The Class Nature of Women's Oppression

Abstract

The principal thesis of the article is that the oppression of women is based on the role of women in the exploited class as the repro ducers of laborers in class society. The oppression of women is not due to the need for the ruling class to hand on its private property to its biol ogical children, as Engels argued; nor is it due to the division of labor between women and men. Rather, the specific economic form whereby resources (use-values) are provided to women during the period of child- bearing determines the institutional relations between women and men and constitutes part of the economic base of class society. At the same time, the determining factor in this relationship (between women and men) is the specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is ex tracted from the direct producers.