Marxist feminism
Engels describes this situation as coincidental to the beginnings of forced servitude as a dominant feature of society, leading eventually to a European culture of class oppression, where the children of the poor were expected to be servants of the rich.
Marxist feminists such as Mary Inman established networks of likeminded members within these organizations that were able to lobby for women's oppression to be considered a key policy issue by the 1940s.
[9] Focusing on exclusion from productive labor as the most important source of female oppression, some Marxist feminists advocated for the inclusion of domestic work within the waged capitalist economy.
The idea of compensating reproductive labor was present in the writing of socialists such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1898) who argued that women's oppression stemmed from being forced into the private sphere.
Many of these women, including Selma James,[11] Mariarosa Dalla Costa,[12] Brigitte Galtier, and Silvia Federici[13] published a range of sources to promote their message in academic and public domains.
[15] To address this, Davis concludes that the "socialisation of housework – including meal preparation and child care – presupposes an end to the profit-motive's reign over the economy.
Attempts to address the exploitation of domestic labor were met with pushback by critics who argued that this type of gendered housework should be considered a social good.
In both works, the gendered division of labor, specifically within the domestic sphere, is shown to illustrate the methods the capitalist system exploits women globally.
Similarly, Gayle Rubin, who has written on a range of subjects including sadomasochism, prostitution, pornography, and lesbian literature, first rose to prominence through her 1975 essay "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex",[18] in which she coins the phrase "sex/gender system" and criticizes Marxism for what she claims is its incomplete analysis of sexism under capitalism.
Through these works, Marxist feminists like Hartmann and Rubin framed the oppression of women as a social phenomenon that occurred when hierarchies based on perceived difference were enforced.
[20] In an interview in 2013, Silvia Federici urges feminist movements to consider the fact that many women are now forced into productive and reproductive labor, resulting in a double day.
[21] Federici argues that the emancipation of women cannot occur until they are free from the burden of unwaged labor, which she proposes will involve institutional changes such as closing the wage gap and implementing child care programs in the workplace.
Whitney states, "The daily struggle of unemployed persons and the domestic toil of housewives no less than the waged worker are thus part of the production and reproduction of social life, and of the biopolitical growth of capital that valorizes information and subjectivities.
Traditional Marxist feminists remain critical of its reliance on bourgeois identity politics, arguing that intersectionality limits conceptions of class and power by overemphasizing the individual and not the collective proletariat experience.
[30] Intersectional Marxist feminism challenges the separation of class and social identity as being an incomplete critique of capitalism,[31] that reproduces bourgeois hierarchy.
The 2010s feminist movement in Argentina used Marxist feminism to address the relationship between various social and economic factors that contributed to gender violence in the country.
[41] Kollontai was a prominent leader in the Bolshevik party in Russia, defending her stance on how capitalism had shaped a rather displeasing and oppressing position for women who are part of its system.
[46] In keeping with her unusual position during her time, she also kept diaries of her plans and ideas on moving towards a more "modern" society where socialism would help uproot that of capitalism and the oppression that different groups of gender and class had been facing.
[47] Kollontai's most pertinent presence in feminist socialism was her stance on reproductive rights and her view on women being allowed the same luxuries that men have in finding love not only to be stable and supported, and to also be able to make their own money and be secure on their own two feet.
[48] This indication of the scope of revolution required to promote change states that demanding anything less than complete reform will produce inadequate solutions to long-term issues.
