Woman's Consciousness, Man's World by Sheila Rowbotham

Author:Sheila Rowbotham [Rowbotham, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2015-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

Since bourgeois society is only a form resulting from the development of antagonistic elements, some relations belonging to earlier forms of society are frequently to be found in a crippled state or as a travesty of their former self, as for example communal property.8

Men and women are brought up for a different position in the labour force: the man for the world of work, the woman for the family. This difference in the sexual division of labour in society means that the relationship of men as a group to production is different from that of women. For a man the social relations and values of commodity production predominate and home is a retreat into intimacy. For the woman the public world of work belongs to and is owned by men. She is dependent on what the man earns but is responsible for the private sphere, the family. In the family she does a different kind of work from the man. The family now only rarely produces goods for exchange. Instead the woman’s production is for immediate use. The social relationships in the family mode of production are different from those outside, although they hinge upon commodity production. Thus these differences in the way in which production is structured serve to shape the consciousness of men and women. In the case of women who go out to work, the main responsibility is still the home.

In the relation of husband and wife there is an exchange of services which resembles the bond between man and man in feudalism. The woman essentially serves the man in exchange for care and protection, though the specific balance between them is personally determined. Within feudalism the serf served his lord in return for the obligation of protection from physical assault, however the particular nature of dependency varied. Sometimes the bond between man and man was relatively loose, and limited by emerging rights. In the case of the lower orders it carried traces of servility because the obligation passed to the dependents.

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