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: : Piper: So your Utopia's goig to cure all social ills is it stoller? It's going to be what? The end of history? : : BTW economic relations are not the only cause of legislation. To hold to that is naive in the extreme.
: True to some extent. The feminist movement is something which moves both inside and outside the boundaries of economical class structure. Arguing that every existing problem of the society points at the economical reallity is even more metaphysical and ahistorical than the average capitalist sentiment. Nothing but crude economical determination at best..
: But can we really rule out that at some point these factors ultimately converge with the economical relations between a man and a woman? Why were women treated unequal in the first place? Why DO they remain unequal? How did the average capitalistic family structure act upon women and their social activities?
Piper: Women as i understand it are a victim of social relations originating as far back as human history goes. I suppose the iniquity arose originally because women are easily dominated physically by men and this was perpetuated into society proper.
They remain unequal mainly i think because it is so ingrained in our social system that they are not equal. There are entrenched power structures and prejudices that have to be oversome before they can be truly equal.
As to economics, well it seems to me that their lower stauts in this is a reflexion of social relations. Sure it must reinforce women's lower status, but this is i think a symptom of underlying social problems, not the cause of it.
Now you are right to say that a fundamental reordering of economic relations (ie socialism) would help in overcoming entrenched prejudice and obtaining equity for women.
Socialism would deal with one part of the problem- it would provide women with equal pay (but i think capitalism can provide this too, see my post to stoller).
I am not sure i see how it would deal with the another problem though- women being entrenched into certain forms of work (women being nurses, secretaries, teachers, etc). It seems to me that with this socialism would have all the same problems of overcoming entrenched prejudices and social roles that capitalism has. It's not easy to reorder society's established social relationships.
