International Women’s Day, March 8, was the occasion for reports and commentary on women’s oppression ─ its continuation and its softening, here and there. A lot of the oppression stems from women’s traditional place in society as caretaker, a role often referred to as social reproduction.
Women, more than men, prepare and sustain people at the beginning of their lives and afterwards. Their work involves the birthing, nurturing, feeding, teaching, and sheltering of children; service in education and healthcare; and care provided to the sick, disabled, and elderly.
Women taking on these tasks may be vulnerable; the goods, materials, and support systems relied upon for social reproduction may disappear as the result of unstable external circumstances. Disruption leads to added burdens, troubles, and pain.
Meanwhile, women endowed with educational, financial, and political resources are better positioned to weather such storms than those whose lives are precarious.
The object here is to survey women’s oppression in well-endowed, industrialized societies typified by the United States and in far-flung regions dependent on, and yet resisting, the world’s economic centers. Women living in peripheral regions may face oppression that is more severe and different in kind than that experienced by women living in the developed countries.
Our plan is to present commentary in response to International Women’s Day on general aspects of women’s oppression and then to introduce the views of prominent feminist scholar Silvia Federici on dangers disturbing the lives of women worldwide.
Two clarifications are necessary. First, men can and do perform many of the tasks that make up social reproduction. But often they fall short, and until they are doing more, women are at special risk. As social reproducers, women receive either no pay or reduced pay. In wars and other calamitous situations ─ Gaza is emblematic ─ women and their children suffer and die disproportionally.
Secondly, this report does not deal with male violence against women. Rather, it attempts to shed light on political and economic factors contributing to women’s oppression, this by way of preparation for political action.
Undoubtedly, much male violence stems from psychological aberrations. These may aggravate adverse societal influences affecting men and boys. Our understanding of such processes is not so full, nor so available, as to provide confidence that this major problem will be resolved soon. For optimists at least, the political approach offers more promise.
Repression from all sides
Reports and statements appearing recently in connection with International Women’s Day, and consulted here, offer little or no commentary on the relation between social-class difference and women’s oppression. Or a haphazard manner of presenting material seems to preclude any reasoning process that might have detected class-based dynamics.
The gist of an Amnesty International statement is the complaint that, “Despite significant progress…the world has failed to fully deliver on all the promises. From rape and femicide to coercion, control, and assaults on our reproductive rights, violence against women and girls still threatens their safety, happiness, and very existence in a multitude of ways.”
The UN-Women organization issued a report marking the 30th anniversary of the 1995 gathering for women’s rights that produced the “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.” The Report documents both gains and continuing assaults. With much attention paid to the industrialized countries, it does mention wars, climate-change effects, and poverty affecting women’s lives everywhere.
We learn that “countries have enacted 1,531 legal reforms advancing gender equality, maternal mortality has dropped by a third and women’s representation in parliaments has more than doubled.”
The Report speaks of “backlash on gender equality” and “weakening of democratic institutions.” It provides scattershot observations such as conflict-related sexual violence increasing 50% in three years, women being three times more likely to do unpaid work than men, and sexual violence afflicting one-third of women during their lifetime.
The Pew Research Center reported on March 4 that information conveyed a year ago is still relevant. The Center had indicated that women made up 47% of U.S. workers, up 30% since 1950; more women than men are college-educated; one-third of U.S. workers in the highest paid industries are women; and “Women still lag in top leadership positions in business and government.”
The information seemingly pertains to the lives of politically attuned women belonging to the middle and upper classes and not so much to the lives of poor, marginalized women.
The U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics are an unlikely source of useful information on the impact of social-class differences on women’s oppression. They correlate data with occupation and poverty levels but not with social class. For what it’s worth, the Bureau did report poverty rates of women and men in 2023 as 11.9% and 10.2%, respectively.
According to the Center for American Progress, the earning gap between all full-time male and female U.S. workers widened in 2023; women’s median annual income ended up $11,550 lower than that for men. Also: the male-female gap is greater among part-time workers and “[t]he gender wage gap is significantly larger for most women of color.”
Farther afield
The danger capitalism presents to women’s lives shows dramatically in the larger world, especially as capitalism’s wars and economic sanctions ─ think Cuba ─ aggravate the toll of economic deprivation.
Turning Point magazine provides some perspective: “As we navigate the uncertainties of 2025, women’s rights … face an unprecedented assault … Patriarchy does not exist in isolation. It intersects with and reinforces other systems of oppression, including capitalism, racism, and colonialism.”
The magazine reports that at least 400 million women and girls have been abandoned to extreme poverty by predominantly male policymakers. By 2030, trends suggest 8% of women globally will subsist on less than $2.15 per day.
“The exploitation of women’s unpaid labor is a cornerstone of the global economy; underscoring the inseparability of patriarchy and capitalism,” as Turning Point puts it.
Highlighting the disaster for women that is war, Silvia Federici explores its capitalist origins. Excerpts from her 2023 essay, “War, reproduction, and feminist struggles,” follow:
“It is fundamental to speak today of war because it has become a permanent element of capitalist politics at the international level… [Wars are] a fundamental part of capitalist development, of the expansion of capitalist relations in the world …
“[Ours is] an era that begins with the debt crisis, which has been artificially created and which has affected a large part of the countries that were coming out of colonialism … [T]hey have been recolonized, above all through the policies of the World Bank, and of the International Monetary Fund … it practically forced the governments of the indebted countries to destroy and cut all investment in social reproduction… education, health, public transport, basic necessities, mass employment, and above all has forced them to change the direction of their economies …
“We women speak from the perspective of the reproduction of daily, social life, the very reproduction war seeks to destroy. So, despite the fact that men make up armies, women are the ones who experience the most devastating effects of war in their bodies, in their lives, and in their communities; they have children, are pregnant, and take care of the sick and the elderly.
“One cannot conceptualize this: the horror of having the responsibility of reproducing life at a time when everything that happens around you is destroying your life. That’s why I think a feminist reading of war is important.”
In November 2024, Federici commented on the war in Gaza:
“At a time of increasing capitalist crisis and inter-capitalist competition, development requires massive clearances, enclosures, the sacking of entire regions, as well as a policy tending to constantly reduce investment in social reproduction, benefits, and wages …
“The war Israelis carry out in Palestine is especially cruel for women who are responsible for the reproduction of their communities and now are left with nothing – no homes, no food, no means to reproduce, care for and protect their children and their families. …
“Evidence has been mounting that capitalist development requires a true war on the means and activities people need to reproduce their lives. Whether by financial interventions or military operations or, more commonly by both, millions are dispossessed from their homes, their lands, their countries, as their lands are being privatized, opened to new investments and extractive ventures by petroleum, mining, agribusiness companies. This is why today, throughout the world, there are massive migratory movements.”
The author translated Federici’s 2023 article. As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
CONTRIBUTOR
