Metadata

This Revolutionary Marxist Group (RMG) pamphlet provides a Marxist analysis of women’s oppression under capitalism, and addresses in particular the role of family, domestic labour and the reproduction of labour, and women as a reserve army of cheap labour. It also looks at the related social and workplace limitations, sexual repression, and psychological costs. The structures of women’s oppression, and the related social relations and ideology, are conservatizing forces that weaken and divide the working class. At the same time, the intersection of feminist consciousness and class consciousness is a powerful impetus to a political rupture with bourgeois ideology and reformism and suggests women will emerge as an important component of an emerging revolutionary vanguard. The document argues women’s liberation will come only through socialist revolution and that there can be no revolution without women’s liberation. It concludes with an overview of some of the central issues facing women, including abortion rights, child care, the oppression of gays, equal pay and work, and the socialization of housework, as well as a conception of how best to fight for them.