[donaldscrankshaw] Donald: Socialism and feminism

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Posted by Donald:
Socialism and feminism
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1168580165.shtml


   This is an interesting argument, and one that strikes me as containing
   some truth. From [1]Jonah Goldberg, at the Corner:

     Did feminism undermine socialism? I'm just thinking out loud, but
     think about it. When women weren't part of the workforce in large
     numbers, the idea of organizing society and politics around our
     jobs was enormously popular. Syndicalism, socialism, trade
     unionism, corporatism, Veblenism, Swopism, big chunks of social
     democracy, etc etc, were premised in large parts on the idea that
     your job was your identity. "Workers of the world unite" and all
     that jazz. When women who didn't work for a wage claimed that they
     were citizens â or fully entitled to citizenship â it undermined
     the view that You Are Your Job. And as women entered the workforce,
     the willingness of men to identify themselves solely by their work
     tended to erode. Perhaps sexism drove men to say that they were
     more than their job if a woman could do their job just as well (or
     well enough).

   There's more, but as Jonah himself notes, you have to be careful.
   While the old-style "Workers of the world unite!" socialism may have
   died, the new style nanny-state socialism is clearly alive and well. I
   think his analysis misses a big point, though, which is that women are
   less willing than men to be defined by their jobs. While a man can
   derive much of his identity from work, women tend not to, which means
   that they are less sympathetic to that old-style socialism. Thus, when
   the unionization efforts had to recruit women, they needed to take a
   different tact, which ultimately played a part in changing the tone of
   the labor movement.
   There were other issues as well, although most of the ones I'm
   thinking of weren't real influences until the mid-20th century, which
   was after old-style socialism's heyday.

References

   1. http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjJiYzE2YTM2Y2NhZDFjNGQ4NDE5YjViNmRhYmJjNTg=