On 10/16/06, michael a. lebowitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 06:21 16/10/2006, Yoshie wrote:
>>Yes, but struggles to improve conditions (of workers, blacks, women)
>>produce leaders (of same), no?
>
>They do, but I wonder if those women leaders who emerge at the
>workplace, community, and social movement grassroots levels don't get
>shunted into "women's political career tracks," so to speak.
>
>1. Modern political parties, especially ones on the Left, tend to
>have "women's sections." Both women intellectuals and women
>grassroots leaders get groomed into leading "women's sections" in
>particular rather than parties in general on the Left, though they
>apparently aren't on the Right?
Such sections (as well as mandatory quotas on executive committees,
etc) have tended to emerge as the results of the demands of an active
women's movement (rather than from paternalism), and in my view are
important in the development of capacities.
They can be, but the political division of labor on the Left has often
worked like this: men think BIG, GENERAL, IMPORTANT questions while
women think about "women's issues." Naturally, with that division of
labor, it has been men who tend to become national political leaders.
In the absence of an
active movement, of course, they become career paths for
individuals... but that begs the question as to why the movement dissipates.
Where feminism has developed as an autonomous movement in the absence
of a left-wing party of which it can be a part, the very success of
the movement in removing much of de jure discrimination has dissipated
the movement, before specific problems that confront working-class
women can get resolved. That's a problem in places like the USA.
Where feminism has not become an autonomous movement but has become
incorporated into a party or state on the Left, feminist women, I
think, have become a kind of mediators between the state/party and
women, (A) conveying women's demands to the state/party but also (B)
making women accept what the state/party demands of them. (B) can
often take precedence over (A), which limits the appeal of feminism.
Maybe it all comes back to the same question--- a set of
social relations and norms that permit(dissuade) men(women) in
general to devote much of their waking hours to a focus upon
political struggle;
Behind one political activist/intellectual there usually is at least
one person who supports the activist/intellectual by taking care of
the activist/intellectual's personal, domestic needs. It's often the
case that men become activists/intellectuals and women take care of
them.
however, the original question that you posed---
the absence of women in the top leadership in societies attempting to
build socialism-- seems more interesting to me than the issue of
leadership in left movements in the barbarisms of the west.
I think the two are related questions, since societies attempting to
build socialism inherit the gendered division of political labor
created when they were not building it.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
