by Anne Summers
‘Equality’ may mean equality between men and women of the same class, although even this is dubious. It certainly does not entail any erosion of the complex hierarchy of inequality and exploitation that exists at present. In practice it may have the effect of further solidifying these iniquities, for their basic acceptability is reaffirmed by the fact that groups argue for access to the various levels of the hierarchy. It seems likely that women may gain a considerable degree of equality in the next decade as the present government has committed itself to this policy, and it is unlikely that a Liberal Government would reverse it. But what would women have gained? The right to be equally exploited alongside men? We know from current employment patterns for women that they tend to occupy jobs with low status and remuneration. If the 1974 equal pay judgement is interpreted in practice to mean that both sexes are entitled to an equal guaranteed minimum wage, the latter factor may change, but while the present sex-role ideology persists, women’s status can only alter marginally.
We have already seen in Chapter Twelve how women were mobilised during the Second World War to occupy the jobs created by the war effort or vacated by servicemen, and how they were susceptible to this temporary mobilisation because it seemed compatible with their sex-role prescriptions. What seems to have been happening in the past decade is a new form of mobilisation of women. The War showed that women could effectively be used as a reserve labour force because once their labour was no longer required, they could be returned to the home. Unemployed men are not so easy to hide. Nor will they leave their jobs so quietly. Since the mid-1960s, women have been called up to work in large numbers. In periods of recession they have been laid off in equally large numbers, but this to-ing and fro-ing between workforce and home has been largely disguised by the way unemployment figures are collected (see Chapter Five) and so its extent is difficult to estimate. But while the traditional sex division of labour exists, this kind of treatment of women will persist and their so-called equality of opportunity to work will be an elaborate device for disguising this new and convenient means of filling job vacancies when they occur and of hiding the real extent of unemployment when jobs are in short supply.
In Australia we could not expect a Bill of Rights or a greatly increased female workforce, albeit one receiving equal pay, to necessarily alter women’s cultural impotence. Nor could we expect the incidence of female poverty to be greatly reduced while children are still seen as a woman’s responsibility. The percentage of women bringing up children alone is increasing and many of the remedies being prescribed by advocates of equality will simply raise these women to minimum wage standard, elevating them from dire poverty to basic sustenance. They will be equal with no-one, except each other, and perhaps the much smaller percentage of men who raise children alone. The principle of equality reaffirms the various social and economic strata that already exist; it requires only that these strata expand slightly to accommodate some female entrants. This is not liberation.
Increasing the number of women at top executive or managerial level will do nothing to decrease the number of managers, and thus reaffirms the notion that there ought to be managers and people who are managed. This negates the notion of self-management. The ‘liberation’ of the women who make it to the top under a system of equality will involve the exploiting of men and other women. It will do nothing to help the attainment of self-management of individuals and groups, and the decentralisation of power, which would be a basic prerequisite for liberation. Nor would it remove most of the problems and disabilities experienced by women, which have been described in this book. Enabling women to receive a tertiary education and perhaps to get more stimulating and well-paid jobs will prove little consolation to the woman who cannot have an orgasm, to the housewife whose husband treats her as a domestic slave, to the mother who feels her family has rejected her. Equality is incompatible with changing sexist ideas and practices which are not governed by legislation.
Too often the demand for equality is in effect a demand that women become more like men, and the notion that men might have to start changing themselves and many facets of their behaviour is lost in the clamour for equal rights. To demand equality is to concede that the standards and practices devised by and for men are the most desirable and that these should provide the guide for female emancipation. This is what the Blacks have labelled ‘Uncle Tomism’ – the desire on the part of an oppressed person or group to imitate the behaviour and share the rewards of the oppressing group. It does not challenge the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. If the goal of equality really meant what it professes, if it was designed to abolish divisions of power and status, then it could provide the prerequisite for liberation. But in the political practice of present-day Australia, no such vision is implied. It is a pragmatic response designed to guarantee a reserve army of labour, to ensure that mothers’ work can be performed more effectively by increasing the necessary maternal services, and to patch up some of the patent injustices or outmoded social practices that women have pointed out.
The attainment of these goals will not of itself contribute to the liberation of women or men, but this does not necessarily imply that they are to be disparaged. If they will ameliorate any of the present disadvantages women have to endure then they are worth achieving. It is indisputable that increased rates of pay will benefit women in employment and are worth fighting for. Similarly, the greater availability of safe contraception and abortion will free women from the imperatives of their biology. The provision of child-care centres will release women from full-time motherhood and enable them to take jobs with easier consciences. Any and all of these reforms could have the beneficial effect of increasing women’s independence. This of course is most desirable, but it would have a double-edged result.
These reforms do little to erode the sexist division of labour, power and status. In fact, the present division of labour is endorsed by some of them. The provision of child-care centres may reduce the number of daily hours a woman need spend caring for her children, but it does not challenge the deeply entrenched belief that children are primarily a woman’s responsibility. At present this belief also carries with it the notion that it is positively dangerous for men to be involved with small children who are not their own offspring. Men are barred from entering many public playgrounds – even in the company of their children. Men are unable to adopt children except in the rarest circumstances and even then only if they are prepared (and able) to set up a household run by a middle-aged female housekeeper. Men are prohibited from adopting their own illegitimate children, even if the mother should make the child available for adoption. This means that a man who wishes to have children, or to share in the care of them, has to find a woman who will not only bear the child but who will continue to live with him. Should she leave, she takes the child and, in most cases, all rights to that child with her. Is a society that views all men as potential child molesters going to employ men in child-care centres? It seems unlikely. Yet it would only be by doing that, and by permitting single men to adopt children, that the idea of children being a woman’s responsibility would ever be challenged.
It is possible that the increased independence these reforms could provide for women might spark the desire for further qualitative change, but the ‘equality’ reforms, by themselves, do little to alter the relations between the sexes. It is how they are used by women that is going to determine their liberating possibilities. A woman who earns a decent salary, whose children can be cared for competently and who is freed from unwanted pregnancies is in a better position to contemplate and then fight for further changes than is the woman who has none of these. But it is a mistake to equate the changes themselves with liberation.
I adopted the device of analysing the position of women in Australia in terms of two stereotypes because it seemed to provide a faithful reflection of how women are actually categorised within this country, and to explain some of the divisions that exist within the one sex. I have concentrated o
n the God’s Police stereotype both because it is the prescriptive one – it encompasses the behaviour women are exhorted to adopt – and because it seems to provide a key to understanding why women so far have not wanted, or have failed, to alter fundamentally their social and political position.
As I have stressed throughout this work, the God’s Police stereotype has attached to it a status which acts as both a consolation and a compensation for the inequalities and burdens of women’s role. It has been easier for most women to seek refuge behind this status than to embark on the difficult and lonely task of trying to change that role. Yet the God’s Police role directs women into situations and activities that require them to be aware of and responsive to other people’s needs. This happens within ‘the family’, which is designated as their main sphere of activity, but women carry that same responsiveness wherever they go. Women generally possess a sympathy and a sensitivity, which means that they notice suffering and discomfort and unhappiness, and they feel compelled to try to alleviate it. In other words, women’s socialisation makes them potential allies, if not activists, with any movement of oppressed and exploited groups to try and end their oppression. But at the same time, the God’s Police role prescribes that their special social responsibility – the one that earns them the status – is to help maintain existing authority relations. Yet it is these relations that are responsible for much, if not all, of the exploitation and oppression that generates the suffering that women respond to. The God’s Police role contains a contradiction, which has important political consequences.
It directs women into desiring social change but it simultaneously prevents them from adopting iconoclastic means of obtaining it. Within the terms of the God’s Police role, women can be reformers but they cannot be revolutionaries. They can become fighters to preserve their role – what was described in the Introduction as having female consciousness – but it is far more difficult for them to become feminists, with the radical meaning I gave that term in the Introduction. Alternatively, many women who are self-styled revolutionaries or feminists wear the labels but do not act in accordance with them. All too often the activities of women within left-wing groups or parties are confined to servicing the male members of such groups (by acting as secretaries, seamstresses and tea-makers), to trying to prevent discord within the group (by acting as conciliators or intermediaries in the case of conflict), or to engaging in political actions and campaigns that are directly connected with the requisites of the God’s Police role. (Women are often active in peace campaigns or in consumer protection activities, which aim to make the housewife’s traditional jobs of shopping, cooking and managing the family budget a little easier and which, thereby, reaffirm that these are women’s responsibilities.) Thus even within avowedly radical movements, women’s adherence to the God’s Police role can act as a conservative influence and can deter or prevent those groups from posing a serious political threat to the existing order. This is recognised by the men of many radical groups – although they would not express it in quite these terms – and is one reason why they prefer to keep women from obtaining powerful positions within the group, so that they will not be in a position to steer the group towards moderate activities, rather than revolutionary ones – especially any that could entail violence.
Similarly, many self-styled feminists both today and in the past have not questioned the sex division of labour and power, and have confined their political activities to demands and programs that aim merely to make adjustments within that basic framework. This, as we saw, was what the first Australian feminist movement did and it was the reason, I suggested, why its radical potential never unfurled.
The recently arisen second wave of feminism in Australia has attempted to move beyond that framework. The women’s liberation movement in Australia was formed in 1969 and one of its earliest insights was that it is sexism that perpetuates the oppression of women. Its original political activities were formulated with the intention of subverting this means of assigning social functions and its attendant discrimination in denying women access to so many areas of social and political activity. Implicit, and sometimes explicit too, in much of the early activity was a challenge to the stereotypes. In the last few years the movement has grown enormously in size and has, inevitably, spawned a diverse number of groups, which vary greatly in political orientation. Since 1972 and the setting up of the Women’s Electoral Lobby as an overtly reformist lobbying group, the movement has had radical and reformist wings and there are considerable differences within each wing about the kinds of changes that are sought.3
With this increase in size and diversity has come a dilution of the women’s movement’s radicalism. Some groups are reproducing the demand for equality, perhaps rather more militantly than those mentioned earlier, but their militant methods will not alter the inadequacies of the goal they seek. Even the ostensibly more radical groups are having difficulty in devising strategies that could effect the fundamental changes they seek. There has developed an increasing tendency to view women apart from the overall social and political context in which they live; at the same time, the word ‘liberation’ seems to have been dropped from the movement’s title and feminists increasingly refer to the women’s movement, rather than to women’s liberation. This seems to signify a receding of the original radical goals. The sheer enormity of the many components of women’s oppression has produced a feeling of impotence, a despair of ever being able to change such a multifarious beast. This has led some women into a movement of separatism, to the setting up of all-women communes or embryonic rural communities, which are intended to provide a haven where women can live and do as they like, unhampered by the interference of men and the prescriptive adumbrations of society. Such women are constructing a survival site for themselves. It will give them time to think and to experiment with different ways of living, and perhaps they will be able to come back to the cities with insights that will suggest strategies for general social change. But this is unlikely. Isolation of this kind tends to produce millenarianism for it is in itself an instance of that kind of politics. Ideas for changing society are usually generated by constant experience of and interaction with that society.
Other groups of women have settled down to providing special services for women, such as refuges, health centres and rape crisis centres, which are intended to provide immediate relief from distressing situations or conditions that are directly related to being female. The enormous effort that is required to maintain such centres, and to try and obtain finance for them so that they do not become just another voluntary agency staffed by women, is such that those involved have little time for thinking about overall strategies for change. Even where the centres are established within a radical feminist framework, and are seen as part of a strategy of change in themselves, the experience of most centres to date has been that they are so inundated with suffering women that many of their original aims and intentions have been displaced, at least for the time being, while an effort is made to ameliorate the immediate problems of the women who have come to them.
The difficulties of devising strategies for radical change are endemic and I am not so presumptuous as to think that I can provide any solutions. All I can do is suggest that a thorough understanding of how and why women are oppressed is a necessary prerequisite. I see an awareness of how extensively the God’s Police ideology permeates our society – and even the women’s movement, including the liberation groups within it – as being part of this. If women start to recognise the constraints this ideology places on their behaviour and on their way of thinking, they will begin to understand how they have become accomplices in the maintenance of the existing order. Because they have performed, or have been expected to perform, a policing role on behalf of the current power structure for so long now, they are the ones who can expose that role. They can ask: do we need to be policed? Can we not all accept responsibility for our own actions? A social order that cannot function through the volu
ntary consent of its people, but which requires power imposed from above and an army of moral police to check that it is being obeyed, is evidently not a just or popular order. If women were to refuse to perform this policing function, the power structure would be less secure and the way could be open to making all kinds of radical changes.
This is not meant to imply that I think it is merely a matter of radical women identifying with the Damned Whore stereotype. As we saw in Chapter Seven, this division between women has been an important means of keeping them quiescent. If we see liberation as a process of eradicating the social and economic divisions between people, as a means of decentralising power and making self-management possible, then the stereotypes have to be transcended, not perpetuated by a new group of women. Women have to be seen as individuals, and as human beings, not as stereotyped representations within a moral dualism devised to perpetuate the patriarchy. To this end, it is obviously important for all women to refuse to countenance this dualism, and for those who perhaps pride themselves on their God’s Police role not to be party to denigrating those women who have been categorised as Damned Whores. Nor can they adopt a patronising or redemptive attitude towards their so-called ‘fallen sisters’. Both attitudes perpetuate the divisions imposed between women by men. Women could help negate these divisions by publicly identifying themselves with women in the condemned groups, not by romanticising them to heroic status or by blindly ignoring the poverty or suffering or discrimination these women usually have to endure, since this too denies their humanity and the reality of their present lives, but by identifying with them as women. Our common sex is a fragile bond – but it is all that we have with which to break down these divisions.
Once women start to understand how and why they have been divided from each other in this country, to see the purposes the stereotypes have been made to serve, then the possibility of eroding them begins to exist. Then, as Sheila Rowbotham points out, once we understand ourselves in relation to one another, we can begin to understand our movement in relation to the rest of the world. Then we can begin to use our newly acquired self-consciousness strategically. Then, the prospect of finding the ways to struggle for liberation will not seem so remote.