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The Internal Contradictions of Feminism

Article · May 2015

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Belinda Brown
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 THE INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS
OF FEMINISM

Belinda Brown

One of the most striking things about feminism is the extent to which a body of
beliefs based on notions of equality has produced new inequalities without hardly
anyone seeming to notice. I particularly have in mind the inequalities between
a rich, privileged female elite and the majority of other women as well as the
growing inequalities between men. These are partly the consequence of changes
in the employment market produced by a growing pool of female labour prepared
to work for a lower wage because their priorities lie elsewhere.

However, they are also due to changes in the structure of the family which have
resulted from the way in which Marxist ideas have shaped feminist thinking and
ensured that its impact on a rich, privileged minority has been quite different to its
impact on others. I believe that this has happened because those ideas were based
on a flawed conception of the relationship between the family and the workplace.
However, it should be noted that the developments to which I refer are far more
pronounced in Western societies than they are in former communist societies where
relatively high levels of employment among women and somewhat greater access
to top jobs meant that the motivation to develop a women’s movement was not as
strong as in the West. I would urge caution on those women’s groups in Central and
Eastern Europe who may feel tempted to adopt Western-style feminism: to do so
would risk jeopardising the progress achieved since the collapse of communism by
allowing some Marxist assumptions to be readmitted through the back door.

XX WOMEN AND THE OTHER 80 PER CENT

In Britain, the debate over the inequalities between different female socio-
economic groups has been stimulated by Alison Wolf’s book, The XX Factor: How
Working Women Are Creating a New Society.1 This revealed some striking disparities
in incomes and lifestyles of contemporary women. Broadly, the top 15–20 per cent
work in environments where men and women are more or less equally represented
and rewarded. These are women who live to work: career women who work full-
time, and who take little time off to have children. The other 80 per cent of women

THE INTERNA L CON TR AD ICTION S OF FEMIN ISM 31

are likely to work in environments where there is a disproportionate number of
female employees; these women are less well paid, attach a significantly lower
priority to work and are more likely to work part-time.

As a consequence, feminists are being criticised for focussing on issues which are the
concern of the rich and privileged such as the number of women in the boardroom
or in the broadcasting studio, rather than upon the problems of ordinary women.
The feminists respond to this charge by saying that they have been fighting to
improve educational opportunities for women and to raise the status of female
employment, and by pressing for greater access to flexible employment or childcare
so that women can spend more time at work. However, the evidence suggests that
given the choice, ordinary women want to reduce the amount of time spent at work
in order to spend more time with their children; only the least well-off of all regard
long working hours as a solution to their problems.2 For many, the real source of
disadvantage and disappointment is not to be located in the workforce but in the
family, for the family is very different among the less well-off. This group is less
likely to be married; if they do have partners they are more likely to split up and if
they marry they are more likely to be divorced and they are unlikely to have a male
partner that earns more than them; indeed, they are unlikely to find a partner from
the dwindling supply of hardworking, motivated and employable young men.

MEN: A HIDDEN RESOURCE

If one peers behind the façade of feminism and female independence, it turns
out that in the lives of the modern liberated woman the man actually plays an
important and very useful role – even if this is not so in the case of their less
fortunate sisters. This is evident from the fact that among married and cohabiting
couples in contemporary Britain only ten per cent of mothers with pre-school
children are the only, main or equal earner. Among graduate mothers of three-
year-olds, only one in five works full-time. By contrast 91 per cent of graduate
fathers have full-time jobs. Surveys suggest that in such situations women are
far from clamouring to do more work, although once their children are at school
this changes. Even then it is those with partners who are more likely to be able to
return to work when their children are older than those without.3

In such privileged households men work just as hard as women, albeit more outside
the household than in. This had led feminists to complain that if men did more
housework and childcare women could work more outside the home. However,
the available evidence suggests that on the whole men are responsive to women’s
preferences in this regard.4 Research indicates that in both the immediate and
longer term, it is the mother’s employment schedules that determine the levels of

32 HU NG A R IA N REV IEW | M ay 2015

paternal involvement with the father increasing the hours spent on childcare as
the mother spends longer at work.5 The paternal involvement in housework and
childcare enhances life satisfaction for both partners with the result that they live
happier lives.6

It also appears that overall men do earn more than women (and consequently
contribute 72 per cent of the total tax take) while women are responsible for 70 per
cent of domestic expenditure; these figures draw attention to the contrast between
the lives of a privileged elite with male partners who contribute significantly to
domestic expenditure and those who lack male partners.7 8

Finally, it is clear that the high level of female employment depends largely on
informal childcare with grandparents providing 42 per cent and resident partners
20 per cent of the care provided; non-resident partners play only a negligible role.

Women with partners inevitably have far more access to childcare not only
because this can be provided by the partner but also because there will be two sets
of grandparents to give support, rather than one. Such resources are especially
important to those on low wages. Meanwhile, many ordinary women become
more dependent on the state or on poorly paid employment for the lack of an
adequate supply of male providers.

MARX AND FEMINISM – A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

To understand how we arrived at this situation it is necessary to dig deep into

core feminist assumptions and to reflect on the blind faith which early feminist
myth makers such as Kate Millet and Germaine Greer placed in two middle-class,
middle-aged males: Engels and Marx. Greer, Millet and others quoted extensively
from both and more recent theoreticians have continued to acknowledge their
role with pride. According to an article in the International Socialist Review: “It is no
exaggeration to say that Engels’ work has defined the terms of debate around the
origin of women’s oppression for the last 100 years.”9 Another feminist theoretician
credits him thus: “His analysis has been indispensable to my organising. He
penetrates capitalist reality including in my own life and, from what I can see, in
other people’s, as no one else does, and helps keep me focussed on that reality by
warding off invasions of the enemy’s logic, excuses and invitations to egomania.
I am profoundly grateful for that help.”10 A universalistic theory which sought
to upend traditional social institutions was no doubt popular to Sixties women,
helping to knit their discontents, post-pill confusion and serious disadvantages
and privations into a comprehensive theoretical whole. For the socialists, feminism
provided a neat solution to the problems of the practical application of class.11

THE INTERNA L CON TR AD ICTION S OF FEMIN ISM 33

There is one key aspect of Marxist-Engelsian theory which I would identify as
crucial to the formation of feminism; the underlying assumption on which all other
theoretical innovations depend. That is the identification of the means of production,
i.e. the workplace and its political apparatus, as the heart of society and the site of
potential transformation. All change stems from here. Marx expresses it thus:

The mode of production of material life conditions the general processes of

social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their
consciousness…12

Similarly, Engels traces the origins of what he refers to as the “world historical defeat
of the female sex” as lying in the development of technology, for example the cattle-
drawn plough, which women’s childcare responsibilities prevented them from using.
This results in men having ownership of surplus resources which they need to pass
on to their children. To do so they need to gain control of the women through whom
inheritance would otherwise occur. What follows from this is the subordination of
the family and women within it for the purposes of transferring wealth:

The woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave
of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.

Monogamous marriage is regarded by Engels as the “subjugation of the one sex by

the other”13. For Marx the woman is similarly subjugated but his focus is more on
the reproduction of the labour force than on the transfer of wealth:

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears

that [under communism] the instruments of production are to be exploited
in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the
lot of being common to all will likewise fall to women.14

THE SPAWN OF MARX AND MILLET

The fundamental belief about the relationship of the family to the means of
production forms the plate tectonics of feminism. Through feminism Engels’
words are still with us today:

Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife
is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this
in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic
unit of society…

34 HU NG A R IA N REV IEW | M ay 2015

In its early days feminism focussed unambiguously on the need to destroy the
family. For example this is what Kate Millet had to say:

“Why are we here today?” “To make revolution.” “What kind of

revolution?” she replied. “The Cultural Revolution.” “And how do we make
Cultural Revolution?” “By destroying the American family!” “How do we
destroy the family?” “By destroying the American Patriarch.” “And how do
we destroy the American Patriarch?” “By taking away his power!” “How
do we do that?” “By destroying monogamy!”15

And so on. Germaine Greer wrote in The Female Eunuch: “Women’s Liberation,
if it abolishes the patriarchal family, will abolish a necessary substructure of the
authoritarian state; … so let’s get on with it”.16

The need to excise the father from family life became part of mainstream thinking.
So for example Anna Coote in a 1991 article for The Guardian has this to say:

The father is no longer essential to the economic survival of the unit. Men
haven’t kept up with the changes in society; they don’t know how to be
parents. Nobody has taught them: where are the cultural institutions to
tell them that being a parent is a good thing? They don’t exist. At the same
time, women don’t have many expectations of what men might provide.17

The British journalist Polly Toynbee takes a similar line:

Women and children will suffer needlessly until the state faces up to the
reality of its own inability to do anything about the revolution in national
morals. What it can do is shape a society that makes a place for women and
children as family units, self-sufficient and independent.18

This is just what the state proceeded to do. One example of this can be found in
the fact the British tax system has ensured that lower income families are better
off living apart. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has calculated that in 2010, 95 per
cent of single people would incur a “couple penalty” if they married or started
living together as couples. 89 per cent of existing couples with children presently
incur a couple penalty of averaging £109 per week.19 A recent pamphlet shows
how much better off a family is when its members separate. It explains that if the
family stays together the main provider (usually a father) is caught in a tax trap
and does not escape the high effective tax rates until his salary reaches £38,000.
If he chooses to live apart from his family he could escape the tax trap at about
16k while the mother could access state benefits as a lone parent with children.
The authors conclude that:

THE INTERNA L CON TR AD ICTION S OF FEMIN ISM 35

 The high Marginal Effective Tax Rates across a large income range are
not only a disincentive to earn more but reduce pressure on employers to
pay better wages, creating instead a dependency on welfare. The system
destroys aspiration, denies the father the opportunity to provide for his
family, discourages extra work and holds back business. Worse still it
encourages family separation.20

All of this has been accompanied by a strong emphasis on female employment and
tax policies which put pressure on women to go out to work. As men are regarded as
marginal to the family there is little focus on male employment or on the ever declining
educational performance of men. At the same time the inability to effectively perform
the provider role is used by the courts, legal system and mothers as a stick to beat men
with and further exclude them from family life.21 I would argue that it is precisely the
resulting dearth of motivated, employable educated men which constitutes the real
difference between the lives of ordinary women and those of the privileged few.

TRANSFORMING MEN

This provider role, which feminists are so intent on undermining, is not about
creating dependency among women, nor even is it necessarily about provisioning
them – although of course this is extremely valuable. It is part of a process of
motivating, socialising and getting the most out of men. Geoff Dench has written
a book in which this is convincingly and elegantly argued:

… if women go too far in pressing for symmetry, and in trying to change

the rules of the game, men will simply decide not to play. The traditional
male weapons in the sex war are non-cooperation in domestic chores, and
flight. The traditional female weapon is celebration of paternity and male
responsibility; as it is this which is the proven key to male commitment.
If women now choose to define this as patriarchal oppression and withdraw
the notion that men’s family role is important then they are throwing away
their best trick. Feminism, in dismantling patriarchy, is simply reviving the
underlying greater natural freedom of men…

And:

... the current attack on patriarchal conventions is surely promoting…

a plague of feckless yobs, who leave all real work to women and gravitate
towards the margins of society where males naturally hang around unless
culture gives them a reason to do otherwise. The family may be a myth,
but it is a myth that works to make men tolerably useful.22

36 HU NG A R IA N REV IEW | M ay 2015

Dench’s hypothesis is supported by a wide range of evidence. It has been found that male
unemployment and low income increased rates of union dissolution whilst the opposite
had a positive effect on marriage. Married couples are much more likely to divorce if the
mother is the only earner. An unemployed husband is more likely to choose to leave a
relationship than a married man with a job; there is a positive correlation between good
labour market participation and lasting marriage for fathers at all educational levels.23

PUTTING THE HEART BACK IN THE HOME

For Engels, the shift towards agricultural production increased the productivity of
labour which in turn increased the demand for labour, because it meant more surplus
could be produced. Reproduction was at the service of production. In the real world
relations are the other way around. People work in order to feed and provide their
family and this seems to occur regardless of sex or age. So for example if we look at
the employment patterns of women we find that the category of women who have
raised their workplace participation the most and most rapidly are precisely mothers
with young children, suggesting that reproduction is a push towards work. However,
this does not mean that they have prioritised employment. The clear preference of
most women for part-time work strongly supports the conclusion that work is valued
insofar as it fits in with family and community life and serves those purposes.24

Reproductive relations seem to be central for men too. Dench in his research finds
that it is among men who don’t have partners expecting them to earn a living
that the worklessness is heaviest. He suggests that this is not simply a matter
of women choosing partners who work. It is also that men who do not get the
experience of living with and providing at least some support for a female partner
may not develop the necessary motivations to hold down a job.25

What is also interesting is that grandmothers turn out to be more likely to

be working than other women of their age and their decision to work tends
to coincide with their daughters’ decision not to work. Thus the behaviour of
different members of the family is determined by the needs of the youngest – this
is the driving force and, as Darwin discovered only a few years before Engels wrote
his tome, it is this instinct which determines the survival of the race.

Once the primacy of private relations is acknowledged the heart is put back into
society. The stage is then set for some very positive social changes.

Indeed, faced with the problem of combating poverty policymakers with an

understanding that individuals can be motivated through the opportunity to
support their loved ones will set about devising policy approaches that recognise

THE INTERNA L CON TR AD ICTION S OF FEMIN ISM 37

not only the needs of women and children but which also seek to release the
potential of that far more challenging group – men.

A workplace relation is based occasionally on exploitation, but always on exchange

of labour for a wage. As more and more women have entered the economy the
work done in the household has moved into the workplace. Thus, despite their
best intentions feminists are vulnerable to the accusation that they have brought
even the most intimate caring relations under capitalist control.

By contrast, familial relations are based on trust, love and interdependence; in such
an environment material and non-material goods circulate through reciprocity
and exchange. Where families are strong these networks will be outward-looking
and will come to include more and more people who are not necessarily related
by blood, providing additional sources of support and exchange. In this way, the
flourishing of family-type relationships based on care rather than self-interest can
act as a protective buffer, compensating for a weakening welfare state.

A strong domestic realm has been shown to contribute to gender equality; this is
most likely to occur where the home is a unit of production. Social reproduction
where varied social networks spiral outwards from the family could compensate
for the loss of role in material production. This could serve to promote gender
equality by increasing the power and influence of the home.

In traditional societies the family often provided the mediating link between production
and reproduction. Those who earned more were able to have more children and this
helped to redistribute their wealth. The less well-off restricted the number of children
they had, when they were able to, in order to better look after the few, although in
developing countries poor families might have many children in the hope that at least
one might provide for them in old age. The erosion of the family has broken these
links and thus a mechanism which had a regulatory role facilitating equality has been
destroyed. For example the very wealthy now tend to have very few children, thus
concentrating wealth in fewer hands. The less well-off appear to have more children
presumably because children attract state benefits. A focus on the family unit for tax
and benefit purposes might help to restore the family’s regulatory and supportive role.

CONCLUSION

Feminism wrought essential social change from which we have all benefitted.
The place of feminists in history is secure. However, social landscapes constantly
change and if the feminist movement is again to be constructive it will need to
significantly adapt. If this is not happening this has much to do with the absence

38 HU NG A R IA N REV IEW | M ay 2015

 of any serious critical analysis of feminist ideas and assumptions. Standing in the
way of such an analysis is the tendency to regard the body of feminist theory as if
it were objectively true rather than as the theoretical basis for practical action to
achieve change. This brief essay is intended to provide just such an analysis as the
first step in providing an alternative approach to understanding gender relations
which which I believe is better suited to our times and circumstances.

1
Wolf, A., The XX Factor: How Working Women Are Creating a New Society, London, Profile Books, 2013.
2
See for example http://www.netmums.com/home/netmums-campaigns/the-great-work-debate
Or Alakeson, V., “The Price of Motherhood: women and part-time work”, Resolution Foundation, 2012.
3
Dench, G., What Women Want: Evidence from British Social Attitudes, London, Hera Trust, 2010.
4
Bloemen, H. G. and Stancanelli, E. G. F., “Market hours, household work, child care, and wage
rates of partners: an empirical analysis”, in Review of Economics of the Household, 2013. DOI:10.1007/
s11150-013-9219-4.
5
Norman, H., Elliot, M. and Fagan, C., “Which fathers are the most involved in taking care of their
toddlers in the UK? An investigation of the predictors of paternal involvement”, in Community, Work
and Family, 2013. DOI:10.1080/13668803.2013.862361.
6
Agache, A., Leyendecker, B., Schafermeier, E,. Scholmerich, A., “Paternal involvement elevates
trajectories of life satisfaction during transition to parenthood”, in European Journal of Developmental
Psychology, 2013. DOI: 10.1080/17405629.2013.851025.
7
https://j4mb.wordpress.com/british-men-pay-72-of-the-income-tax-collected-in-the-uk-women-just-
28-so-why-does-the-state-relentlessly-assault-men-and-boys-while-advantaging-women-and-girls/
8
http://she-conomy.com/facts-on-women
9
Smith, S., “Engels and the origin of women’s oppression”, in International Socialist Review, issue 2, 1997.
10
James, S., Marx and feminism, Crossroads Books, 1994.
11
Lyndon, N., Sexual Politics; Heresies on Sex, Gender and Feminism, 2014.
12
Marx, K., The Poverty of Philosophy, Progress Publishers, 1955.
13
Engels, F., “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State”, 1884, in Feminism: The
Essential Historical Writings, Miriam Schneir, 1972.
14
Marx K. and Engels F., The Communist Manifesto, New York, 1948, p. 27. Engels, op cit.
15
www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mallorymillett/marxist-feminisms-ruined-lives/
16
Greer, p. 326
17
“The Parent Trap”, The Guardian, 16 September 1991. Cited from Neil Lyndon, op. cit.
18
The worm-turned syndrome”, in The Observer, 17 October 1989.
19
Draper, D., Beighton L., Independent Taxation – 25 years on, CARE, 2013, p. 33.
20
Fennel, A., Who Cares about the Family?, Mothers at Home Matter, 2015, p. 14.
21
Bryan, D. M., “To Parent or provide? The effect of the provider role on low-income men’s
decisions about fatherhood and paternal engagement”, in Fathering, 2013, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 71–89.
DOI: 10.3149/fth.1101.71
22
Dench, G., Transforming Men: Changing Patterns of Dependency and Dominance in Gender Relations,
New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1996.
23
Brown, B., “Reviewing Gendered Employment Policies”, in Men for Tomorrow, 2014, working
paper 09/14.
24
Brown, B. and Dench, G., The Family Strikes Back: Changing Attitudes to Work and Family, London,
Hera Trust, 2014.
25
Dench, G., What Women Want; Evidence from British Social Attitudes, New Brunswick, Transaction
Publishers, 2011.

THE INTERNA L CON TR AD ICTION S OF FEMIN ISM 39

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