From private to public patriarchy

FROM PRIVATE TO PUBLIC PATRIARCHY The Periodisation

of British History*

SYLVIA DepartIIIeflt

Of

Sociology, University

WALBY

of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 JYL,

England

SynopsisWhile the new women’s history has produced detailed accounts of women’s lives. it has been very cautious about large-scale generalisations or theoretical development. This paper discusses macroquestions of historical change and attempts a historical periodisation of gender relations in Britain. It is important to distinguish changes in the form of patriarchy from those of changes in its degree. There has been a movement in the type of patriarchy from a private to a public form in Britain over the last century or so. This was caused by both the development of the demand for women’s labour by an expanding capitalist economy and by the successes of first-wave feminism.

rise in affective individualism in which the family is organised around principles of personal autonomy and bound by strong affective ties. Stone considers that this last type is now diffused from its middle class origins to all lcvcls of society. Second, thcrc arc those who suggest that every advance on one front is balanced by rcgrcss on another. Millctt (1977) analyses the sexual counter revolution as a backlash to the advances of first wave-feminism. Brown (1981) suggests that women only gain legal control over their children when they bccomc a drain rather than a resource. Others suggest that women gain entry to an occupation only when its position in the hierarchy of occupations is on its way down. This twofold classification is, of course, over simplified, and there are other themes, such as the worsening of women’s position with the development of capitalism. There is a further debate on the significance of the development of capitalism for gender relations, and employment in particular. On the one hand, writers have argued that capitalism led to the separation of home and work, with women being confined to the former, as in the work of Tilly and Scott (1978), Zaretsky (1976). Oakley (1976), and Davidoff and Hall (1987). On the other, there are those who have argued that capitalism did not lead to such a separation because there was already a marked sexual division of labour, for example, Middleton (1981) and Hartmann (1979). However, these are the two

The new women’s history has produced many detailed accounts of the lives of women of earlier times which were previously considered irrelevant to the main flow of history. It has been very cautious about large-scale gencralisations or theoretical dcvclopmcnt. Thcrc arc exceptions to this, such as the fcminist historians Joan Kelly (1984) and Gcrda Lerncr (1986), but these are few. The purpose of this paper is to discuss macroqucstions of historical change in gender relations and to attempt a historical pcriodisation of gcndcr relations. There arc two opposed intcrprctations of changes in gcndcr relations: that they are improving, and that there is little overall change. First, there are those who report on improvements in the position of women. Bcrgmann (1986) considers we are now secing the economic emergence of women in the postwar period. Stone (1977) discusses the progressive evolution of the family from the open lineage family (in which kin and neighbours had a lot of control over internal family practices) through to the contemporary closed domesticafed nuclear family, which Stone considers to be the product of a

*The original paper presented to the BSA conference was considerably longer than that printed here. The other part may be found in Helen Corr and Lynn Jamieson (Eds.), Thepolificso/~veryduyli/e, Hutchinson. 1989. I should like to thank both WSlFand Corr and Jamieson for allowing some minor repetition in the latter sections of the paper.

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major positions and they represent a significant divergence in ways of understanding gender and history. Further they have important political resonances: the former with optimistic notions of inevitability of progress without the need for much political activity, the latter with the urgency of the need for women’s political mobilisation, because so little has been achieved. Those who write of progress in the position of women typically have a conception of different degrees of patriarchy, but with little grasp as to the way that some apparently progressive changes also contain traps for women, that constitute new forms of patriarchy. Those who write of the changes as merely being in the form of patriarchy tend not to see these new forms as potentially being improvcments, even if not perfect. There is a further reason for problematising the issue of greater or lesser degrees of patriarchy. This stems from the difficulty in analysing ethnic specificity within patriarchy in a manner sensitive to cultural diffcrcnccs which arc not simply grcatcr or lcsscr dcgrccs of inequality bctwccn women and mtn. FEMINISM AND CULTURAL SI’EXIFICITY

Feminist theory, togcthcr with most other social theory, has come under critical scrutiny for its ethnocentric bias and its ncglcct of the significance of racism as an important social force (e.g., Carby, 1982; CCCS, 1982; Gilroy, 1987; Hooks, 1982, 1984; Parmar, 1982). One of the particularly difficult issues for feminists analysing the interface of scxism and racism is how to theorise oppressive patriarchal practices in ethnic groups and cultures other than their own. This difficulty is redoubled if white Western feminists are tempted to consider some of those practices to be more oppressive than those they experience in their own, but resist articulating this because of the way this could be construed as racist or at least ethnocentric; and, following the promptings of feminist standpoint epistemology, hesitate further about speaking of things of which they do not have direct experience. A further analytic issue is the importance of not comparing social institutions taken from different contexts; in different social environments the same practices have

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different implications and meanings (e.g., Saifullah-Khan (19761 has argued that purdah is more oppressive in a British context than in its original one). In avoiding declaring one culture as more or less marked by gender inequality than another, the focus shifts to that of difference between types of inequality rather than degrees of inequality. This has been extremely important development in enabling us to avoid white Western ethnocentrism. However, feminists cannot afford to throw out the notion of degrees of patriarchy altogether. To do so logically entails a rejection of the possibility of improvement in the position of women short of total equality. So, despite the problems which naive usage of the notion of degrees of patriarchy can cause, it must be rctaincd alongside a conception of different form of patriarchy. DEGREES

AND FORMS OF

PATRIARCHY

1 want to distinguish conceptually between degrees and forms of patriarchy. The former rcfcrs to the intensity of the oppression of women and the latter the different shapes this takes. Thcrc have been some attempts to empirically diffcrcntiate major forms of gender relations and to theorise this as forms of patriarchy. Boserup (1970) provides an empirically rich account of the different forms of sexual divisions of labour, especially in agriculture, on a world basis. She suggests there are two main forms of sexual divisions in agricultural societies. In the first, women do most of the farming; the men have a restricted range of jobs, perhaps land clearing and hunting. This is to be found in most of Africa. In the second, men do most of the field labour. This is to be found in places of plough agriculture, such as Asia. This can be further differentiated into those where the woman is in seclusion and veiled and those where the woman does perform domestic labour. Finally, there are complex systems in which these different patterns are overlaid, though separated by class, caste, or ethnicity. In these, the wives of the ruling men are domesticated, while lower categories of women engage in public labour. Indeed, the possibility of the first group of women to be domes-

The F’criodisation of British History

ticated may be predicated upon the exploitation of the labour of a subordinated group of women and men. As Beneria and Sen (1986) note, Boserup’s account is undertheorised, especially in her use of modernisation theory, rather than specifying the capitalist forces at work. However, it is also undertheorised in relation to gender relations. Boserup provides empirical support for a thesis that there are major patterns in the sexual division of labour, but does not provide us with any theoretical understanding of this. Some of the theoretical issues involved in changes in the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism are explored in Mies (1986), while some of those in differentiating between forms of patriarchy have been raised by the work of Guillaumin (1980). Dworkin (1983), and Brown (1981). Guillaumin (1980) makes a distinction between the collective and private appropriation of women, the latter being a restrictive expression of the former. Patriarchal appropriation includes not only that of women’s labour. but all aspects of lift from women’s sexuality to psychological care. Jutcau and Laurin (1986) dcvclop this, pointing out that even if certain catcgorics of women, such as nuns, escape private appropriation, they arc, like all women. subject to collective appropriation. These materialist feminists provide a critical insight by simultaneously making a distinction between different forms of appropriation and recognising that together they form one system of appropriation. The distinction between collective and private forms catches some critical differences in the ways this appropriation is performed. This enables a comparison between the position of women in the form of patriarchy to which they are subject, without any necessary implications for the degree of patriarchy. However, the way that the distinction is used places certain limitations on its heuristic utility for capturing historical change. The focus is on either specific institutions or the whole. I want distinctions which relate to the different interconnection between the elements of patriarchy, and their relative significance in different eras. The notion that there are two major historical forms of patriarchy is introduced in the work of Dworkin (1983) and Brown (1981). Dworkin emphasises the sexual dimension in the differentiation of the

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of patriarchy, because her overall theory places this centrally in relation to gender, even to the extent of conflating the two. Evidence to support Dworkin’s claim includes the movement in the main locus of control over women’s sexuality from the private to the public sphere. As women are increasingly able to leave husbands and to engage in nonmarital sexual relations, then public forms of control (e.g., via pornography) become increasingly important. However, following my argument that sexuality is but one site of patriarchal relations, Dworkin’s typology of patriarchal forms is limited because of this restriction. Similarly, Brown is concerned with only a limited number of areas of patriarchy in her theory, that is, labour, and hence has a typology based upon this. Again it produces insights, but is limited by this restriction to the two sites of labour. It is powerful insofar as the relationship between paid work and domestic work is the key to differences in women’s position. Indeed today, with the changing form of the family, the labour market is an especially significant base of patriarchy (although I have argued elsewhere [Walby, 19861 that it was the practices in paid work which at least partially determined the form of the family, that is the labour market was key to making the family a patriarchal site). The distinction between private and public forms of patriarchy does grasp important differences in form, but Dworkin and Brown’s accounts are limited by their restriction to restricted arenas. We need one which takes into account the full range of patriarchal relations. 1 suggest that the different forms are dependent upon the interaction of six key patriarchal structures. These are the patriarchal mode of production; patriarchal relations in paid work; patriarchal relations in the state; male violence; patriarchal relations in sexuality; and patriarchal relations in cultural institutions including religions, media, education (these are developed at greater length in Walby, 1989a). In different times and places some of the structures are more important than others. The elimination of any one patriarchal structure does not lead to the demise of the system as a whole. Logically, there could be many forms, since I have identified six structures of patriarchy, and two

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WALBY

The Pcriodisation

duced expectancy that a husband is for life, and the slow but steady removal of barriers to women’s participation in paid work within the workplace. The private form of patriarchy which existed among the middle classes in the 19th century did not reach the full limits of that model. In Britain, we see different degrees of public and private patriarchy among different ethnic groups. Afro-Caribbeans are closer to the public form, Muslim-Asians the private form, with native whites in the middle. Afro-Caribbean women have the highest rates of participation in paid work and the highest rates of female headed-households of the three groups. Muslim-Asian women have the lowest rates of paid work, and have the most intense forms of male-headed families (Brown, 1984). Native whites appear to be moving towards the Afro-Caribbean pattern. I have identified two main forms of patriarchy. They arc useful for conceptualising major changes in gender relations in Britain in the last couple of centuries. In order to grasp the major diffcrcnccs in the forms of patriarchy bctwccn diffcrcnt countries of the industrial&d world, it is further necessary to divide the public form of patriarchy into two: one based on the market and the other on the state as the basis of bringing women into the public sphcrc. At one end of the continuum we have the countries of Eastern Europe where the state has played a major role in this; at the other we have the United States in which the market has played an equivalent role. In the middle WC have the countries of Western Europe in which the state, in its capacity especially as a welfare state, has been of intermediate significance. The development of the typology from a duality to a triple is based on the introduction of the level of the state as a new element. In Eastern Europe, and to a lesser extent in Western Europe, the state has taken on some of the tasks which were previously performed by women privately in the household and organiscd them collectively (even if they are still largely performed by women). This is the cast for care of children, the sick, and the old. There is clearly a major difference between Western and Eastern Europe in the extent of state activity, but the differences bctween Western Europe and the United States

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are also striking in this regard (although the existence of a massive state education system in the United States should preclude comparative statements of al absolute kind). Thus, the contemporary IUnIted States may be seen to have a market-based form of public patriarchy, Eastern Europe a state-based form of public patriarchy, and Western Europe a mixed state/market form of public patriarchy. In each of these areas this represents a change from a previous form of private patriarchy. The variation is caused by the difference in state policy, which itself is an outcome of the various struggles between opposing forces on both gender and class issues. In Eastern Europe, the seizure of the state by forces which were radical on both class and gender issues is central, even if that radicalism had very significant limits. The developmcnt of the welfare state in Western Europe is usually considered to be the outcome of a compromise in the struggle between capital and labour. I think this should rather be considered to be also the outcome of gendered political forces, because an alliance between feminism and the labour market was key to the dcvclopmcnt of such policies. THE MOVEMENT FROM PRIVATE PUBLIC PATRIARCHY

TO

While it is customary to argue that the rise of capitalism caused significant changes in gcnder relations, it is not often argued that there have been significant point of change since then. Indeed many feminist writers suggest there have been few significant changes. Those who argue that there have been changes generally suggest that there have been gradual and cumulative developments in the direction of the emancipation of women. There are a few exceptions, of course, for example, Marwick, who considered that women made significant progress during the upheaval of the world wars. There has been a point of very significant change in gender relations. In particular, that there was a change in the direction of the development of patriarchy away from the trend towards the private form in the early 19th century, towards the public form. This is not merely a statement that thcrc were important changes. but further, that the very

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direction of change was reversed. This turn has two moments, one located at the end of the turn of the 19th century into the 2Oth, the other in the post-second-world-war period. There are two main reasons for this change: first, the capitalist demand for labour; second, feminist political activity. Both were pertinent at the two moments of this point of change. In the first moment women won political citizenship, which gave them not only the vote, but education, and hence access to the professions, property ownership, and the right to leave marriages. In the second moment women gained effective access to paid employment and the effective ability to leave marriages. The first moment was primarily a victory at the political level of the state; the second at the economic level provided the material possibility of the mass of women taking advantage of their legal indcpcndcnce. In the absence of the first, the political victory, the increase in women’s wage labour of the second moment would have been merely additional exploitation. Capitalism and changes in tk form of patriarchy

The usual ways of analysing the impact of capitalism and industrialisation on gcndcr inequality arc cithcr to argue that it worscncd the position of women (as is dcscribcd above), or improved it (e.g., Pcrkin, 1969). Ncithcr is correct. Rather, thcrc was a strugglc bctwccn capitalist and patriarchal forces, the outcome of which was a change in the form of patriarchy from private to public. This change was not immediate and thcrc was a prolonged period of dispute bcforc the historical compromise was made. The main basis of the tension bctwccn capitalism and patriarchy is over the cxploitation of women’s labour. On the one hand capitalists’ interests are in the recruitment and exploitation of female labour, which is cheaper than that of men because of patriarchal structures. On the other there is resistance to this by a patriarchal strategy which seeks to maintain the exploitation of women in the household. The first forms of capitalist industrialisation saw the successful rccruitmcnt of women (and children) into the cotton tcxtilc factories in greater numbers than men. Prolonged patriarchal rcsistancc through political pressure on the state to pass

WALBY

the Factory Acts and by craft unions to bar women entry to specific jobs was not able to do more than stabilise the situation in this industry. In other occupations which entered the capitalist factory later, such as skilled manual engineering work, the men’s craft organisations were successful in excluding women. Indeed there was often a strong crossclass patriarchal alliance which supported the exclusion of women, even in the absence of strong male unions. However, this crossclass alliance had weaknesses when it cut across the interests of employers to recruit the cheaper labour of women. Conflict would break out, as it did over the recruitment of women into the munitions factories during the first world war. An alternative patriarchal strategy developed allowing women into paid employment, but segregating them from men and paying them less. Clerical work is a good example of this process, where the malt workers’ organisations were insufficiently strong to defeat employcrs’ insistent attempts to recruit women. This was resolved by a compromise in which the employers ceased trying to directly substitute women for men and instead recruited women for new suboccupations which were scgrcgatcd from those of the men, graded lower, and paid Icss, while maintaining the men in the upper rcachcs of white collar work (see Walby, 1986). Whcthcr the cxclusionary strategy or scgrcgation strategy was followed dcpcndcd upon the balance of capitalist and patriarchal forces in a particular industry in a particular locality. The exclusionary strategy was based upon a private form of patriarchy in which women were controlled by excluding them from the public sphere, especially from paid work. The segregation strategy was based upon a public form of patriarchy in which women were controlled within all spheres, not by excluding them from some. The power of capital precluded the successful maintenance of the exclusionary mode, except in certain small tight pockets of patriarchal power and resistance (for example. the typesetters were able to sustain this until the last decade, as Cockburn (19831 has shown). The exclusionary form of patriarchy was also under attack by a large powerful feminist movemcnt from the middle of the 19th century to the first quarter of the 20th.

The Periodisation

The development of the economic structures of capitalism was not sufficient by itself to cause the shift from private to public patriarchy. This could only have occurred in the context of a powerful feminist movement in Britain, and indeed most of the West. Where we find capitalism in the absence of a feminist movement, there is not such a change in the form of patriarchy. For instance, in some parts of the contemporary Third World young women have been pulled into wage labour for the capitalist factories of foreigners, yet are still subject to the patriarchal control of their fathers (Jayawardena, 1986; Mies, 1986). Wage labour by itself does not provide freedom from patriarchal control. In the case of Western industrialisation, first-wave feminism created a different balance of forces.

First- wave feminism First-wave feminism was vital in this change of direction from private to public patriarchy. First-wave feminism was a large powerful movcmcnt which won for women citizenship rights and the formal entry of women to the public sphere. First-wave fcminism was, until rcccntly, a significantly undcrratcd political movcmcnt; its extent, range, and impact is rarely appreciated. Convcntionally it has been thought of as a movcment of a few middle-class women who argued for the vote in terms of the liberal political philosophy of rights. Mainstream political, sociological, and historical texts are quite simply wrong in characterising movements for women’s emancipation and liberation as small, narrow, of limited duration, and recent. First-wave feminism has been frequently characterised as primarily a struggle for the vote; rarely are other issues mentioned, with the occasional exception of the reform enabling married women to own property. Thus, the women’s movement has been described as campaigning on a very narrow range of issues. Further, it has often been considered to represent the interests of only a narrow range of women: middle- and upper-class women. This latter view has been supported in two ways: by reference to the Married Women’s Property Acts, which are considered to be of interest only to women with inherited property, and by reference to

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the apparently middle- and upper-class composition of the movements. Both these contentions are incorrect: the movement embraced a wide, not narrow, range of demands; it represented the interests of all women, not only those of the middle and upper classes. First-wave feminism was a large, multifacted, long-lived, and highly effective political phenomenon. It can be dated as extending from around 1850 to about 1930. It contained a wide range of political positions and involved a large variety of campaigns. At minimum it may be considered to contain: evangelical feminism, socialist feminism, materialist feminism, and radical feminism, as well as liberal feminism (Banks, 1981; Hayden, 1981; Liddington and Norris, 1978; Schreiner, 1918; Spender, 1983; Strachcy, 1978). Campaigns included not only the famous one for suffrage, but also for the containment of predatory male sexual behaviour (Christabel Pankhurst’s slogan was “Votes for women, chastity for men”), access to employment, to training and education, reform of the legal status of married women so they could own property, for divorce and rights to Icgal separation at the woman’s behcst as well as that of the husband (Holcombc, 1983), for the collective rather than private organisation of meal preparation among many others (Gilman, 1966; Hayden, 1981). The campaigns around the containment of men’s sexuality probably best illustrate my claim that the breadth and radicalness of first wave feminism is neglected (see hcrc Banks, 1981; Butler, 1896; Walkowitz, 1980). In the last quarter of the 19th century, feminists argued against the sexual double standard and men’s sexual exploitation of women in explicit and controversial ways. The attempt to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act was merely one example of this. The actions of feminists in the labour movement are another much neglected area of agitation. Most unions in the 19th century refused to admit women, so, if they were to be unionised, it had to be in newly created women’s unions. These were encouraged by the National Federation of Women Workers and the Women’s Trade Union League. These women activists in the trade union movement are often excluded from designa-

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tion as part of first-wave feminism by definitional fiat. That is, trade unionist women are a priori categorised as part of the labour movement and not part of the feminist movement. Yet, since they were clearly representing the interests of women as women this is inappropriate; moreover, these women had to deal with male workers and employers in order to advance the interests of their members (Andrews, 1918; Drake, 1984; Lewenhak, 1977; Soldon, 1978; Strachey, 1978; Walby, 1986). The deprivatisation of women’s domestic labour was another major area of political and theoretical activity among first-wave feminists (Hayden, 1981; Gilman, 1966; Schreiner, 1918). Leading first-wave feminists identified the exploitation of women’s labour in the privatised context of the home as a major source of the problems facing women. This labour was theorised as work, and as subject to particular forms of exploitation. The barriers to women obtaining work outside the household of a type which would adcquntcly support them, and their children if any, was considcrcd to bc a major reason forcing wonicn into marriage as a means of economic survival. The isolated and monotonous nature of the work were seen as further problems for women. Initiativcs to remedy this varied from cooperatives in which housework was performed collcctivcly, to the devclopmcnt of hot meals services for profit. Access to higher education is one of the few campaigns of first-wave feminism which is sometimes noticed. In this women won the right to attend some universities. This was significant not merely in its own right, but also because it gave women access to those professions for which a university-level training was a prerequisite, such as medicine. The struggle for suffrage is the only campaign of first-wave feminism which is universally acknowledged, yet even here there are problems in the conventional interpretation. It is customarily described as a battle fought largely by middle-class women around a liberal vocabulary of human rights; that is, the campaign is represented as that of middleclass liberal feminists. This is misleading. Working-class women were involved in this struggle, especially the organised women workers of the Lancashire cotton textile mills

H’;\LBY

(see Liddington and Norris, 1978). While one section of the movement, that of the suffragists, did adhere to a liberal political philosophy, others, such as the militant suffragettes, did not. The latter group had an analysis much more in keeping with that of contemporary radical feminists, seeing society as composed of two main social groupings: men and women. Parliament was described as a male club, with the differences between the two parties as of little significance to women. blilitant tactics were designed not to win moderate male support, but to both gain greater female support by exposing what they saw as the charade of chivalry by provoking hostile male reactions, and to force the men into conceding the vote. This campaign for the vote was not restricted to small groups of women; one of the meetings in Hyde Park was of a quarter of a million pcoplc (Pankhurst, 1977; Spender, 1983; Strachcy, 1978). In short, first-wave feminism involved numbers of women much greater than convcntional accounts suggest; these women were from a wider range of class backgrounds than usually suggested; the range of issues and campaigns were much more varied and wide ranging than dcscribcd. First-wave feminism was not a few middle-class liberal women who wanted the vote and a bit of education; it was a crossclass, multifaceted powerful political movcmcnt. The significance o$firsr- wave feminism Most importantly, for the argument here, this political movement made a major impact on the position of women, and the forms of patriarchy. Women won political citizenship. In addition they won access to higher education, and hence to the professions. They won rights to legal personhood, such as the right to sit on juries, to own property, whatever their marital status, and hence to have access to credit. They won the right to leave a marriage, both by legal separation and by divorce. These are a considerable list of gains. They defeated the patriarchal strategy of restricting women to the private sphere of the home. Women had won access to the public sphere and claims to the rights and privileges of citizenship. This is not to argue that women won equality with men, but it is to assert

The Periodisation

the significance of these victories in the public arenas relating to political citizenship and legal personhood. It is true that many things were still closed to women; the material and political conditions to guarantee full access in many areas were lacking. But, nevertheless the significance of these gains should not be underestimated. They led women’s entry into the public sphere and the change in form of patriarchy from private to public. This political movement caused a change in the form of patriarchy as well as in degree. While the movement constituted a turning point, the consequences of first-wave feminism took some time to work through. Indeed, the direction set at that time has yet to reach its fullest expression. It is only with women’s access to both waged labour and state welfare payments in the post-secondworld-war period that the possibility of full economic, as well as political, citizenship is realised. The second moment of the turning point from private to public patriarchy is of critical importance. I shall now discuss the changes for which the winning of political citizenship were vital, before moving onto a consideration of this second moment. What is the connection between the first moment of the turning point that I have identified and future dcvelopmcnts? A most important factor is the entry of women into decent paid employment; this could not have occurred without first-wave feminism. The closure to women of the professions such as law and medicine was overturned by the winning of access to universities during this struggle. While numerically this is not particularly significant, it is in terms of women’s collective access to the top jobs, which themselves are significant gatekeepers. Further, the state could no longer be used to back up a patriarchal closure strategy by organised male workers to the same extent after women won the vote. During the 19th century, a series of acts of Parliament had sought to restrict women’s paid employment. This restricted the best work available to women, in terms of pay and hours of work, in the cotton mills and the mines, rather than the worst, such as domestic service and field lahour, which paid worse for longer hours (see Walby, 1986). During the first world war, male unions had been able to call upon the state to back their demands that their jobs be

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returned to them after the war if they let women take them for the duration of the hostilities (Braybon, 1981). Yet in the next world war, after women had won the vote, despite the fact that the men attempted to follow the same strategy, it was significantly less successful, with the state much more reluctant to intervene in the aftermath of the war to support the men’s demands (Braybon, 1981; Summerfield, 1984). Despite the enormous patriarchal pressure to exclude women (and especially married women) from paid work during the interwar depression, the national state never passed legislation to enforce this. From the 1950s. the state has been backing moves towards equality at paid work for men and women. The first groups of women workers to win equal pay were white collar government employees (teachers, civil servants, etc.). I am not trying to argue that the state today is an antipatriarchal state, but rather that there was a significant change in its policy from acting to enforce closure in employmcnt against women before women got the vote, in legislation much as the series of Factory Acts and the First World War Munitions Act, to a laissez-faire policy in the interwar period, and then to an active, albeit weak, cndorscment of women’s rights to employmcnt from the 1950s onward. Such closure that remains, and it is significant, is primarily enforced at a more dccentralised level, in the structures which constitute occupational segregation (see Witz, 1986, for an argument that occupational segregation is enforced primarily at the level of the civil society, not the state). I would argue that women’s winning of political citizenship is crucial to these changes. A further major change crucially affected by state policy is the ability of women to both leave marriages and to live with their children without a man. The legal right to leave an unwanted husband was won by firstwave feminism. In the 19th century, a man could forcibly have a runaway wife returned to him (see Holcombe, 1983; Strachey, 1978, for instances of this). Divorce was in practice unavailable, since it required a special act of Parliament. First-wave feminism won the right of a woman to leave her husband if she so wanted, and in certain circumstances, to oblige him to continue to support her. This

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was won, not only by means of the revisions to the divorce law. but also in those to legal separation, which brought this right within the financial reach of working-class women who could only afford the procedures of the magistrates courts (Holcombe. 1983; Strathey, 1978). This right has been steadily extended ever since, in particular by the 1969 Divorce Reform Act which enabled divorce after two years separation if both parties agreed and after five if one did not. While the legal right to divorce was won by first-wave feminism, it was not until the 1970s that divorce became widespread. This was partly due to the further reforms of the 1969 Act, but especially because of the availability of economic support for women. It was only at this time that paid employment for women who were married became the majority pattern and the option of supporting oneself and one’s children by paid employment became a real possibility (though this cmploymcnt is extremely restricted in the cnsc of women with preschool age children, who arc less likely to bc in paid work than women with husbands). Material indcpcndcncc is also partly a result of stale policy in the provision of payments to support a lone mother in the form of supplcmcntary bcncfit payments. She is not obliged to seek the support of rclativcs or stay with an unwanted partner. In short, first-wave feminism won the right to escape an unwanted husband; it has been steadily extended ever since, both in terms of ever more liberal divorce legislation, and Ihe increasing possibility of material support as a lone woman and lone parent. The entry of women to the British state and political citizenship via the vote was a highly significant factor in changes in gender relations. Howcvcr, thcrc is a second moment to the change from private to public patriarchy; this is the increased access of women to paid employment which took place after the second world war, and is still occurring. In 1988, the majority of British women are in paid employment, and make up 45% of the paid workforcc. Women having children in the 1980s take on avcragc only five years out of the labour market (Martin & Roberts, 1984). Class diffcrenccs are ncgligible. Ethnic differcnccs arc significant, with women of Afro-Caribbean origin being more likely to be in paid work, Moslem-

Asian women least likely to be in public paid work, and white women in between. This is significantly different from the peak of the private form of patriarchy in the middle of the 19th century, when women of the middle and upper classes were less likely to be in paid work than either the workingclass women of that time or the white and Afro-Caribbean women of today. Further, working-class women had restricted access to paid employment, with most of the best jobs barred to them on grounds of sex. For example, all the skilled manual trades which demanded apprenticeships were closed to them. Among those that remained, the most important form of work, domestic service, entailed forms of control which were midway between paid work and housework, such as the nearly continuous availability, supervision of private life, living in, and not infrequent sexual demands. Further, most forms of formal paid employment, even those which gradually opcncd to women in the carly dccadcs of the 20th century, had a marriagc bar. While some branches of paid employment wcrc opcncd up to women in the dccadcs following first-wave feminism, most rctaincd the marriage bar. This is a curiously neglcctcd aspect of gcndcr relations in employment. Its consequences for women should not be underestimated. Most married women did not have access to formal paid employment until the removal of the marriage bar during the second world war, despite demands for this by working women’s organisations. It is only after the second world war that we see married women having formal access to paid employment. The expansion of women’s paid employment could then only occur after the second world war when the marriage bar had been abolished. Conventionally, the expansion of women’s paid employment is seen, by both Marxists and neoclassical economists, as a result of the expansion of the economy into which women get drawn. That is, the explanatory variable is the capitalist economy or market demand for labour. Some see this as a cyclical phenomenon, others a long run one, as was indicated at the beginning. The problem with these ungcndcrcd accounts is that they are unable to deal with the fact that women are continuing to enter the paid workforce

The Periodisation of British History

while men are leaving it in the current recession. Demand for labour is not a sufficient explanation. The expansion of women’s paid employment has often been considered to be a crucial step on the road to women’s emancipation (Engels, 1978; Young & Willmott, 1975; Bergmann, 1986). Yet this is controversial. Does the entry of women to paid work merely give them a double burden? The key question is: Is the entry to paid work merely a different form of patriarchy, or is it a reduction in its degree? In summary the changes in gender relations between the two centuries might be described as follows. Women’s paid employment has grown significantly since the turn of the century. However, most of this increase did not occur till half a century later, after the second world war. Marriage has been significantly affected, with one in two ending in divorce, and one-quarter of children being born out of wedlock. Women have some minor level of rcprescntation at the lcvcl of the state. There is littlc evidcncc of change in the relations around malt violence, except a very rcccnt increase in the support given to women whose violent attackers arc strangers. Thcrc have been significant changes in sexuality, with less stigmatization of nonmarital sexuality, combined with greater pressure to bc engaged in some. Access to education has been very significantly improved. There are two types of intcrprctations of these developments. On the one hand, this can bc seen as a dcclinc in the dcgrce of patriarchy. On the other, it can be seen as a change in the form, not degree. I want to argue that it is both, but that these two dimensions of change need to bc identified separately. In summary, women have found access to the public spheres of contemporary society from which they were previously barred. They have entered paid employment in such numbers that the workforce is now 45% female. Women are able to leave marriages, and increasing numbers do; one in two of new marriages are predicted to end in divorce. The forms of control are significantly less from a personal patriarch (the husband or father) and increasingly from a collective of public patriarchy. For instance, sexuality

101

is increasingly regulated outside of the family. These changes by themselves might appear to constitute a reduction in the degree of patriarchy. I think they do, but that simultaneously they provoked a change in the form of patriarchy. With the failure of the exclusionary strategy of private patriarchy and its exclusion of women from the public sphere, we see the development of a new strategy of inclusion, but new forms of control, with the development of public patriarchy. The argument is then that as some sites of patriarchy lose their salience, as a result of feminist advances, others come to the fore. The strongest argument that we are seeing a change in form comes from an analysis of sexuality and of household labour. This is an argument against the conventional view that women gained sexual freedom in the period following the Victorian one. Women who engage in premarital sex are no longer rejected by men seeking brides. Unmarried mothers arc no longer quite so badly stigmatiscd. Contraception is available free and on dcmand from doctors. Abortion is available undcr certain circumstances. While the AIDS crisis has Icd to some rctrcnchmcnt in attitudcs, there is littlc evidence of a change in sexual practices among hctcroscxuals. The other argument is that thcrc is now considcrablc pressure for women to engage in hctcroscxual sex, in a way unknown to 19th century women. Indeed, a school of writers including Covcney et al. (1984), Faderman (1981), Jcffreys (1985), and Millett (1977) have argued that women’s oppression through sexuality has intensified in the pcriod after first-wave feminism. In the 19th century, women were not expected to like or want to engage in sex (Cott, 1978). This approach to sexuality, while to modern eyes rcstrictive, could in fact be a form of women’s resistance. A legitimate and respectable rcason to say no to unwanted sexual intercourse could be to women’s benefit. Further, women’s supposed asexuality meant that they could maintain close and loving relationships with those for whom they did feel real affection, their female friends, without this being regarded as threatening. Faderman (1981) and Smith-Rosenberg (1975) have drawn convincing pictures of the romantic fricndships between women in the 19th century and

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of their often life-long loving and indeed sensual nature. These relationships were problematised after 1920 or so by the development and popularisation of Freudian and neo-Freudian theories of sexuality. First, it led to a way of seeing female romantic friendships as sexual, rather than asexual, and, consequently, as perverted, given the negative view attached to lesbianism. This reduced the possibility of such close bonding between women, unless they were prepared to defy the sanctions against lesbianism. Second, this neo-Freudian view gave rise to the notion that to be normal a person had to be heterosexually active. Otherwise, the person was considered unfulfilled and liable to neurosis. In particular, this fed negative images of older single women as leading distorted lives, resulting in bitter and twisted personalities. Jeffreys (1985) sees this as one of the ways in which first-wave feminism was attacked, since this movement entailed strong bonding bctwcen women, without men. The growth of these new notions of proper sexual conduct occurs immcdiatcly after the succcsscs of first-wave feminism. Millctt, Fadcrman, and Jcffrcys all consider the new discourse on sexuality to be part of a patriarchal backlash, indeed in Millctt’s terms a sexual counter revolution. Millctt analyses this new sexual ideology via the novels of writers otherwise considered progressive, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer. After the victories of first-wave feminism, the imperative on women to engage in XX with men was a new way of ensuring women’s subordination to men. The weapon was in the new thcorics of sexuality, which marked as perverted women who were not heterosexually active. These writers have focused upon new forms of pressure on women to engage in sexual relations with men. There are further new forms of control through sexuality. While sex was supposed to take place only inside marriage, there were restrictions on the public portrayal of sexuality. The gradual removal of these restrictions has opcncd the way to such things as the widespread availability of pornography. The main site of control over women through sexuality has shifted away from the individual husband or father in the home to more diffuse patriarchal cultural practices in the public sphcrc.

WALBY

However, it is important not to push these arguments too far. There clearly were benefits to women in not being hounded if they bore illegitimate children, in being able to have sex with a man to whom they were not married without the dire consequences which might have befallen them in the 19th century. Wilson (1983) and Gordon and Dubois (1983) warn of the traps of glorying in the purity concerns of the 19th century women, preferring to risk the danger of the battlefield of sexuality. Nevertheless, the point is that the new discourse on sexuality introduces new forms of regulation of women, as well as removing others. While some degree of gender inequality is removed, new forms are introduced. Changes in household structure and composition form a further area of change indicating a shift in the form of patriarchy as well as one of degree. The ability of women to leave unwanted marriages has so far been prcscnted as a diminution in the degree of patriarchal control. However, it should also bc considered as part of a change in the form of patriarchy. While in fcmalc-headed households women escape the duties of serving their husbands, they also losc possible if not always actual access to the income such a man might have brought to the household. Lone mothers with preschool children are likely to live on social security payments. Even when in employment many women will not earn much more than a poverty-level wage if they have children. Women typically have custody of children after divorce and in practice look after them during separation. The absence of a husband does not mean that women arc freed from the work, responsibilities, and cost of child care. They still produce the next generation. While they lose their own individual patriarch, they do not lost their subordination to other patriarchal structures and practices. Indeed, they become even more exposed to certain of the more diffused public sets of patriarchal practices. Their income level and standard of living are no longer determined primarily by that of their husband, but instead either by the patriarchal state, if they are dependent upon welfare benefits, or the patriarchally structured labour market. It is the anonymous state and market rather than her private patriarch which determines the life of

The Periodisation

the lone mother. private patriarchy.

She substitutes

public

for

CONCLUSION Patriarchy comes in more than one form; each form can be found to different degrees. British history over the last century has seen a shift from a private patriarchy towards public patriarchy. This was a result of the successes of first-wave feminism in the context of an expanding capitalist economy. Rather than asking simply whether there is progress or regress for women, we need to analyse the different forms of patriarchy. First-wave feminism won many of its demands, and a major consequence was a shift in the form of patriarchy. It is inappropriate to see this as simple incorporation of women, but neither is it the same as simply a succcssful entry of women into the public sphere. REFERENCE5 Andrcwr. lrenc Osgood. (IYIX). Economiccypcrsof ,he wur upon wottren and children in Greur Britain. New York: Oxford Univcr5ity Press. Uan ks. Olive. (I 98 I ). /?~ces oj/*ttrinisttr: a srudy of /cministn as a sociul tt~o~ett~et~~. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Ucncria. Lourdes. &i Scn. Gita. (1986). Accumulation, reproduction and women’s role in economic dcvclopmcnt: Boscrup rwisitcd. In Eleanor Lcacock and Helen I. Sa fa (Eds.). W?~;i,,nen’s work: dcvelo~~ftrcvf~ and rhe division of labor by gender. MA: Bcrgin and Garvcy. Bcrgmann. Barbara. (1986). The economic emergence of women. New York: Basic Books. Boscrup. Ester. (IY70). WbmanS role in economic developmenr. London: Allen and Unwin. Braybon. Gail. (1981). Wottren workers in the firsI world war: (he Brirish experience. London: Croom Helm. Brown. Carol. (1981). Mothers. fathers, and children: from private to public patriarchy. In Lydia Sargent (Ed.), H’ornen and revolulion: the unhappy murriage of marxistn andjetninistn. London: Pluto Press. Brown, Colin. (1984). Bluck and white Brilain: Ihe rhird PSIsurvey. London: Hcinemann. Butler, Josephine. (1896). Persona/ retniniscences of (I greul crusude. London: Horace Marshall and Son. Carby. Hazel. (1982). White woman listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood. In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Ed.), The empire srrikes back: race and racism in 70s Brilain. London: Hutchinson. Centrc for Contemporary Cultural Studies. (1982). The empire srrikes back: race and racism in 70s &fain. London: Hutchinson. Cockburn. Cynthia. (1983). Brolhers: ma/e dominance und lechnoiogical chunge. London: Pluto Press.

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