Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalist patriarchy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

> Doug wrote:
>
> > Like I said yesterday, the relation between sex/gender oppression
> > and capitalism is extremely complicated, with capitalism
> > destabilizing received gender hierarchies as much as it thrives on
> > them. The entry of women into waged labor profoundly transforms
> > societies in the early phases of capitalist development.
> > Recognizing this is one of the things that distinguishes a Marxist
> > feminism from other kinds.
>
> Doug I agree and this is a step in the right direction but it is
> still of the "add gender and stir" kind of recognizing.  Women were
> present during all the transformations that occurred throughout
> history.  All of these processes must be analyzed from a more
> feminist perspective for deeper insights into the problems and
> solutions.
>
> Diane

Feminist contributions to labor history tell us that the first wage
laborers at the beginning of the "industrial revolution" in the most
crucial industry were often predominantly female, not male, textile
workers.  (Even mining was not the all male or predominantly male
industry either.)  For instance, see E. Patricia Tsurumi, _Factory
Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan_, Princeton: New
Jersey: Princeton UP, 1990:

*****   Begun initially as largely government enterprises that
received government support and encouragement after they were in
private hands, the machine silk-reeling and cotton-spinning
industries of Meiji were the first in Japan to develop extensive
factory production.  Their work forces, heavily female, formed a
large proportion of the labor force during the first period of
Japan's industrialization.  This pattern would remain long after the
Meiji era had ended.

Although throughout the Meiji period some cotton-mill hands came from
urban homes, the vast majority of the silk-reeling and
cotton-spinning operatives were women and girls from a rural
background.  During the first decade of the new era, daughters of
debt-free and even well-to-do farming families went to work in the
new silk mills, but thereafter the female workers in both silk and
cotton plants tended to be from poor peasant families.  By the turn
of the century these kojo [factory girls] came from some of the
poorest tenant-farmer villages in the entire country.  The women and
girls who became textile factory workers, including those from
independent cultivator or prosperous farming homes, were no strangers
to hard work.  They knew that many generations of country women had
contributed to the well-being of their families by laboring both at
home and away from home.  Like their mothers and grandmothers before
them in pre-Meiji times, they had routinely seen female as well as
male offspring of peasant families "going out to work" (dekasegi) in
a place beyond commuting distance....

During the Edo era (1600-1867), female offspring of peasant families
were sent away to labor as dekasegi workers, usually in a local
village or town.  This immediately reduced the number of mouths that
had to be fed, and the girls might gain valuable skills and
experience, eventually bringing in some remuneration.  The ones who
remained at home were essential workers within the peasant family
economy, producing and processing food and other items for the family
subsistence, caring for the young and the incapacitated, and playing
key roles in the production of marketable commodities, including silk
and cotton thread.  (9-10)   *****

This knowledge challenges a commonly accepted notion that "the
working class used to be predominantly male, and female workers were
brought in to keep male workers' wages down."  The working class
became predominantly male only in the course of industrial
development & working-class struggles within it.  What were
short-term achievements for the survival of working-class families --
"family wages" for men, "protective" legislations for women, etc. --
in the long run undermined the formation of solidaristic, not
gender-hierarchic, working-class culture & movement.

Why were early industrial workers so often more female than male?  I
speculate that's in part because more women than men were often
excluded from inheriting family properties by the law of
primogeniture (and other laws that govern inheritance in countries
without primogeniture) & customs.  Here, the residual patriarchal
practice (the feudal need to prevent excessive parcellization &
alienation of land -- recall Carrol's comment that in premodern
societies place determines merit, not vice versa as under capitalism)
determined the particular gender cast that wage labor took at the
take-off moment of industrialization.

Typical faces of industrial workers changed from female & colored to
male & white to female & colored.  The prevalence of the nuclear
family idealized by conservatives now -- male breadwinner, female
housewife, & biological children -- was merely a blip in history that
coincided with the post-WW2 economic boom (say, from the Korean War
to the Vietnam War & oil shock).

Yoshie