What do Women Really Have to Celebrate?

NOMBULELO SHANGE and KALI NENAWHEN CAPITALISM is in crisis, it turns on women, people of colour, LGBTQI++ groups, and other minority groups. We have seen this throughout history.

After the First and the Second World Wars ended, economies were in tatters globally and capitalism had to repress women to regain its edge. Men returned home to find women doing ‘men’s work’, and the realisation that they were no longer able to provide for their families in the way society expected them to.

This created what Bell Hooks refers to as a crisis of patriarchal masculinity. Men were suddenly confused about their role, because the meaning they attached to being men as ‘provider’, ‘strong’, ‘head of the home’, et cetera, no longer applied. Nonetheless, men were able to re-enter the workplace, many employers still preferred to hire men over women, and women lost their jobs to make room for men.

As countries started to rebuild after both wars, women were convinced their main role was being at home raising children, while men grew the economy. The same is true for South Africa. At the end of apartheid, the SA economy was in ruins because of sanctions and because apartheid criminals emptied state coffers before fleeing the country.

Apartheid was ruthless to black men – many leaders were either dead, exiled, or in jail. A lot of the late apartheid liberation work was carried out by women and the youth. Similarly, just as women in Europe and America were pushed aside after the wars, women in South Africa had to take a back seat to allow men to take the lead in growing a struggling economy.

The global lockdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak is arguably the biggest threat to capitalism in our lifetime. The system is struggling because its core tenets have always been around profit and enriching white, patriarchal monopoly capital – not social well-being.

Many jobs have been lost and the rate of Covid-19 infections are staggering.

Women are the most vulnerable as they occupy the most unskilled jobs and face the greatest risk when it comes to job or income loss. Cases of gender-based violence are also spiking. In the first three weeks of lockdown, more than 120 000 people called the domestic violence hotline, double the usual volume.

We need to ask ourselves what we are celebrating when this failing economic system has shown time and time again that women are not ‘valuable’. On the surface, celebrating Women’s Day/Month is important because it is symbolic. However, a deeper look elicits reflection that should be part of the celebration.

Women are free from the political bondage that was apartheid; women in general have fewer structural impediments to entering and progressing in business and at work, and, to some extent, women no longer have to enter the institution of marriage and bear children to be significant – at least in theory.

But on the flip side, men are at war with women. Even when women are able to overcome the historical and structural oppression and make it into workplaces, they still have to deal with sexual harassment and being undervalued.

The oppression and violence that people of colour and women face were created by the capitalist system through slavery, colonialism, apartheid, etc. Capitalism never intended for women to benefit from the system, so, when we address the violence women face, we have to challenge capitalism too, because it affects every aspect of our lives, even in ways we do not realise.

Employers still prefer to hire men over women, women are paid less, and there are fewer female executives. Women still occupy most of the lowest-paid, unskilled jobs. We still celebrate and get excited when big corporations announce the first black female top executives and, of course, we should celebrate women’s achievements. But a certain level of outrage should be directed towards these companies for not being more inclusive sooner.

One of the oldest perspectives in sociology is the conflict perspective. It points out that part of the explanation for the plight of women is the division of males and females into producers and reproducers, respectively.

Producers must work for their families to have access to food, clothes, and shelter, while reproducers have to bear children and care for those children.

Societies by and large seem to believe that the success of the family, business, politics, and communities rests upon both males and females respecting this division. This arbitrary and often impractical demarcation has been debunked by feminist theorists such as Judith Butler. Butler reminds us that these divisions of labour are socially constructed, not based on any absolute facts and can be changed, dismantled, and reconstructed in different ways. However, the view of women as reproducers and nurturers has persisted even in the workplace, where male chief executive officers and managers far outnumber their female counterparts.

With this in mind, as well as the heartless killing of women by men in different contexts, one is forced to ask once again – are women really free? Can women ‘fit’ into a failing capitalist system that has never intended for them to be active members? What are we really celebrating this Women’s Month?