But now you have to prove to me that hubby proletarian actually benefits from the fact that his wife earns less per hour than he does, and it is clear as day that he DOESN'T, because it means that real disposable household income is less than it could be, and if her wage was equal to his, they would have more disposable income.
The wealth of a household = disposable income + unpaid work. If the wife earns less than the man, then it is "reasonable" for him to expect her to do most or all of the housework. Moreover, when household income is insufficent, a lot of women make it sufficient by sewing clothes, cooking from scratch, etc. I'm not saying that only women produce for the household, I am just suggesting that for the working class "household income" is simply an inadequate way to measure household wealth.
The capitalist market cannot adjust for the fact, that female labour-power must withdraw from the market to perform its child-bearing or childraising function, to put it clinically; it can at best accommodate it to some extent, as a result of struggles for women's rights which create institutions which compensate for the economic consequences of that withdrawal.
Some of the child-bearing is unavoidably what women have to do, why that should extend to child-raising I don't get -- but this is some of the stuff that feminists (rightfully) bring up.
Socialism stands for universal emancipation, universal liberation, and thus is based on the principle "the liberation of each is conditional on the liberation of all, and the liberation of all is conditional on the liberation of each", and the only social classes who can consistently enact this program are the labouring classes, the workers and peasants of this world who produce the world's material wealth with their own hands and brains.
Well, I agree, but certain issues do need to be thrashed out like what is "women's work" -- see above, or the general (both Marxist and Capitalist) dismissal of the "mere" work of reproduction.
Joanna
