Suchergebnisse

A response to the discussion of the oppressed status of women under capitalism by Patricia Connelly (see abstract elsewhere in this section) & Michelle Barrett (Women's Oppression Today, London, 1980). Issues challenged in Barrett's analysis include her view of the impact of M labor unions on sex segregation in the labor market, & her implication that women's subordination is "crucial" but not "essential" to capitalist production. Theoretical opposition to Connelly's argument is based on her attempt to minimize the effects of women's biology in analyzing capitalist modes of production. It is argued that economic equality of the sexes will only be realized with the end of capitalism. D. Dunseath.

Building on & profiting from a wide range of feminist & Marxist analyses, ways are suggested to move beyond the classless sex of most feminist writing & the sexless SC of most Marxist works to a political economy that recognizes sexual divisions as integral to theoretical development & to capitalism. Recognizing that many aspects of the sexual DofL predate capitalism, it is argued that there is a sexual DofL particular to capitalist society. Because capitalism is premised on free wage labor & separation of most aspects of worker's reproduction from the production process, women's reproductive capacities separate them from the production process for childbearing work. This establishes the basis for an elaboration of sex differences, ie, for a sexual DofL that subordinates women & pervades all levels of activity under capitalism. Such segregation also fundamentally divides SCs. To recognize the differences in F & M reproductive capacities, eg, that women have babies & that this fact must be integrated at all levels of theoretical abstraction, is not to resort to a biological explanation of women's subordination or to call for an elimination of women's childbearing responsibilities. Physical capacities do not exist autonomously from power structures & productive processes; nor are they beyond human control & manipulation. The reworking of theory required must include an analysis of biology that is historical, materialist, & dialectical. It must recognize that the Wc comes in two sexes. Modified AA.

In recent years, Canadian women have been flooding into the labour market, into employment and unemployment. While the steadily rising participation rate of women has been carefully documented and discussed, the more dramatic increase in the female unemployment rate has been largely ignored or dismissed as unimportant. To the extent that these patterns have been analysed, the growing number of women searching for paid work has been explained primarily in terms of changing female aspirations and preferences and has been viewed by some as dangerous, as a threat to male employment. Too many women choosing to work (and, as a corollory, choosing not to have babies) is often seen to be the main cause of the increase in both male and female unemployment. More effort has been directed toward dismissing women's unemployment as insignificant — because they do not need to work, because they are secondary workers, and because they claim unemployment primarily to gain eligibility for benefits, toward explaining away women's unemployment, than toward investigating the economic conditions which give rise to these massive changes in women's labour force behaviour.

L'article examine les emplois des canadiennes principalement à partir des données du recensement. Malgré le changement des attitudes par rapport au travail féminin et l'accroissement considérable de la participation féminine dans la force du travail, la ségrégation professionnelle demeure virtuellement la même entre 1941 et 1971. La plupart des femmes au travail continuent àêtre concentrées dans quelques emplois, emplois à prédominance féminine. Les femmes se joignent à la force du travail par nécessitééconomique et on peut établir une relation entre l'accroissement de la participation féminine et de la disparitééconomique par une analyse des mouvements dans la distribution du revenu au cours des années et dans le nombre recevant un revenu dans chaque famille. Finalement, le bas salaire des femmes au travail et l'écart grandissant entre les hauts et les bas revenus ont été camouflés par l'énorme croissance du nombre de femmes mariées dans la force du travail.Using primarily census data, we examine the jobs held by Canadian women. Despite changing attitudes to women's work and despite the substantial growth in the labour force participation of women, occupational segregation stays virtually unchanged between 1941 and 1971. Most working women remain concentrated in a few jobs, jobs which are dominated by female workers.Economic need has been chiefly responsible for their joining the labour force, and a link can be established between increasing female participation and growing economic disparity by analysing shifts over the years in income distribution and in the number of income recipients per family. Finally, both the low pay for women workers and the growing disparity between high and low individual income recipients have been camouflaged by the tremendous growth in the number of married women in the labour force.

Seeking strategies to guide women in fundamentally altering the structures, conditions, & relations that serve to maintain inequality, The articles in this issue (see abstracts in SA 39:1) raise the questions of where, & under what conditions, class, race, ethnicity, sex, or region become the more salient factors or the divisive factors in relation to collective action, & how they can become the basis for change. Modified AA