Utopian Feminism?

March 2024 Forums General discussion Utopian Feminism?

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  • #81600
    jondwhite
    Participant

    Notes from a feminist book tour – New Statesman

    Laurie Penny writes

    … I’m a utopian. I believe that the time will come when women have full control over our bodies and our lives, when girls do not grow up ashamed of our sexuality, when we do not have to fear violence at home and in the streets if we step out of line and poverty if we are not born rich. I believe there will be a time when the world is better and braver and freer than we can possibly imagine. And hey, maybe I won’t get to live in that world for very long, but I’m prepared to believe that some of the women who will lead it and build futures in it have already been born. …

    #90210
    ALB
    Keymaster

    No, this is not utopian. It's perfectly achievable within capitalism and is in fact being achieved even if slowly. Capitalism has no reason to discriminate against half the working class. In fact it is not in its overall interest to do so.

    #90211
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    ALB wrote:
    Capitalism has no reason to discriminate against half the working class. In fact it is not in its overall interest to do so.

    Surely it is in the interests of the capitalist class to keep down the cost of variable capital which is precisely what it's doing in this case.

    #90212
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Individual capitalists and capitalist firms may have an immediate interest in paying a section of the working class less than another section, but in the long run this is not necessarily in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole since this is to deny themselves access to a pool of potentially more productive (ie producing more profit for them) workers. That's why I used the term "overall interest". It's why of course the capitalist class in South Africa was opposed to apartheid and why this fell. I was suggesting that the same thing will eventually happen in the case of discrimination against women and has in fact already begun to happen

    #90213
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    ALB wrote:
    I was suggesting that the same thing will eventually happen in the case of discrimination against women and has in fact already begun to happen

    Not according to the Fawcett Society, the UK's leading organisation which campaigns for equality between women and men.The 15% pay gap between men and women is likely to get wider, according to warnings from the Fawcett Society.Speaking on national equal pay day, the Fawcett Society's chief executive Ceri Goddard said that reductions in the public sector could make the gap even wider."In recent years, progress on closing the gap has slowed, but as the age of austerity bites, we now face the very real prospect of the gap actually widening for the first time since records began," she said.Their campaign comes just two weeks after a group of former Birmingham city council workers successfully sued their former employers for not entitling them to the same pay and bonuses as their male colleagues, potentially opening the door to many other similar claims.http://uk.news.yahoo.com/gender-pay-gap-set-worse-060733072.htmlAnd there are some sections of the capitalist class who claim, unsurprisingly, that the gender pay gap is a myth:-http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-07-26/commentary/32859540_1_gender-wage-women-staffers-higher-paying-fields

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