WOMEN RESIST
BOURGEOIS OFFENSIVE
ON ABORTION, JOBS by Jacqueline Heinen The year 1975 was supposed to be International Women's Year. It was mainly a year of demagogy and cut-rate promises. The year 1976 was not only the year of return to reality, but also the year in which bourgeois governments launched the toughest attacks on women in a long time. Against freedom of abortion: In Britain and the United States the bourgeoisie is challenging the progressive laws passed a few years ago. In Belgium and the Netherlands it is attacking the status quo which, despite the laws, permits thousands of women to get abortions in quasi-official clinics. In France it is refusing to apply the law in most cases. Against the right to work: Unemployment is not only hitting the working class massively, but is affecting women above all, with bourgeois propaganda encouraging the employers to send women back to "their" homes. The right to maternity leaves has been challenged in several countries. Child-care centers are closing down one after the other, as are hospitals, and women are still expected to care for old people, the sick, and children. But women have not bowed to this offensive. On the contrary, their radicalization has broadened in most of the advanced capitalist countries, leading ever greater layers of working reformist organizations have been compelled to declare themselves when faced with mass movements. We have seen the Italian Communist party shift the position it held last spring on abortion; the CP has become the champion of unity in the struggle of women against their oppression in Spain; the
French CP has recognized that rape is an important question.
Their presence in the united demonstrations called by women's groups for March 8, 1977, is nevertheless not assured. But the themes that have been placed on the agenda for this international women's day do guarantee that the mobilization will broaden in the future. Women today are struggling to defend their gains: for the right to employment and social services that free them from domestic tasks; the right to have children if they want, when they want, and how they want. They are struggling for their right to equality and economic independence; they are struggling to be treated like independent Free abortion on demand The generalized economic crisis facing the bourgeoisie is provoking identical bourgeois reactions in all the advanced capitalist countries in the domain of budget policy: save money at the expense of the workers by beginning to make sinister cuts in non-profitable sectors. Social services have been the first to be attacked: schools, child-care centers, health care, social security, etc. And within the health budget, the first areas to be cut are the credits earmarked for hospital services relating to abortions or natural childbirth, because these things aren't profitable, because they are superfluous, and because they are even harmful since they give women "ideas" about their capacity to decide and control. Thus, we have seen the public authorities try to close down Elizabeth Garret Anderson Hospital in London, a hospital created for women at the end of the nineteenth century, one directed by women and in which it is mainly women who work. In Paris they have refused to grant the credits needed to keep the maternity hospital of Lilas functioning. This hospital practices natural childbirth and the personnel draws women into collective discussions on their relations with their children, on their bodies, and on the functioning of the clinic the management of which is supposed to be collective. The pressure exerted by the most reactionary wing of the bourgeoisie, the weight of the church, and the relationship of forces with the workers movement are, of course, decisive in the manner in which various governments are reacting. The Social Democrats in Britain are not at all opposed to the proposal to "revise" the law which has been made by the Conservative Benyon. And for good reason: this proposal simply more or less repeats that presented eighteen months ago by Labour MP James White, which was aimed at reducing the period of pregnancy during which abortion is legal, restricting the rights of immigrant women, increasing the right of the police to have access to dossiers established on women who get abortions, diminishing the number of doctors authorized
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WOMEN'S MOVEMENT to perform abortions (they would have to have at least five year's experience), and closing down clinics performing inexpensive abortions. All this in the name of the health of women, of course. Since there are half a million people on hospital waiting lists in this country, it is understandable that less than half the women who wanted to abort have been able to do so in public facilities during past years. In the United states this figure falls to 15%, the bulk of requests being dealt with by private clinics. And nevertheless, 700,000 out of 1.5 million women were refused access to them in 1975. But here the bourgeoisie, Ford and Carter in the lead, is more cynical: Last September, in the name of economizing, Congress passed a law eliminating federal funds allocated to abortion, which would be reflected in no less than 300,000 women a year having to resort to back-street abortionists or giving up hope. The law was declared unconstitutional, which means that the Supreme Court will have to rule, the same court which has just rebuffed the working women of General Electric who were demanding maternity leaves paid by the company. These gentlemen, of course, are supported by the powerful shadow of the pope, who said that if malformed babies had to be bom in the wake of the Seveso tragedy, there would be no lack of good Christians to adopt them. He also plans to canonize a woman "saint" who preferred to die in childbirth rather than have an abortion. And there are others who have emulated him. At a time when the Belgian bourgeoisie is engaged in a witch-hunt against doctors who have the courage to say that they perform abortions and has arrested Five of them (among them Dr. Peers, whose arrest had already given rise to massive mobilizations four years ago), at a time when this bourgeoisie intends to bring one of our comrades in Kortrijk to trial for "illegal abortion propaganda" (pamphlets on this question were "found" in her car), posters put up by the municipal authorities cover the walls of this city recommending breast feeding and urging women to "be the complete mother. " And of course everyone knows that the employers of Kortrijk are especially progressive, that they grant breastfeeding leaves to all their women workers and do not lay them off when they are pregnant but instead give them six months leave. But irony is out of place when one takes into account that the anti-abortion movements are powerful in Britain and the United States, that they recruit many adherents within a working class impregnated with bourgeois ideology, that in Portugal even today women are being sent to prison for having had abortions, and that the Francoist law defining abortion as a crime is still in effect in Spain. While it is true that in the long run the bourgeoisie will be unable to refuse to grant, in one diluted form or another, a democratic right that many women of the ruling class itself are demanding, this does not change the fact that for the moment it is primarily the most exploited and oppressed women who suffer from this situation - those who cannot afford a stay in a private clinic, those who do not have the right skin color, to whom the right to abortion is denied and on whom sterilization is forced. This is what was revealed by the "tribunal" on abortion organized in London at the end of January by a united front 38 of left and far-left forces, on the initiative of the National Abortion Campaign and with the support of many women of the Labour party. The question of the conditions under which abortions are performed has long since been raised, challeng the compulsory three days' stay in a hospital, with compulsor anesthetic. It should be noted that this same sort of concern is being expressed today in French women's groups. The latte along with some groups of MLAC (Movement for Free Abortio and Contraception), have taken the inifiative in a campaign for application of the abortion law, basing themselves on a charter of the women's movement. And most important, other concerns are beginning to be raised, such as contraception and choice of sexuality. This is a dominant theme of the cam paign being waged in Spain today, in the image of the mobil zations of Italian women for the "consultori, " around a manifesto demanding the opening of family planning centers as well as free abortion and contraception on demand. Another concern is that of another type of maternity, another type of relations with children. Many working women are beginning to wonder why they are taught from early childhoo that their "natural" role is to be mothers, although they do n have the right to become pregnant without running the risk of losing their jobs. Equal pay for equal work in countries like Spain, Italy, or Portugal, the rate of emplo ment of women barely exceeds 25% of the total work force. In spite of that, women are still the first laid off, as in all the other capitalist countries. Unemployment among women in Britain is increasing at twice the rate of unemployment among men; in France the unemployment rate is 5.8% among women and 3.2% among men. And although this is partly a result of the generalized policy of maximizing profit being pursued by the employers, a policy which affects all workers, it is more particularly caused by the credit cuts that have bee made in the public sector and the deliberate desire to lend priority to employing men at all levels. The intensification of discrimination ogainst pregnant women in the recent period, like the measures taken against married women working as teachers in public education in West Germany or Switzerland demonstrate this. As do the consequences of the recent govern ment decree in Italy blocking the expansion of municipalities, provinces, and regions until the end of 1977: Not only will there be no new hiring by these bodies, which will lead to about 100,000 more unemployed in a sector the great majority of whose employees are women, but the planned shutdowns of child-care centers, schools, old people's homes, and so on will also mean that many additional women will be compelled to quit their jobs to take care of children and old people who will no longer be cared for by collective institutions. In New York the number of workers in public hospitals decline by 3,000 in 1975, and an additional 4,500 layoffs are planne for 1976. In Britain E1,000 million were cut from the public service budget last year, primarily affecting the jobs and living conditions of women. In this country of the traditional "welfare state" less than a third of children under the age of 5 have access to any sort of child-care facilities, even though four-fifths of employed women (38% of the total work force)
work full time. Thus, the fight of British working women for a minimum wage and equal pay takes place in the context both of opposition to the budget policy of the Labour govemment (there were masses of women among the 80,000 people who marched in London last November against the cuts) and of the struggle against the incomes policy imposed by the trade unions. The victory of the Trico workers after a twenty-oneweek strike showed that only direct action produces results, that the Equal Pay Act, passed at the end of 1975, has no effect unless women organize to make sure it is applied. The appeals court showed which side it was on when it rejected their demand that the law be applied under the pretext that the women were not doing the same work as the men. These are the conclusions that were drawn during the Rally on Women's Rights held in London at the end of February, which drew 2,000 people, particularly women active in the major struggles of past months in factories and neighborhoods. (A massive delegation from the campaign for child-care centers now going on in the northwest was also present.) Women struggling for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution in the United States have reached the same conclusions. In face of the foot-dragging of the leaders of the National Organization for Women, most of whom are linked to the Democratic party, who curbed the mobilizations as much as they could in order not to disrupt Carter's election campaign, the most active militants in the campaign for the ERA, including our comrades of the Socialist Workers party, are fighting for mobilizations in the streets and among the unions, which alone will enable women to compel respect for their rights and defend the rights of the most exploited women - Blacks, Chicanas, and immigrants. It must also be stressed that the problems that have been raised by women in struggle during the many factory occupations that have taken place in the textile industry in France (where half the strikes during the past year occurred in factories where the majority of workers are women) have not all been limited to questions of wages. They have also posed the problem of women's right to unionize, their right to job training, their refusal to work overtime on top of their already double work day, the especially unhealthy working conditions to which they are subject, and the infernal speedups in most of the sectors in which they work. Women are fighting for recognition of their delegates and for paid maternity leaves, as in the massive strike (90% effective) which lasted several weeks and resulted in the shutdown of the Induyco textile factory in Madrid. With solidarity from women of many other shops, the working women of Induyco organized a boycott of the Corte Ingles chain store, whose owners are the majority shareholders in Induyco. They fought against the paternalism of the employer, as other women are doing in the Puente strike, also in Madrid. When layoff letters were sent to the parents of the women workers there, most of whom are minors (between 14 and 18), a "Parents' Assembly" was called to resist these pressures collectively, to convince the parents to react as workers and oppose the divisive maneuvers of the employer. Generally speaking, there has been a significant increase in the rate of unionization of women during the past two years, and specific bodies have been created in the unions - women's trade-union commissions, punctual gatherings of women to discuss their particular problems, even non-mixed coalitions of various unions, such as the Congress of Labor Union Women in the United States. And these structures have often been stimulated by the leaderships of the traditional organizations of the workers movement. The policy of the reformists The evolution of the positions of the trade-union leaders, the CPs, and the Social Democratic parties during the past period should not astonish us. Challenged by the rising radicalization of working women, the leaderships of these reformist organizations have been compelled to demonstrate some flexibility in order not to completely lose control of important mobilizations, especially when the latter have been actively supported by many women militants in their own ranks. Hence the reanimation during International Women's Year of trade-union structures designed to discuss the specific problems of women, the placing of discussion of the theme of the oppression of women on the agenda of cadre training schools, and above all the systematic reappearance in platforms of demands of slogans going beyond the traditional "equal pay for equal work" and dealing with equal job training, free quality child-care, the right of women to control their own bodies, and sometimes even the questioning of the division of tasks within the family. These sorts of positions - sometimes very advanced, as in the platform worked out for the July 1976 National Meeting of working women of the Intersindical in Portugal or the National Confederation of Trade Unions in Quebec - are nevertheless usually limited to written statements and are rarely reflected in active support to women's struggles. Pressure from the mass movement such as is being expressed in Spain or Italy today is necessary to compel the reformist leaderships to move to action and try to take the lead in the movement. Even then they often do so in a sectarian manner. The Italian CP called for demonstrations for jobs in Turin on March 8 separate from the rest of the women's movement, declining to place abortion on the agenda in an attempt to prevent pressure from the rank and file from forcing the party into a head-on confrontation with the Christian Democracy during the discussion on the abortion bill in the Senate, scheduled to begin March 9. In Madrid, where the first national gathering of working women's groups was held February 12-13, the CP of Spain, which had itself taken the initiative in calling the gathering, carefully avoided inviting the factory groups it does not control, thus limiting the impact of the meeting. It took five months before the leadership of the interunion structure in London called for a national demonstration with the Trico workers, under the pressure of the campaign for the Working Women's Charter and the far-left political organizations, in particular our comrades of the International Marxist Group. As for a solidarity campaign with the women textile workers who have been occupying their factories in France, sometimes for more than a year, we are still waiting. These few facts simply underscore the contradictions in which the reformists are caught. They cannot go too far without running the risk of being confronted with embarassing questions on the independence of strike bodies, trade-union democracy,
WOMEN'S MOVEMENT the maintenance of discrimination against women in the workers movement, etc. They thus do all they can to coopt, limit, and channel these mobilizations, either by doing nothing or by acting through the bodies which they control completely. Nevertheless, the existence of some 2,000 women's commissions in the Italian CP, the united work between the UDI (Union of Italian Women, linked to the CP) and the CRAC (Coordinating Body of Women's Abortion Groups in Rome), and the presence of Spanish CP women in the neighborhood groups and in the weekly coordinating body in Barcelona, which includes some sixty groups assembling all political tendencies, all represent serious practical limits to their ability to exercise this control. The women of the Italian CP, for example, have great difficulty defending the policy of class collaboration called for and applied by their party leadership. On the contrary, in the discussion in the various Italian Communist press organs they are questioning the party's acceptance of the incomes policy and the budget cuts of which women are the first to bear the burden. Likewise, they are criticizing the economistic manner in which the party has intervened among women, limiting itself, in their view, to propaganda against superexploitation in the factories. Dynamic of the movement In this context, it is obvious that the positions upheld by revolutionaries can gain a growing audience among important layers of working class women, especially since many mobilizations are beginning to put forward themes that can become explosive within the traditional organizations, The question of beaten women, for example, shows that the violence with which all relations are fainted in capitalist society is repeated in the proletarian family; such violence is even commited by active militants of the workers movement. And when revolufionaries intervene to show that only a radical change in this society, only the elimination of the profit system, can enable other types of relations among individuals to develop, many women still organized or influenced by the reformists can only agree. Because they see that this individual violence is the result of fatigue and daily exploitation, the unending rushing around, the lack of collective responsibility for domestic tasks, which rest entirely on their shoulders; they also see that they themselves are not in position to try to create different relations with their companions. In fighting to win collective equipment, cheap launderies, and quality child-care centers managed by the users and with a mixed personnel, they are not only struggling against their double work day, but are also posing the need for the socialization of domestic tasks; they are not only refusing to be confined in their present role, but are also rejecting the image of the virile man by demanding that he take on a share of these tasks. And if they do not do so explicitly, the intervention of revolutionaries can lead them to. In their pamphlets, militants of the Movement of Democratic Women in Spain (linked to the CP) certainly present an incorrect analysis of the origin of the oppression of women, for they see it solely as a function of Francoism without challenging the role of the bourgeois state, which enables the them to spread all sorts of illusions in "democracy. " But when in these same pamphlets they violently aftack advertising, the 40 Directeur de publication: Jean-François Godchau mass media, and the bourgeois press for the way they treat women as sex objects, they lay the basis for reflection abo the importance the ruling class attaches to maintaining this image, about the link between official propaganda calling for the return of women to the home during periods of crisis and about the very foundations of the power of the bourgeo sie and its state. In the same way, they are challenging the passivity of worr not only in daily life but also in the workers organizations It is thus incumbent upon us to stress that women can play decisive role in the recomposition of the workers movement and the process of trade-union unification. By holding unit discussions of their demands at the factory level, for exam they can contribute to raising a common discussion in the various union organizations. By fighting for the defense of their demands they will be led to engage in discussion on democracy in the unions. Since they often clash frontally with the class collaborationist policy of the leaderships of the workers movement, the struggles of women today preser a special opportunity for revolutionaries to take initiatives that sharpen the contradictions faced by the traditional organizations of the working class (cf the campaigns on abortion and equal pay in Britain during a period in which the maneuvering room of the reformists in power is extreme narrow) and accentuate the workers' defiance of their leaderships. But it is also an opportunity for them to devel their strategic perspectives and to show how the socialist revolution is on the agenda. The struggle for equal pay poses not only the problem of a centralized struggle of the entire working class for a minin wage, but also the problem of training and education unde the capitalist system. Through struggles against rising pric or for collective equipment, in which women are generall the first to become involved, the question of control is po and we must develop it. The struggle for free abortion and contraception allows questions of health care to be posed, such as the quality of care, scientific research, and the nationalization of the pharmaceutical trusts. All these are elements and initiatives that point in the direction of developing the independent activity and orga zation of the working class as a whole but at the same tim imply clearly posing the necessity for an independent worr movement, its character, and its links with the workers movement. We will return to this theme in a future artic The theme of freedom of abortion and the right to work an the center of the mobilizations of March 8, 1977. These themes go back to all the mobilizations that have occurre internationally during the past year. Whether in response the direct attacks of the bourgeoisie or out of a deeper challenging of the place they occupy in society, thousand of women have taken to the streets demanding their econo and sexual independence, refusing to be laid off, beaten raped, demanding free time, the right to decide whether not to have children, demanding to be able to go out at n without being attacked, to get divorced if they want, and finally, to be recognized as full individuals, both on the and in all aspects of social life. March 3, 1977
Imprimerie Rotographie, Montreuil