Male Chauvinism Creeps into Every Corner of Capitalist Australian Society

HOW MISOGYNY CRUSHED THE CAREER OF A TALENTED WOMAN

 

Those serious about opposing the oppression of women are aware of the overall picture in Australia. How women are paid on average 23% less than men. How women’s right to abortion is at best tenuous, curtailed and under attack. How domestic violence, bullying and abuse of women is rife. Yet, the reality of women’s oppression in capitalist Australia is made up of millions of personal stories. Stories of subjugation, humiliations, abuse, received threats and dashed hopes.

Some women’s experiences are worse than others. A working class or other low-income woman tends to cop the worst of male chauvinism because her subordinated and vulnerable socio-economic position leaves her open to misogynist attacks from male bosses, landlords, welfare/ public housing bureaucrats, debt collectors and cops. If a low-income, working class woman is of a coloured “ethnic” background and even more so if she is Aboriginal, the racist oppression she can suffer only magnifies her subjugation as a woman and as a working class person. In contrast, women from rich ruling class and upper-middle class backgrounds, generally, have greater means to evade the full force of misogyny within society. This can sometimes apply, too, to others lucky enough to get a good education and have promising career prospects. Yet, even some of these women can be unfortunate enough to suffer cruel oppression. We present here the story of one highly educated, once theoretically “upwardly mobile,” professional woman whose career was crushed under the weight of Australia’s misogynist society. Her work life was turned from great hopes to torment and finally exclusion. This woman, “Rozita H” (not her real name), wants us to tell her story. We here oblige her wishes not only because she fully deserves to be able to air her sufferings but because her experiences help shine a light on the inner workings of this misogynist, capitalist society and the types of people who occupy the echelons of its “respected” classes.

Rozita was born in Iran and migrated to Australia in the 1980s in her late teens. She had wanted to get a high quality education and that time in Iran universities were closed. From watching movies during the era of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran’s rule (which ended in 1979), she had thought that Western countries were places of “advanced science”, “freedom” and “democracy.” In time this would all prove to be a cruel illusion.

Rozita put herself through university in Australia, often working ten hour shifts in coffee shops and in aged care to gain the income needed to get by. She eventually graduated with an architecture degree from one of Sydney’s most prestigious universities. Rozita wanted to live the life of a skilled professional. Don’t get her wrong, she did not have ambitions of being a high-flying capitalist exploiter. Even from that age she was a leftist and, for instance, participated in protests against the first U.S./Australian war on the Iraqi people in 1990/91. However, what Rozita hoped for was an interesting, fulfilling and well-paying job as a professional woman. When you meet her you realise that she really has a lot going for her in addition to the potential benefits that a prestigious degree could be expected to bring her. Rozita is both technically and artistically talented, beautiful, bi-lingual and with an allround razor sharp mind. Theoretically, according to the if you are capable and work hard… principle that capitalist societies supposedly operate according to – the mythical “meritocracy” which even if it were real is still a flawed and anti-egalitarian principle – she was more than on her way to realising her dreams. Indeed, for a while it seemed to Rozita that she was on a pleasant path to success. After qualifying with her Architecture degree she found work in her field. Meanwhile, as she puts it, she enjoyed living the Bohemian inner city life of art and culture, following intellectual pursuits and socialising. However, before long, the reality of being a non-white woman in a racist and male chauvinist society started to come crashing down around her.

 

A WOMAN WHO DARED TO DEFY THE BOYS CLUB

Rozita’s first job was in the public sector. However, she soon found that her abilities were not recognised. It was a boys club running the show. Indeed, Rozita points out that, in her experience, having worked in several jobs in the architecture sector, only around 10% of architects are women and the directors and senior architects are always men.

Frustrated at the doors being shut in her face in her public sector role, Rozita moved to the private sector. This proved to be a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. She was simply not accepted into the workforce. Instead, at some workplaces, her bosses sent the message – slimily packaged in “coded” language to enable them to evade responsibility – that she needed to have sex with them if she was to get a foot up into real projects. Indeed, one male architect she once worked with explained the deal to her with brutally “honest” bigotry:

Men have designed, built and managed buildings and construction for over 5,000 years. What, do you think we are going to let girls in? We only let girls in to fu_k them!

Due to this misogynist pressure, Rozita moved jobs several times. She jumped from one “reputable” architecture firm to another but could not escape from a noxious male chauvinist environment. In one of the last firms that she worked at, the misogynist climate was especially severe. One of the directors of the firm was a big bully who she asked us to refer to as “Roy.” Roy’s stock in trade was screaming his head off at female employees. He and several other male architects in the firm also made unwanted, overbearing sexual advances at Rozita while being sly enough to cover themselves by thinly veiling their forays. From soon after she joined this firm, Roy made clear to Rozita – as he did to other female employees – that he owned her. His “justification” being, “I bring in millions of dollars to this firm so ….” On one occasion after word had got back to Roy that Rozita was seen at a nightclub dancing with a guy, Roy called in Rozita to tell her that he had heard this and then made clear that if she danced with another guy … she ought to submit to him!

Because she refused to succumb to the demands of her male bosses, Rozita was excluded from opportunities to use her architectural skills. Instead, she was given tedious draughting tasks that required her to work from 8am to 11pm, five days a week. Exhausted, Rozita told her “superiors” that she needed a break from that work and wanted the opportunity to get involved in an actual architecture project where she could utilise her training. The response from a male director was a series of clearly coded messages such as: “How about mixing business and pleasure?”

Rozita turned to the Human Resources Department hoping for some respite. She explained that she was being treated arrogantly and denied the opportunity to be involved in actual architectural projects and asked whether there was any problem with the quality of her work. The answer from the Human Resources Manager went something like this:

No, it has nothing to do with the work you are doing. Roy is very ambitious and if he does not get what he wants he will start screaming.

As Rozita puts it, the Human Resources Department acted as pimps for the firm’s directors. The Human Resources Manager was basically telling Rozita that she ought to submit to Roy saying that “Roy brings in millions of dollars to the firm and Roy always gets what he wants.” Eventually, Rozita ended up in a situation where she was not only discriminated against and harassed but felt physically threatened. Roy put her on practically meaningless tasks that required her to repeatedly stay back working late. He then, himself, hung around after work doing almost nothing except to invade Rozita’s personal space and slouch around in sexually suggestive postures. Knowing how aggressively and abusively Roy had behaved towards her and other female employees, Rozita feared that Roy would one day rape her. She had to get out! And she did.

Rozita is rightly proud that she always maintained her dignity and refused to submit to the pressure of her despicable male chauvinist “superiors”. She points out that several other female employees at various firms that she worked at did succumb to the wishes of their male bosses – although Rozita does not judge them. She, herself, has had to pay a heavy price for maintaining her integrity and standing by her principles. The architecture world is dominated by an elite clique of male mates. If word gets out that you are a woman who refuses to play the game and what’s more has the audacity to defy the big boys then doors are literally shut in your face. As a result, Rozita has been excluded from work in her field. It has been thirteen years since she has had a secure job in the architecture sector. This has been wholly demoralising. It also means that she does it really hard financially. The whole experience has taken a huge financial and emotional toll on Rozita. Fortunately, because of her considerable artistic talents she is able to fall back on art as a pursuit. Others not so lucky to have been endowed with her talents would have found it much harder to cope.

THE INTERSECTION OF RACISM, SEXISM AND CLASS OPPRESSION

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Then there is that most obvious aspect of what Rozita endured – male chauvinism. Discrimination against women and misogyny are fundamental features of all capitalist societies. Marxists understand that the particular form of social organisation that we call the state – with its standing army and police forces, prisons, legal system and bureaucracy – first made its appearance on Earth only once human societies began to divide into mutually exclusive and opposing classes of exploiters and exploited, rich and poor, powerful rulers and oppressed subjects who are ruled over. The ruling class has always, necessarily, been made up of a smaller number of privileged people than the masses whom they exploit and so, in order to maintain their wealth, status and power this ruling class requires the use of all the various mechanisms of state from the big stick that their bully boys wield to the propaganda penned by their faithful scribes in the media. This has been true all through the ever evolving history of the state from its origins in ancient slave-owning societies such as in Greece and Rome, through to the medieval, feudal period with its “divine right” of kings and robber barons to rule over peasants and serfs and then on to our “modern” period where it is the capitalists, the merchants, bankers and traders who have gained ascendancy over the mass of workers and who extract their wealth, primarily, through the wage labour system.

But before the advent of these various systems of mass exploitation and the state which maintains such patently unfair social organisations in place, human societies – such as was in the case in Australia before British invasion, for instance – were, generally, organised into a federation of clan groups. And such societies, based on systems of kinship and kindness, knew nothing of exploitation,  the discrimination against women or misogyny. The oppression of women was given birth to when society was first divided into classes of exploiters and exploited – and capitalism, we Marxists know, will be the last form of class society.

Part of the essence of class-divided societies like capitalism is that land and means of production, rather than being the common property of all, are owned by some private individuals while many others own no such productive property at all. For those lucky enough to own productive property – no matter how small – a key part of their existence is driven by a preoccupation with passing on their property to male heirs. However, so as to be sure that their wealth isn’t claimed by the patriarch of another family, these males want their property to be passed on to heirs who are indisputably theirs. This obsession with handing down their property to their own heirs and, thus, with ensuring that their wives do not bear children to other men drive these propertied males’ compulsion to socially – and, thus, economically – isolate their wives. Meanwhile, the greedy ruling class under capitalism does not want to actually pay people to conduct the essential tasks of housework and child rearing. And so it is held incumbent upon women to, without any pay, conduct these important social functions; work that in original human civilisations – including those of most of Australia’s Aboriginal nations – had humanely and quite rightly been carried out as the collective responsibility of whole communities. The combined result of women being almost exclusively burdened with doing unpaid housework and the partial – or in worst cases almost complete – straightjacketing of women by their husbands results in women’s (on average) greatly reduced opportunity to participate equally in economic life. Herein lies the material basis for women’s subjugation under capitalism. When a woman, because of her burdens and restrictions, is financially reliant on a male partner, she is almost inevitably going to have an unequal relationship with him. In the worst cases it means that if that partner is violent or otherwise abusive, she is presented with the agonising “choice” between leaving that partner and living an impoverished life (along with her children if she is a mother) or suffering under the tyrant at home. [See “The Struggles of a Single Mother Living in Sydney’s West: Kushi Demands Justice and a Better Life” in Trotskyist Platform Issue 12 which can be found at https://trotskyistplatform.com/Kushi.html].

The reality of economic and social subjugation of women breeds a foul male chauvinist ideology that reflects this oppressive reality. This ideology, expressed in mainstream attitudes, media, government, religion and all sorts of social taboos, customs and “social norms” in turn “rationalises”, perpetuates and reinforces women’s second class status. Even compared to other capitalist societies, misogyny is especially vile in Australia. The brutal nature of capitalist White Australia’s foundation as a convict colony and the ongoing violent dispossession of and horrific acts of genocide against Australia’s First Peoples has, necessarily, brutalised all aspects of this society ever since – including gender relations. Women who are doing it hard financially and who are dependent on male partners or family are most vulnerable in such a violently misogynist society. Yet, just like relatively wealthy, dark-skinned people are not immune to the horror of White Australia racism, even financially independent women with good economic prospects can be bowled over in this capitalist society by powerful blasts of misogyny.

 

Rozita was not financially dependent on a male partner or other male family members. However, she was in economic terms at the mercy of other men – her male bosses at the architecture firms she worked at. They had the “right” under this system to determine what work she got and didn’t get and the power to sack her. That’s why it took such strong principles on her part to defy them. In a formal sense these bosses were not called “bosses.” In the architecture world, as in many other lofty professions, they were known as “partners” and “directors.” However, the reality is that in big architectural firms, the labour of junior and other non-partner architects like Rozita – in this case their intellectual labour – was exploited by the partners in order to generate profit for themselves. The junior and other non-partner architects are, thus, denied part of the fruit of their own labour. In that sense, those in Rozita’s position are no different to process workers at a factory, construction workers at a building site or mine workers at a mine. Increasingly in today’s economy there are many workers whose main form of labour is intellectual – like many IT help desk and support staff, laboratory workers and CAD draughties – who are exploited just like other workers in the so-called blue collar workplace.

However, there is an important difference between the position of junior and other non-partner architects in big architectural consulting firms and that of, say, factory workers. And that is that many of the non-partner architects have hopes of, one day, becoming a “partner” themselves: that is, a small-scale, capitalist boss. What’s more, they not only have the education to one day become a “boss” too but have, moreover, even some probability of one day “rising” to such a position. It is this – and not their pay levels – which makes junior architects and others in similar positions in other professions more middle class in their reality and outlook. Working class people have a much lower probability – and, hence, less hope – of one day becoming a capitalist profiteer. What working class people do have, however, that most of those in middle class professions often don’t even realise that they are missing, is the very real chance to solidarize shoulder to shoulder in a powerful and organized collective unity alongside their working class comrades. And it is this factor that is the very key to the future of society.

THE UNITED WORKING CLASS – WITH WOMEN WORKERS AS THE SPEARHEAD – WILL LEAD THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION

Ironically, the very same reason that even junior architects are considered privileged and middle class with respect to proletarian workers also makes them, at the same time, more vulnerable to being bullied by their bosses. The hopes of one day becoming a partner in the firm gnaw away at bonds of solidarity between mistreated and exploited junior professionals. Many seek to nudge each other out of the way in their rival bids to reach the top. That is why non-partner architects are not, at this time, in droves forming themselves into unions to collectively fight for their rights. It would not be until a mass working class upsurge emerges for union consciousness to widely seep into these layers of society. The ambitious, middle class outlook of even exploited non-partner architects in the current period meant that Rozita never had anyone to really stand up for her – or even offer meaningful moral support – in all the times she suffered at various architectural firms. This is quite different to what could happen if she was one of a group of proletarian workers at a workplace. Especially if there is a workplace with a strong union presence, workers may well stand together to try and challenge sexual or other harassment of a co-worker by a boss. A genuine class struggle union leadership would be prepared to unleash union industrial action to punish the bosses for any sort of bullying of any worker. If the harassment came from a co-worker they would organise for all the other workers to drag this worker aside and resolutely reprimand and, if necessary, even severely punish him.

 

That is why it is the working class – with women workers at the forefront – that will lead the struggle for women’s liberation. We saw glimpses of this in the hundreds of proud women trade unionists who formed the backbone of the 2017 and 2018 International Women’s Day marches in Sydney. The organised working class will be the spearhead of the struggle for women’s emancipation and not only because workers’ solidarity, expressed through workers’ unions, can stand up to sexist bullying at work and demand equal pay for women workers. The working class’ interests lie in seeing the overthrow of the capitalist system – the system under which workers’ labour is exploited by business owners and under which many workers are condemned to economic insecurity and unemployment – and its replacement with the system that embodies workers’ interests, socialism. In fighting for such a revolutionary change, the working class is simultaneously struggling against the system upon which women’s oppression is based and for a system that will lay the basis for women’s emancipation. Socialism will enable women to win full economic independence by providing jobs for all workers for as many hours as each worker needs and by making the society and community responsible for the crucial tasks of housework and child rearing that are today, still, largely performed by women as unpaid labour. Thus, a socialist society would provide free pre-school education, free 24-hour childcare, free school lunches at all schools as well after-school sports, music and cultural activities provided for free by the state alongside free transport from school to and from these activities. It is simply natural for a socialist society to take these measures needed to enable women’s full participation in social and economic life since that participation maximises production and enriches society culturally. To not utilise women’s full potential is not only unfair and oppressive – it is also a terrible waste! However, the capitalist system does not operate on such rational considerations as the maximisation of total society-wide economic and artistic output. It operates solely on the basis of what is most profitable for the individual private bosses who run society.

The social and industrial power of women workers to fight for both women’s equality and workers’ rights comes as part of a united class that also, of course, includes male workers. However, male workers are shaped by a society whose media, customs, organised religion and social norms are flooded with male chauvinist attitudes. Furthermore, in this class society, where hierarchical relations between people are normalised and even celebrated, many a male worker who is exploited and bullied by his boss at work finds “solace” in being a tyrant to his female partner at home. Needless to say, such male chauvinism within the workers movement is not only poisonous to a working class fight for women’s rights but to the unity needed for workers to fight for their jobs, wages and conditions. There needs to be a determined struggle by the most conscious, enlightened workers to drive out such male chauvinism from the workers movement. This struggle is part of a broader fight to turn the working class from what it currently is – a class shaped by all the backwardness imparted into it by capitalist society – into a class that becomes aware of what it needs to do to liberate itself and all the oppressed and look with clear, unfettered eyes toward a brighter future. It is a struggle to not only purge the workers movement of male chauvinism but also of racism, nationalism and the corrosive illusions in capitalist “democracy.” It is a struggle to build a revolutionary workers party that will unite the working class, make it champion the cause of all the downtrodden and lead it in struggles that will culminate in the overturn of capitalism and the commencement of the construction of a new socialist society. When a future socialist society enables women to have complete economic independence then this will, over time, drastically change society’s attitudes, customs and behaviour.

The revolutionary party of the masses indispensable to this triumph of socialism and women’s liberation will oblige those who take the responsibility of putting themselves in the vanguard of the struggle to stand with the greatest courage, never sell out their principles under pressure and not fear making enormous sacrifices for the cause. We should be confident that many will flock to this task – especially from amongst the most oppressed sections of the masses including women, Aboriginal people, persecuted migrant-derived “ethnic” groups, LGBTI people and the lowest paid workers. As Rozita has shown, there are indeed strong people out there who are prepared to stand their ground in the face of the oppressors and refuse to compromise on their principles.