THE exploitation of women’s labour is at the root of their oppression and subordination – and this exploitation takes place in a variety of ways depending on class, stage of development of society, etc... We need a women’s organisation to reach out to women in every possible area of society, and to address the specific ways in which women are exploited and oppressed in each of these various areas: from the field to the factory, from the family to the red-light area, from fashion ramp to film industry, etc..., and to organise and mobilise women in struggle in all these areas.
By drawing a large mass of women into the workforce, capitalism lays the ground for women’s liberation. Why? Women’s work even within homes was crucial to sustaining the system. But when masses of women come out of their homes, earn incomes independently of their husbands or fathers, work together with other women as well as men in the workplace (thus finding an entirely new avenue of solidarity and unity), it opens up enormous possibilities for marching ahead towards women’s liberation. This is why we particularly emphasise on organising these new forces of women who are being drawn into the workforce. That’s why we’ve chosen the slogan of ‘equal rights, equal opportunities’ for the AIPWA 5th National Conference – because our central focus is on the discriminations and inequalities faced by these women in the workplace and the market. However, the way we conceptualise ‘equal rights and equal opportunities’ is different from the way in which liberal feminists define it. For the latter, ‘equality’ is usually ‘equal opportunity in the eyes of the market’. Even this formal equality is all too often denied – lesser wages for equal work and other discriminatory practices (such as different codes for looks, clothes and weight for women) abound even in the more well-paid jobs. But even if the formal equality is achieved, the fact remains that the marketplace cannot be a level playing field for the vast majority of women. This is because the mass of working women have to bear the double burden of the care of children, old and sick people – and this burden automatically limits their ability to avail of ‘equal opportunities,’ and also allows the employers to pay them less wages – in some cases on the ground that they work fewer hours, but in other cases, where this is not true, just by convention – e.g., women bidi workers getting less for the same thousand pieces of bidi]. For the communist women’s movement, ‘equal opportunity’ can be a reality only if domestic work is socialised. In India, too, as more and more women enter the workforce, the demand that the state provide crèches, free healthcare and care for the elderly etc... is bound to gather momentum – though it is yet to take shape. As a preliminary step towards this, we should intensify our struggles to ensure that there as crèches for women employed under NREGA, to protest against the cut-backs in healthcare, and to demand free and universal healthcare.
Why is it that these forces of women workers can deliver the sharpest blow to patriarchy? Because for them, unlike for the better-off, better-paid women, no individual solutions are possible: they cannot buy or hire the labour of other women to take on the tasks of domestic labour. So they are impelled to make demands on a share of the state’s resources – and therefore they hit capitalism harder.
However, in spite of their relative privileges, women from the upper classes too continue to remain socially and economically subordinated. In the home, all the labour-saving devices and the hired labour of others do not change the fact that it is they who remain responsible for the lion’s share of domestic labour. This is particularly true of middle class working women, who have little wealth beyond their salaries. The family is still the institution to ensure the transfer of private property along the male line – and this maintains the basis for the control of women’s sexual freedom, all the more so in the affluent classes. They also continue to face violence both inside the family and inequality and violence at work.
So we do not pit women workers against educated women, relatively privileged women, or better-paid women. Rather, it is an important part of our work to take up the struggles of women students, women academics, working women in the relatively better-paid jobs etc..., and to make these sections of women realise how their own struggles are linked with those of the broader mass of women workers. We leave it to the anti-woman political forces (such as the opponents of the Women’s Reservation Bill) to caricature ‘urbanised educated women’ with epithets like ‘parkati /balkati’ and so on. Far from pitting women workers against the urban educated women, we make every effort to get the latter sections of women to realise that their own freedom is dependent on a revolutionary change in society’s dependence on exploitative relations of production and reproduction, and thereby to get this section of the women’s movement to link their own struggles with those of working class women.