by Anne Summers
The God’s Police stereotype has also included the redemptive idea that women could and should police other women.
These stereotypes are the product of a society in which sex is viewed as a major means of categorising people and assigning their social functions. The justificatory ideology – sexism – has been a major component of Australia’s social structure, and an exploration of sexism is one of the principle concerns of this book. Although the ideology and practice of sexism will be discussed continually throughout this book it is necessary to say a little about it now for it is often misunderstood.
[Sexism] refers to a division made between people on genital/ sexual grounds which goes beyond the simple biological classification and into the area of suppositions about personality, ability, equality etc. It is about a series of alleged differences extrapolated from one basic biological difference … it seems to me to be sexist to say that women are ‘naturally’ emotional, men are ‘naturally’ rational, even though it may be true and non-sexist to say that because of sexist expectations in our society men and women may be more inclined in either of these directions.4
Sexism is a sex/political means of identifying and then dividing people. Often it is confused with ‘male chauvinism’ and used as a synonymous term. Sexism does not mean male dominance – although the political system of male dominance, patriarchy, is the usual form of sexism in this era. Men occupy dominant positions in all important political, economic and cultural institutions and are able to control the lives of some other men and all women. This is not a necessary corollary of sexism: a matriarchy or a gynarchy would also be sexist. It is always necessary to look at the power structure that upholds and reinforces a sex distinction and to see who benefits from it.
In practice sexism, like racism, is almost always discriminatory. Such a division of society could not be maintained unless one group had the power to enforce it, and that it chooses to enforce it generally means that considerable benefits derive to members of the powerful group from the division. The discrimination of racism is usually quite patent even though the economic reasons for race discrimination are always glossed over with ideologies that supposedly rationalise the imputed inferiority of the oppressed race.
Two distinct but overlapping processes coincide in perpetuating such oppression. The ruling group constructs an ideology to justify the validity of its own political, economic and cultural practices and then universalises it, that is, decrees that it ought to be subscribed to by all people, even those outside the ruling group. It then labels as inferior, and not deserving of its own status, those who do not conform to its dictates. At the same time it refuses to recognise, or to give equal status to, the culture of the oppressed group. This is where the differences matter. It is not possible for the two (or three or however many) groups to coexist with equal power and status. The ruling group protects its power, and continues to reinforce its convictions of its own superiority, by denying the other group access to that power or status. And this power is maintained partly by convincing the other group that its own culture is worthless. Such power can only be maintained while the ruling group controls the major economic resources of society and is thus in a position to enforce the subordination of the other group, which must accede to the ruling group’s ideology in order to exist.
In Australia the overall control system is that of a capitalist economy and the ruling group is the class that controls the means of production. It is composed entirely of white men. Its ideology justifies its own class, race and sex position in order to perpetuate the capitalist system and it maintains its class, race and sex superiority through the political, economic and cultural institutions of society. Both race and sex ideologies were transported from England with the capitalist system, but they have been maintained in Australia with a distinct and explicable fervour. The ideology of racism was used to justify the invasion of the continent and the dispossession of the original inhabitants of their land. The ideology of sexism has served several varying purposes in Australia’s economic development and these are explored at some length in the second part of this book.
These mediating ideologies of racism and sexism are generally overlooked, or paid insufficient attention, by Marxists who concentrate entirely on class relations and class ideology. But it seems likely that for two large groups in Australia, women and Aborigines, class ideology is relevant only in a very generalised sense and its relevance is mediated through the more specific ideologies of race and sex. Members of these groups have a primary self-identification as women or as Blacks, which precedes class identification. Both groups are specifically oppressed through the use that society makes or has made of their sex or race, uses that may not always be directly related to the maintenance of the capitalist system. Those theories of capitalism that underrate the importance of these mediating ideologies are neglecting vital areas of subversion and revolt.
The class struggle has only limited relevance to people who are largely outside it even when they are conscious of being exploited. For that exploitation is a function of their sex or race. That is the consciousness they already have or that which they are more likely to arrive at. Having attained that consciousness they are then in a better position to be aware of the wider system of control that perpetuates their specific oppression. But the ideologies of sex and race are powerful and pervasive. They are continually reinforced at every level of society. The manner in which they are upheld, even by those who are themselves oppressed and exploited, is a measure of the intricate nexus of repression that occurs within capitalism and prevents the massed opposition to capitalism of all oppressed groups. The working class, as defined by Marxists, is exploited within the capitalist system, but its members are preponderantly white men, and they uphold the values of both sexism and racism. And they benefit considerably from upholding them: they protect their jobs by keeping Australia white and they preserve their own little domain of personal power and sustenance by living in bourgeois families. Similarly women and Aborigines apply racist and sexist values to each other – and to themselves. Thus the exploration of the ubiquitousness of these mediating ideologies is important not only as a necessary task in itself, but for gaining an understanding of the ways in which their perpetuation prevents revolt against the larger system.
I will concentrate on sexism and I want to stress that to concentrate simply on its most blatant discriminatory manifestations tends to obscure its pervasiveness and hence its power. To point to such things as wife-bashing, the refusal to give women the right to abortion or to allow them equal wages with men is indeed to illustrate patriarchal power in a sexist society. But such examples are not necessary consequences of sexism and concentrating on them tends to disguise the more subtle and intricate textures that are the basis of sexism and that lead to these extreme discriminations. It is possible to envisage a benevolent patriarchy or one that wants to alter the present content of one or both sex roles. In such a system women could have equal legal rights and access to the cultural, economic and political institutions of society. But unless that society had also abandoned a sexual division of labour in every area of existence, most especially in family relationships, then it would still be sexist. A reversal of the current division, whereby men were housekeepers and women went out to work, would be sexist – and it would not be long before such a society generated its specific ideological justification for this particular form of ascribing social functions. Men and women sharing roles that are currently performed by one sex only would only be non-sexist in so far as all assumptions and expectations about what men (or women) should ‘normally’ do disappeared. But to see sexism as only manifested in the work (in families and outside) that people do is to neglect the vast array of cultural assumptions, prejudices, myths, fears and other ideologies that shore up this ideology and are embodied in practically every institution, ritual and pastime in this country.
I will give just a few examples. The Christian Church is based absolutely on sexist assu
mptions that have been given the authority of divine law: the male God with a saviour son borne by a woman (there is no need for gods to be born in the way mortals are) has imposed a basic pattern of male spiritual and political power contrasted with women’s purely reproductive function. Introduction rituals in Australia dictate that men shake hands with each other when meeting for the first time – women do not shake each other by the hand and they choose whether or not to extend their hand to men. A national pastime – drinking – has distinct rules, rights and conventions for each sex.
Sexism is a system of oppression within capitalism and, like the larger system, it is neither static nor uniform in its manifestations. Sheila Rowbotham writes:
Oppression is not an abstract moral condition but a social and historical experience. Its forms and expressions change as the mode of production and the relationships between men and women, men and men, women and women, change in society. Thus, while it is true that women were subordinated to men before capitalism and that this has affected the position of women in capitalist society, it is also true that the context of oppression we fight against now is specific to a society in which the capacity of human beings to create is appropriated by privately owned capital and in which things produced are exchanged as commodities.5
The various permutations that have occurred in the oppression of women in Australia are traced in Part Two.
Oppression can be explored and evaluated by outlining the many dimensions of the structure, for example, of relations between the sexes, and its supporting ideology and by attempting to assess the extent to which the less powerful group complies with its situation of powerlessness. Both measures are necessary if we are to understand the nature of that oppression and the means by which it changes. Sexism differs from other systems of oppression because of the close relations between women and men. Women’s oppression is often not seen or felt as such because, unlike most other political systems, many members of the two groups are bound to each other by ties of mutual affection. The ideology of ‘the family’ prescribes that the sexes love each other and such love, and the institution on which it is based, often disguise the existence, or the extent, of women’s oppression. A further difference in women’s oppression also stems from this close relationship: the women who are most compliant with sexist norms are awarded certain compensations. These are culturally determined, and in Australia the main compensation has been to give the maternal role a revered status. This status is largely a sham since it is superficial and is by no means an adequate compensation for the demands of the role. But most women have accepted it for it has enabled them to attach value to an activity that is unique to their sex and thereby to wear the role with pride.
For most of Australian history this compensatory status has been sufficient to quell whatever restlessness many women must have felt. It has only been during periods when the demands of motherhood have been completely out of tune with other social forces that revolt has occurred. Mostly this has taken the form of a demand to alter the content of the role or else to increase its status in recognition of an expansion of the role which has already occurred. But occasionally it has been a revolt against the role itself and it is these occasions that really threaten to undermine sexism. Such a revolt can be named feminism.
Feminism has to be distinguished from female consciousness. Female consciousness describes the first situation: it entails a heightened awareness among women of their sex roles. But it is awareness coupled with acceptance of sexism. Women with female consciousness wish to preserve their roles as wives and mothers and the special and separate status they carry. Such female consciousness can often lead to militant action if women feel that their effective performance of those roles is being threatened. Women have formed Housewives’ Associations and Consumer Protection Groups and have been active in resident action groups and other community activities in attempts to prevent encroachments on what they cherish as their unique contribution to society. This female consciousness is active acceptance of female roles and differs from the more passive acceptance that characterises most women who comply with sexist norms.
Feminism is more difficult to define since its meaning has altered in recent years. At the turn of the century, feminism meant support for women’s rights. The rights sought were defined differently in different countries and in Australia were rather circumscribed. The early feminists here sought to extend the area of women’s participation in society but, as Chapter Eleven argues, they did not seriously wish to challenge the sexist status quo. Since the rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 1960s, feminism has been radicalised to mean rejection of sexism and sex roles, and what radical feminists seek today is the freedom to decide what to do with their lives without the determining mantle of sex limiting or impeding their opportunities. The older form of feminism has also resurged with large numbers of women demanding an expansion of existing sex roles.
Whether this new wave of feminism will be able to alter significantly the sexist status quo remains to be seen. The radical feminists have correctly identified the sexist division of societies as the major way in which women are oppressed, but this recognition needs to be coupled both with a comprehensive understanding of the complex and subtle ways in which sexism permeates every facet of social and economic organisation, and with a revolutionary strategy for undermining it. I see this work as contributing to the first requirement: this book assumes a critical stance towards sexism and concentrates on important events, issues and ideas in the development of sexism in Australia.
This book has taken almost four years to research and write. During that time I have changed my ideas, not only about the book’s subject matter but also about how it should be written. When I began, I was very concerned to present an extensively documented case for my contentions and although I felt unfettered by the traditional boundaries of academic research, I was nevertheless still convinced of the need to adhere to its conventions of scholarship. I have recently felt increasingly that this is not so necessary, especially when it can often lead to omitting important insights and observations simply because they cannot be incorporated within an academic framework. Thus, the chapters written most recently diverge considerably from the patterns I established with those I wrote first. This will be evident to the reader. But since I see my work as reflecting my ideas at any given time, I saw no need to rewrite these earlier chapters to give the book a uniformity of style or method.
What follows is the result of four years of thinking and writing and engagement in numerous political activities. The latter, especially, have profoundly influenced me. I have been involved in three major political activities in the last three years: the establishment of Refractory Girl, a women’s studies journal, which was begun in December 1972; the squatting movement in Victoria Street, Kings Cross, as part of a protest against the tearing down of inner-city low-rent housing areas to be replaced by high-rise speculative office or hotel developments; and the setting up of Elsie Women’s Refuge in Glebe in March 1974. Each of these involvements has been the result of convictions I have had about the economic and cultural needs of disadvantaged groups in our society, the majority of whom in each case have been women. But my ideas have been altered to some extent as a result of these practical involvements. I see the constant interaction of ideas and action as being necessary to my self-development and my struggle against oppression in the various forms it takes in Australian society. I hope that this book will provide ideas and incentive to others who are similarly engaged in such struggles.
*The term feminist is often misunderstood, especially as its meaning has shifted in common usage in recent years: it will be defined more fully later in this Introduction.
*A revised edition of this book has recently appeared. See S Encel, N MacKenzie & M Tebbutt, Women and Society, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1974.
PART ONE
The nexus of oppression
Within a supposedly free and independent Australia, women are
a colonised sex. They are denied freedom of movement, control of their bodies, economic independence and cultural potency. This oppressed state derives from the status of ‘the family’ in Australia and the responsibilities assigned to women within that institution.
CHAPTER ONE
A sexist culture
The very concept of a ‘female’ culture is a bewildering and problematic one. Once we have extended our idea of culture beyond the conventional conception of it as a deposit of intellectual and artistic artefacts, we can see that women can legitimately claim a ‘culture’ of our own – an experience of living which is, in some respects, characterized by wholeness where the male culture is not, which has always been an important ingredient of human life, and which has never been acknowledged in any intellectual tradition. On the other hand, the female condition has never been a self-determined state, so there is nothing we can lay claim to as our own.
Eileen Haley, ‘Crossing the sexual frontier’,
Refractory Girl, no. 1, Summer 1972/73.
The experiences of women in Australia are closely tied to family life. More so than with men, the lives of most women are defined by their family relationships, and these relationships, and the conventions and prescriptions they give rise to, need to be explored if we wish to try and understand the position of women in this country. Family relationships differ for individual women and are governed by objective factors such as class and race, and by various subjective forces. However, the convention among social scientists and other analysts has been to obscure varieties of family relationships under an embracing institutionalised label: ‘the family’. This label disguises differences between individuals and between the sexes in their experiences and perceptions of family relationships. Yet it is probably the illusion of uniformity produced by this label that has enabled ‘the family’ to assume its paramount place in the assembly of revered Australian institutions and has ensured that it receives at least a perfunctory reference in every piece of writing about contemporary Australian culture. Donald Home, for instance, writes, ‘The “home” occupies as central a position in Australian life as land in a peasant community except that it is disposable after death; there can be an equally strong sense of family, except that as children become adult the family group dissolves, the children go their own way’.1 An almost identical view is presented by Craig McGregor: ‘Australians are a very family-minded people. The family forms a very tight social unit and its members often count for more than close friends even after the original family circle has broken up and its younger members have set up homes of their own’.2