Many workers believe that feminism, a militant fight by women with allies among some men for women’s rights, is the way to defeat sexism and the discrimination against women both by individual men and society at large.
Feminist movements have, indeed, fought for reforms in the workforce so that women workers would be paid more and face less gender-based discrimination and harassment on the job.
However, while these achievements are important, the majority of working-class women, especially black and Latina women, who are triply oppressed by sex, class and race, have not benefited much from these gains. For instance, in 2001, women’s median annual paychecks were only 78 cents for every $1.00 earned by men.
For black, Latina, and immigrant women, the gap is even wider. In comparison to men’s dollar, black women earn only 69 cents and Latina women, just 59 cents.
Feminism cannot defeat sexism. Like nationalism, it has been used by the ruling class to keep workers, male and female, from uniting against our common enemy — capitalism.
Like black nationalists who view white supremacy as the primary obstacle to liberation, feminists believe patriarchy is the leading cause of women’s oppression. This is due, in part, to the fact that most of the violence perpetrated against women in society is by men. Ninety to ninety-five percent of all sexual assaults and serious domestic violence cases in the U.S. are committed by men. Men make up ninety-nine percent of the people in jail for rape. Men are also the victims of violence committed by other men.
The capitalists would like us to believe that this aggressive behavior is a reflection of man’s nature. On the contrary, male violence depicts the role that masculinity plays in the society as defined by capitalist culture: telling men to be tough, invulnerable and to assert power and gain respect through violence. The capitalists use this as a way to keep working-class men fighting their brothers and sisters in order to maintain an illusion of male privilege and power, while the rulers maintain true power over the entire working class.
Frederick Engels argued in his classic work Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State that sexual inequality as we know it today did not exist before the advent of private property. In pre-class societies, although there was a division of labor, the work that women did was equally valued. At times, the jobs were even interchangeable between the men and the women, as they were in the native Iroquoian Seneca tribes in North America. The work was complementary, not hierarchical.
Conversely, in class societies, whatever became designated as women’s work was devalued. “Women’s work” was no longer seen as a special kind of work, but rather, as a certain grade of work (Charlette Perkins, The Home, Its Work and Influence). As a result, capitalists are able to pay women the lowest wages while reaping huge profits. Bosses maintain their power by indoctrinating the workers with sexist ideology through media, religion, schools and other outlets. They propagate the myth that sexism is an innate human trait, when in reality, it is a learned behavior.
The rulers use identity politics, such as nationalism and feminism to their advantage. It emphasizes the differences between us, encourages division, and keeps workers from organizing around their similarities to overthrow their oppressor. This is the case with feminism, as women work to liberate themselves from the grips of sexist oppression, while viewing other forms of oppression as separate from their own and excluding the class struggle from the diagnosis.
While there are some feminists who do consider class in their analysis, such as Gloria Jean Watkins who goes by the pen name bell hooks, the analysis is weak. It does not speak of eradicating the class system but rather ensuring that women, irrespective of class, have better lives, which they consider possible through reforms.
“All over this nation individual feminists with class power who support a revolutionary vision of social change share resources and use our power to aid reforms that will improve the lives of women irrespective of class.” (Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks).
In other words, those who make it to the top of the “ladder of success” should share with those who are at the bottom. But as Assata Shakur says in her autobiography, “Anytime you’re talking about a ladder, you’re talking about a top and a bottom, an upper class and a lower class, a rich class and a poor class.”
Feminism doesn’t want to remove the ladder; only make room for more women to climb it. Communism, on the other hand, seeks to smash it.
And, we will smash all aspects of sexism as it plays out on a systemic level as well as its appearance in our personal relationships. However, for us to root out sexism entirely from our lives and our society, we must reckon with the primary contradiction of capitalism: workers cannot be fully paid for the value of their labor.
The fight against sexism cannot be fought outside of class lines. With the abolishment of class, and with fierce struggle,  sexism will slowly wither away in all of its manifestations. We struggle with ourselves, our comrades, and friends to eliminate sexist beliefs and practices on an individual level. Primarily, our fight against sexism must be at the point of ideological and material production: in schools and in all sectors of labor, including unpaid work.