Socialist Feminism

Definition of socialist Feminism

Socialist Feminism is an off-shoot of mainstream Feminism that emphasises the importance of class struggle in addressing social inequalities. Socialist feminists believe that pre-existing political, economic, and cultural structures must be challenged and rethought to create more fair and equal societies.

Socialist feminists draw attention to how patriarchy and racism are systematically oppressive structures that create structural gendered inequalities for women and gender variant individuals. According to them, capitalism is the reason behind all these oppressive structures.

The central focus of socialist Feminism is to highlight how capitalism exacerbates the detrimental impacts of patriarchal structures and how patriarchy fuels the negative gender consequences of capitalism. Therefore, to challenge gender inequality, Socialist feminists argue capitalism, as the root of all oppression, must be challenged and dismantled with a socialist economic system put in its place.

It must be noted that socialist Feminism seeks to challenge and dismantle other forms of oppression, such as racism, which compound and feed into the harmful effects of the patriarchy.

The difference between Socialist Feminism and other branches of Feminism is that Socialist feminists seek to completely restructure and redefine existing political, economic, and social systems which allow for the oppression of women and gender variant individuals.

Key features of socialist feminism

We already know the definition and the purpose of socialist Feminism. Now we will deepen on the critical features of this movement.

Intersectionality

According to feminist historian Linda Gordon, Socialist Feminism is different. After all, it’s intersectional at its foundation, at least to some extent, because it considers both gender and class.

The term was first used by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who studied how intersecting social identities in minority groups related to systems of oppression and discrimination.

Under this term, Socialist Feminists incorporated the Black Feminists movement in the hands of Claudia Jones. Jones worked on the theory that women of colour experienced oppression based on race, class and gender, calling this "Triple Oppression"³.

Jones's theory also highlighted how white women neglected to introduce women of colour in the socialist feminist movement effectively and proved deficient in this aspect.

Gender roles and the division of labour

Socialist feminists claim gendered division of labour is unnatural and a source of oppression. To foster more equitable societies, Socialist feminists aim to challenge social and economic systems which enforce gender roles. Below are some examples of socialist feminist critiques of gender roles:

Socialist feminists such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman considered the professionalisation of housework as critical to their liberation from the circumstances of work as a mother and homemakers.

Relationship with men

It is crucial to note that while socialist Feminism opposes patriarchy, it does not oppose men. It is a commonly misunderstood element of Feminism in general. In the end, socialist feminists don't hate men. Instead, they oppose patriarchy and capitalism as two oppressive systems.

According to socialist feminists, toxic masculinity harms individuals across society regardless of their gender identity. Pressure on males to conform to gender roles, particularly a gender binary, contributes to the crisis of rape culture and the normalisation of violence against women.

Socialist feminist politics argues that this normalised behaviour is another element of the patriarchy's gender construction designed to damage women.

So on, the socialist feminism theory advocates for a radical change of the oppressive structures to liberate women to end the negative consequences of the patriarchal system, which makes women economically dependent on male individuals due to an uneven balance of wealth.

Socialist feminism theory

Socialist Feminism is based on Karl Marx's ideas to assert that class oppression made women second-class citizens and, with the change of the capitalist system, they could regain their rights. Frederick Engels, a famous political theorist, echoed Marx, arguing that women would be oppressed if they kept their roles within the nuclear family construct.

However, socialist Feminism went even more profound, saying that gender oppression isn't due to being part of an oppressed class but rather a Dual System theory.

The concept that the cause of women's subjugation is systems connected to race, social class, gender, sexuality, and nation is at the centre of socialist feminist philosophy. As a result, socialist feminists are concerned with a broad spectrum of oppressions rather than only the sex/gender system.

However, socialists and socialist feminists tend to disagree with the emphasis of socialism on class politics, which is the core of its ideology, rather than focusing on other issues such as racial or sexual politics.

Examples of Socialist Feminism

The most remarkable example of Socialist Feminism is the books and essays that backed the theory. The most popular are:

^{Table 1 – Examples of Socialist Feminism.}

However, several movements put the theory into practice. We will deepen about them in the following section.

Socialist Feminism groups

In the last decades, many socialist feminist groups have aroused to fight for women's rights. Below, we will talk about some of the most remarkable groups:

Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses)

Fig. 1 – Organisation Pan y Rosas.

Pan y Rosas is a feminist organisation created in Argentina which advocates for women's liberation through a socialist approach. The organisation has 3,500 active members in Argentina⁴, most of whom are Worker's Socialist Party members.

Its foundation dates to 2003, the 18th National Women Convention in Rosario[6], Argentina. The organisation has already spread through the rest of Latin America and Spain.

Freedom Socialist Party

Fig. 2 – Freedom Socialist Party logo.

The Freedom Socialist Party is a Marxist organisation based in the United States. It advocates for racial freedom, women's liberation, LGTBI equality and universal civil rights.

This party was created in 1966 in Seattle⁶, at the peak of the protests against the Vietnam War. The organisation currently has sections in the US and Australia and members in England, Germany and New Zealand.

Radical Women

Radical Women is a socialist feminist movement founded in the US that believes in multi-issue organising around the needs of the most marginalised. It is the extremist wing of the US feminist movement.

It emerged in Seattle, United States, as a grassroots movement backed by a group of revolutionary feminists in 1967. In its early years, the campaign organised strikes against low wages and worked alongside African-Americans in social programs.

Socialist feminism criticism

Socialist Feminism is a revolutionary wing of the feminist movement. We now have discussed its theory and examples of groups representing this doctrine. Now we will explain all we need to know about the criticisms and flaws of its theory.

Socialist feminists created the dual systems theory, explained above, and it's the source of most criticism, as this theory fails to define other types of oppression, such as racial oppression.

Socialist Feminism has confronted the issues of class and gender head-on, but it has often been blind to race, sexuality, and disability. Critics say that to comprehend our society, other forms of oppression must consider, including the causes of inequality and the heterogeneity of women as a class.

To the detriment of other aspects of women's lives, such as sexuality, violence, or abortion, socialist Feminism has emphasised the economic part of gender inequality. The focus of this feminist movement has been on economic oppression because autonomous feminist struggles have been perceived as bourgeois and likely to produce conflicts between poor women and men.

Although socialist Feminism is intersectional, many feminists, particularly women of colour, criticised the movement for issues connected to racial equality.