5 Assignment 04

In chapter one, Federici describes the breakdown of women’s autonomy with the rise of capitalism by elaborating on the shift from self-sufficiency to wage labor that occurred in the middle ages. As the wages increased for the peasants and profits decreased the state had to step in to rebalance the diminishing wealth of the ruling class. Although European society was moving towards a cooperative egalitarian economy, the economy would not be able to sustain itself and the hierarchy. Due to this circumstance the ruling class had to find a way to eliminate competition and manipulate people to work in undesirable conditions, without exploitive labor workers’ would be able to resist and the wealthy would lose their power. Women were essentially driven out of the labor-force, allowed only the lowest paid jobs, by the promotion of witch-hunts or imprisonment until eventually transitioning to unpaid housewife and further dependent on men. Additionally, if a woman was without children and attempted to resist the economic conditions she would be risking physical and sexual violence.

Assisting in further exploitation was the rise of the slave trade, through buying humans or convicting them of crimes and shipping them to other colonies. The revived practice was necessary to make up for the decimated native population that could not withstand the abusive labor practices. Despite the extreme poverty and death, the sexual and racial divides were not easy to overcome. The denial of communal property by landowners was purposeful to control the food supply as well as dependent on the ruling class for wages and housing. The transition to a global capitalist system was filled with starvation, further land privatization and attacks on collective gatherings. Eventually the state intervenes again when the capitalist economic system becomes clearly unstable, not to abolish it like the egalitarian society, but to establish public assistance as a balance for cheap labor, profit margins and social control of the disenfranchised.

According to Silvia Frederici in her article “The Caliban and the Witch,” women had been discounted as part of the capitalist’s investment. In the Middle ages, feudalism was deeply rooted into European society for a very long time. Until the shift between workers and masters occurred, nothing was sufficient enough to demolish the old concept and hierarchies. Frederici brings up Marx’s idea of which connects the feudal reconstruction to the development of capitalism. According to that, European working class set up the foundation of capitalist system. However, in Marx’s introduction of “transition to capitalism,” he does not mention the social position of women and how it was shifted due to social and economic changes. According to Frederici, women were only treated as a working machine. In other words, they were merely the reproduction of work force. The accumulation of wealth was eventually made by exploited workers, but the more important thing is that there was also a division within the working class and people suffered much more due to race and gender. Therefore it supports Frederici’s idea that capitalism is committed to both sexism and racism. The capitalist class in Europe had policies that shaped the proletariat. One of the policies was cutting wages of women. There also was a hierarchy between indigenous, African and European women. These were happened to discipline and reproduce the capitalist class. The means of self sufficiency brought wealth of people in some sense, but it excluded certain class from the hierarchy, which does not fit the general capitalist idea. As a result, capitalism brought different forms of enslavement. The exploitation was not just about physical abuse and labor, but was intensified in terms of ideology. Also, derived from this idea the clear division of gender and race was created. The whole process of degradation came into place. Eventually it became the foundation of capitalist accumulations that shaped a big part of the society.

When the land started to become privatized and work was changed into a free wage labor market, almost all women lost their production jobs such as working on the field. Instead, they were degraded to the point where almost anything they did was seen as housekeeping or helping the man. This started happening because women lost their land, or a common area, where they could talk to other women and share ideas without the influence of males. It was also harder for women to work production jobs and travel since they had to take care of children or would get pregnant which meant it was harder for them to do the job even if they were available. This caused many women to riot which eventually lead to them being arrested and further degraded.

When women did any work it was seen as housekeeping work no matter what it was and that they were working for the men. If there was women working in production, it was only cause they were seen as there to help their husbands. In France, women were expected to register their pregnancies and weren’t allowed to terminate them. Contraception was also made illegal,  These laws were of course made by men. There was a huge emphasis on women keeping their babies because more children meant that in the future, there would be more people working in production if they were male. Women being pregnant and giving birth was also eventually credited to the men who were doctors in society instead of the women. The men were said to be giving life even though it was the women who had the baby in her womb and gave birth. This system was seen as profitable since both men and especially women were getting paid less than how much the products they made would be sold for, which meant more money for the state.

In Silvia Federici’s reading, she described the degradation of women’s social status in the period of Capitalism. The article had mention that in 14th century, the women can got half the pay of man, but in the mid-16th, they only earn one-third of man’s wages. This fact states the degradation of women’s social status. During 16th century, women’s power was being crushed, they were forcing to worked on the jobs that were unpaid or low paid. They were excluded from many wages occupation, even they had the same job with males, they still earn less compared with males.
In 19th century, there were more women that became full time housewife, in relation with men. The rate of more women were dependence on men was increasing, because there has no access to earn wages for unmarry women, they were under the condition of poverty, economic dependence. The only thing they can do were to rely on men.
During the transition of Feudalism to Capitalism, there was a time period called Patriarchy. In that time, women were lived as a ‘Wages-slavery’: The man was receiving his wife’s wages, the woman didn’t get the money even she worked so hard. In this way, women was impossible to have their own money.
In conclude, women’s social status was being degraded. Their wages get low, and the chance of work opportunities were limited for them, the way for women to survive was rely on men. They were also being insult and assault by men with inequality treatment. Their social status has became more inferior to men.

Federici describes the degradation of women as a relation to the changes in the social-economic system in Europe and the New World. As the economy of Europe changed from Feudalism to Capitalism, women’s roles changed along with it. Federici says, “the ‘transition to capitalism’ is a test case for feminist theory, as the redefinition of productive and reproductive tasks and male-female relations that we find in this period” (14). Where a woman’s role in the household was once valued because she was able to knit her family’s clothing and help her husband till their farm, once economic life became commercialized, women were forced to buy their clothing and buy their produce. They could no longer function as imperative forces in their homes. Furthermore, the term “housewife” meant that a woman was working full-time in her home (raising children, cooking, cleaning), as an unrecognized, unpaid laborer. Women were degraded in this way and became dependent on their husbands.

Federici explains that once mercantilism started to grow, there was a dire need for population growth to accommodate such a work force. The wealth of a nation was therefore dependent on its number of citizens. This population crisis put a huge amount of pressure on women. A woman’s role was now to reproduce. Women lost control of their own bodies. They were marginalized if they were taking any form of birth control, if they had complications during pregnancy, or if they were barren. Federici argues that witch hunts came about because of this crisis — men needed someone to blame for the lack of reproduction. Women were deemed witches if they were unable or unwilling to reproduce. Even midwives were blamed if there was a complication during birth. Many midwives were persecuted or lost their jobs. The result was an massive increase in male doctors.

Women saw many forms of discrimination during these economic changes. There came about a new sexual division of labor and sexual hierarchy in a political society. Federici claims, “discrimination that women have suffered in the wage work-force has been directly rooted in their function as unpaid laborers in the home” (94-95). She believes the degradation of women — racism and sexism in labor roles — stemmed from capitalist development and ideologies which marginalized women’s work life in their homes and outside the home as well.

Before reading this piece, I did believe that capitalism directly caused sexism and worked to harm women each day. Women were unable to have equal rights in the workforce, were placed in unfair unsafe working conditions, and are not given the same wages to this day. In this piece, women are described as having their work being valued as less than that of a man’s. Because of the fact that they are women, the bosses are able to pay them less and treat them more poorly, which is seen as normal by the white male population. Women were increasingly seen as housewives, which were expected to stay at home and work from there, relying on the wages of the man. Women who worked outside of the home still had little access to resources because of their low wages; for example, if a woman worked in a wheat factory it would still be very likely that she could not afford bread on her own. This system caused women to have to rely on men, staying with them and being unhappy just to make a living. Separation was impossible for economic reasons as well as societal reasons, so women were forced to stay in unhappy or abusive marriages because it would be impossible for them to live otherwise. Many women were politically involved during this time, protesting food shortages and unfair working conditions. Women rose up against their unfair treatment, and fought for their rights as seen in the years previous to this. To me this shows the persistence and strength of women, as they are always continuously faced with disadvantages that they fight against. The rebellion and efforts of women are extremely important to the history of women, as it demonstrates the effectiveness of women coming together to fight against patriarchal rule and unfair conditions.

Due Monday, February 27th, by midnight. Word count: 300 words. Please make sure everything is in your own words. Absolutely no quotes should be used. If you paraphrase from the text (from Federici’s work or anywhere else), you must be sure to include the proper citation (either MLA or APA).

In The Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici argues that as a social-economic system, capitalism is committed to sexism and racism (2004:17). In your own words, describe the degradation of women that Federici describes in chapter one of her work. How is that degradation joined to accumulations of wealth in a capitalist political economy?