Feminism: a new look
Events of the last two decades of this century have had great impact on women's lives internationally. The collapse of the political and economic systems of the postcapitalist societies as well as the application of neo-liberal economic policies in the industrialised countries and the Third World have directly effected basic aspects of women's lives. Cut-backs in state sponsored health care have jeopardised women's health. Elimination of state welfare systems and the social security net has accelerated the process of the feminisation of poverty. Economic accords such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Zone) also attack workers, which in most cases are women, by making jobs more insecure and by lowering living and working conditions dramatically. The increase in the foreign debt of the underdeveloped nations and the neo-liberal policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, etc. to recover the debt, directly contribute to deepening the already existing feminisation of poverty in Latin America,
This becomes even more serious for indigenous women and women of other oppressed ethnic groups who are either forced to emigrate to find jobs or who remain in their countries, but whose job options there are severely limited. In both cases, racial and ethnic oppression is yet one more aspect of their overall oppression as women and as workers. In the "new world order", indigenous women and other women of colour continue to be locked into the lowest-paying, most unsafe and insecure jobs - domestic service, maquiladoras (free trade zones), sweatshops, and various informal sector jobs,
Privatisation of basic social services has shifted the responsibility for personal wellbeing from the public sphere of the state to the private sphere of the individual or the family. Due to the growing number of women-headed households, the effects of privatisation have made and are making a particularly devastating impact on women, children and older women in all societies. Cut-backs in child-care, educational facilities, medical care programs and pensions increase the pressure on women to extend their work-day beyond the sphere of the workplace to include the concerns of the household and other family members.
To accompany the economic attacks against women, there has also been an ideological front. The rise of right-wing conservatism - the "New Right" in the US, neo-fascism in Europe, religious fundamentalism, etc. - has resulted in the limitation of women's reproductive rights, affirmative action programs, etc. Women have had to struggle against a growing conservatism which seeks to strengthen the traditional introduction * patriarchal family which defines women's primary role in society as wife and mother. In the US and Europe, recent attacks against gay and lesbian rights, bombings of abortion clinics, legislation restricting women's reproductive choices are just some of the ways conservative forces have sought to re-impose their perspectives and to dismantle the gains made by the women's movement over the last 30 years.
This issue of International Viewpoint will examine ways in which women are fighting back. The articles focus on women's efforts to build and strengthen the feminist response to neo-liberalism, privatisation, imperialism and right-wing conservatism.
This fight takes place in the context of a wide-spread decline of the organised feminist movement that developed, essentially in Western Europe and North America, in the 1970s and the conditions have changed since that period. Feminist ideas which have been taken up and disseminated, albeit often in an institutionalised way by governmental and non-governmental institutions, have had a broad impact in the developing countries. This has made these countries important testing grounds for the challenge of building women's movements that combine the tight for women-specific demands with a recognition of the importance of the fight against ethnic, racial and class oppression. At the same time these movements have to avoid the dangers of institutionalisation posed by the increasing network of women-oriented non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
This fight to build independent women's movements that relate more directly to the problems of all the excluded sectors of women (the poor, unemployed, homeless, immigrants) is also acutely posed in the advanced capitalist country, as the 1970s generation has increasingly lost its radical
The articles featured here give examples of these different but interlocked challenges -re-mobilising and rebuilding the women's movement in Canada; understanding the ditficulties of building a new women's movement in South Africa and the tensions created within the women's movement by the conflict between "institutionalist" and "autonomous" feminism particularly in regions such as Latin America where bourgeois governments have seized on the "women's issue" as a way of declaring their modernity.
This is only a brief overview of some of the many and difficult questions facing women activists today. We welcome contributions from other countries and other experiences, for publication in future issues. Penny Duggan and Nancy Herzig
March 1997#286 25
time for working-class women's leadership