This year, the Cahiers celebrates its tenth anniversary. It remains one of a very few socialist-feminist magazines continuing to publish and flourish in the 1980s. To mark the occasion, Penny Duggan interviewed two members of the editorial committee, Josette Desbois and Anne-Marie Granger, about the history of the Cahiers and the political situation of women in France.
Question. What was the feminist movement doing at the time you decided to launch the Cahiers du Feminisme?
Josette. The Cahiers were launched in November 1977. We took this decision during our national women's conference in June 1977. To try and describe the political context in which the review came out I think there are three elements we should remember.
First of all there was the impact of the feminist movement at the time. The movement had been able to lead some very big mass struggles. We campaigned on two subjects in particular, abortion and contraception with meetings, demonstrations and so on in united-front type campaigns, and also on questions such as rape. The women's movement was therefore a fairly powerful movement even though it was structured in different ways such as the MLAC (movement for freedom of abortion and contraception).
At the time there were four to five hundred women's groups in France as a whole between five and seven thousand women were organized in non-mixed groups. The women's movement had also had an impact within the workers' movement. 'On May 1, 1977, there was a feminist contingent behind the trade-union banners involving 5,000 women, not just intellectuals but also lots of women trade-unionists who joined it at the end of the demonstration.
The sixth working women's conference of the CGT [trade-union federation led by the Communist Party], which took place at the end of May 1977, was a direct expression of the questions that concerned women in the workplaces. It discussed not only the super-exploitation of women workers but also how to challenge women's double workshift, the sexual division of labour, the problem of contraception, sexuality, abortion and so on.
the questions raised by the feminist movement were reflected in the trade-union movement in the CGT, and in the CFDT [trade-union federation of Catholic origin, with a largely social-democratic leadership]. So, there was a strong feminist movement.
The second factor was that the women's movement was divided on one thing - the question of links with the workers' movement. There was one current influenced by radical feminism that was above all worried about being taken over by the trade unions and the workers' movement, and thus for them it was out of the question to have any joint activities or even to speak to the workers' movement dominated by men.
There was another part of the women's movement, in which we played an active role. We said that the point was not to be worried about being taken over but to do our best to encourage a convergence between the feminist movement as it was — mainly public sector white-collar workers - with working women, whether in the trade unions or not. We wanted to make this link on a feminist class-struggle basis. This required a constant battle by us in the women's movement and in the LCR.
The third factor is the overall political context. The March 1978 elections were coming up, which was a very important occasion for the left. In this context women were a very important electoral factor.
The traditional parties of the 686 6 00
left and the bourgeois currents tried to address women and to use them in the elections. So paradoxically there was a very favourable context for discussions on all the questions raised by the feminist movement.
There was a plethora of publications which came out at that time. F magazine came out in January 1978, just after the Cahiers was launched. It was representative of an "enlightened bourgeois" current, very much "of its time" and took up a series of questions raised by the feminist movement, such as abortion and contraception, which gave it a certain impact.
At the same time all the different feminist currents were putting out their own journals. For example, Histoire d'Elles. It aimed to have a feminist viewpoint on the whole scope of the current news, which was a different aim from most others. There were other journals that were more the expression of the women's groups, including the radical feminist current, such as Questions feministes.
The debate within the LCR also played an important role. How can a revolutionary organization participate in and be representative of feminist struggles and how it can introduce the changes in its organizational practice which allow women to fully participate in the organization at all levels? That was what we were discussing and the answers were not obvious at the time.
Overall, women's struggles were considered as important not only in context of the anti-capitalist struggle but also in the perspective of the struggle for a socialist society. In practice it was a permanent struggle to get what we call the "feminization" of the daily practice of the organization - to have this aspect taken into account at all times.
I'll tell you one quite revealing story. The decision to hold a national women's conference was taken during the second congress of the LCR, in January 1977. What does one find in the pamphlet containing the theses of this conference? An erratum: "Paragraph 10, Women's Struggles was unfortunately mislaid during the preparation of the definitive version of the theses for printing." This unconscious mistake is quite revealing.
We thought that there was a dual role for the Cahiers. On the one hand we could do our utmost to encourage this convergence between the struggle of women in general and that of women workers in particular, and on the other encourage the discussion within the LCR, be a motor and a stimulus for our feminist activity in general.
Q. What is your balance sheet 10 years later?
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Josette. Again we should start with a quick survey of the political situation. Contrary to what we expected and hoped, the left's arrival in government, not in 1978 but in 1981, was not the signal for an upsurge in big mass struggles, but rather threw the whole of the workers' movement into disarray. This was for a series of reasons. Number one was the policy of the reformist parties in the government. From this point of view, the aim we had of playing a particular role between a dynamic feminist movement and the debates that could have arisen in the workers' movement in an upsurge was completely changed.
In 1979 the women's movement involved in some important was struggles to defend the abortion rights won in 1975. More than 50,000 people, a majority of whom were women, demonstrated in November 1979. Once the left were in power there was also a struggle to get the reimbursement of abortion by the social security, something that had been promised before the election. But we can't really say that there have been mass women's struggles during the last five years. We have rather been fighting step by step to keep what we had: the network of groups in Paris, the Women's Centre, the Family Planning association.
At the same time, in the workers' movement, there were discussions particularly involving women. A particular case was in Spring 1982 when almost all the staff of Antoinette, the CGT's monthly women's magazine was sacked for not having followed to the comma the federation leadership's sectarianism to the CFDT and its support for Jaruzelski's coup in Poland. Women from the LCR, members of the CGT, and others, tried to broaden solidarity with the Antoinette women in the union movement and in the feminist movement. Some of the Antoinette women subsequently formed a new feminist discussion group the "Flora Tristan Circle".
Anne-Marie. Given this new situation, we rediscussed the content of the Cahiers in 1983. At the same time a number of new comrades became involved in the collective. It seemed to us that we needed a magazine that tried to look at some questions more deeply, without necessarily being tied to current events. This seemed to us true both for discussions with other feminist currents and also for the discussions in the organization. We decided to focus each issue on a special feature, which would be chosen mainly in relation to what was going on, but not solely. They would be basically on questions we wanted to go into more deeply.
For example, two years ago we had a feature on the question of new reproductive technologies, which at the time were not the subject of fierce debate as they are today. We considered that we had to discuss and elaborate these types of questions, and not leave them to be monopolized by the bourgeois press. We were one
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of the first feminist magazines to take up the question.
Q. What was the reaction to the Cahiers within the women's movement? Was there any hostility to a revolutionary Marxist organization having its own journal? Were we accused of perhaps substituting for a broader publication of the class struggle current in the movement?
Josette. There was never a discussion on the journal as such. At the time when the women's movement was very strong there were always currents who reproached us for claiming to be fully-fledged feminists and members of a political organization. We took up the discussion on this quite frankly. For example in one of the first issues of the Cahiers in March 1978, we had an article "Women and Politics" in which we explained why we thought it was not only possible but useful, while not at all underestimating the contradictions and conflicts in being a feminist and a member of a political organization.
There is even less reason to critic. ize us for publishing our own journal as we have never pretended that it could be a publication of the feminist movement as a whole. LCR women have also been among those most enthusiastic for an independent journal of the women's movement.
Q. The situation has changed, and the Cahiers with it. What is the role today?
Josette. Yes it's true. Our role has changed but we are still a place for thought and discussion on all the problems women face.
Anne-Marie. We have played an important role on the question of waged work. Many women in the women's movement as it was did not see this as a big question, it was for the socialist feminists, belonging to a political organization. At the beginning of the 1980s, when the government began to promote part-time work, some feminists saw this as a gain, a new area of freedom for women, as a right to choose. We player an important role in showing the leality of this "choice" • We sounded the alarm.
Our work obviously had an effect because in 1982 the women's movement took the initiative to organize "Etats Generaux" on women and work. The two days, filled with discussions and debates, were attended by 2,000 women of very different experiences. This assembly was organized by a section of the women's movement, from the Paris women's centre, the Family Planning and the CFDT.
Josette. There are other examples. We were among the first to note the 14 role of the young women of the second generation of the North African immigration in the developing anti-racist movement. When we look at the student and school-student movement, these young "second-generation immigrants" played an important role, and the women in particular. Our role is to draw attention, provoke thought and discussion. For example, the Cahiers drew the attention of our members to the question of the "increasing flexibility" of the workforce. Before it involved all workers, it was tried out on women. I think we helped the organization to understand this, and I think this was very important.
Q. How does the editorial committee function?
Anne-Marie. Like any other, except that we all have full-time jobs and we are all active politically. That means that the Cahiers are not separate from our activity in building the women's movement. We are all active in one way or another in the Family Planning, in trade unions, in women's groups, and that for us is inseparable from our work for the Cahiers. We should point out that the committee is completely composed of women! This is not a deliberate choice, it happens like that. We have some male contributors from time to time, but the committee is all women. We have already said that the journal should be led by women. At the moment, our readership is not the traditional readership of the other publications of the LCR. We can tell from the letters we receive and the sales we have. We also have the sing-
.... A9lh0 ularity of more or less breaking even financially!
Q. How do you explain the fact that the Cahiers still exist when almost all other feminist publications in France have disappeared?
Josette. First of all because of our conviction that women's struggles are not a question of passing fashion but a fundamental element of the struggle for human emancipation. Then because we are the publication of an organization. This might seem paradoxical but it is an important element. This gives us a distribution network, the minimum of back up without which any publication would be impossible. Without the material support of the organization, even at the financial level we could not exist. This is a political choice of the organization.
But over and above these purely material reasons, in a context in which the feminist movement is rather in decline, to be participating in a more global struggle allows us to escape the isolation felt by so many feminist activists. This political commitment can cause problems as we've already said, but it is a support to be part of a political organization which has an overall political perspective.
The other reason is that we have a political project: participating in building a mass autonomous women's movement. This explains why we work as we do, that we're not just intel. lectuals sitting in an office. In our workplaces, our trade unions, in different groups and associations we are continually working toward this aim. I think that these are the reasons why we are still going strong.
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Al-Mitraga A revolutionary communist review for the Arab region. Issue number 4 (October-December 1986) is now available. Contents include: Tunisia — the lull before the storm; Dossier on Islamic fundamentalism (second part); Nationalism and internationalism in building the revolutionary workers' party. Yearly subscription (3 issues) 50FF; 1 issue 12FF. For subscriptions and copies please write to PEC, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France. International Viewpoint 9 March 1987