Feminism and the other half

Every March 8 is celebrated as “International Women’s Day”, and this is how this week ends. Strictly speaking, it should be called “International Women’s Rights Day”. This is the meaning of the date, to commemorate more than a century of struggle for equality in favor of a social group defined by its sex.

It is a story of the early 20th century, a time of deep social unrest associated with labor struggles at the start of the Industrial Revolution. In them, women began to identify an additional form of oppression, due to their gender. In 1908, the first mobilization in the United States was recorded, 15,000 women marched in New York to demand a shorter working day, better pay and the right to vote.

The first National Women’s Day was observed in the United States on February 28, 1909 from a declaration by the Socialist Party. In 1910 in Copenhagen, at a conference of more than a hundred women from 17 countries, mostly socialist leaders, the designation of International Women’s Day was approved, although it was not then no fixed date on the calendar.

In Russia, the first International Women’s Day was observed on February 23, 1913, and later it was designated March 8, the equivalent day in the Gregorian calendar. It was not until 1975 that the date became international when it was adopted by the United Nations.

The socialist roots of the feminist movement are indisputable. Gender issues were not foreign to Marxism-Leninism, especially for Engels. In his reading, economic change—the transition to an agricultural society and private property—was accompanied by a shift from primordial matriarchy to repressive patriarchy. He viewed gender oppression as a consequence of social relations arising from the regime of private property, a regime that included women as commodities. The exploitation of women by men was analogous to and derived from the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeois. The classless society would resolve both conflicts simultaneously.

As a feminist, however, Engels was more “utopian” than “scientific.” At the end of the 20th century, it became clear that proletarian emancipation did not mean the automatic emancipation of women, far from it. In other words, the really existing socialism has equalized, although it has not equalized, the incomes between women and men. And in all other areas of gender claims – civil rights, political representation, autonomy, cultural rights and identity – women have remained as subjugated as they were under capitalism.

Which emphasizes that International Women’s Day is an ambitious, truncated rights agenda still today. Specifically, the World Bank recently reported that only in 14 countries in the world – 14 out of 190, that is – women enjoy 100% of men’s rights. And this in the most varied categories, including pay for equal work. In Latin America, for example, the wage gap varies from 15 to 30%. According to Shakira, there is still a long way to go before women really make a profit.

Note that the wage demand was part of March 1, 1908, this illustrates all that is outstanding. Part of the problem is that significant segments of the feminist movement have retraced the path of material claims – law, rights, income – to adopt a distinctly identity and culturalist bias.

Resources are invested in monitoring the language, whether words end in a, o, e or x; Sometimes, we forget that in poverty, it is difficult to empower oneself. It’s problematic, the resources, material, human, communicational and symbolic, are finite. They must be spent rationally, the emphasis on culture neglects priority; is to start at the end.

To a large extent this mirrors what happened in socialist thought (and feminism originated in socialism) where Foucault’s constructivism killed and buried the historical materialism of Marx and Engels. With this, the order of priorities of claims is disarticulated, the essential is diluted in the accessory. I repeat, it starts at the end.

In the United States, awards are repeated for Woman of the Year, College Athlete of the Year, Brave Woman, and other recognitions, to trans women. It also happened on March 8. And it’s not that trans women don’t deserve to enjoy rights and social and legal recognition as women, it’s just a question of whether said agenda speaks for the feminist movement. Are these identical realities, equivalent problems? Do the two arenas belong to the same conceptual and historical universe?

Since identity bias does not reinforce the feminist agenda, it leads to a sectarian culture. This prevents the articulation of a broad social movement with the ability to convene beyond its natural constituency, a necessary condition for building successful reformist coalitions, those capable of generating social change. A political strategy that reaches men, the other half of society, is needed to support the equality agenda expressed by feminism.

Feminism is also a “men’s thing”, but the sectarian culture generates defensive attitudes in many of them and, frequently, leads to ad-hominem discourse (against men, literally).. As in Spain, where the Secretary of State for Equality and against Gender Violence, Ángela Rodríguez Pam, assured that “men do not need to go to the civil registry to be rapists, they they are and unfortunately in our country they absolutely are”. If the support of men is important to the equality agenda proposed by feminism, stigmatizing them will not help.

Moreover, it goes against the grain of history. The mobilization from below of the aggrieved manages to install a stake in public deliberation, but institutional change requires a coalition. The struggle for racial equality in the United States, the ninety years from the Civil War to the end of segregation, had the support of the Northeastern white elite, first Republican then Democratic . The establishment of the welfare state, based on the mobilization of the unions, was built with the support of enlightened conservatives. Except that it was initiated by them, in the Germany of Bismarck or in the Uruguay of Battle y Ordóñez.

And finally, the obvious: who legislated women’s suffrage in our democracies? There can be no successful feminism without the other half of society.

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