WORKERS WORLD PARTY CONFERENCE
'In the 21st century, the majority of workers will be
women'
Excerpts from a toalk by Dianne Mathiowetz
Everyone's heard the phrase "feminization of
poverty." The thought might have gone through your mind,
"What's new about that? Women have always been among the
poor."
By definition, class society means a division into the haves
and the have nots, the rich and the poor.
Moreover, the subjugation of women was the first
manifestation of the development of classes. Women and children
were early forms of property; their labor was the first to be
exploited.
The inequality and powerlessness forced on women by the
weight of patriarchal concepts of female inferiority has been
magnified by the expansion of global capital. Of the 1.3
billion people living in poverty today, 70 percent of them are
women. The central reality of women's lives is that capitalism
equals oppression of unbearable consequences.
Hundreds of millions of women throughout the world have been
thrust into factories and plants to work for pennies an hour as
local economies are destroyed or disrupted by imperialism.
Yet everywhere, even as women become wage earners, they are
still responsible for raising children and maintaining the
home. This dual role defines women's continued oppression.
The poverty experienced by women today is unlike that of
earlier class societies because it is totally preventable.
Often women are poor just because they are women. Because the
ruling class institutes policies designed to keep women
poor.
Nowhere is that more obvious than in the United States,
where the level of technology and science is the greatest in
the world.
There is no reason for poverty to exist among such an
abundance of wealth unless it is deliberate and conscious.
In the same period that women joined the work force in
record numbers, more women became impoverished. Segregated into
low-paying, non-union industries such as clerical, retail and
service, women's wages are barely sufficient to keep a roof
over their heads, food on the table and the utilities turned
on.
For the growing number of women who are single parents,
divorced, separated or widowed, a personal situation or loss
can plunge them into an economic crisis that can last their
lifetime.
Families headed by women in the United States are 10 times
more likely to be poor than if there is a male wage earner
present.
The disparity of wages paid women and men is an overt
expression of sexism. When, on average, women workers earn less
than 70 percent of what men workers do, the bosses reap super
profits.
If today every woman worker were paid wages and benefits
comparable to those of male workers, the capitalists would
still be expropriating huge profits. Much of the capitalist
boom can be attributed to the super profits stolen from women's
labor.
Three years ago, the minimum social safety net provided by
welfare was torn to shreds by the combined mach inations of the
Republican and Democratic parties.
Roughly six million people, mostly women and children, lost
benefits that had kept them alive.
This represented a deliberate expansion of the pool of
workers who could be forced to work for the lowest of wages,
who could be used as a battering ram against unionized public
workers.
At the same time that women, especially African American,
Latina, Asian, Arab and Native women, are being forced to leave
their children at home alone or pay a high percentage of their
income on child care, a climate is being created to blame
working women for all the social ills.
Everything from low test scores among U.S. students to teen
pregnancy and drug use is put at the feet of mothers who
work.
The goal is to isolate working women from winning support
for measures designed to improve their condition--such as
comprehensive health care, affordable and available child care,
and protection from sexual harassment and domestic
violence.
From attacks on affirmative action to reproductive rights to
denying lesbians custody of their children, reactionaries are
attempting to punish women for daring to break tradition.
The bourgeoisie has brought women onto the stage of the
class struggle, out of their individual homes, into social
production--where they can organize.
The recent tremendous union victories in hotel, airline,
home health care and textiles were won by women workers in
large part, many of whom were people of color and immigrants,
both documented and undocumented.
Similarly, Workfairness has given voice to those affected by
welfare cuts who are demanding union membership, decent wages
and benefits for the work they do.
Workers World Party has developed a trained, highly
political number of women leaders, of whom we are justifiably
proud. Our candidates for president and vice president
exemplify that. In order to meet the needs of the coming
struggles, we must recruit many more women and devise campaigns
that speak to the issues facing working women.
At the end of this conference, we will sing The
International, the anthem of the world working class. It says
that "No more tradition's chains shall bind us." Written in the
18th century, when women were a small percentage of the
developing working class, these words carry us into the 21st
century, when women will be a majority of the working
class.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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