Women’s Day and the Market Economy

With a lot of excitement, my daughter approached me to inform me that some of the apps on her phone were offering fantastic deals on various items in observance of Women’s Day. Even though those things weren’t really helpful to me, she persisted in pushing to induce me to buy them merely because they were currently on sale.

Celebrated annually on March 8th since 1911, International Women’s Day (IWD) honors the social, cultural, political, and economic accomplishments of women worldwide. Apart from commemorating the achievements, this day is an important reminder to act to promote women’s equality.

 There is usually a clamour for women’s emancipation as March 8th draws near, and the market floods with deals, discounts, vouchers, and other profitable choices to entice women. Additionally, this trend is used on Mother’s Day and Daughter’s Day to attract female clients and make them feel valued. The dilemma that arises here, though, is whether women are treated with genuine respect or if, in the current outgrowing market economy, they are seen as profitable customers who should be treated equally in order to increase sales and revenue.

Between the 1840s and the 1880s, Marx and Engels refined their understanding of the historical and social nature of reproduction. The changing social relations of production and reproduction were expounded in Friedrich Engels’ 1884 work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.
According to Engels, capitalism exploited the productive domain of family work under feudalism for its own purposes. With the enclosure of common lands and the reliance on salaries alone for rural survival, women’s labor in subsistence farming, spinning, handicrafts, livestock rearing, and other agricultural tasks gave way. Engels maintained that household management lost its public character under capitalism. Society no longer cared about it. The wife became the head servant and was barred from all social production, turning it into a private service. The class relations of capitalism upheld the gender hierarchies that served as the foundation for women’s oppression; gender subordination was neither physiologically innate nor divinely bestowed.

Because of its centrality to capitalism, this patriarchal family was seen by Marxist feminists as a locus of oppression, which has to be eliminated. As an alternative, gendered labor relations inside the family should be ingrained. In order to fight against women’s oppression in patriarchal ideals and social structures, women workers had to join proletarian battles against capitalism.

By means of policies, socialism empowers women and grants them the right to equality and fairness. On the other hand, feminism would empower women to fight against oppression and exploitation.

Socialist feminism is a part of the international struggle for women’s rights and liberation. Socialist feminists stress how the economic system, especially within capitalist economies, is a cause of oppression and highlight gender inequality as a cultural force that stems from patriarchy. Socialist feminism is based on the idea that capitalism and patriarchy are intertwined systems of women’s exploitation and oppression. Social feminists aim to overthrow these structures in order to achieve emancipation. Class struggle is the main force behind social and political change, according to this theory, which was established by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It holds that historical change results from variations in the material circumstances of groups of people. In particular, socialist feminists examine the economic disadvantages faced by working-class women, many of whom continue to labor in traditionally female-dominated care industries, and how this has resulted in their subordination. Beyond the female wage gap, socialist feminist analysis critically examined the unpaid work of child care, cleaning, and cooking. The concept of social reproduction and how oppression happens generation after generation is central to socialist feminism. Women’s rights to abortion, access to contraception, and quality healthcare are also significant to socialist feminists. A key element of feminist socialism is agitating for a just society with essential social services.

Women must understand that they are not only participants in the market economy just as a consumer but also have a right to economic and social freedom.

Dr Trishna Sarkar, Asst Prof, Dept of Economics, Dr BhimRao Ambedkar College, University of Delhi.