This year, the Cahiers celebrates its tenth anniversary. It remains ment with the employers and the one of a very few socialist-feminist magazines continuing to publish male workers that if women's jobs were automated, the women workers and flourish in the 1980s. To mark the occasion, Penny Duggan would be kept on. Moreover, equal interviewed two members of the editorial committee, Josette Desbois and Anne-Marie Granger, about the history of the Cahiers and the that people are paid the rate for the departments they are in and not for political situation of women in France.
the specific jobs they hold.
In this way, women managed to hold their jobs in the breweries, even if today they constitute only a quarter of the workforce. But there is also a possibility now for changing that.
The brewery employers calculate that with the natural departures from the workforce and the new hiring, in the year 2007 there will be an equal number of men and women workers.
However, the guarantee that this will happen is not going to be provided by the employers but by the
It is brewery workers themselves.
their solidarity and activity that will assure not only that women are hired, but also men.
The number of brewery workers has fallen drastically as a result of rationalizations and the introduction of new technology. Shortly after the end of the Easter strikes in 1985, the brewery workers at Carlsberg and Tuborg in Copenhagen went out on a 10-week-long conflict under the slogan "technology must make our work easier, not eliminate us."
The demand was for a shorter workweek and jobs for all.
The brewery workers did not win their strike against the bosses, but they did improve the solidarity between men and women, and open the way for a common union.
up
During the strike, common meetings were held for men and women, and there was a joint union strike committee. The unions organized together around all the strike actions.
Women played a very active role in organizing blockades in front of the breweries and in collecting money for the strikers. The brewery workers are convinced today that a common union will give them new strength, and that they will be better able to take on the bosses.
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Question. What was the feminist movement doing at the time you decided to launch the Cahiers du Feminisme?
Josette. The Cahiers were launched in November 1977. We took this decision during our national women's conference in June 1977. To try and describe the political context in which the review came out I think there are three elements we should remember.
First of all there was the impact of the feminist movement at the time. The movement had been able to lead some very big mass struggles. We campaigned on two subjects in particular, abortion and contraception with meetings, demonstrations and so on in united-front type campaigns, and also on questions such as rape. The women's movement was therefore a fairly powerful movement even though it was structured in different ways such as the MLAC (movement for freedom of abortion and contra-
At the time there were four to seven thousand women were organized in non-mixed groups. women's movement had also had an impact within the workers' movement. • On May 1, 1977, there was a feminist contingent behind the trade-union banners involving 5,000 women, not just intellectuals but also lots of women trade-unionists who joined it at the end of the demonstration.
The sixth working women's conof the CGT [trade-union led by the Communist Party], which took place at the end of May 1977, was a direct expression questions that concerned women in the workplaces. It discussed not only the super-exploitation of women workers but also how to challenge women's double sexual division of labour, the problem of contracep tion, sexuality, abortion and so on.
the questions raised by the feminist movement were reflected in the trade-union movement in the CGT, and in the CFDT [trade-union federation of Catholic origin, with a largely leadership]. there was a strong feminist movement.
The second factor was that the women's movement was divided on one thing - the question of links with the workers' movement. There was one current influenced by ladical feminism that was above all worried about being taken over by the trade unions and the workers' movement, and thus for them it was out of the question to have any joint activities or even to speak to the workers' movement dominated by men.
another part of the women's movement, in which we played an active role. We said that the point was not to be worried about being taken over but to do our best to encourage a convergence between the feminist movement as it was — white-collar workers - with working women, whether in the trade unions or not. We wanted to make this link on a feminist class-struggle basis. This re quired a constant battle by us in the women's movement and in the LCR.
The third factor is the overall political context. The March 1978 elections were coming up, which was a very important occasion for the left. In this context women were a very important electoral factor.
The traditional parties of the International Viewpoint 9 March 1987
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FRANCE
left and the bourgeois currents tried to address women and to use them in the elections. So paradoxically there was a very favourable context for discussions on all the questions raised by the feminist movement.
There was a plethora of cations which came out at that time. F magazine came out in January 1978, just after the Cahiers was launched. It was representative of an enlightened current, very much of its a series of questions raised by the feminist movement, as abortion and contraception, which gave it a certain impact.
At the same time all the different feminist currents were putting out their own journals. For example, Histoire d'Elles. It aimed to have a feminist viewpoint on scope of the current news, which was a different aim from most others. There were other journals that were more the expression of the women's groups, including the radical feminist current, such as Questions feministes.
Subscriptions to the Cahiers cost 75F (surface mail)
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Write to 14, rue de Nanteuil, 75015 Paris callers u feminisme
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OSTER: santan played an important role. How can a cahiers ( revolutionary organization participate du féminisme in and be representative of feminist struggles and how it can introduce changes in its organizational practice which allow women to fully in the organization all levels? That was what discussing and the answers were not obvious at the time.
### Overall, women's struggles considered as important not only in context of the anti-capitalist struggle for a socialist society. In practice it was a permanent struggle to get what we call the "feminization" of the daily practice of the organization - to have this aspect taken into account at all times.
I'll tell you one quite revealing story. The decision to hold a national women's conference was taken during find in the pamphlet containing the theses of this conference? An erratum: "Paragraph 10, Women's Struggles was unfortunately mislaid during the preparation of the definitive version of the theses for printing." This unconscious mistake is quite revealing.
We thought that there was a dual role for the Cahiers. On the one hand we could do our utmost to encourage this convergence between the struggle of women in general and that of women workers in particular, and on the other encourage the discussion within the LCR, be a motor and a stimulus for our feminist activity in general.
Q. What is your balance sheet 10 years later?
International Viewpoint 9 March 1987 with a quick survey of the political situation. Contrary to what we expectthe left's arrival in government, not in 1978 but in 1981, signal for an upsurge in struggles, but rather threw the workers' This was for a series of reasons. Number one was the policy of the reformist parties in the government. From this point of view, the aim we had of playing a particular movement and the debates that could have arisen in the workers' movement in an upsurge was completely changed.
women's movement struggles to defend the abortion rights than 50,000 people, a majority of whom were women, demonstrated in November 1979. Once the left were in power there was also a struggle to get the reimbursement of abortion by the social security, something that had been promised before the election. But we can't really say that there have been mass women's struggles during the last five years. We have rather been fighting step by step to keep what we had: the network
Paris, the Women's Centre, the Family Planning associa-
At the same time, in the workers' movement, there particularly involving particular case was in Spring 1982 when almost all the staff of Antoinette, the CGT's monthly women's magazine was sacked for not having followed to the comma the federation leadership's sectarianism to the CFDT and its
Jaruzelski's coup Poland. Women from the LCR, members of the CGT, and others, broaden solidarity with the Antoinette women in the union movement and in the feminist movement. Some of the Antoinette women subsequently group the "Flora Tristan Circle"
Anne-Marie.
we rediscussed the content of the Cahiers in 1983. At the same
La number of new involved in the collective. It seemed to us that we needed magazine that tried to look at some necessarily being tied to current events. This seemed to us true both discussions with other feminist currents and also for the discussions in the organization. We decided to focus each issue on a special feature, which would be chosen mainly in relation to what was going on, but not solely. They would be basically on questions we wanted to go into
For example, two years ago we had a feature on the question of new reproductive technologies, which at the time were not the subject of fierce debate as they are today. We considered that we had to discuss and elaborate these types of questions, and not leave them to be monopolized by the bourgeois press. We were one
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and copies please write to PEC, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreull, France.
of the first feminist magazines to take up the question.
What was the reaction to the Cahiers within the women's movement? Was there any hostility to a revolutionary Marxist organization own journal? Were we accused of perhaps substituting for a broader publication of the class struggle current in the movement?
There was never a discussion on the journal as such. At the time when the women's movement was very strong there were always currents who reproached us for claiming to be fully-fledged feminists and members of a political organization. We took up the quite frankly. For example in one of the first issues of the Cahiers in March 1978, we had an article "Women and Politics" in which we explained why we thought it was not only possible but useful, while not at all underestimating the contradictions and conflicts in being a feminist and a member of a political organization.
There is even less reason to criticize us for publishing our own journal as we have it could be a publication of the femin. ist movement as a whole. LCR women also been among those enthusiastic for an independent journ. al of the women's movement.
situation has changed, and the Cahiers with it. What is the
Yes it's true. Our role has changed but we are still a place for thought and discussion on all the problems women face.
We have played an important role on the question of
Many women in the women's movement as it was did not see this as a big question, it was for the socialist feminists, belonging to a political organization. At the beginning of the 1980s, when the government began to promote part-time work, some feminists saw this as a gain, a new area of freedom for as a right to choose. We role of the young women of the second generation African immigration in the developing anti-racist movement. When we look at the student and school-student movement, these young "second-generation immigrants" played an important role, and the women in particular. Our role is to draw attention, provoke thought and discussion. For example, the Cahiers drew the attention of our members to the question of the "increasing flexibility" of the workforce.
it involved all workers, it was tried out on women. I think we helped the organization to understand this, and I think this was very
Q. How does the editorial committee function?
Anne-Marie. except that we all have full-time jobs and we are all active politically. That separate from our activity in building the women's movement. We are all active in one way or another in the Family Planning, in trade unions, in women's groups, and that for us is inseparable from our work for the Cahiers. We should point out that the committee is completely composed of women! This is choice, it happens like that. We have some male contributors from time to time, but the committee is all women. We have already said that the journal should be led by women. At the moment, our readership is not the traditional readership of the other publications of the LCR. We can tell from the letters we receive and the sales we have. We also have the sing-
....
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ularity of more or less breaking even financially!
Q. How do you explain the fact that the Cahiers still exist when almost all other feminist publications France have disappeared?
Josette. First of all because of our conviction that women's struggles are not a question of passing fashion but a fundamental element of the Then because we are the publication of an organization. This might seem paradoxical but it is an important element. This gives us a distribution network, the minimum of back up without which any publication would be impossible. Without the material support of the organization, even at the financial level we could not exist. This is a political choice of the organi-
But over and above these purely material reasons, in a context in which the feminist movement is rather in decline, to be participating in a more global struggle allows us to escape the isolation felt by so many feminist activists. This political commitment can cause problems as we've already said, but it is a support to be part of a political organization which has an overall political perspective.
The other reason is that we have a political project: participating in building a mass autonomous women's movement. This explains why we work as we do, that we're not just intellectuals sitting in an office. In our workplaces, our trade unions, in different groups and associations we are continually working toward this aim. I think that these are the reasons why we are still going strong.
women, player an important role in showing the
¡eality of this
"choice". We sounded the alarm.
Al-Mitraga
Our work obviously had an effect because in 1982 the women's move-
A revolutionary communist review for the Arab region. Issue ment took the initiative to organize number 4 (October-December 1986) is now available. Contents
"Etats Generaux" on women and include: Tunisia — the lull before the storm; Dossier on Isdays, work. The two filled with discussions and debates, were attended lamic fundamentalism (second part); Nationalism and interby 2,000 women of very different nationalism in building the revolutionary workers' party.
experiences. This assembly was organized by a section of the women's
Yearly subscription (3 issues) 50FF; 1 issue 12FF. For subscriptions movement, from the Paris women's centre, the Family Planning and the
CFDT.
Josette. There are other examples.
We were among the first to note the
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International Viewpoint 9 March 1987
"Work like a man, and also
EASTERN EUROPE have argued for some time now his integration must be accompanied by a social and political process that leads to changes in women's situation in all areas, not just work outside the home.
These processes challenge tradi. tional relations between men and women in the family and personal ife, restructure how society care or children and incorporates mer fully felian ato day sexualty and eitore into that realm, to women control over our reproduc
THE CONFERENCE of the Soviet Women's Union, held at the end of January 1987 in Moscow, clearly showed that the bureaucratic regimes of Eastern Europe have desperately tried to hide behind their rhetoric on sexual equality for many years.
In the USSR, large numbers of women do the sort of jobs that men do not want - tiring manual work in industry, the building trade or agriculture. (In Siberia, some women workers on collective farms stagger under the weight of 60kg [132 Ib. ] sacks of food for the cattle.) In the mechanical engineering industry, 70% of the women workers are employed in unskilled jobs; only 1.3% have jobs with any responsibility.
With a population of 272 million, creche places in the USSR have not increased beyond 1.5 million. Alongside many other dif ficulties, women are forced to spend hours in queues each day to buy food and other everyday necessities. The following article looks at the context of women's daily lives in all the countries of Eastern
Europe that proclaim themselves to be "socialist".
JACQUELINE HEINEN
«We know perfectly well that nobody is going to liberate us from diapers or dishes, any more than from standing in those long lines and then dragging the groceries home. Besides, its normal."
"Say what you want about liberation, but the man's the breadwinner and the woman takes care of the of our grandnothers? Not at all. The first statement figures prominently in a 1983 article in Rabotnitsa, one of the two main women's magazines in the Soviet
Union. The second appeared in the
March 8, 1981, International Women's
Day editorial of Lacznosc, the official journal of the Polish trade unions.
These very same publications are quick to sing the praises of exemplary women workers, unhestitatingly tackle "men's while remaining perfect housewives.
editorial stated: "We know what we have to do: we want to work outside the home because we are not resigned to our role in the family and all the housework. We are not going to allow ourselves to be confined to the kitchen or simply taking care of children."