Hartmann - Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex

The sexual division of labor appears to be universal across time and space. The hierarchical nature it has today, however, with men on top and women on bottom, is not. In this paper, Hartmann examines the development and importance of a sex-ordered division of labor. She argues that if women are to attain equal status with men and both sexes are to fully develop their potential, the hierarchical nature of the sexual division of labor must be eliminated. It is the root of women's second class status.

Two primary questions for investigation: 1) how does a more sexually egalitarian division of labor becomes less egalitarian; and 2) how this hierarchical division of labor extended to wage labor.

Hartmann argues that a patriarchal system, in which men controlled the labor of women and children in the family, existed before capitalism. Through this system, men learned hierarchical organization and control. The introduction of the public/private separation allowed these personal systems of control to be expanded into an indirect, impersonal system that was society-wide. Two mechanisms men used were 1) the traditional sexual division of labor; and 2) techniques of hierarchical organization and control. These mechanisms were important in extending the sex-ordered division of labor to the wage-labor system when capitalism emerged.

Explanations of the effect capitalism would have on women, specifically, that it would destroy the family and earlier patriarchal authority by bringing women and children into the workforce have not been satisfactory. If this were true, why are women still unequal to men in the labor market? Hartmann argues that the problem with these explanations is that they ignore the role of men in maintaining the subordinate status of women. Hartmann argues that men have and continue to play a significant role in maintaining the sexual division of labor in the labor market. The primary mechanism that maintains male dominance in capitalist society is job segregation by sex. Low wages keep women dependent on men and encourage them to marry (in which they are required to perform domestic work for their husband). Men, therefore, get better wages and domestic services. Since women have greater domestic responsibilities, their position in the labor force is weakened. So the hierarchical division of labor in the home and in the workplace reinforce one another.

Hartmann's argument is different from both the neoclassical and Marxist economist views because both ignore patriarchy. Neo-classical economists attribute job segregation to outside ideological factors (sexist attitudes, etc.) and do not hold capitalism responsible. Marxists attribute job segregation to capitalists and do not acknowledge to role played by male workers and patriarchal social relations. Hartmann attempts a more balanced approach.

Anthropological Perspectives on the Division of Labor by Sex

Some anthropologists argue that male dominance has existed since the beginning of society. Sherry Ortner - "female is to male as nature is to culture". Culture devalues nature and women are associated with nature in all cultures, hence they are devalued. This view is similar to Rosaldo, who focuses on the public/private split, and Levi-Strauss who says the subordination of women is part of the process in which society is created. L-S argues that culture begins with an exchange of women between men. This exchange creates bonds between families, making them interdependent, and thereby creates society. Similarly, the sexual division of labor makes the sexes interdependent and assures heterosexual marriage. Therefore, a sexual division of labor is universal (although the division of tasks varies greatly). Finally, since it is men exchanging women, men benefit more from the social bonds created and the division of labor is hierarchical.

Chodorow exemplifies a second school of anthropological thought that focuses on the isolation of women within the domestic sphere. Specifically, Chodorow focuses on the mothering role. Chodorow argues that patriarchy is universal because women universally mother. Female mothering reproduces the system by creating gender-specific personality structures.

The feminist-revisionist school and the variationist school both reject the universality (at least in theory) of the sex-ordered division of labor. Feminist-revisionists argue that we are unable to accurately observe other sexual divisions of labor because we are biased by of our cultural bias which expects male dominance. Even if a division was separate and equal, we will be unable to understand it that way. Hartmann describes this approach as extreme cultural relativism, but finds it useful in contributing an understanding of women's work and accomplishments. Variationists are subdivided according to the characteristics they emphasize. For example, the contribution of women to subsistence and their control over those contributions; the organization of tribal vs. state societies; requirements of the mode of production; emergence of wealth and private property; boundaries of the public and private spheres. She only gives a few examples of these approaches because there are so many of them.

1) studies of the !Kung in Southwest Africa in which women have a great deal of autonomy and influence, especially by Patricia Draper. She argues that women's position in this culture is a result of their high proportion of food contribution, equal absences from camp of male hunters and female gatherers, flexibility of adult sex roles, absence of physical aggression, small group size and flexible membership, and a close, public arrangement of housing.

Draper argues that as this and other cultures had greater contact with male-dominated Western civilization, changes began to occur within them. The status of women decreased, their work became devalued, and the public/private split began to take place.

2) Ester Boserup also examines the problems that exposure to western society caused for women in Third World tribal groups. She argues that this influence resulted in the strengthening or creation of male dominance. Before colonization, women in many African cultures had significant economic and political independence which was eroded by colonial practices of teaching men agricultural techniques or trading when women were traditionally the farmers or traders. Westerners also encouraged men to be the head of the household which also eroded women's traditional roles.

Europeans also gave local governing power to men and ignored women's traditional political participation, which was often quite extensive.

3) Viana Muller looks at the decline of Anglo-Saxon and Welsh tribal societies and the emergence of the English nation-state. In these tribal societies, individual rights were not entrusted to a head of the family, but in the larger social group. Men and women received cattle from this larger group upon adulthood so that they could avoid dependence on anyone else. Women participated in the politics of both their husband's and their birth lineages. These customs were undermined by the emergence of the state which uses the traditional division of labor to create a hierarchical relationship within the family (husband over wife and children) and in society overall(lord over peasants and serfs). Tribes lost their authority and women's work became private and for the benefit of her husband.

The above are just a few examples of the variationist work. Variationists use a number of different variables to explain the decrease in women's social status. The argue that increased sexual stratification occurs along with a process of social stratification. The decrease in women's status occurs when: she loses control over subsistence through changes in production and devaluation of her contribution; when women's work becomes private and family centered instead of centered on social or kin groups; and/or when some men assert power of others through the state mechanism, giving these subordinate men power over their families and using these nuclear families against the kin group. So control over women is maintained by men within the nuclear family, but is supported by social institutions. The variationist work suggests that patriarchy did not always exist. It emerged as social conditions changed and men participated in these changes. Most anthropologists agree that patriarchy existed way before capitalism.

The Emergence of Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in England and the United States

The key process in the emergence of capitalism was primitive accumulation, a two-fold process that set the preconditions for the expansion of the scale of production. 1) free laborers had to be accumulated, 2) large amounts of capital were needed. 1) was achieved by removing people from the land so that they had to work for wages. 2) was achieved through the growth of farms and shops whose capital was amassed through banks, and by huge increases in merchant capital as a result of the slave trade and colonial exploitation.

The creation of the wage-labor force and expansion of production had a stronger impact on women than men. Hartmann examines the work women did before this transition and how that worked changed.

1500s-1600s: most people worked in agriculture and woolen textiles, and in different crafts and trade in town. Rural women tended household gardens, orchards, animals, etc. as well as spun and wove. Some of these products were sold in towns, so women were able to contribute cash as well as products to the family income. Some men and women worked on larger farms for wages.

1600s-1700s: small farmers were displaced by larger farmers and wives lost their sources of support while men were able to continue working for wages. Women experienced greater unemployment with the loss of the household plots and families lost a large portion of their subsistence as a result. Also in the 1700s, cotton textiles grew, and a putting out system was created which helped many displaced farm families. But soon this system could not meet demand and first spinning then weaving were organized into factories in rural areas that hired both women and children.

It is suggested that women were more available to the exploitation of work in the factories and putting out systems because of their subordinate position within the family, although this cannot be completely corroborated because of the limited and biased data available. It is, however, compatible with the conclusions of the above section which describes the emergence of patriarchy as part of early social stratification.

In cities and towns, the transition to capitalism occurred differently, but still along the same lines with regard to gender. Men and women had different places in the family authority structure and capitalism built on that structure. Men were master artisans. Women were members of their husbands' guild, but only as appendages. Within some industries (family industries), men tended to do more skilled jobs, while women worked more with raw materials or finishing tasks. Girls were less trained and rarely apprenticed and so could not work their way up the ladder to masters, etc. In other industries, the entire industry was sex segregated, such as carpentry and millinery.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, demand for larger output broke down the family industries and guilds. Capitalists organized production on a larger scale and removed it from the home. Women were excluded from the industries in which they assisted men and many married women stayed home to do domestic work. When women did work for wages, they were at a disadvantage relative to men. In ag, there was a tradition of lower wages for women. Women were also less trained and obtained less desirable jobs. Finally, women wage laborers were less organized then men.

The better organization of men, Hartmann argues, played a key role in limiting the participation of women in the labor market. She provides evidence for this better organization and gives some likely reasons for men's superior organizational skills during this period (not for men's universal organizational superiority).

Evidence: guilds that were male dominated and stronger in male trades; male professions and their usurpation of female profession (16th and 17th centuries), ex. medicine; throughout the emergence of capitalism, men seem to have been better able to organize themselves as wage workers.

Reasons: the patriarchal social relations in the nuclear family that are reinforced by the state and religion. Their organizational ability grew out of the position in the family.

So, industrial capitalism increased the subordination of women by taking work out of the home while at the same time increasing the importance of men's work. But men's domination already existed, it did not come from capitalism. In fact, it guided and shaped the development of capitalism. Taking work out of the home made men less dependent on women's industrial work and made women more economically dependent on men.

Women's wage labor was limited by both patriarchy and capitalism. Wage labor altered the control men had over women's labor, but it did not eliminate it (as early marxists predicted). Job segregation by sex served to maintain men's dominance. Women's jobs were lower paid, less skilled, and involved less authority/control. Men used trade associations and the domestic division of labor to enforce job segregation and maintain their dominant position. Women's subordinate positions in the labor force and in the family mutually reinforced each other.

1800s to early 20th century: by 1840 male factory workers were demanding limitations on the labor participation of women and children. They viewed women and children as threats because they worked for significantly lower pay. What Hartmann finds telling is that men responded to this threat by demanding the exclusion of women and children from the workplace rather than attempting to organize these workers. She argues that this response is clearly based on patriarchal relations not capitalism. It was in men's interest as men to keep women doing domestic work at home.

Different scholars of the era discussed this issue (see pp. 155-158), ex. Webb, Rathbone, Fawcett, Edgeworth. These scholars are significant because the set the foundation for almost all following explanations of women's position in the labor market. They focus on the role of male unionists, and different skill levels of men and women. Fawcett and Rathbone argue that equal pay for equal work was a mechanism for keeping women unequal since they did not have equal access to skills.

After WWI: Fawcett argues that WWI raised women's expectations and made them unwilling to return to the way things had been before. Edgeworth formalized Fawcett's work into a job segregation and overcrowding model: job segregation by sex caused overcrowding in women's jobs. This created higher wages for men and lower wages for women. Male unions were the main cause of women's overcrowding.

English literature: lower wages and job segregation are explained by 1) male unions, 2) men's financial responsibility for their families, 3) women's willingness to work for lower pay, and 4) women's lack of training and skills. It suggests that job segregation is patriarchal in nature and men's ability to organize in unions is a key element.

American literature: focuses on 1) sex shifts in jobs, and 2) technology. American experience differ from English. 1) colonial farm families probably had a more rigid division of labor, 2)early textile farms hired young single women from New England farms, a conscious effort to avoid family labor, 3) shortage of labor in colonial and frontier America created more opportunities for women outside of the family, 4) labor shortage continued throughout 19th and 20th century, 5) immigrants created an extremely heterogeneous labor force with differing skill levels and varying antagonisms.

In America, machinery, unskilled labor and women worker often went together. An increase in female labor force participation usually accompanied an increase in demand and technological changes. Also, a shortage of an industry's usual labor supply also resulted in shifts in female labor force participation.

Illustrations: cigar making, printing. Male workers got protective legislation and exclusion of women.

Hartmann notes that although she emphasizes the role of male workers, she also recognizes the important role of the employer. She describes recent labor market segmentation theory as a framework for understanding the employers role. Employers actively work to reinforce and create tensions between workers in order to weaken their class unity and reduce their bargaining power. This theory suggests that sex segregation is a form of labor-market segmentation that is inherent in advanced capitalism and that employers actively work to exacerbate these sex divisions. They may not have created job segregation, but they have used it for their own purposes. According to Hartmann, the problem with this model is that it overemphasizes the role of employers and ignores the role of the workers themselves. She suggests that the role of employers and the role of workers may vary over time, depending on the current economic situation.

Conclusion

Women's current status in the labor force and the current sex segregation of jobs is a result of the interactions between patriarchy and capitalism. Hartmann emphasizes the role of male workers in this process. Job segregation by sex, maintained by various social institutions, is the root of women's subordinate status. Men will have to give up their favored position in the division of labor at home and in the workplace if women's subordination is to end and men are freed from class oppression and exploitation. This is a difficult task because the consequences of the division of labor run very deep, into the subconscious and are reinforced by social institutions.

Key Words:

- patriarchal capitalism

- job segregation by sex

- anthropological schools

- emergence of capitalism

- familial authority structures

- male guilds and labor unions

- English vs. American literatures

- labor-market segmentation theory

Discussion:

- Hartmann gives a good historical analysis of the interaction between patriarchy and capitalism

- good introduction to general anthropological schools and English/American differences.