Feminism Rule - Village Magazine

 —    December  - January 

 Sexual Equality in the 2010s

   a concept that requires deﬁ-

nition. To deﬁne it would be to limit it when it

is still in the phase of development. Rather too

much time is being wasted already on arguing

about whether this or that is true feminism or

not. The general discourse is not helped by the

kind of naiveté that believes that history pro-

ceeds by decades. Historically, ten years is not

a signiﬁcant unit. To ask where feminism is at

the end of the last decade, this decade or the

next is not a sensible question. It makes even

less sense than asking where nationalism might

be at the end of some decade or another. The

only possible answer is ‘still there and still alive’

and that means still changing. There is, alas,

no such easy answer to the question of where

socialism is, now that we really need it.

Equality feminism is profoundly conserva-

tive. Its basic premise is that men have achieved

everything that is possible under corporate cap-

italism and all that women need or want is what

men have got already. When we hear successful

women demanding that women be equally rep-

resented at the highest level of government, civil

service and multinational corporations, that we

have as many female CEOs as we have males and

even that we insist on ‘women only’ short lists

and all female candidates for certain posts, we

should understand that the people supporting

such arguments are secure in the knowledge

that simply putting women in positions created

by and designed for men will have no eﬀect on

the underlying structures whatsoever.

Remember Margaret Thatcher: the only man

in her cabinet, warmonger, probably war crimi-

nal, architect and prime mover of the crooked Al

Yamama arms deal? Did she change the British

Conservative Party? Yes, she did. She made it

tough, pitiless and aggressive. Did she change

the British working class? Utterly. She took it

upon herself to break the power of the trades

unions. She only succeeded because the trades

unions had already betrayed their own. Sex did

have something to do with it. One of the factors

in the defeat of the trades unions was their per-

sistence in discriminating against women. A

huge pool of unrepresented female workers who

had no way of defending their pay and condi-

tions, and no choice but to accept whatever deal

the employer oﬀered had come into existence,

and would work for a pittance. When women

workers went on strike against grotesque

oppression in their workplaces, the élite trades

unions left them to fend for themselves. No ﬂy-

ing pickets for them. Jackboots are still jack-

boots, regardless of the sex of the wearer.

Equality is not simply a conservative aim;

it is also illusory. Women who break into the

ranks of male privilege very soon discover that

they are intruders, and that the kernel of male

solidarity remains impenetrable. Women who

were accepted as traders on the stock exchange

found the masculinist culture of their fellow

traders intimidating. Bullying was endemic in

the corporate culture; bullying of women took

on a sexual character that many women expe-

rienced as utterly degrading. Women admitted

as partners in law chambers can tell a similar

story. Women in the police and women in the

army can tell the same tale. Even women in the

church. Yes, there are ways of seeking redress,

but make no mistake, the women who seek the

redress to which they are legally entitled for

discrimination in the workplace will not get

their old jobs back. Most of them have had to

kiss their career goodbye.

I have never been an equality feminist. I

have never coveted the lives that men lead,

whether they are down the mine, or on the cor-

porate ladder. Corporate capitalism creates

far more losers than it does winners, because

constructing the management élite is a process

of elimination. Management is the art of tak-

ing credit for other people’s work. Women in

the corporate world make the same mistakes

that they made as high-achieving students: they

work too hard. When they delegate, they watch

over the shoulder of the person to whom the

task has been delegated, and blame themselves

if they make a mess of it. Many high-achieving

“I have never

been an equality

feminist. I have

never coveted the

lives that men

lead, whether

they are down the

mine, or on the

corporate ladder”

 

Feminism is not about equality: it is the politics of liberation or nothing at all

g e r m a i n e g r e e r