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Socialism and women's equality: Looking backward and forward
JUDITH H.
STIEHM
Socialism and Women's Equality: Looking Backward and Forward
Both capitalism and socialism offer political analyses rooted in economic theory. Both emphasize the organization of production and the development of that organization. Both analyses describe production as though it were done by individuals or organizations of similar individuals. Both assume that consumption is done by families whose members are of different ages and sexes and may or may not be wage-earners. The shift in the unit of analysis is important: too much is overlooked when analysis of production focuses on the public work of individuals and that of consumption on the domestic life of families.~ Specifically, what is missing is a discussion, first, of the unpaid labor of home production, which mostly involves immediate consumption and a barter exchange between persons legally bound to each other, and second, the production and maintenance of the public sector's producers. I. Judith Stiehm, "The Unit of Political Analysis: Our Aristotelian Hangover" in Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka (eds.), Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics and Methodology (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981).
STUDIESINCOtS~^RATlVECOMMUNISM
VOL.X1V, NOS.2 & 3, SUMMER/AUTUMN1981, 208-218
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The Means of Production, Reproduction, and Destruction One reason why mostly male analysts of production have ignored the reproduction of labor and nonwage labor must be that, if they thought of them at all, they thought of them simply as "women's work." (Women's work is something that men tend to know little about; moreover, it is to their interest to devalue it.) A second reason why they may have overlooked them is that until recently women have supplied "enough" children for the labor force and have done "enough" domestic labor to maintain family life. In some industrial countries, however, women have now begun to have so few children and divorce rates have become so high that policymakers have begun to consider how to reward women for the domestic work that they used to do for nothing. Because of increased longevity and increased length of training, analysts now must also consider how the different generations, some too young and some too old to be incorporated into the productive system, shall be provided for. Can the family unit bear the increased burden? Which members of the family should do so? An economic/political analysis based on the assumption that most persons are full-time workers most of their lives is simply not adequate. Male policymakers and their analysts have been relatively free to overlook women because of their near-monopoly not only of the means of production, but also their substantial control over the means of reproduction and the implements of destruction. Nowhere do women control their own bodies, and everywhere men control societies' legal, organized, equipped, honored violence. This is a fact which cannot be ignored in a world where politics and the state justify the routine threat (law) and use of force (law enforcement). What kind of political credibility does an individual or a group have when denied access to the instruments of force? Why do men forbid women to enforce the law? Why do they deny women an active (especially combat) role in their own defense? Deficient as both socialism and capitalism are, both do make a claim to women's allegiance. Capitalism's individualism can serve as a liberating idea for women (though when women begin to take themselves too seriously, an attack on "narcissism" may develop). 2 Socialism's emphasis on equality and its description of women as oppressed both as members of the working class and as nonmembers of the working class (because they are at home), has won the commitment of many "Marxist-feminists." (Indeed, they have no self-conscious "liberal-feminist" opposite.) Neither system, however, 2. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner, 1979).
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has demonstrated how women and men might live in equality. The United States has not even been willing symbolically to affirm equality through a constitutional amendment. Russian women complain vigorously about their "double shift" as wage-earners and as unpaid domestics. Yet one wonders: is socialist willingness to be explicit about women's oppression based on a real commitment to equality, or is it just part of a challenger's general attack on the status quo? Or is it, perhaps, the underdog's effort to mobilize the marginal--not for their own but for socialism's benefit? Let us be clear: socialist policies have brought remarkable changes in the lives of many women. Women have rapidly acquired education and wage-earning work. They have been urged to participate in the ratification of governmental decisions and in local political organizations. However, as Stites and the other authors in this volume point out, in both the United States and the Soviet Union, work is sex segregated, women assume most domestic responsibilities; and few women participate in policymaking.
The Case Studies The case studies offered here document the specific condition of women in four socialist countries. Richard Stites suggests much similarity betwe.cn the Soviet Union and the United States, both of which are massive and hierarchical industrial states. In particular, he notes that feminist movements have tended to originate among privileged women who have first worked for another cause (e.g., civil rights). This is often taken as a negative criticism, but such an origin should be expected. It is upper class women, after all, who experience the most relative deprivation and the most "invidious intimacy. ''3 Further, if socialism follows capitalism, follows feudalism, why should not women of each waning system enjoy equality with the men of that system? Why must all women wait for socialism? And why should women be expected to achieve unanimity across classes before their concerns are taken seriously? Further, why should women be given the special duty of recruiting women to socialism and doing all other work, too? Stites also raises another important topic. He is one of the few to note that women's efforts to achieve equality have been, and could in the future be, resisted by men. This resistance has included and could include reprisals--violent reprisals. Men have and can selfconsciously punish women who seek change. 3. Judith Stiehm, "Invidious Intimacy," Social Policy, Vol. 6, No. 5 (April 1976), pp. 12-16.
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Sharon Wolchik's article on Czechoslovakia emphasizes the instrumental use of women by the male Party and governmental elite. What makes the calculated use of women so evident is the cyclical nature of their mobilization, which Wolchik carefully documents. Barbara Janear's historical account of women's participation in Yugoslavia's national liberation movement emphasizes the fact that socialist mobilization can occur for a number of reasons and that achieving women's liberation as a byproduct of socialism is probably the least effective mobilizer. More forceful is economic necessity or incentive. Most potent is probably patriotism, national survival--the existence of war. Jayne Werner's observations cannot provide what we might like to call evidence, but she is able to develop several important hypotheses from her study of Vietnam and to suggest new ways of thinking about the relationship between women, men, and power. Werner like Jancar emphasizes the importance of war's dislocation to changes in women's status. It almost seems that this cannot be emphasized too much--that the "withering away of social structure" is required for any change in women's lives. But, and this, too, cannot be overemphasized, change and especially progress may not be what they seem. They may be only temporary aberrations; also, changes in women's status must always be considered relative to men's status. Men are the measure--one's own men, and not one's mother, not women of another country, and not oneself of previous years. Too often women see progress when they are moving into positions vacated by men. They do not ask why there is a vacancy or if that vacancy is permanent. If men are the measure, it is important that we take the advice of the feminists' villain, Lionel Tiger, and call a men's group a men's group. Presently men's groups often claim a general (genderless) title when they are, in fact, as much men's groups as the League of Women Voters is a women's group. If we follow Rosabeth Kanter's lead and call groups with only token women (any group with less than 20 percent women) the "man's party .... the male elite," "the male government," we should understand both antagonisms and omissions more readily. 4 Indeed, just as social scientists are beginning to be more careful about identifying experimental subjects by gender, so historians and others must provide more "truth in labeling." If this were done, for instance, we would learn not that "women defeated the ERA," but that the male legislatures of 4. Rosabeth Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
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fifteen southern and western states defeated it by voting against it. 5 In the essay by Ecklein and Giele, we are offered evidence. The authors systematically compare two countries, East Germany and the United States, in terms of demography, the economy, and ideology. Then they compare the status of women in these countries with regard to education, employment, and family life. But the coauthors cannot agree upon the relative importance of (1) differences attributed to a socialist as opposed to a capitalist system, and (2) similarities created by a division of labor which permits great interchangeability of workers. What the G.D.R. experience does seem to show is that if too many women choose production over reproduction, the state may devise policies to reward reproduction. American women have not yet tested this premise. Some of them fear that the state may also resort to less positive sanctions, e.g., denial of access to abortions, if too many women neglect reproduction for production. Some attention is given in these essays to the relationship between development (both socialist and capitalist) and women's changing status. I think the evidence is not yet in on these relationships, although they have been discussed in a number of forums.6 The basic transition in development is from agricultural to urban/factory work. Socialist analysis has never been fully satisfactory on rural production, and even if Stites is correct in saying women's freedom and opportunity increase in an urban setting, it may also be true that women are more equal in African villages and midwestern farms where production takes place at home. After all, in an individualistic, urban, secular, environment men may enjoy even more freedom by evading traditional responsibilities. Do those responsibilities then go unmet or are they assumed by women? And do the women continue to bear their traditional responsibilities as well? If both capitalist and socialist development involve a shift in the location of production and the development of roles for men beyond those of father, brother, and son to those of comrade, boss, and employee, is it possible that women's relatively under-developed status should be considered only a "lag"? Should we expect their 5. Andrew Hacker, "ERA-RIP," Harper's, Vol. 261, No. 1564 (September 1980), pp. I-I 1, 14. 6. See, for example, the special issue of Signs, Journal o f Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn 1977); Office of Women in Development, A.I.D., Report on Women in Development (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, August 1978); and Irene Tinker and Michele Bramsen (eds.), Women and World Development (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1976).
SOCIALISM
AND WOMEN’S EQUALITY
production to move to the public sector, their unpaid become paid, or shared with men, or assumed by others? S evidence suggeststhat Communist states are run by men w needs in mind. This is shown in assumptions about fami the use of women in wartime, and in efforts to mobilize w state needs. Communism and the Family
Women might be considered de facto socialists. While possible to discuss men’s needs, rights, and status without to anyone but other men, no discussion of women’s r proceed without reference to others-particularly childrer family.” Indeed, women’s web of social relationships and bilities makes them more complex than men. Their roles mothers, daughters, and workers entail a variety of SC conflicting obligations. Conversely, men’s roles as husband: and sons are nearly congruent with their role of wage-earn “bring home the bacon,” they have accomplished all their roles. (Actually, if their husbands did bring home the b other groceries, Russian women’s lives would be greatly sil While socialist theory supports the monogamous fami assumes that women need independent wage-income in insure that they will not have to sell their bodies either outside of marriage. What is not clear is whether a socia structure assumes that two coequal earners are available tl a family, or, whether part of the population (women) is ex earn at a lower rate (enough perhaps to support a single in’ although it can also combine resources with persons wi income (men) to support a family. This is the kind of wage we have in the United States; it is maintained by ha segregated occupations with women earning about 60 p what men earn. This makes it reasonable, too, for worn than men to absorb any career difficulties associated with family. It also makes it impossible for women to support alone. We do not know whether or not socialist couples pr
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that the low birth and high divorce rates of Eastern Europe reflect either women's exhaustion or an (unconscious) protest against current "superwomen" expectations. When there is a limited investment in "the family" and "the home," when only a small number of people are involved, when home is not an emotional haven, a place of aesthetic pleasure and of physical comfort, when it is not an investment for one's children, home and family become easy to relinquish. When the maintenance of marriage depends almost exclusively on the continued affection of two adults for each other, and when one incurs extensive responsibilities that the other does not incur, stability must diminish. Moreover, reduced birthrates may be an unconscious Lysistratalike action seeking redefinition of the roles of husband and father. One suspects that the response will be to redefine women's role as worker, for social production has not "liberated" women even in Vietnam where Werner notes that 50 percent of a family's income comes from the private plot farmed by women who contribute additional income by working for the commune--where their "light" work is rewarded less than men's "heavy" work! Eastern European governments are beginning to respond to the high divorce-low birth rate trends of at least part of their populations. It is not clear, though, why lower divorce and higher birth rates are sought. Is it to avoid in-migration of foreign populations? Or, is a larger next generation required for this generation's interest, either to provide for its old age or to provide an expanding economy? Or is a next generation needed to provide a transcendental element otherwise unavailable in a nonreligious society? Or, since the diminishing traditional patriarchy included the domination of the young by the old as well as of women by men, can the lack of interest in heving children be a response by adults to the fact that age is not revered? Werner points out the benefits to daughters-in-law when patrilocality is ended, but she does not dwell on the loss to mothers-in-law. When family ties are loosened, how are mutual responsibilities of the generations worked out? If governments adopt more coercive demographic policies, if families and children are understood not as "natural" but as socially influenced if not controlled, won't women see the state as more relevant than ever? Won't such policies politicize women? Won't they create a previously unknown "gender-consciousness"? Won't women begin to demand more than increased maternity benefits? Won't they also begin to insist that their work role not be penalized? Won't they want guarantees of no loss of seniority, for instance? Won't they ask that any domestic service they do be treated as a full equivalent of men's special, especially military service?
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Socialist Women and the Military The military is thought of as men's preserve, yet women always participate and die in war. Jancar illustrates this with details from the Yugoslav experience, and Werner does the same from the Vietnamese experience. Two trends seem evident: first, women rarely exercise leadership or command authority; and, second, women do not participate in the military in times of peace--in times when it is safe and profitable. Interpretations of these facts can vary. Women may see their exclusion from the peacetime military and from wartime combat roles as a way of ensuring that they are not prepared for and do not obtain the seniority required for the exercise of command. They may also see the emphasis on the use of young women as a way of avoiding the question as to why authority is denied to mature women. Women may also see their participation as evidence of their competency and equality which should earn postwar respect not just for individual women heroes but for women as a group. The liberation and commitment experienced by women who participate in the military may make it hard for them to go home again, but they may have to, for the consolidation and organization of postwar political power is done by professionals, by seniors, by specialists, by men. The view that women have given proof of equality and that changes in the direction of equality have already occurred may be limited to women. A different (male) view may be that, in an emergency, women helped to the degree that they were able, and that norms which were temporarily suspended can now be reinstated. This "reserve army" theory emphasizes the fact that women "fill in," that they act only in men's absence. 7 As Werner notes, Vietnam women's war responsibilities were to (I) run the house (in men's absence), (2) run the village (in men's absence), and (3) send their men to the front. When women only release men to fight, men can argue that women have not performed equally but that they have temporarily taken over men's usual tasks while men accomplish extraordinary duties. Thus women's exercise of power, selfdirection, and public competency remains relatively inferior despite absolute change. Again, patriarchy's control of the young by the old is reflected in a society's organization for war. Old men dispute their rivals by organizing and forcing young men to fight for them and young 7. Cynthia Enloe, "Women--The Reserve Army of Army Labor," The Review of Political Economics, Fourth Special Issue on the Political Economy of Women, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer 1980), pp. 42-52.
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women to support them. Nowhere, though, do old women regularly exercise public, institutional authority over men. It may be that family roles, which still provide that all children are directed by women and all adults by men, have far more relevance to women's failure to achieve political equality than socialist theory or practice concerning their public roles:
The Cyclical Mobilization o f Women Political leaders alternately mobilize and placate their citizenry. For new challenges or endeavors, new or underused human resources must be found. Women, especially young women who have not yet married or had children and who would not expect to be equal to the older men making policy, are an obvious group. Socialist countries have mobilized such women for production, for the war effort, for political organizing, and for challenging cultural traditions. Werner especially argues that women are seen as a "resource to manipulate" for a "higher" goal. Indeed, appeals to women by men are rarely made to the women's self interest. They are based, instead, on the interest of the nation, the laboring class, the future, the children. At best, women's equality is described as a byproduct while feminism is described as a narrow and dangerously diverting perspective. But what group is larger than women? What group is poorer? What more devalued? What can be more arrogant than to assume that women consider themselves so unimportant that they respond best to mobilizing on others' behalf?. And what do mobilizers think women were doing before mobilization? Nothing? And do they think women equal when they call them to do work men previously did? And after telling women that they can, how can they later argue that they can't, or that what they did before mobilization is worth going back to? Demobilization often follows mobilization. In such contexts, women have been said to "withdraw," "retreat," "recede"; only occasionally are they described as "forced out." The cyclical waxing and waning of women's participation in public life merits careful consideration. Mostly what we have are case-studies of particular cycles. Unfortunately, continuity is not characteristic of women's history, nor is the integration of descriptions of men's and women's roles, nor is a description of women's entering and leaving public 8. See Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); and Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1978).
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roles over their life cycles. Yet all are required to understand the relationship between domestic and public production/life. Political parties frequently have created special women's sections or organizations. Some seem to function as auxiliaries, some to recruit and mobilize women for "regular" participation. These organizations seem to be cyclical, too. They seem to meet their demise not because it is decided to put an end to women's political participation but because they become too "successful," i.e., they begin to make claims on the party and/or the government on behalf of women. They are phased out then, not because women are integrated into policymaking, executive, and military bodies, but because they seek to do more than support and rally others to support the male party and male government. Once understood, this pattern should generate more self-conscious and critical participation by women.
Conclusion Communist practice demonstrates that women's equality is not just a class problem. Indeed, what Jancar calls Communism's "fear of feminism" would seem to come more from feminist radicalism than from its affiliation with reactionary bourgeoisie forces. While women may seize the opportunities that accompany social crises, there is little evidence to show that they consciously exploit those chances in order to institutionalize accommodations made during periods of suspended norms. Communist women (including Cubans, where a law requires that men share the housework equally), know that participation in social production has not made them free, nor has it made them powerful. It has given them education and second occupations; it has also led to a deterioration in family life if low birth rates and high divorce rates can be said to measure deterioration. Socialist theory cannot claim to be inclusive if it ignores unpaid work, the production and reproduction of labor, and men's monopoly on legitimate coercion. Cyclical mobilization, which changes women's roles without changing their invidious relationship to men's roles, which broadens the activities of young women without letting them develop into mature, authoritative women, and which is managed by old men who regularly use coercion to accomplish social purposes, but who infrequently permit women to use instruments of coercion, will cease to succeed as the elite's manipulation of women becomes more and more evident and as gender consciousness develops. Before an ultimate resolution is reached, though,
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men will have to be understood as more than a measure and as more than antagonists. Their specialization and the integration of their various roles now yield men most public power. Mueh of this is attributed to gender and much to merit. In fact, seniority and specialization, both of which derive from social context, not from heredity or individual effort, account for much of men's power. To look to the future, to a purer Communism, or to a next generation for change, is really to refuse to look. Current practice and its historical antecedents have much to teach us about the possibilities for equality between women and men. Without new practice derived from analysis of the past and present women have little to look forward to.
STIEHM
Socialism and Women's Equality: Looking Backward and Forward
Both capitalism and socialism offer political analyses rooted in economic theory. Both emphasize the organization of production and the development of that organization. Both analyses describe production as though it were done by individuals or organizations of similar individuals. Both assume that consumption is done by families whose members are of different ages and sexes and may or may not be wage-earners. The shift in the unit of analysis is important: too much is overlooked when analysis of production focuses on the public work of individuals and that of consumption on the domestic life of families.~ Specifically, what is missing is a discussion, first, of the unpaid labor of home production, which mostly involves immediate consumption and a barter exchange between persons legally bound to each other, and second, the production and maintenance of the public sector's producers. I. Judith Stiehm, "The Unit of Political Analysis: Our Aristotelian Hangover" in Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka (eds.), Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics and Methodology (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981).
STUDIESINCOtS~^RATlVECOMMUNISM
VOL.X1V, NOS.2 & 3, SUMMER/AUTUMN1981, 208-218
SOCIALISM AND WOMEN'S EQUALITY
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The Means of Production, Reproduction, and Destruction One reason why mostly male analysts of production have ignored the reproduction of labor and nonwage labor must be that, if they thought of them at all, they thought of them simply as "women's work." (Women's work is something that men tend to know little about; moreover, it is to their interest to devalue it.) A second reason why they may have overlooked them is that until recently women have supplied "enough" children for the labor force and have done "enough" domestic labor to maintain family life. In some industrial countries, however, women have now begun to have so few children and divorce rates have become so high that policymakers have begun to consider how to reward women for the domestic work that they used to do for nothing. Because of increased longevity and increased length of training, analysts now must also consider how the different generations, some too young and some too old to be incorporated into the productive system, shall be provided for. Can the family unit bear the increased burden? Which members of the family should do so? An economic/political analysis based on the assumption that most persons are full-time workers most of their lives is simply not adequate. Male policymakers and their analysts have been relatively free to overlook women because of their near-monopoly not only of the means of production, but also their substantial control over the means of reproduction and the implements of destruction. Nowhere do women control their own bodies, and everywhere men control societies' legal, organized, equipped, honored violence. This is a fact which cannot be ignored in a world where politics and the state justify the routine threat (law) and use of force (law enforcement). What kind of political credibility does an individual or a group have when denied access to the instruments of force? Why do men forbid women to enforce the law? Why do they deny women an active (especially combat) role in their own defense? Deficient as both socialism and capitalism are, both do make a claim to women's allegiance. Capitalism's individualism can serve as a liberating idea for women (though when women begin to take themselves too seriously, an attack on "narcissism" may develop). 2 Socialism's emphasis on equality and its description of women as oppressed both as members of the working class and as nonmembers of the working class (because they are at home), has won the commitment of many "Marxist-feminists." (Indeed, they have no self-conscious "liberal-feminist" opposite.) Neither system, however, 2. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner, 1979).
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has demonstrated how women and men might live in equality. The United States has not even been willing symbolically to affirm equality through a constitutional amendment. Russian women complain vigorously about their "double shift" as wage-earners and as unpaid domestics. Yet one wonders: is socialist willingness to be explicit about women's oppression based on a real commitment to equality, or is it just part of a challenger's general attack on the status quo? Or is it, perhaps, the underdog's effort to mobilize the marginal--not for their own but for socialism's benefit? Let us be clear: socialist policies have brought remarkable changes in the lives of many women. Women have rapidly acquired education and wage-earning work. They have been urged to participate in the ratification of governmental decisions and in local political organizations. However, as Stites and the other authors in this volume point out, in both the United States and the Soviet Union, work is sex segregated, women assume most domestic responsibilities; and few women participate in policymaking.
The Case Studies The case studies offered here document the specific condition of women in four socialist countries. Richard Stites suggests much similarity betwe.cn the Soviet Union and the United States, both of which are massive and hierarchical industrial states. In particular, he notes that feminist movements have tended to originate among privileged women who have first worked for another cause (e.g., civil rights). This is often taken as a negative criticism, but such an origin should be expected. It is upper class women, after all, who experience the most relative deprivation and the most "invidious intimacy. ''3 Further, if socialism follows capitalism, follows feudalism, why should not women of each waning system enjoy equality with the men of that system? Why must all women wait for socialism? And why should women be expected to achieve unanimity across classes before their concerns are taken seriously? Further, why should women be given the special duty of recruiting women to socialism and doing all other work, too? Stites also raises another important topic. He is one of the few to note that women's efforts to achieve equality have been, and could in the future be, resisted by men. This resistance has included and could include reprisals--violent reprisals. Men have and can selfconsciously punish women who seek change. 3. Judith Stiehm, "Invidious Intimacy," Social Policy, Vol. 6, No. 5 (April 1976), pp. 12-16.
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211
Sharon Wolchik's article on Czechoslovakia emphasizes the instrumental use of women by the male Party and governmental elite. What makes the calculated use of women so evident is the cyclical nature of their mobilization, which Wolchik carefully documents. Barbara Janear's historical account of women's participation in Yugoslavia's national liberation movement emphasizes the fact that socialist mobilization can occur for a number of reasons and that achieving women's liberation as a byproduct of socialism is probably the least effective mobilizer. More forceful is economic necessity or incentive. Most potent is probably patriotism, national survival--the existence of war. Jayne Werner's observations cannot provide what we might like to call evidence, but she is able to develop several important hypotheses from her study of Vietnam and to suggest new ways of thinking about the relationship between women, men, and power. Werner like Jancar emphasizes the importance of war's dislocation to changes in women's status. It almost seems that this cannot be emphasized too much--that the "withering away of social structure" is required for any change in women's lives. But, and this, too, cannot be overemphasized, change and especially progress may not be what they seem. They may be only temporary aberrations; also, changes in women's status must always be considered relative to men's status. Men are the measure--one's own men, and not one's mother, not women of another country, and not oneself of previous years. Too often women see progress when they are moving into positions vacated by men. They do not ask why there is a vacancy or if that vacancy is permanent. If men are the measure, it is important that we take the advice of the feminists' villain, Lionel Tiger, and call a men's group a men's group. Presently men's groups often claim a general (genderless) title when they are, in fact, as much men's groups as the League of Women Voters is a women's group. If we follow Rosabeth Kanter's lead and call groups with only token women (any group with less than 20 percent women) the "man's party .... the male elite," "the male government," we should understand both antagonisms and omissions more readily. 4 Indeed, just as social scientists are beginning to be more careful about identifying experimental subjects by gender, so historians and others must provide more "truth in labeling." If this were done, for instance, we would learn not that "women defeated the ERA," but that the male legislatures of 4. Rosabeth Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
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fifteen southern and western states defeated it by voting against it. 5 In the essay by Ecklein and Giele, we are offered evidence. The authors systematically compare two countries, East Germany and the United States, in terms of demography, the economy, and ideology. Then they compare the status of women in these countries with regard to education, employment, and family life. But the coauthors cannot agree upon the relative importance of (1) differences attributed to a socialist as opposed to a capitalist system, and (2) similarities created by a division of labor which permits great interchangeability of workers. What the G.D.R. experience does seem to show is that if too many women choose production over reproduction, the state may devise policies to reward reproduction. American women have not yet tested this premise. Some of them fear that the state may also resort to less positive sanctions, e.g., denial of access to abortions, if too many women neglect reproduction for production. Some attention is given in these essays to the relationship between development (both socialist and capitalist) and women's changing status. I think the evidence is not yet in on these relationships, although they have been discussed in a number of forums.6 The basic transition in development is from agricultural to urban/factory work. Socialist analysis has never been fully satisfactory on rural production, and even if Stites is correct in saying women's freedom and opportunity increase in an urban setting, it may also be true that women are more equal in African villages and midwestern farms where production takes place at home. After all, in an individualistic, urban, secular, environment men may enjoy even more freedom by evading traditional responsibilities. Do those responsibilities then go unmet or are they assumed by women? And do the women continue to bear their traditional responsibilities as well? If both capitalist and socialist development involve a shift in the location of production and the development of roles for men beyond those of father, brother, and son to those of comrade, boss, and employee, is it possible that women's relatively under-developed status should be considered only a "lag"? Should we expect their 5. Andrew Hacker, "ERA-RIP," Harper's, Vol. 261, No. 1564 (September 1980), pp. I-I 1, 14. 6. See, for example, the special issue of Signs, Journal o f Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn 1977); Office of Women in Development, A.I.D., Report on Women in Development (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, August 1978); and Irene Tinker and Michele Bramsen (eds.), Women and World Development (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1976).
SOCIALISM
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production to move to the public sector, their unpaid become paid, or shared with men, or assumed by others? S evidence suggeststhat Communist states are run by men w needs in mind. This is shown in assumptions about fami the use of women in wartime, and in efforts to mobilize w state needs. Communism and the Family
Women might be considered de facto socialists. While possible to discuss men’s needs, rights, and status without to anyone but other men, no discussion of women’s r proceed without reference to others-particularly childrer family.” Indeed, women’s web of social relationships and bilities makes them more complex than men. Their roles mothers, daughters, and workers entail a variety of SC conflicting obligations. Conversely, men’s roles as husband: and sons are nearly congruent with their role of wage-earn “bring home the bacon,” they have accomplished all their roles. (Actually, if their husbands did bring home the b other groceries, Russian women’s lives would be greatly sil While socialist theory supports the monogamous fami assumes that women need independent wage-income in insure that they will not have to sell their bodies either outside of marriage. What is not clear is whether a socia structure assumes that two coequal earners are available tl a family, or, whether part of the population (women) is ex earn at a lower rate (enough perhaps to support a single in’ although it can also combine resources with persons wi income (men) to support a family. This is the kind of wage we have in the United States; it is maintained by ha segregated occupations with women earning about 60 p what men earn. This makes it reasonable, too, for worn than men to absorb any career difficulties associated with family. It also makes it impossible for women to support alone. We do not know whether or not socialist couples pr
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that the low birth and high divorce rates of Eastern Europe reflect either women's exhaustion or an (unconscious) protest against current "superwomen" expectations. When there is a limited investment in "the family" and "the home," when only a small number of people are involved, when home is not an emotional haven, a place of aesthetic pleasure and of physical comfort, when it is not an investment for one's children, home and family become easy to relinquish. When the maintenance of marriage depends almost exclusively on the continued affection of two adults for each other, and when one incurs extensive responsibilities that the other does not incur, stability must diminish. Moreover, reduced birthrates may be an unconscious Lysistratalike action seeking redefinition of the roles of husband and father. One suspects that the response will be to redefine women's role as worker, for social production has not "liberated" women even in Vietnam where Werner notes that 50 percent of a family's income comes from the private plot farmed by women who contribute additional income by working for the commune--where their "light" work is rewarded less than men's "heavy" work! Eastern European governments are beginning to respond to the high divorce-low birth rate trends of at least part of their populations. It is not clear, though, why lower divorce and higher birth rates are sought. Is it to avoid in-migration of foreign populations? Or, is a larger next generation required for this generation's interest, either to provide for its old age or to provide an expanding economy? Or is a next generation needed to provide a transcendental element otherwise unavailable in a nonreligious society? Or, since the diminishing traditional patriarchy included the domination of the young by the old as well as of women by men, can the lack of interest in heving children be a response by adults to the fact that age is not revered? Werner points out the benefits to daughters-in-law when patrilocality is ended, but she does not dwell on the loss to mothers-in-law. When family ties are loosened, how are mutual responsibilities of the generations worked out? If governments adopt more coercive demographic policies, if families and children are understood not as "natural" but as socially influenced if not controlled, won't women see the state as more relevant than ever? Won't such policies politicize women? Won't they create a previously unknown "gender-consciousness"? Won't women begin to demand more than increased maternity benefits? Won't they also begin to insist that their work role not be penalized? Won't they want guarantees of no loss of seniority, for instance? Won't they ask that any domestic service they do be treated as a full equivalent of men's special, especially military service?
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Socialist Women and the Military The military is thought of as men's preserve, yet women always participate and die in war. Jancar illustrates this with details from the Yugoslav experience, and Werner does the same from the Vietnamese experience. Two trends seem evident: first, women rarely exercise leadership or command authority; and, second, women do not participate in the military in times of peace--in times when it is safe and profitable. Interpretations of these facts can vary. Women may see their exclusion from the peacetime military and from wartime combat roles as a way of ensuring that they are not prepared for and do not obtain the seniority required for the exercise of command. They may also see the emphasis on the use of young women as a way of avoiding the question as to why authority is denied to mature women. Women may also see their participation as evidence of their competency and equality which should earn postwar respect not just for individual women heroes but for women as a group. The liberation and commitment experienced by women who participate in the military may make it hard for them to go home again, but they may have to, for the consolidation and organization of postwar political power is done by professionals, by seniors, by specialists, by men. The view that women have given proof of equality and that changes in the direction of equality have already occurred may be limited to women. A different (male) view may be that, in an emergency, women helped to the degree that they were able, and that norms which were temporarily suspended can now be reinstated. This "reserve army" theory emphasizes the fact that women "fill in," that they act only in men's absence. 7 As Werner notes, Vietnam women's war responsibilities were to (I) run the house (in men's absence), (2) run the village (in men's absence), and (3) send their men to the front. When women only release men to fight, men can argue that women have not performed equally but that they have temporarily taken over men's usual tasks while men accomplish extraordinary duties. Thus women's exercise of power, selfdirection, and public competency remains relatively inferior despite absolute change. Again, patriarchy's control of the young by the old is reflected in a society's organization for war. Old men dispute their rivals by organizing and forcing young men to fight for them and young 7. Cynthia Enloe, "Women--The Reserve Army of Army Labor," The Review of Political Economics, Fourth Special Issue on the Political Economy of Women, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer 1980), pp. 42-52.
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women to support them. Nowhere, though, do old women regularly exercise public, institutional authority over men. It may be that family roles, which still provide that all children are directed by women and all adults by men, have far more relevance to women's failure to achieve political equality than socialist theory or practice concerning their public roles:
The Cyclical Mobilization o f Women Political leaders alternately mobilize and placate their citizenry. For new challenges or endeavors, new or underused human resources must be found. Women, especially young women who have not yet married or had children and who would not expect to be equal to the older men making policy, are an obvious group. Socialist countries have mobilized such women for production, for the war effort, for political organizing, and for challenging cultural traditions. Werner especially argues that women are seen as a "resource to manipulate" for a "higher" goal. Indeed, appeals to women by men are rarely made to the women's self interest. They are based, instead, on the interest of the nation, the laboring class, the future, the children. At best, women's equality is described as a byproduct while feminism is described as a narrow and dangerously diverting perspective. But what group is larger than women? What group is poorer? What more devalued? What can be more arrogant than to assume that women consider themselves so unimportant that they respond best to mobilizing on others' behalf?. And what do mobilizers think women were doing before mobilization? Nothing? And do they think women equal when they call them to do work men previously did? And after telling women that they can, how can they later argue that they can't, or that what they did before mobilization is worth going back to? Demobilization often follows mobilization. In such contexts, women have been said to "withdraw," "retreat," "recede"; only occasionally are they described as "forced out." The cyclical waxing and waning of women's participation in public life merits careful consideration. Mostly what we have are case-studies of particular cycles. Unfortunately, continuity is not characteristic of women's history, nor is the integration of descriptions of men's and women's roles, nor is a description of women's entering and leaving public 8. See Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); and Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1978).
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roles over their life cycles. Yet all are required to understand the relationship between domestic and public production/life. Political parties frequently have created special women's sections or organizations. Some seem to function as auxiliaries, some to recruit and mobilize women for "regular" participation. These organizations seem to be cyclical, too. They seem to meet their demise not because it is decided to put an end to women's political participation but because they become too "successful," i.e., they begin to make claims on the party and/or the government on behalf of women. They are phased out then, not because women are integrated into policymaking, executive, and military bodies, but because they seek to do more than support and rally others to support the male party and male government. Once understood, this pattern should generate more self-conscious and critical participation by women.
Conclusion Communist practice demonstrates that women's equality is not just a class problem. Indeed, what Jancar calls Communism's "fear of feminism" would seem to come more from feminist radicalism than from its affiliation with reactionary bourgeoisie forces. While women may seize the opportunities that accompany social crises, there is little evidence to show that they consciously exploit those chances in order to institutionalize accommodations made during periods of suspended norms. Communist women (including Cubans, where a law requires that men share the housework equally), know that participation in social production has not made them free, nor has it made them powerful. It has given them education and second occupations; it has also led to a deterioration in family life if low birth rates and high divorce rates can be said to measure deterioration. Socialist theory cannot claim to be inclusive if it ignores unpaid work, the production and reproduction of labor, and men's monopoly on legitimate coercion. Cyclical mobilization, which changes women's roles without changing their invidious relationship to men's roles, which broadens the activities of young women without letting them develop into mature, authoritative women, and which is managed by old men who regularly use coercion to accomplish social purposes, but who infrequently permit women to use instruments of coercion, will cease to succeed as the elite's manipulation of women becomes more and more evident and as gender consciousness develops. Before an ultimate resolution is reached, though,
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men will have to be understood as more than a measure and as more than antagonists. Their specialization and the integration of their various roles now yield men most public power. Mueh of this is attributed to gender and much to merit. In fact, seniority and specialization, both of which derive from social context, not from heredity or individual effort, account for much of men's power. To look to the future, to a purer Communism, or to a next generation for change, is really to refuse to look. Current practice and its historical antecedents have much to teach us about the possibilities for equality between women and men. Without new practice derived from analysis of the past and present women have little to look forward to.