History shows that socialist leaning movements and their societies have always elevated women politically i.e. the Eastern Europe, Cuba and the former USSR to name a few. This is due to the fact that a socialist economy, as opposed to a capitalist economy, does not need sexism or any form of discrimination to thrive.
The women status, however, declined sharply in Eastern Europe with the advent of a capitalist rule in that region. South Africa, though not socialist, was able to transform from a sexist apartheid society where females in parliament were less than 3% to a whopping 25% female representation in a relatively short period. What explains this remarkable phenomenon?
In socialist societies the change towards a non-sexist society was driven by ideology and quotas. This lacked a support base on the ground because the change was devoid of an organic response from the culture. Conversely South African culture has its roots in the ancient African matrilineal societies. Although these matrilineal societies were either destroyed, supplanted or greatly weakened by the advent of Christian, Islamic and other colonial systems of conquest which imposed patriarchal rule, the organic roots of the matrilineal culture have managed to survive in one form or another. The linguistic record bears witness to this fact i.e. “wa thin’abafazi watint’umbokodo…” meaning if you touch a woman you have struck a rock. Another popular adage that I heard consistently when I was a little boy expressed almost exclusively by men says “mme o tshwara thipa kabohaleng” meaning a woman has the rare ability to subdue a dangerous situation of volatility. This adage is expressed in deference to a powerful woman in a traditional African society.
It’s the combustible remnants of these ancient African traditions that fuel a change that empowers women whenever the right mechanisms are in place. This is what the leaders of the South African liberation like the iconic Mr. Nelson Mandela, Mr. Thabo Mbeki, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Lillian Ngoyi, Sophie Williams, Helen Joseph, Baleka Mbete, Sheena Duncan, Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini,the ANC Women’s League and many others have done making South Africa a leading country in the empowerment of women.
It's fortuitous that the foresight of the foremothers and forefathers who have gone before us, have bequeathed to us the indestructible fibres of a pre-colonial traditional society. These surviving cultural strands provide the necessary glue to bind and wire together tradition and modernity in the reconstruction of an egalitarian society where brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, and men and women can interact without being scorched by the brutal flame of sexism. I am reminded by a poem Sisters Must Arise:
“Gutsy sisters must arise
To break chains at sunrise
The warrior Manthatisi
At great risk defended
Their birthright appended
Scorched like wild game
By a fearful brutal flame
A fiery chauvinist master
Extinguishable by a cluster
A battalion of the sisters”
Sisters Must Arise from A Goodbye To My Little Troubles, Vusi Moloi © 2008.
During the days when I was a cadre in the African National Congress in the bush, our political education, among others, entailed gender equality and feminist theory. It’s regrettable that some people of today fail to understand and appreciate the African genesis of ancient societies and powerful roles women play in shaping these traditional societies.
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Socialist-leaning versus capitalist societies have nothing to do with the elevation or subjugation of women. It boils down to whether the society has its roots in a patriarchal model or a matriarchal model. Many societies that have patriarchal roots often subjugated women. Socialism has succeeded in breaking that model and elevating women, but socialism does not endow them power of itself.
The roots of subjugation lie more in the societal model. Patriarchal societies have to subjugate women because in a patriarchal society, paternity is the sole determinant of property rights. However, short of DNA tests or obvious genetic differences between father and child, establishing paternity is difficult unless you succeed in limiting a woman's breeding opportunities only to a single known man at a time. As the old maxim goes, "Mother's baby, daddy's...maybe!". Limiting breeding opportunities is hard to do without subjugating women. Therefore patriarchal societies depend on subjugating women.
Matrilineal societies don't have to subjugate women because establishing maternity is not that hard. On a side note, my wife once complained that none of our children looked like her. I stepped back out of slapping range and commented that I was not sure that she was the mother. Then I ran... :) . Once you don't have to subjugate women, people can more easily take on roles appropriate to their skills and talents without artifical gender-based constraints. This may explain why SA so easily moved to 25% female representation in parliament. The colonial powers never really killed off the matrilineal tradition.
It's not the socialism mon! It is the matrilinealism that got SA better female empowerment.
You remember the first former female CEO of a major corporation HP? The great lady whom I respect Carly Fiorina? I don't agree with some of her political views but I consider her a pioneer in flattening the sexist barriers in the corporate world in a ground breaking way. Interestingly, she had a hard time being accepted by the male dominated corporate world. Wall Street and other executive (boy's clubs!) boards always had a good reason to criticize her and dislike her. In fact when she was finally pressured to vacate her post the shares of HP jumped instantly on the news as if on stereoids.
The point I am making is that a capitalist society relies on some form of discrimination in order to thrive because of the need to streamline the bottom line and lower the overhead. Sexism lowers the overhead and helps the bottom line because you can justify low pay. Think about this, majority of members of society and workers are females. If you are spending (x) amount on salaries and suddenly you have to flaten the pay scale then you will now have to fork out (2x + K) as opposed to a mere (x). The direct consequence of that action will be a riot from the shareholders. To stem the tide of the disgruntled shareholders you will have to revert to the sexist status quo. This is the raison d'etra of capitalism.
Unfortunately I was born in a capitalist society and I don't have the sensory knowledge of a socialist society. The only understanding of it I have is the anti-socialist indocrination we receive in Western societies from when we are still little and I will probably never know how that system works.
Spain is a macho society but the ideology of a socialist political party was good enough to bring about a change in terms of gender equality. That change is not permanent because the next rightwing political party may erase those gains. So this is only a cosmetic change and it's only a systemic change that will guarantee those gains.
I understand your viewpoint that a patriarchal mode determines the subjugation of women as opposed to a capitalist mode of society meaning that a gender organization of society is an end by itself. However the thrust of my point is that the gender structure is not an end by itself but a means to an end. The matrileneal societies in Africa came to being because the women owned the land whereas men roamed about as nomads. As a result the nomadic societies of Africa are partriarchal whereas the agricultural societies are matriarchal. So it's the economics of food production that determines the gender structures. The African nomads established own societies in order to escape the female rule i.e. Nubian kingdom was ruled almost exclusively by females. The name Candace or Candice comes from an African word which was a title used by Nubian queens. By the way one powerful woman of Nubia Queen Candace went to war with the Roman Emperor Caesar and she was successful in preventing Rome from annexing Nubia as a province of Rome unlike Egypt. There you have it power to the women!
Carly Fiorina was not loved because the Compaq acquisition didn't turn out to be a good one, and because it went against the wishes of one of Hewlett's or Packard's. She was also famous for demoralizing the company (men & women) and having hostile relations with the board of directors. She is also mentioned in the book "The No Asshole Rule" in an unfavourable light along with lots of men. The stock has done well because her successor has motivated the employees and has their confidence. If you are going to pull out examples of exemplary female leaders that illustrated gender equality, I'd point to others such as Nancy Pelosi, Kim Campbell, Meg Whtman, Janet Reno, Ellen DeGeneres, Benazir Bhutto, or Condoleeza Rice.
The last time I checked, when a company has to cut costs they do so by cutting senior employees with high salaries and big pension accruals to fill. Those are usually middle-aged men. Witness the layoffs at Ford, GM, Chrysler and Nortel over the last number of years.
In Canada we live in a socialist society. Karl Marx would be pleased. Our actual social safety net exceeds that of most countries including socialist countries.
Many capitalist societies depend on some form of oppression, but it is not the explicit oppression of females. There are lots of other forms of oppression. e.g. Western societies make lots of money selling arms to various Africans so that they can continue to whack each other to bits, and then be forced to pay for it by liquidating their natural resources at low prices to pay for the arms and general mayhem.
Your point about Nomadic societies leaning to a patriarchal model while agricultural societies leaned to a matriarchal model is interesting. That would explain the struggles of western society to stay patriarchal (using the Judeo-Christian model) while living in an environment that is more naturally matriarchal.
The question to you...how do you break the oppression in South Africa peacefully?
Dear Jay my apologies for delaying to respond to your thought provoking posting with respect to the inherent oppressive/expoitative nature of the capitalist economy.
Have you ever wondered about the PR or Public Relations industry? This is a multibillion dollar industry rooted on the fictitious reasons of existence i.e. if you look at a tree and someone is threatened by your knowledge of your tree then they will filter and interpret for you the real "knowledge" of the tree and not your gut understanding of it.
I came across this from the internet "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power." Edward L. Bernays, 1978, ‘Propaganda’, p47
I mention the above because the only way our structure of the economy can thrive it needs the spin doctors to make us accept the unacceptable and believe the unbelievable. As you know the Exxon Mobil's revenues punched through the stratosphere when the in war Iraq began and their 2007 revenues exceeded $400 billion US making more than a $1 billion per day. It's interesting that we were all sold on the Iraq. It was possible to be sold because of the PR industry. Even the CIA was sold on the war too. Everybody was sold. Many years later companies like Exxon Mobil make more money than any other company in history.
Do you think that if we had no PR industry the war would have broken out? I am not suggesting a topic on the Iraq war but this is rather an extreme example of the power of the capitalist spin doctors in making it impossible for us to sift through the large chunks of information that come at us. The spin doctors are so good they could sell ice in Alaska. Almost! Their success relies on the basic principle of undermining our natural intuition with respect to reacting to our environment. They instill self-distrust and self-doubts so that we can rely on the external sources for our information processing.
Why I am saying all this? Back to Fiorina. HP once issued a press statement in which they said Carly Fiorina had achieved the highest rate of innovation in the company's history. This was the greatest honour ever achieved by any one in HP and incidentally this happens to be a female. The interesting thing is that the men's reaction to that was to question how the company measured that metric. This is a specific case of sexism where there is nothing more interesting a female can do to win an approval rating. The interesting thing about sexism is that it's always changing the goal posts.
Your views are legitimate because if I were to follow well written and respected articles like the Wall Street Journal I would arrive at the same conclusion in terms of discounting the innovative contributions of Carly Fiorina.
My view is that a lot of the executive boards are still functioning as boy's clubs making it near impossible for females to thrive viz-z-vis their male counterparts.
With respect to South Africa and the peaceful change, I am muzzled and sometimes I am at my wit's end. Since the last time we discussed this, things there have been new developments in that we had these xenophobic attacks that did a lot of damage to the reputation of the country. There is nothing on earth (no matter what) to justify such savage attacks on foreigners. Regrettably I came across a Youtube video in which a White South African was calling for the African refugees to be killed and I was so dismayed and disappointed by that. I think the peaceful change in South Africa has to take place at the economic level. First of all get rid of the debt in order to free up the resources for rebuilding the country. Otherwise we are headed in the same direction as Zimbabwe. Check my new posting on Zimbabwe.
Thanks Jay and keep those comments coming and bear with me when I am swamped.
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