FEMINIST LETTER NO 17
To all feminists
When the big elephants fight, the grass gets trampled – but this is also happens when they make love!This saying originates from the African continent, yet can be applied to many areas, from the most intimate sphere to a global perspective. Where “big” interests are at stake, “lesser” interests lose priority. This could apply to many issues, such as children exposed to conflicts between adults, to women’s demands for higher pay against the background of male dominated trade unions and employers agreeing that men should top the wage scale, to issues such as the interests of minority groups in society compared to demands made by the majority, or to the right of small nations to self-determination in relation to the efforts of super powers to gain supremacy.
In politics, too, we can see the dance of the big elephants. The existence of two blocks in politics, a right-wing and a left, of conservatives and social democrats, are happy to name each other the enemy, while being in agreement on many vital issues, frequently matters concerning human rights. Refugee and asylum policies are one such example.
Even now, with over a year yet to go before the next election, the two-block scenario will be a salient feature of the political set-up. The issue as to who will form the government is to be seen in a strictly right/left, black and white, either/or perspective. Everything is to be subordinated from the very start to one over-arching principle by which everything is judged. The election should preferably be decided in advance and politics be unerringly predictable. There are now frantic attempts on both sides to project disquieting pictures of the enemy, illustrated with shifting per cent units in the social security systems, the importance of which are declining as unemployment rises. Any sum related to social security or unemployment benefits are based on employment-related income. If you don’t have a job, you are helplessly outside the system. Youth unemployment has today reached a higher level than ever before. And should you have part-time employment, that is to say you work involuntarily part time and you are a woman, then you don’t have enough money to live on, even if you have a job.
Debate on far reaching changes in society, the fact that we have economic growth that provides fewer and fewer jobs, that the ascendancy of a global consumer and market based economy leads to ever growing gaps inside our respective societies and between continents, this debate is conspicuously absent. Joined together, nailed to the spot by a concept of mutual enmity, the political parties that make up two block politics find themselves stalemate. They dance with each other in a political two-step where the basic step is “right-left”, and the result is - they are standing still.
Two- block politics impede political revitalization. When those of us who advocate another political dimension based on a feminist analysis, the main argument against us is that we would invite a right wing government. We upset the balance and disturb the dancing. We do not have access to the dance floor. We have not been asked for a dance by either Mr Right or Mr Left. Is not the right to take the initiative allowed?
Why should policies based on a feminist analysis necessarily lead to a right wing government? Does not this way of thinking presuppose that feminists are completely insensitive to and ignorant of all other injustices than those that are the most manifest expression of gender oppression? We who are feminists are supposed to be all for just wages, the right to secure and full time employment, the right to decide over our own bodies, to equal health care, to fair pensions etc etc, yet be entirely insensitive to all other injustices that exist in society?! Nor are we supposed to be knowledgeable enough to understand the background?!
We are supposed then not to understand that a majority of the poor in the world are women?! We are supposed to lack insight into the two-fold oppression facing immigrant women, looked down upon by the majority, while being oppressed in the group they belong to because they are women.?! We are supposed not to know that lesbians have difficulty in finding support for their specific demands, while homosexual men have gained the “freedom” even of being exposed in advertising.?! It is supposed that we are totally ignorant of the fact that disabled women often are the victims of sexual harassment and violence?! And we supposedly don’t have the faintest idea about the necessity for commitment to social and economic reforms and legislation to create a society that is sustainable both for people and for the environment?! Nor do we understand the role of the military and industrial complex in the development of defence and security policies?!
Neither are we aware of how creative women with business ambitions are impeded by autocratic men?! We are supposedly just a bunch of foul tempered women who have decided to wreak vengeance on men?!
Of course this not the way things are. The truth lies in quite the opposite direction. Together we have quite sufficient knowledge and experience gained from our own lives and those of others from the world that surround us and from other worlds. We are perfectly well aware of the fact that in our societies there are different forms of domination and oppression (rich/poor, white/black, hetero/homo(hbt), abled/disabled)and all exercise of power and discrimination work together and reinforce each other. However, this does not mean that we for this reason intend to disregard the structures and patterns that for so long and so thoroughly have shaped the whole of our society, that is to say the patriarchal power structures. And we do not intend to let others forget about them either. In fact we intend to introduce new steps onto the dance floor of politics. We are not going to be wallflowers any longer. How many of us have not stood or sat looking pretty, smiling bravely , in the hope of being invited to dance? A smiling mask that run the risk of stiffening in self –contempt if one doesn’t have the sense to get moving. And to find the strength to do it.!
The notion that men should have more power and influence, besides the right to control and decide over the lives of women, shapes the way society is organised. Wherever I put down my foot around the world the same pattern is to be found. With our actual biological differences as the starting point we are considered to have been “created” for living completely different lives with wholly different areas of responsibility and entirely different access to power and influence over the future. The position of women varies from country to country the world over, but the patriarchal pattern is the same. Hitherto it has survived every revolution in history, been embraced by every new society, flourished in every economic system and been strengthened by all religious dogma. Patriarchal power structures are indeed without exaggeration a fundamental feature in human society! .
To believe that the political parties that exist today, with few exceptions founded a century ago on the basis of the conflict between labour and capital, would embrace another ideological dimension, is presumably wishful thinking. From a programmatic point of view, feminism has done quite well. Several parties have included feminism in their party programmes. In practice, however, in the “doing”, on the dance floor, right- left still rules the day, that is, fair distribution based on a class analysis. This is of course necessary politics, but is patently insufficient if we wish to achieve equality in practice. Economic and political reforms that give more to those who have the least, do not challenge patriarchal order.
A fairer distribution of wealth does not necessarily give more power and influence to women. Fair distribution is a necessary ingredient, but if we do not choose our starting point correctly, many things can go wrong. It is still the case that when women go out to work and earn their own wages, this presupposes that other women look after their children, or the aged, on an insufficient living wage. Women as a group are still responsible, a responsibility that manifests itself clearly in insecure employment, limited working hours and unjust wages. Or that shows itself in growing figures for ill health, specially among women who have jobs on the condition it doesn’t show that they are mothers and who at the same time have a home and family life where it’s not supposed to show that they gout to work.
Some people believe that this is the price we have to pay for gender equality. I suggest that it is the other way round. It is the price we (women) have to pay for not being a gender equal society. Neither the work place nor the home is organised on the principle of the equal value of individuals. Gender stereotypes is part of the wall paper both in the home and at work. And naturally politics is no emancipated area either! However, since we need politics as a tool for shaping a society that offers freedom, we need access to the dance floor. That is why we have taken a feminist initiative. Initiative is power, to be used, not as a new power structure designed to last for 100 years, but the power necessary to break down the old, destructive, patriarchal order.
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