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Islam The choice of Thinking Women 4

ECONOMICS

And in no way covet those things in which Allah has bestowed His gifts more freely on some of you than on others: to men is allotted what they earn and to women what they earn: but ask Allah of His bounty. For Allah has full knowledge of all things.

[al Nisa’ 4:32]

Through Islam, women gained economic liberation and independence frown their menfolk. For the first time in human history, Islam bestowed upon women a legal economic entity. A woman could now own, manage, inherit, distribute and sell her own property as she wished and in her own right. Her assets remained hers, and marriage or divorce did not alter the fact. The Islamic ruling and practice with regard to women’s economic rights was light-years ahead of any Western equal rights manifesto. Islam brought these rights to women fourteen hundred years ago, long before equal rights were thought of or campaigned for in other lands.

In the West, women’s emergence into the economic arena only took hold during the two World wars when, with most men conscripted for the war effort, the need for labour was so acute that there was no other option but to bring women out of the home. However, it has taken much heartache and a great deal of struggle and striving to bring women anywhere near a position of equal economic status. Even today, the Western woman is economically bound to her husband, who can demand a share from her earnings for ongoing domestic expenses and, in the case of divorce, can claim a share of her savings. In contrast, the Muslim wife is entitled to be supported by her husband, no matter how rich she may be in her own right; whilst she is a child, she is entitled to be supported by her father and in old age she is entitled to be supported by her children. The Muslim woman is relieved of the burden of having to earn a living, and she is allowed to dispose of her earnings in whatever manner she chooses.

In the case of inheritance, the Muslim woman is allotted a share equal to half of that given to her male counterpart. This is often cited as an example of Islam’s unfairness to women, but the facts warrant closer examination. In many societies, including pre-Islamic Arabia, wealth that was to be inherited was distributed by means of a written will which in many cases deprived women and those in a weak position of their share; this is still the case in some parts of the world. Islam offers, as it were, a “ready-made will”: the Qur’an spells out the Islamic injunctions regarding inheritance, and gives women the right to inherit from husbands, fathers and brothers:

From what is left by parents and those nearest related there is a share for men and a share for women, whether the property be small or large -a determinate share.

[al-Nisa’ 4:7]

The reason for men being given a portion twice as much as that given to women is that men are responsible for taking care of their womenfolk: A man may be required to spend on his mother, sisters or other female relatives. A woman is entitled to dispose of her share of the inheritance as she wishes, and is under no obligation to support anyone, even herself. When these facts are borne in mind, the just and equitable position of Islam is vindicated.

Islam has given rights to women in all aspects of life, including some where women in other cultures have no rights even today. Many of the instances which critics point to as being unfair to women are, upon closer inspection, found to be favourable to women and may even be seen as giving them preferential treatment.

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT

It is very important to study and understand the feminist movement, because it claims to represent the emancipation and welfare of women in these times. A need to appraise its logic, practical implications and viability is required, all of which will be addressed in this chapter.

The word “feminism” itself is very subjective and has been used indiscriminately, which has led to a certain measure of confusion and the existence of several definitions. Among the current definitions of feminism are:
# Any groups that have tried to change the position of women, or the ideas about women, have been granted the title of feminist.

+ A doctrine advocating social and political rights equal to those of men.

+ Feminism means we seek for women the same opportunities and privileges the society gives to men, or that we assert the distinctive value of womanhood against patriarchal denigration. While these positions need not be mutually exclusive, there is a strong tendency to make them so. Either we want to be like men or we don’t.

* Feminists must not only work towards the elimination of male privileges but the sex distinction itself; genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. The tyranny of the biological family would be broken and with it the psychology of power.

The emergence of feminism in the West was mainly due to the dual standards of law in favour of men, which were based on the teachings of Christianity. The earliest feminist campaigners demanded an end to the double standard of sexual morality,l but this did not mean that they sought an overall lowering of moral standards: the early feminists saw chastity not as oppressive, but as both natural and necessary.

Until fairly recently, Western political systems were open to men only (and there were restrictions on precisely which men were allowed to take part, namely socio-economic class). Women had no say whatsoever. The suffragettes campaigned for women’s rights to vote and participate in the political process.

As late as the nineteenth century, oppressive marriage laws were still restricting women with regard to earnings. In the event of a divorce, women were further humiliated by being denied access to their children and being cut off from any source of maintenance. The divorce laws were heavily biased in favour of men.

The development of the factory system drew women out of the home, and the oppression perpetrated by employers who saw women as cheap labour led to the emergence of a women’s movement that demanded equal pay and fair treatment. The struggle for equal pay lasted ostensibly until 1975, when a law was finally passed in Britain. However, as women are still being exploited in the work place, and it is not unknown for women to be paid less than men for the same work, the struggle is clearly not yet over.

The existence of all these oppressive laws and practices led to omen coming together to demand equal rights and justice. However, as time passed, capitalism and men in positions of power diverted Western women onto a different track. The early feminists’ attack on injustice evolved into a movement in which women looked at and accused themselves. So what began with a struggle to change society’s (in most cases, men’s) attitudes and laws ended up changing women, arguably to the delight of men.

The feminist movement has become an academic quagmire which has spawned nearly a dozen schools of thought. These may be grouped under the headings of Marxist (or Socialist), Liberal, Sexual and Radical feminism. These will be examined and their theories and practical implications discussed.

MARXIST FEMINISM

The socialist or Marxist tradition has its roots in the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. However, the idea of socialism predates both, and had already been in circulation among philosophers, economists and politicians. The thought of Marx and Engels is exemplified in the following quotation:

“As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. Hence what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production”.’

Marx’s concept of labour and value may be summarised as follows: The value and power of labour contained within this product can be realized only if others want the commodity - if it has an exchange value in the marketplace. In return for such productive labour, the worker receives a wage, which has within it two components - one a measure of profit or the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist, and the other, the product of necessary labour, is used by the workers to sustain themselves, their family and the next generation. Marx’s depiction of capitalism includes a further class, a group which is only tenuously linked to the production process at any given time: the unemployed, the immigrant workers, and the women (italics mine). This group comprises various parts of the reserve army of labour ready to be mobilised when production needs to be expanded rapidly, and then demobilised during times of recession.

Marxist theory emphasises the idea that what makes us human is the fact that we produce our means of subsistence. We are what we are because of what we do or, more specifically, what we do to meet our basic needs in productive activities. What is distinctive about Marxist feminism is that it invites every woman, whether proletarian or bourgeois, to understand women’s oppression not so much as the result of the intentional actions of individuals, but as the product of the political, social and economic structures associated with capitalism.

Prior to the introduction of industrial capitalism, the family or household was the site of production. Parents, children and relatives all worked together to produce whatever was needed for the family’s survival. Women’s work - planting, preserving, canning, cooking, weaving, sewing, childbearing and childrearing - was as essential to the economic activity and success of the family unit as was the work of men. But with industrialisation and the transfer of production from the home to the factory or other public workplace, women who for the most part did not enter the public workplace, at least in the beginning- came to be viewed as “non productive,” in contrast to “productive” wage earning men.

This is basically Engels’ theory of the cause of women’s inferior status, which he blamed on the capitalist system, the family and marriage. In order to bring about an end to the oppression of women, Engels proposed extending legal equality to women and then introducing them en masse to the workplace. Such a move would be a prelude to the alliance of all women with the working class to socialise the means of production, abolish private property, and usher in an age of monogamous sexual love.

It was thought that women’s primary oppression lay in their role as unpaid domestic workers. This analysis implies that the benefits to male wage earners directly offset the disadvantage inherent in their class position. This points to one solution: the abolition of housework as it is now known.

What angered Marxist women most about women under capitalism was the trivialization of women’s work. Women were increasingly regarded as mere consumers, as if the role of men was to earn wages and that of women was simply to spend them on “the right products of capitalist industry”.

A prominent Marxist feminist, Benston concluded that unless a woman is freed from her heavy burden of domestic duty, including child care, her entrance into the workforce will be a step away from, rather than towards, liberation. Marxist women therefore worked towards moving the women onto the factory work floor and towards earning a living of their own, as a means of proving independence and equality. Another socialist, Warrior, argued that in general, males benefit from women’s labour and capitalist males benefit twice. Women are the source of all labour in that they are the producers of all labourers. Their labour creates the first commodity, male and female labourers, who in turn create all other commodities and products. Men, as the ruling class, profit from this commodity through its labour. The male capitalist class makes a profit when it buys this labour power and then receives the surplus value of its visible economic production.

Marxist feminists believe that all women in the capitalist system are subordinate. Middle class women are subordinated in general to the men with whom they live and work, but as members of the middle class they enjoy material and social advantages over both male and female members of the working class. Working class women, on the other hand, bear the dual burden of their subordinate gender and class identities. In the family, as wives and mothers, they are the principal reproducers of the labour power from which capitalism extracts its surplus, for which service they receive no payment. In addition, many of them, even mothers with children, are in paid employment, which permits the direct extraction of surplus value, while the wages they earn serve to meet family needs, created in increasing number by capitalism itself, for which the income of the male “breadwinner” no longer suffices.

Yet another theory within Marxist feminism suggests that it is not childbearing, physical weakness or any other presumed biologically determined differences that are the basis of women’s subordination in capitalist societies; it is the social allocation to women of responsibility for children. The obstacles to changing this connection lie in the capitalist system of production.

In Capitalism, the family and personal life, Zaretsky3 detailed Marxist feminist theory regarding public/private conceptualisation. She argues that patriarchal ideology is vital in the reproduction of capitalism and further that the illusion of a private sphere wherein one’s “personal life” is conducted is an integral part of this philosophy. This introduces an entirely new factor: the concept of a personal life, a subjectivity that is self consciously seeking personal fulfilment. This had not been a factor in the analyses of non capitalist modes of production. Indeed, one of Zaretsky’s arguments is that this search is specific to capitalism.

Zaretsky has two main arguments. The first is that the rise of industrial capitalism promoted a new search for personal identity outside the social division of labour. The second is that the expansion of this “personal life” beyond the place of work created a new basis for women’s oppression, since the responsibility for maintaining a refuge from an impersonal society was given to women, or at least to wives and mothers.

Zaretsky traces the particular process of the proletarianization of the pett) bourgeoisie, which gave rise to a need for a search for personal identity outside the sphere of work. This became increasingly so as capitalism required a rationalised labour process undisturbed by community sentiment, family responsibilities, personal relations and feelings.

In 1973, Vogel introduced an idea that represented a shift from the original Marxist understanding of domestic work. Vogel wrote: “In short, domestic labour is neither productive nor unproductive… Women’s productive activity in the family does not fall under the capitalist mode of production strictly defined. The common characteristic of women, that of being domestic labourers is significant. Thus women who perform domestic labour form a group whose labour is appropriated in a distinct way in capitalist society, in a mode of production whose social relations differ from those of capitalist production. This means that an autonomous women’s movement is necessary to represent the oppression which women share as domestic labourers”.

What Marxist feminists have tried to highlight is how women’s domestic work is trivialised in comparison with wage-earning work, and how women are given the most boring and low-paying jobs.

Dallas Costa published an article ‘The Power of Woman and the Subversion of the Community’ (1973) which carried an introduction by Selma James and made the unorthodox Marxist claim that women’s domestic work is productive not in the colloquial sense of being “useful” but in the strict Marxist sense of creating surplus value. No women have to enter the productive labour force, for all women are already in it, even if no one recognises the fact. Women’s work is the necessary condition for all other labour, from which in turn, surplus value is extracted. By providing current (and future) workers not only with food and clothes, but also with emotional and domestic comfort, women keep the cogs of the capitalist machine running.

Given the view of women’s domestic work as productive work, a “wages for housework” campaign painted a picture of women who enter the public workplace as carrying a double load which meant that the day started with paid, recognised work on the assembly line and ended with unpaid, unrecognised work at home. The way to end this inequity, suggested Costa and James, is for women to demand wages for housework. They proposed that the state - not individual men (fathers, husbands) - should pay wages to housewives.

The practical application of Marxism has itself dealt the death blow to its theories, for if Marxism truly intended to save women from oppression, then the people of the Eastern bloc countries would not have risen up as they did in recent years. The failure of Marxism in Eastern Europe is sufficient proof against this theory. However, we should also look at some of the practical issues:

* Wages for housework is an idea that is neither feasible or desirable as a strategy for the liberation of women. It is not feasible because if the state pays wages to housewives, it will only do so in a way that preserves its own interests. The state would most likely impose a special tax on married men, which would be used to pay wages to their wives. Depending on how large a bite was thus taken out of the husband’s income - and there is reason to believe that it would be a hefty sum - the wife’s pay cheque would most likely represent nothing more than a rise in status, as there would be no real rise in the family’s real income. The housewife’s pay cheque would have the further, undesirable, effect of imprisoning women in the home.
* To regard childbirth as the production of people to be evaluated as a financial asset is a failure to understand and appreciate the value of human beings. In chapter III, we saw numerous ayat of Qur’an and ahadith which indicate the higher status of the female due to her gender and unique ability to bring forth and nurture children. Islam has elevated women beyond the narrow, worldly concerns of the workplace and earning a wage, and has decreed that her production and nurturing of children gives her a status that equals, if not exceeds, that of men. If Allah and His Prophet have told us that the value of a mother is even greater than that of a father, then the status of motherhood must be reinstated to its proper, elevated position.
* The underlying Marxist theory assumes equality between individuals in terms of financial independence: people are only equal if they earn independently to support themselves. Far from liberating women, Marxism has in fact served the interests of the bosses by supplying them with a surplus of workers which makes it easy for them to demand cheap labour. Real-life experience has shown that few who do get financial independence have gained it by sacrificing their own physical and mental health. However, the majority have become the victims of rather than the winners of the society. From Chapter II we can deduce the ills befalling women in the non Islamic societies of today.
* Zaretsky suggests that the family is seen as not only a haven for men but also the arena for the personal fulfilment of fathers and husbands, this can only happen at the expense of mothers and wives.’ This view is contrary to Islamic teachings, which advocates the family as a place where both man and woman obtain serenity and peace. The family thus is the arena which provides both partners with personal fulfillment and protection.
* The assumption that child-care duties in the home form the basis of oppression implies a need to create communal nurseries, canteens and sleeping quarters. Feminists have falsely assumed that all women would rather be on the shop floor or in the office than spend time with their children. In fact it is highly improbable that women would like to be whisked straight from the labour ward to the factory floor, thus losing the opportunity to nurture their infants. As far as communal living is concerned, there are not many people who would willingly exchange their privacy and personal space for an open kibbutz style life. Another consideration is that in a communal environment, it would no doubt be the women who would be employed to take care of the nurseries and canteens, no doubt at unsociable hours and with the lowest status in the hierarchy of roles. (This is in fact the case in many Israeli kibbutzim where women tend to be stuck with the menial tasks and childcare whilst the more interesting and prestigious jobs go to the men).

It may be argued that to expect the state or commune to take care of children is absurd. Since parents choose to have children, they should take the responsibility for their upbringing. If we think of children as valued possessions, we should not say that it is unfair that a family of four should live on the same income as a family of two: we should say that one couple chooses to spend its income on children, whilst the other chooses to spend its money on holidays or furniture. There is no justification for expecting the state to care for children. In a capitalist system, money has become the reward for everything. The feminists have lowered women’s value by demanding financial compensation for an asset which they should be proud of.

Marxist theory appears to have little room for questions that deal directly with women’s reproductive and sexual concerns: contraception, sterilisation, abortion, pornography, prostitution, rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence.

Marxist feminists try to retain their loyalty to both socialism and feminism. Consequently, they continue to give priority to the issue of class, although - unlike orthodox socialists - they no longer see feminism as a necessary consequence of a socialist victory.4 They agree, however, that feminism without socialism is impossible (Mitchell, 1971) and for this reason, if no other, the struggle for socialism is given prominence. At the same time, these women find that they can only do so by means of what amounts to a very radical critique of orthodox Maviews on the position of women.

If the oppression of women is based on the economic and legal power that men have over them, and if that power is class-based, then it follows that abolishing private property and socialising production destroys the economic foundation of women’s position.’ However, the experience of socialist countries has been used to question this logic. Women under Marxist regimes throughout the world have been the unfortunate victims of oppression in the home, the workplace and in the educational and political spheres. As far as the liberation of women goes, Marxism has offered nothing more than the illusion of justice.

LEBERAL FEMINISM

Liberal feminists see working towards the elimination of the differences between the sexes as the first step towards true equality.

Modern liberal feminist theories of gender equality are based on the assumption that in order to achieve equal status, all stereotyped social roles for men and women have to be abolished. Conventional women’s work roles assign to them the major responsibility for unpaid domestic work, especially childcare, and thus handicap them with regard to their occupational roles. Despite the legal rights of women to equality in employment, men use women’s actual or presumed domestic handicaps to perpetuate de facto discrimination by forcing women into a small number of occupational roles that are segregated according to labour market types and working time schedules, and that have lower pay and prestige than comparable men’s occupations. Employed women’s lower income is used as a justification for the perpetuation of their unequal burden of domestic and child care work and their inferior power in the family. Their segregated and inferior roles also hinder their acquisition of economic and political power. It is in the interests of men of all strata to use the unpaid domestic services of women and prevent women from competing with them for better jobs.

Liberal feminists seek to create an androgynous individual, that is an individual which would combine some of each of the characteristics, traits, skills and interests that are now stereotypically associated with either men or women. Another goal of the liberal feminists is sexual equality or gender justice, which means freeing women from oppressive roles and enabling them to rise above their lower (or non-existent) position in academia and in the workplace.

These aims raise immediate questions: should women become like men in order to be equal with men? Or should men become like women in order to be equal with women? Or should both men and women lose their identities and become androgynous, each person combining the “correct” blend of positive masculine and feminine characteristics in order to be equal with every other person? The problems thus raised are phenomenal.

It is impossible to create an androgynous individual because of the physical, anatomical, biochemical and physiological differences between the sexes. Another point, made by Ann Ferguson, is that it may not even be desirable for people to be socialised to develop the potential for androgyny. Complete elimination of gender differences raises major legal and economic issues. For example, if a woman is allowed to take six months off work following childbirth, should not the equal male be allowed the same time off to spend time with his new baby? If men and women have the same intellectual capacity and reasoning skills, then surely there is no particular need for female philosophers: men can point out inequities and suggest reforms just as effectively as women.

Liberal feminists seek to prove that women are as good as men. But we may ask: why is this necessary? Why should women have to be like males before they are deemed equal? The direction taken by liberal feminists is destroying the very essence that makes women special.

The oppressive roles from which liberal feminists seek to free women are not confined only to females. The immigrant population, male and female alike, are the worst victims of oppression; but even Caucasian males may be discriminated against in the case of jobs such as child-care and secretarial work, which are “reserved” for females. No doubt women suffer more than men, but they cannot be seen as unique when ethnic minorities and immigrants in the Western world are also suffering oppression. The roots of this inequity lie in capitalism and its need to seek cheap labour in order to increase returns on investment.

Elshtain, a critic of liberal feminism, states that “there is no way to create real communities out of an aggregate of freely choosing adults”. She argues that liberal feminists have over emphasised the male up to the point of equating masculinity with humanity, manly virtues with human virtues. She argues that liberal feminism has three major flaws: the assumption that women can become like men if they set their minds to it, the notion that all women want to become like men, and the claim that all women should want to become like men and to aspire to masculine values.

Liberal feminism has a tendency to over estimate the number of women who want to be like men, who want to abandon the role of wife and mother for that of citizen and worker. Any woman whose identity is that of a wife and mother is likely to become angry or depressed when, after years of investing blood, sweat and tears, she is told that being a wife or a mother is a mere role, and a problematic one at that. It is one thing to tell a woman to change her hairstyle; it is something else altogether to tell her that she should get a more meaningful identity.

A profound statement by Elshtain states that liberal feminists are wrong to advocate that women should reject traditional values. Articles written for women about dressing for success, making it in a man’s world, being careful not to cry in public, avoiding intimate

friendship, being assertive, and playing hardball serve only to erode what after all may be best about women. It is wrong to assume that women must be the same as men in order to be socially, economically or politically equal. In fact the sexes can be different, carry out different tasks, and still be equal on all these levels.

From the Islamic point of view, there is no room for entertaining a desire to create androgynous individuals. If the Creator had intended this for us, He could have created us as asexual beings who would reproduce like the hydra. However, the issue of oppression of others on the basis of their sex or skin colour still needs to be addressed. Equal opportunities and equal pay must be implemented for all, without bias. Laws should be instituted that would guarantee such equality, whilst taking into account any physical differences and ruling in favour of the weaker individuals. As stated earlier, the Qur’an tells us that Allah has assigned to the male his duties and to the female hers. The Prophet is reported to have said: “Allah’s curse is upon those men who imitate women and those women who imitate men”.

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