Women's double workshift: changing patterns in women's employment IS IT NORMAL for women to work? In reality, of course, women have always worked - cooking, cleaning, looking after the house, the children; once it was home-canning, now its the supermarket; we could go on and on. But there is work - and work. There is paid work and unpaid work. There are hidden domestic tasks and "noble" occupations.
The question is, is the woman at the kitchen sink a thing of the past? Of course the industrial revolution brought about a fantastic change in women's lives; it threw them out onto the job market. For more than a century, they have been shoved in and out of the market according to the economic situation and theruling classes' needs. Today they are there to stay: this is historical fact, there is no getting around it. But what work are they doing? And for what price? And above all, what are they doing besides? Have women really taken away "men's jobs'"? Does going out to work really mean equality?
The following article tries to take account of developments in Europe in the last ten or 20 years, according to the figures available
WOMEN branches which are "female", some of which are undergoing recession (textiles, footwear, clothing) and some of which are expanding (electronics). In both cases the bosses' profits depend on a largely female workforce, occupying jobs (often on a production line) which men do not want. In the service sector where there has been a net increase in jobs in the last ten years, it is above all, female jobs which have increased. Depending on the country, between 60% and 85% of female labour is employed in both the public and private sectors of the services industry.
Some branches of public sector services (health, education, → social services, administration) are completely dominated by women. And, more generally as well, certain jobs (secretaries, accounts clerks, waitresses) are overwhelmingly held by women, and here again men are not queuing up to take their place.
The bourgeoisie's project is not, therefore, to send women back to the home, as was the case immediately following the First and Second World Wars. It has no interest in so doing and it would be materially impossible. What the bourgeoisie wants is to restrict women to unsteady employment ir order to undermine their capacity to resist. It wants them to internalise the idea that they are not really workers, when in fact women's work is essential to the economy. The figures are there to show the massive changes — and also the opposition to change - which have affected women's role in the family and in society as a whole. (1) They vary from one country to another, but it is noticeable that they all demonstrate the same basic tendency. Getting out of the house
In capitalist countries, since the 1950s, the proportion of women in the workforce as a whole has continued to increase. It has now reached about 40% in most countries in Europe, exceeding 45% in the northern part (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway). Even where these figures are substantially lower, as in the Netherlands and Italy, the tendency to increase is still very much in evidence. In most industrialised
1. For statistical analysis see especially: L. Paukert, L'emploi et le chomage des femmes dans les pays d' OCED; 'L'integration des femmes dans l'economie, ed. OECD; "Emploi et chomage,' EUROSTAT, Luxembourg; N. Corvi and MM Salort, 'Les femmes et le marche de travail'", Hatier, Paris, 1985; Frauen in der BRD, ed. VSA, Hambourg, 1983; 'Working women and the labour market,' ed. RKP. London, 1982; 'Women, recession and the Tories, ' Jean Gardiner, ed.
11 and to assess the real situation and mothers in the home. JACOURI INE HEINEN JACQUELINE HEINEN
The current economic crisis has hit hardest at the most vulnerable sections of the working class: women, young people and immigrants, and within that, young women and immigrant women suffer particularly.
Inside each social group women are the first hit because of the contradictions in their situation, torn between work outside the home and the roles of wife and mother. Of course, more and more women are economically active, but at the same time they are expected to carry on with all the domestic tasks and look after the children.
The bourgeoisie's drive to increase profits at the moment goes hand in hand with a policy of austerity which hits hardest at those who are least able to resist because of their place in the job market and because of the reluctance, not to say refusal, of the workers' movement to defend their specific interests. The bosses understand very well that, in order to carry out their goal of dismantling the main gains of the working class since the Second World War, they must first
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986;
of women as workers and as wives take on those sections which will be accorded the least support. They have already had some success in this regard, with the introduction of "flexible" worktime and part-time work as well as with the first victories in challenging the social gains. Cutbacks in areas such as nurseries and school canteens have hit women particularly hard since they are both the users and the workers in such areas. Rebuilding the reserve army
The attempts of the bourgeoisie to trap women in the ghetto of unsteady employment (and perhaps the dream of some to rebuild the reserve army of labour traditionally provided by women, who with broom in hand, wait to be called out to work) have come up against a few obstacles, starting with the structure of the jobs market itself.
Job segregation in industrial production means that there are certain
countries at least half the female population do go out to work and, where part-time work is highly developed, more than 75% of women are economically active (the average among men is between 80% and 85% in Europe). It is important to note that it is above all the massive entry of married women and mothers onto the job market which has changed the curve of economic activity of the female workforce so dramatically in the last two decades. On average about 60% of married women in Europe are economically active (about twice the number as in the 1950s), and this proportion goes beyond 70% in countries like Belgium. In Sweden more than 80% of mothers with children under seven years old were in waged work in 1985. Most of these studies are based on statistics which show that, in the very near future, one worker in two will be a woman.
This increase in women's economic activity is accompanied by changes in their professional outlook. In the past, the maximum rate of economic activity was to be found amongst very young women and women over 45 years old, with a clear decrease among those of child-bearing age, whereas nowadays the curve of activity increases in a linear way and resembles more and more that of men.
This development goes hand in hand with the drop in the fertility rate which is alarming so many bourgeois observers. The era of the large family has certainly passed. Through- tamily has certainly passed. Throughout Europe a one- or two-child family is the dominant form. The most striking example is in the Spanish state where the rate of activity of women has increased even if it is still lower than other countries (31% of the active population in 1985) and where the fertility rate went from 2.77 children per woman in 1977 to 1.7 in 1984.
In the field of education women's position has been greatly strengthened and girls are now more numerous than boys in the first and second years in secondary school. Women represent more than half the new students going to university. For every unemployed man there are one and a half unemployed women
If we want to take account of the real situation of women workers, all of these statistics must be modified in some way. For example, under the impact of the economic crisis, female unemployment has increased at a much faster rate that that of men in most cases. In most European countries the proportion of women 12 out of work is more than 20% of all the economically active (and not far off 30% in the Spanish state). This figure is at times more than twice the rate for men, as is the case in Austria or Portugal. To this has to be added the fact that the official figures do not give the exact number of workers looking for work, because after a certain time many give up looking, stop "signing on" the register and disappear from the statistics. This is particularly the case with women who are more pressurised to go back into the family and take up domestic tasks. In Great Britain it is estimated that 28% of all unemployed women and 43% of all those who are married do not register at employment offices (compared to only 11% of men). There is, of course, a direct relationship between this attitude and the duration of unemployment - which is always on the increase and is much larger among women than among men. In Belgium it is nearly twice as long and women between the ages of 26 and 36 suffer an average of 41 months without work as against 24 for men of the same age. That is three and a half years on average of living from day to day, waiting and looking.
Among mothers and single mothers in particular these difficulties are aggravated by reduced mobility, since women are more reluctant to accept a job away from home because of problems of childcare. The idea of moving to another town is, according to a survey conducted in France, an option which is only open to men; women just follow their husbands. (2)
As for the perspectives for the future, they are not exactly rosy! In the female-dominated branches of industry, great as the number of redundancies are now, the generalised introduction of computerisation in the service sector will eventually bring redundancies as well. It is true though, that the predictions in this regard have yet to be confirmed. (3) Increased productivity resulting from the introduction of new technology has
KarL femmes et le travail et temps partiel,' ed. de la Documentation Francaise, Paris, 1984. See also A-M. Daune-Richard, Travail prof essionnel et travail domestique,' ed. CEFUP, Paris, 1984.
3. S. Nora and A. Mine, 'L'informo tisation de la societe, " ed. de la Documentation Francaise, Paris, 1978. International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
often allowed the company concerned to offer new services occasioned by new needs. But the depth and the durability of the crisis puts an objective limit on the opening up of new areas and the creation of new jobs. Moreover, because the cost of office computers has dropped radically in the last few years, they are becoming more available even in small firms (of one to five employees) where a majority of women work as typists, cashiers, etc. and are the first to go as a result of computerisation. One British study estimates that the introduction of microelectronics will involve the suppression of 17% of secretaries' posts between now and 1990. Half time means half wages
The second major factor which has to be taken into account in order to appreciate the real value of women's economic activity, is the increase in part-time work which affects half of the new jobs created in the last ten years and half the women at work in most countries. The word itself is almost in essence female: part-time workers are women in more than 80% of cases (and in 95% of cases in Denmark and West Germany). The implications of this are: less skilled work, in general excluding any responsibility; a decrease in entitlement to benefits; fixed contracts; irregular hours like those of shop assistants who work a morning and twilight shift; and above all, wages reduced to a quarter, a third or a half. The bosses know what they are doing: within one branch or one firm hourly rates for the same work Irm noury rates for the same work are nearly always lower for part-time workers. Most surveys show that, contrary to what happened in the 1970s, when a large majority of women stated that they had chosen to work these hours, the majority of them now say that they accept them in the absence of anything better.
Conclusion: the apparent increase in the female rate of economic activity is much less spectacular than it seems at first glance and a long way from achieving economie independence for women.
The statistics show that female wages are 20% to 35% lower than men's, despite the International Labour Organisation (ILO) convention No. 100 which was adopted by most countries and never adhered to. Despite, also, specific legislation like the Equal Pay Act in Great Britain in 1971 or the law on equal wages passed in Italy in 1977.
But, as everyone knows, all
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986 statistics have to be handled with great care. Because in fact here we are talking about the hourly wage rate and not about the overall wage. Leaving aside the obvious effect of part-time work on the monthly salary, it has to be stressed that, even for women who are working full time, the gap between the official statistics and the reality is widening all the time if you take account of the fact that women work less hours (that is less overtime and with more absences because of family responsibility) and that they earn less in bonuses etc.
When all these handicaps are added together it is hardly surprising if, among the five million people living on the poverty line in West Germany for example, the vast majority are women. Immigrant women are impoverished and older women without any reserves are forced to live on social security; but there are also young women workers without a job, mothers of young children, who get nothing. A common factor behind these various aspects of the unequal status of women workers is job segregation.
It is a fact: in the vast majority of cases, women do not do the same work as men. They are in different branches of industry, in different jobs, they receive different training and they do not have the same qualifications. In Sweden, nearly half of all working women are employed in the five main "female" areas and more than 90% are secretaries, ancillary workers, shop assistants, domestics and child minders. Contrary to what might have been expected ten years SS=Semi-skilled per cent S=Skilled
SS S SS S women men Paid according to output
Repetitive work ago, the increase in the number of women who are economically active has not undermined this segregation but has encouraged it. It is often sharper among young women, as is shown in West Germany.
The introduction of the new technology has so far helped to increase this tendency. In Europe only 10% to 25% of women are to be found in the higher-level courses linked to employment in computer science. On the other hand, women are legion amongst the typists whose nerves and eyes are ruined by repetitive work. Although new technology could bring more interesting work, with greater variety and development of skills, it is most often introduced without disturbing the traditional organisation and hierarchy where women are at the bottom of the scale. In fact the generalised introduction of computerisation in the service industries has gone hand in hand with new forms of work in the home using screenbased machines and aimed to attract mothers with small children. This is truly unsteady employment: less well-paid than working for an agency, subject to restricted hours determined bv a central computer, let alone the isolation and the physical suffering.
In industry, women are more often "semi-skilled workers" than are male workers. They work on the production line, doing piece work and repeating the same operation all day long - 16,000 buttons a day passing through their hands in a textile firm or whatever. Table 1 showing the situation in France
Table 1 per cent SS S SS S women men
Payment depends on rhythm
-of work
Involving physical effort
13
Source: Les Ouvrieres", Le Sycomore, Paris, 1982.
Source: Les Ouvrieres", Le Sycomore, Paris, 1982.
is ratherilluminating on this point.
The idea that women should earn less or have a different place on the job market because they are not trained or have insufficient training should be rejected: "Women are not unskilled and semi-skilled because of inadequate training at school, but because they are well-trained in overall reproductive functions." (4) If this were not the case, it would be impossible to explain why women direct themselves or are still directed toward "female" apprenticeships (in dressmaking, shorthand and typing) only to be taken later into electronics where their training is not recognised, but where they are preferred for certain posts requiring patience, endurance and attention to detail which are supposedly female qualities. Knit one - purl one
One Swiss boss cynically declared that women were much better than men at putting up with the conditions dietated by work with integrated circuits which demand perfect synchronisaton between the movements of the eyes, feet and arms, so as to observe the process on the screen. Why? Because from their childhood, women have been conditioned by work like knitting which is done in a mechanical way, without thinking . knit one, pearl one ... This is almost a caricature of an analysis of women's oppression. But it also forms the basis of the bosses' policy. Even the method of calculating salaries takes into account the question of the sex of the workforce. We are familiar with bonuses paid on the basis of physical effort or responsibility. But when has an employer ever paid bonuses for monotony? You will not see the employer give up this advantage tomorrow; rather he will make out that women's fairy fingers are something innate and cannot be calculated in money terms.
The above shows that the traditional demands for equality -"equal pay for equal work" - for equal rights, correct though they are, are widely insufficient as a way of getting to the roots of the inequalities between men and women. In this sense, the struggles being waged by US and Canadian workers for unions to adopt policies of positive action in order to force open the doors of those higher paid and more highly skilled sectors previously closed to women, are of decisive importance, even though they may be more difficult to win in the context of the deepening crisis and unemployment. But it is also important to concen14 trate the fire on those sectors where the vast majority of women actually work - that is in the female-dominated sectors - and expose the mechanisms by which female attributes are undervalued in comparison to male attributes, in calculating wages for example. This cannot be achieved without an explicit challenge to the role women are made to play and to the "catch22" situation in which they find themselves. The labyrinth of domestic tasks
The double, even triple, role of wife, mother and worker is basically at the root of all the discrimination which women come up against. The majority of women today consider the right to work as a gain. (5) Even those who hate the jobs they do because they are repetitive or tiring insist on the importance to them of "working outside the home" , of having contacts outside and of not being stuck inside all the time. But nonetheless, they carry on, rushing from the kitchen sink to the workplace and from the workplace to the kitchen sink in a desperate attempt to reconcile everything - the demands of their bosses, their husbands and their children. Working more and getting less sleep than the men, women are shopping whilst men are 'down the pub', they are washing or ironing while men are watching the telly and all this at a high cost to their nerves, their health and most often their careers.
In this situation how can women find the time to read, to think or to be active in a trade union? In the last ten years the division of domestic tasks between men and women has only changed by a very small amount, even in a country like Sweden where relations between men and women are supposedly less macho than other places. In France a woman worker with three children spends about 5 hours and 45 minutes a day on domestic tasks while her husband spends one hour and 40 minutes. Paradoxically he tends to spend more time where there are fewer children. Part-time work has not helped and it has even meant a step back in the division of tasks in blue- and white-collar housholds. Where the man used to think it quite normal to "give a hand" around the house because the wife was working full time, now he thinks he can put his feet up when he comes home from work because "she's got the time". . The situation is still worse when it comes to children. Even if many of the younger generation of women workers expect their companions to share a minimum of domestic chores, they always feel that being in charge of the children is their job. This internalising of their role as mothers comes out in the very great difficulty women have in challenging the traditional norms of the education of little girls who are supposed to have different qualities from their brothers. This results "naturally" in the fact that girls choose general channels of education whilst boys choose technical channels giving access to skilled jobs.
Furthermore the attacks of the ruling class on those institutions (nurseries, school canteens) which constitute the decisive element in freeing women from their domestic tasks and from their traditional role, are particularly dramatic for women. Not only do they involve a deterioration in their daily lives, a decrease in what little time they had to spare but they have extremely negative subjective consequences since they challenge any idea of socialisation of education of very young children, and they strengthen patriarchal relations within the family. Divide and rule
In relation to this, statements by "progressive" sections of the bourgeoisie, who are favourable to a policy of women's equality seem particularly hollow and hypocritical. The existence of a too rigid
4. D. Kergoat, 'Les Ouurieres,' ed. du Sycomore, Paris, 1982.
D. Kergoat, ibid. International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
4 Horo Women's 16-hour day (DR) division within the workforce can, at certain times, go against the interest of a section of the bourgeoisie who will therefore try to push women into jobs traditionally held by men. This was the case, for example, when women began to get into secretarial and clerical jobs which until then had been the preserve of men. But this corresponds, in general, either to technological developments or changes in the responsibilities involved in the job in question (in the above example it was the introduction of the typewriter which determined that men went into more highly qualified posts) or to a phase of restructuring which makes the male labour force want to look elsewhere into other sectors of production. These various changes still do not challenge the existence of job segregation which is merely reproduced on new bases. For this is a crucial weapon of divide and rule for the bourgeoisie and they do not want to give that up.
One just has to look at the way in which part-time work was handled. Promoted at first as a choice for women allowing them to harmonise work and family - as some kind of favour - part-time work quickly became obligatory for new layers of women entering or re-entering the job market. Then as the crisis developed, it became a weapon against the working class as a whole under the name of "flexibility", which covers such areas as changes in work sched-. ules, irregular hours, night work, week-end work. Fresh from its successes, the bourgeoisie no longer has any inhibitions about attacking one of the gains which it seemed impossible would be threatened, that is the ban on night work for women.
In Denmark, the directors of
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
Philips put out a questionnaire asking they women workers if they wanted to work shifts or only at night. To this •our comrades of the SAP (Danish section of the Fourth International) urged their workmates to add a line saying "we want to work in the day". In Switzerland, attempts by bosses to introduce night work in the clock industry have been temporarily defeated. But the Belgian government and the Tories in Britain have relaunched the debate on the basis of the needs of the economy as a result of the crisis, using the argument of equality between men and women. Their real intentions however, can leave no one in any doubt. Such supposedly egalitarian schemas must be rejected as a trap, which is just one of the methods - and not the least of them - through which the bosses are seeking to impose flexible work practices and to dismantle the gains of the workforce as a whole.
Just as we reject part-time work and "flexibility", , we should also reject night work for men and women, except in areas where it is socially necessary.
In the same way; we can see that it is no accident if the ruling class first attacks collective bodies mainly affecting women when they begin their swinging cuts in the social budget. Recently the British government sought to reduce the number of facilities for under-fives, which was already only 40% in 1980-81, to no more than 33% in 1984-85. It also sought to cut school dinners and to replace the regular staff school canteens by women working at half the salary for agencies under subcontract. Why then does the British bourgeoisie, as well as other bourgeoisies in Europe show such prudence in the way they attack social security? Because they know that in hitting sickness benefit, they run the risk of provoking a generalised response. In the case of the attacks pre-school facilities they are relying on the difficulties of achieving worker solidarity on this issue despite the gravity of the cuts involved. The ideological offensive on abortion launched by the far right in several countries, as well as advertising campaigns which reduce women's bodies to sexual objects, show that the ruling class has decided to do anything to roll back the few gains made by women in the last period. The resistance to this offensive has to combine a struggle against specific oppression at work, within the family and in all aspects of social life.
Women are not going to give in to this without a fight and they have shown this in the course of a series of strikes and mass struggles in the last few years. Whether it be the miners' wives in Britain or Danish women workers in the Easter strike of 1985 or the militant strength of German workers in the strike for the 35-hour week the previous year, the Women Against the Crisis campaign in Belgium or the struggles of British and German workers in their trade unions, the groups of women within the peace movement at Greenham and in the anti-NATO campaign in the Spanish state —all these examples are testimony to women's combativity. Sometimes women go into struggle on the basis of immediate demands which are not related to issues of their specific oppression. But it is noticeable that sooner or later these mobilisations take on a feminist dimension and that the women concered, because of their double role in the family and in society, are forced on nearly every occasion to establish organisational structures where they can discuss their specific problems. This is quite clearly a heritage of the autonomous movement of the 1970s.
This movement, however, as an organised independent movement with its own struciures, groups and coordination, has experienced some setbacks aid even some defeats in the last five or six years. With certain rare exceptions (see the article in this issue on the feminist movement in the Spanish state) the movement has not been able to initiate mass campaigns of the scale of those on abortion and contraception. In some countries the movement has even all but disappeared. This is hardly surprising when we consider the defeats in the same period and the level of consciousness necessary to take the struggle onto a further stage; most of the demands around women's specific oppression imply an open confrontation with the state apparatus.
Nevertheless it is true that the setbacks faced by the autonomous movements have been strongly felt within the organisations of the workers' movement. Here women have often found themselves in a very defensive position in relation to the trade-union leaderships who take little interest in the defence of women's specific interests. This poses the problem of the continuity of the struggle of women for their liberation and therefore of the battle necessary for the existence of an independent feminist movement, based on the radicalisation of women workers who are the vanguard of many of the struggles outlined above. However, the concrete perspectives for the women's movement and the tasks of revolutionary Marxists will have to be the subject of a future article.
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