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Assignment 4

The degradation of women that Federici describes is that women had no control of their body. They were limited to what they could and couldn’t do by the government. The government also passed a couple of laws saying that if they used any contraception, have an abortion, and infanticide (killing the baby) they would be considered a criminal/murder and receive capital punishment. This was going to far for just trying to increase the work force because women’s body was a tool for the men to use, they could be raped anytime like the slaves (African American during and after slavery was abolished), they were being stalked by the government (that way the government can determine how much kids there is to increase the workforce), and were unable to see to their child after giving birth to them. So much of women’s rights have been taken away and they were being treated like a toy (slut, looked down upon, etc…).

I think the wealth in capitalist political economy also played a role, where women was being paid less compared to the men. This forces the women to either get married (rely on the men) because their income was too low to support themselves (they were being paid like half of what the men would get paid for working the same amount of hours and job) and that way the income of the men will be able to support them. This however forces the women to be a housewife by taking care of everything in the house (domestic work like knitting clothes and selling it became an option until the textile industry replaced that completely changing the roles of women again) and the child. Also when the economy was really bad, a group of women would go on a protest to steal food from bakery and the rich in order to support themselves or their family because their job wasn’t enough to support them (low pay) and there wasn’t enough money to go around so people were starving.

Today this is still happening, but more like a double standard kind of thing. For example if a women work in the adult industry (prostitution/porn) they would be called slut and etc… If they decide to look for another job after quitting the adult industry they would be unable to escape the industry because people think it is bad influence on society so they would be stuck making their own company or try finding something else to do (this is kind of hard to explain). Overall, I think women are still being treated unfairly (some times you will hear the sexual harassment at work, being raped [I guess rape culture is a pretty harsh topic too], etc…), but for the most part our generation has been more accepting (we are pretty open-minded even though we wouldn’t want to admit certain stuff like saying we are racist or something, were more of the treat others the way you want to be treated kind of type I think). This also depends on the person (nature vs nurture) and how they were raised.