever we experience sexism. We argue for men to take down sexist pictures of women, we object to sexist jokes, we discourage those we work or live with from using sexist language. We discuss the problems of sexism, and how it affects even the left. We take steps to encourage women to play leading roles in campaigns and organisations and defend their right to defy the gender stereotypes. We encourage male activists and socialists to gain an understanding of women’s oppression, how the gender divisions disadvantage women and how to stand up to sexism. These are necessary steps in order to ensure we are conscious of the effects of sexism in everyday life and the way it can constrain women’s involvement in politics.

But we know that it is out of the struggles for reforms that it is most likely that masses of people can begin to challenge the horrible ideas of capitalism and build the necessary organisation to make the revolution. So we support efforts by women to redress their inequalities in whatever way they can. We actively support and sometimes initiate campaigns against right wing attacks on women such as Right to Life marches, or John Howard and others’ attempts to deny single women access to IVF.

As with all the effects of capitalism, it is in the fight for reforms that a revolutionary movement will be built. And if in those struggles, workers don’t overcome the divisions caused by sexism, racism and homophobia there will be no successful socialist revolution. But how can that happen, if the ideas of capitalism are so dominant, and so well grounded?

The most fundamental factor is the contradictions between the promises of capitalism and the actual experience of ordinary people. On the one hand there is the myth of equality before the law, the romantic idea of everlasting love in monogamous marriage, the emphasis on our «individuality» to name just a few. However the class divisions in society and the fact that exploitation and oppression demean people means these myths make a mockery of most people’s lives. There is a popular idea that people will only fight back when their lives become unbearable as a result of falling living standards. But the process by which people resist is much more complex. Lack of power breeds lack of confidence. But in the long post-war boom, rising living standards actually raised levels of confidence. The fact of the boom moved people to expect more from life than previous generations. But of course, bosses and governments shared no such aspirations. But also, it increasingly became evident that in spite of the boom, racism, and other forms of oppression would not be wiped out without a fight. One of the first signs of this recognition was the Civil Rights Movement in the US. This in turn highlighted the need to struggle to others. For instance, it was the US Civil Rights Movement that inspired mostly white, and one black university student, Charles Perkins, to organise a «Freedom Ride» from Sydney University around the outback NSW towns where anti‑Aboriginal racism was rife. This led to increased anti-racist activity. Again, the Women’s Liberation Movement arose from the contradictions highlighted by the boom. As women were pulled into the workforce in growing numbers, as contraception became available, and more women entered tertiary education, especially as teachers (pulled in by a shortage of teachers in an expanding education system), the idea that they should be content to be housewives and mothers began to come unstuck. It is not insignificant that it was working class women, many of whom had been influenced by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), that hit the headlines in 1969 protesting over equal pay. Working alongside men, catching public transport where they paid the same fares, but being paid less, facing the problems of childcare while experiencing discrimination at work drove an at first tiny minority to take a stand.

The boom led to workers expecting higher living standards, but facing huge fines for their union every time they took industrial action because of the anti-union laws of the right wing Menzies government. It was no accident that in the same year women chained themselves to buildings to demand equal pay, a million workers had taken action earlier that year and successfully smashed the Penal Powers as the anti-union laws were known. When one group shows that gains can be made, and solidarity is possible, it gives others increased confidence. This can be especially important in helping oppressed groups make their first move. Out of this growing level of confidence and struggle in the late sixties, the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation (BLF), after many years of struggle to unionise their industry and win safer working conditions, took the lead in urban environmental campaigns to save historic working class areas and parks around Sydney. Their campaign in turn inspired environmentalists who took up their phrase «green bans» and applied it to their movement. This all-male workforce became famous for their support for women’s struggles, in particular, for the right of women to work in the building industry. They inspired activists with their bans at Macquarie University in defence of a gay student victimised because of his sexuality. None of this was simply accidental or merely episodic. It is the nature of class struggle to encourage ideas of solidarity. Because workers find that on their own they come up against the power of governments and bosses. Once solidarity has been won, the issues of new supporters gain a new hearing and so on.

But it is not simply that issues link up in a linear way. Qualitative changes become possible once the normality of everyday life and its subservience is broken. In the turmoil of struggle, ideas which seem settled and undisputed come up for grabs. Because once workers begin to take some control over their lives, the sense of powerlessness is weakened. This then provides the basis to examine long held beliefs. There is nothing so encouraging than to win an argument with workers organising a picket that women should participate against their doubts. And it is not only men who accept sexist ideas about the role of women. Well, perhaps more inspiring is to witness women (or any workers for that matter) feeling their own power. One of my earliest political experiences was a strike by textile workers at the Kortex factory in Melbourne. Their joy when they turned back a truck from entering the plant is something embedded in my memory that helps me keep going in the lowest points of struggle.

There is no formula for how struggles will begin. The radical movements of the sixties and seventies were underpinned by the contrast between expectations fuelled by the economic boom and the reality of capitalism. Sometimes it is because of bitterness stored up because of oppression, or attacks on living standards by bosses and governments, which is the driving force for the world wide new movement against corporatisation.

So socialists are on the lookout for opportunities to win people to the idea that they can win reforms by fighting , rather than relying on politicians or the benevolence of employers or the supposed neutrality of the courts. In that sense, socialists don’t accept that to fight for women’s liberation we always and everywhere have to be involved in so-called «women’s issues». Strikes over wages, or the right to have a union, can very easily lead to gains in consciousness which lessen the sexism women have to endure. Activists who participated in the many picket lines during the late eighties in Melbourne to defend the BLF, who were facing deregistration by the Labor government, were struck by the heightened awareness of and opposition to sexism among these overwhelmingly male workers. Their years of militant industrial struggle had led to political discussion, contact with the left and a consciousness of oppression. Many young women activists who had not experienced an industrial struggle were similarly surprised at the MUA (Maritime Union of Australia) mass pickets in 1988 when thousands mobilised to defend their union. At pickets where the overwhelming majority were at times male, women commented that they did not feel threatened. Sexist ideas such as expecting women not to be capable of maintaining the picket lines in the event of a police attack were openly argued against. Again, this was a combination of the immediate struggle and its experience and a long history by waterside workers in political and industrial campaigns which had created a layer of activists with an understanding of the role of sexism and other oppressive ideas in society, and how to fight them.

So struggle is central to building a movement that can unite women and men in the fight against sexism. But socialists do not assume this is automatic. Sexist ideas are strong and many varied. So being organised as socialists, developing an understanding of sexism, where it stems from, how to fight it is part and parcel of building on the opportunities that emerge when struggles break out. The intervention of activists to explicitly argue against sexism is still often needed. The difference is, we can get a hearing that in «normal» times might seem impossible. Because the need for solidarity can be stronger than the commitment to the horrible ideas of capitalism.

There are those who argue that women need to be organised «autonomously», otherwise their «issues» won’t be taken seriously, or they won’t be able to participate as equals in the struggles. But this ignores the very real class and therefore political divisions which necessarily divide women. Unlike the divisions among workers caused by sexism, these divisions cannot be overcome in any permanent way. Take past women’s struggles. In the campaigns for women’s suffrage it was common for middle and upper class women to only support property based voting rights (which denied the vote to working class women and men) to give them equal rights with men of their own class. It was only ever the working class movement that consistently supported universal suffrage. It might seem that all women can unite for abortion rights. However, leaving aside the religious views of many women who will never support that right, even women who want abortion rights don’t have the same needs. So abortion campaigns have always been divided between more middle class women who simply want legalised abortion and working class women who need free, safe abortions on demand. And when it comes down to it, ruling class women don’t need the right to work or equal pay, as they live off profits as do the men of their class. So inevitably, all women’s movements, including the Women’s Liberation Movement, while it could raise slogans such as «women united will never be defeated» in its first flush, were in the end torn apart by class differences which were reflected in different political trends from the commitment to working class struggle and unity of socialism to radical feminism which argued that all men oppress all women, and therefore all women could unite, but could not expect solidarity from men. The first signs of the shifts occurring was the disappearance of «Liberation» from the name of the movement. Janey Stone, a revolutionary socialist at the time and an activist in the Women’s Liberation Movement, predicted where things were heading.

Just as the radicalism of the early movement had been related to the rising tide of radicalism and industrial action, so the increasing dominance of the more right wing ideas of feminism accompanied the retreats of the working class and other movements. These questions matter, not because of some abstract shibboleth devised by socialists. When activists embark on a program of struggle based on unachievable goals – in this case, the hope that all women could unite – the ultimate, predictable failure, leads many activists to demoralisation. The disillusionment of many women committed to women’s rights is palpable in student publications. In the Melbourne University women’s student magazine, Judy’s Punch in 1995, one woman wrote that a march against fees, organised from NOWSA (the national conference of women students) was great until the cops attacked it. Then solidarity collapsed. She expressed her disillusionment thus:

Yet we are expected to take the ideas of feminism seriously! Another woman wrote that she had hoped that NOWSA would «pull feminism apart», analysing why the movement was in disarray. But she was disappointed that it didn’t. It is important we learn the lessons from the last Women’s Liberation Movement and the developments over the last decade and a half, so that if the possibility of mass struggles for women’s rights accompany the new anti-capitalist movement we may avoid some of the pitfalls.

Out of the turmoil of debates in the last decade there are those who agree that all women (ruling class and working class) cannot unite. However, they argue that all left wing women should organise «autonomously». However women with fundamental political differences will come up against the same differences of principle that keep them in different organisations. And they will find more in common on these matters of principle with men with whom they agree. This argument, while acknowledging class differences is still aconcession to the ideathat our identity forms our politics, rather than experience and theory. If any group of women has fundamental political agreement, they will be most effective if they are organised together with men with the same politics. The ideathat women need aseparate organisation is aconcession to the ideathat men n a tur a lly and always will dominate, and that women are incapable of playing aleading role in their own right in organisations. Take for example the disagreements that have come up over whether to oppose Right to Life Clubs on campus. Not all left wing women agree on the tactics of demonstrating at their stalls and meetings. So those who do, have amuch stronger presence and ability to defeat the pro-life clubs if they entail the solidarity of men who agree.

The socialist answer to the question «how can we win women’s liberation» is to look to the traditions of collective struggle of the working class. Not that other groups in society do not take up their own demands and lead campaigns. The point is to see that linking these to those of the working class is the way to build amovement capable of uniting millions, and of forcing change. Marxists do not put this emphasis on the working class because we think workers are somehow more virtuous, good, or more deserving than others. It is because as aclass united in struggle, they have the power to defeat those in power, and ultimately, to bring capitalism crashing down and to build anew society based on collectivity out of the ruins. The dynamic in the workers’ movement is in the opposite direction to what we have seen in the women’s movement. At first, the old divisions can seem insuperable at times. But if workers’ confidence continues and they continue to want to fight their rulers, they have to begin to overcome ideas such as sexism, bringing the oppressed into the struggle by raising their demands. In any case, women are half the working class, whether they’re in paid work or not. It is necessary to remind us of that because there is, even after the unprecedented entry of women into the paid workforce, astereotype of the «worker» as male and blue collar. This caricature of the working class lies behind the fear that the «working class» won’t fight for «women’s issues». The working class today includes increasing numbers of white collar workers, often university educated, who might think of themselves as middle class, but nevertheless find themselves organising unions like any other workers. Bank and finance workers are agood example, leading militant struggles in countries such as South Koreain the last decade.

There is nothing inevitable about the specific demands of women being part of working class struggle, especially if it involves at first mostly male workers. However, the need for unity, for involving as wide alayer of workers as possible to gain the strength to defeat governments and employers opens the way for old prejudices to be smashed. That is one important reason for socialists to be organised, and to have ideas about how to win the necessary arguments. Because it is often the intervention of socialists into spontaneous struggles that encourages these steps to be taken. If they are not taken, nine times out of ten the struggle will fail because of its own divisions.

It is not accidental that surveys have shown that skilled male workers often have the most progressive ideas about women’s rights – even than most women. Because they are the section of the working class often with the highest levels of unionisation, they learn the lessons of unity.

So the socialist answer to sexism is struggle . And fundamentally, to end capitalism, struggle led by the working class who have the power to stop production and therefore the capitalist system. In the first two years of the twenty first century, the anti-capitalist movement has taken off around the world marked by mass mobilisations against bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, the IMF and the World Bank, or gatherings of heads of governments. This movement has its own features and dynamic. The tens of thousands who turn out to the mass mobilisations obviously take heart from the fact that lots of different struggles come together at them, that all kinds of issues can be raised, discussed and protested about. Anger over sweatshop conditions has raised apertinent women’s issue. In this climate, the defensiveness of «autonomous» women’s organisations is completely out of step with events. The mass protests should be the focus of everyone who wants to fight sexism, and for women’s liberation. In Porto Alegre at amass mobilisation against the World Economic Forum, unity between the 15–20,000 who protested on the streets illustrated the potential for this new movement. The issues raised included (apart from economic demands to deal with poverty) opposition to US backing for corrupt military dictators in Latin America, support for abortion rights, and adrag queen led acontingent calling for Lesbian and Gay rights. At the May 1 protest in Melbourne in 2001, socialists were able to involve marchers in chanting slogans about issues from Third World debt, to union rights, to Queer liberation. Tens of thousands of women join with equal numbers of men at each and every one of these mass protests, laying the basis for amovement which can fundamentally challenge the very basis of women’s oppression. And that is the existence of class society itself. For that, we need amovement centred on the working class.

For only with the end to the underlying class divisions which make sexism necessary and useful to the system will women’s liberation be possible.