Women
work
&
family
"ECONOMIC CRISIS" and "crisis of the family". These are two dominant themes in the advanced capitalist countries today. In Western Europe governmental policies are attempting to "solve" both by tying them together, encouraging women to leave work and stay at home with their children, thus reducing unemployment statistics, cutting state spending on childcare and reinforcing the traditional family structure as the best framework for looking after children. Such policies have to take into account the social changes which have taken place over the last twenty-five years. Despite the economic crisis, all statistics show that women in Western Europe are continuing to enter the labour market by millions. Studies continually refer to their presence as "an irreversible, lasting, widespread reality"! However, studies also show that this presence in the labour market takes particular forms. Women are massively present in the service sector, they are the vast majority of part-time workers and those working in other forms of "adjusted" work schedules such as "annual working hours" where work is concentrated at particular times of the year, fixed-term contracts, etc. For many women, taking such jobs is a result of the pressure they are under as individuals to find a way of the provision of publicly-funded childcare. Another specific factor of women's place in the labour market is also their generally higher rate of unemployment. It is this combination of factors which makes women a particularly vulnerable target for governmental policies aiming to hide the true extent of unemployment and cut state spending. The offensive being waged on the "crisis of the family" has both ideological and economic aspects. The crisis of the tamily - by which is meant the drop in the number of mariages, the rise in the number of divorces and in the number of children born outside mariage — is held responsible for a general decline in "moral values" and particularly the rise of "juvenile delinquency". This is apparently the result of the lack of a "safe, secure, loving environment" and "appropriate role models". Thus governments are looking for policies that will force people into the nuclear family which apparently provides this - despite the reality of child abuse and violence against women within the family. The responsibility of governmental policies, which have led to increasing unemployment, rising poverty, homelessness, lack of good-quality childcare and over-crowded, under-funded schools, is conveniently forgotten. A strong underlying racism in much of this discourse on the family should be particularly highlighted. One of the most striking examples of this is the recent report on the family in France which openly talks of the "decline of our France" because of the drop in the birthrate. In fact, if immigrants' children are taken into account, the population is growing by 300,000 per year, the highest rate in Europe!? Nevertheless, the French right is leading the field in proposals of pro-natalist policies, that is polisibilities through segregation into low paid precarious jobs and cuts in the state provision of services that make it possible to stay in the labour force and assume family responsibilities. In this context we have also seen, and can expect to see a continuation of, attacks on women's right to abortion and contraception.
The respon-
DOSSIER se of the women's movement, whose fight the during
1970s and
1980s for women's right to abortion and contraception and to the right to work was fundamental to achieving many of the changes in women's position, has been uneven. Nevertheless, the proposal for a "women's strike" in Germany for International Women's Day (8
March) and the interest in Sweden in the idea of a women's party to defend women's interests, show that women can and will continue to organise and seek wavs to resist these attacks. Such national initiatives are crucial in developing awareness of the severity of the attacks we are facing and mobilising
At the same time, we also have to develop an international response. It is clear in Western Europe, where governments
3rd European Conference for combining responsibilities for children with the the right to abortion necessity and wish to go and contraception out to work. It is increasingly impossible for
Paris, 25-26-27 March.
families to live on a
For more details or registration single income, more and more women are please contact:
single parents, and
Co-ordination Nationale des the change in social
Associations pour le Droit à attitudes has also led women to reject lAvortement et à la the idea that
Contraception, staying at home is c/o MFPF
4 square Saint-Irénée a totally fulfilling
75011 Paris, France or natural role, despite the
- 33-1 4807 2910 pleasure that
Fax: 33-1 4700 7977 they find in caring for their children. The impact of childcare responsibilities on women's working lives is demonstrated by the correlation between women's working patterns and cies designed to encourage
(French) women to have more babies.
particularly vicious attack on women is that being spearheaded by the rightwing of the
Conservative Party in
Britain which combines attempts to criminalise single mothers by holding them responsible for the "evils of society" and to force them back into a relationship of financial dependence on the fathers of their children.
there are thus ideological attacks on women's right to independence and freedom of choice and an undermining of their material posin those countries that form the European Union and those that are applying to join use the excuse of European "harmonisation" or "interference" in social legislation to justify their policies, that only the development of contacts and solidarity will make it possible to fight such attacks effectively. But the internationalisation of attacks and thus the solidarity required to combat them goes beyond the confines of "Fortress Europe", not only to Eastern Europe but As a step in building an internationalist women's movement at a European level, the 3rd European Conference for the Right to Abortion and Contraception is particularly important. PENNY DUGGAN C 1. Women in Europe supplement, no. 36, 1990. 2. Hervé Le Bras, Cahiers du Féminisme, no. 67, 1994.
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