AS we begin our discussion of the broad role and orientation of the women’s organisation, the first question we can consider is: Should the women’s movement in India restrict itself to ‘women’s issues’ alone? Or must it confront and address the entire range of social and political structures – through which women experience oppression?

Often, in our common parlance, or in a loose way of putting things, we tend to believe that patriarchy and ‘the system’ (by which we mean the economic and political structures of oppression) are separate. On the one hand, we have trends in the women’s movement which argue that the women’s movement should address gender-based oppression and ‘patriarchy’ alone. While our women’s organisation differs with this viewpoint, we also often make the mistake of seeing class and gender as two separate systems of oppression. We think our perspective is ‘Marxist’ as long as we hold class-based oppression to be more ‘primary’ than gender-based oppression. We tend to say we focus on issues of toiling women as opposed to gender issues – sometimes not realising how gender and women’s labour are inextricably linked. Some of us tend to think that we as a women’s organisation need to take up class issues because even if patriarchy and gender-based oppression (which we think is a more secondary form of oppression) were to end, class oppression would continue. But this formulation is actually not consistent with a Marxist standpoint. And this is not just an abstract academic debate – our clear understanding on this is very important as we give shape to our practice.

Women’s subordination does not lie in some abstract ‘patriarchy’ that floats above “the system”. Rather it is the peculiar and specific nature of women’s role in the system that constitutes the basis for her subordinate status in that system. Patriarchy and capitalism are not two separate systems: it’s the same system and its economic and political structures which exploit women – in ways that are distinct and different from the ways in which men are oppressed. Patriarchy is not a separate rung or tier of oppression resting on a more basic class oppression – patriarchy and patriarchal ideology are not like a set of clothes which capitalism can shed. Rather, the ‘system’ can be imagined like a body – with a basic structure of bones with flesh on top. Imagine that the skeleton is the material base and the flesh is the superstructure – the political institutions, ideological structures and so on; no doubt the flesh would not have any shape without the basic structure provided by the skeleton. In this sense, the economic basis primary and, in the ultimate analysis, determines the superstructure. However, the flesh is no superficial covering, and flesh and bones are taken together as a unity.

Gender oppression, we will find, is inscribed in the material base of society itself – i.e it shapes the structure of the bones and it is also an integral part of the ideological ‘flesh’ that covers the bones. The women’s organisation must fight the entire body of the ‘system’, no doubt: but it has the tough task of identifying exactly how gender oppression is embedded in the DNA of the whole body – and in showing women, in the course of concrete struggles, how this process operates, so that they too are able to see the entire body of oppression, rather than just the small part – the hand or foot which is actually placed on their necks.

In brief, (as we have seen in earlier sessions), women’s reproductive role within the home actually subsidises capitalism. The institution of family and marriage comes into being, not so much as an institution based on human love and caring, but as a way of controlling women’s sexuality to ensure inheritance down the male line of ‘legitimate’ heirs. As a result, most societies are marked not just by an obsession about control of women’s sexuality but also by the fear of ‘uncontrolled’ sexuality of women. Linked to this is the sexualisation of women’s identities: that is, women are essentially equated with their sexuality. This may be obvious in ads using women’s bodies to sell any and everything – but, interestingly, it is true even of feudal societies which are obsessed with ‘covering up’ women’s bodies in purdah! Women’s entire bodies and self are taken to be a sexual part, dangerously disruptive and seductive, and therefore needing to be kept out of male sight. Also, women are basically seen as breeding machines – whose role of giving birth and mothering is highlighted as much as their sexual desires are suppressed and covered up. Even their appetites for food are associated with ‘dangerous’ sexual appetites, and so women are expected to fast, sacrifice food, ignore hunger. Motherhood is artificially dissociated from women’s sexuality, and mothers, while expected to endlessly breed, feed and nurture, are not supposed to experience hunger or sexual desire. Issues of women’s sexuality are therefore not merely ‘cultural’ matters which have nothing to do with questions of production – rather, they are closely linked to women’s enforced role in sustaining class society.

In capitalist society, as women enter the workforce, this sexualisation of their identities continues in newer forms. To take just one small recent example – see how our judiciary upheld that air-hostesses can be dismissed from their jobs for being overweight. When asked how come the same was not rigidly implemented for overweight male pilots, a Supreme Court judge lightly remarked, “Pilots don’t have to show their faces.” Sexual harassment at the workplace; rape of women agricultural labourers by landlords – all these are a reminder that women’s gender and sexuality shape their experience of work, and if we are to take up issues of working women, we must address these issues up front rather than dismissing them as ‘non-economic’ and less primary issues.

If patriarchy and class exploitation are organically and inseparably inter-twined in the same system, then it is pointless to ask, “What if patriarchy could be overthrown – would women still suffer other forms of oppression?” Rather, we must remind ourselves that patriarchy/gender oppression was born with class society, and can end only with the end of class society – so the struggle against patriarchy must continue right up till the point that class struggle itself does (in fact, as an integral part of the class struggle). Gender oppression cannot end even in a socialist society – rather, class struggle and the battle against gender oppression must be waged even within a socialist order.