Behind the 'moral fabric'
It is "the greatest social stabiliser", the "most effective welfare system possible" and a "haven in a heartless world". When it breaks down, "society" pays a huge price — young people turn to the streets and drugs, "taxpayers" money has to be spent on youth refuges and single mothers, and AIDS runs rampant.
The capitalist politicians and media have been beating one of their favourite drums more loudly in recent months. The campaign is under way to convince us all that the nuclear family is at the very core of all that is good, civilised and enduring in our society.
Hidden among the establishment's propaganda about "parental responsibility" and society's "moral fabric", however, two recent reports have revealed the real nature of this "natural" social institutions.
A study released on January 20 by Jillian Fleming from the Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health shows that one in five girls in Australia are sexually abused before they turn 16. Fleming found that in almost half of the assaults, the attacker was a male relative.
Then the Women's Safety Survey, conducted between February and April 1996 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, revealed that women too are suffering massive levels of violence in the family, very often in silence.
According to the ABS survey of 6300 women, 8% reported that they have been attacked by their current partner. Half said it had happened more than once, and 12.1% said they live in fear of further assault.
Of those women who had been in a relationship at some time in their lives, 42% reported an incident of violence by a previous partner. The violence occurred more than once in 76% of cases and, even more horrific, of women who were pregnant at some time during a relationship in which they were assaulted, 42% reported that they were attacked during the pregnancy; 20% were assaulted for the first time when they were pregnant.
More than 40% of women who had been assaulted by a partner said they had taken no action at all afterwards (this includes even talking to others about it). In cases of sexual assault, the figure jumped to 55.3%
These reports reveal that for millions of women and girls in Australia the reality of family life is about as far as you can get from security and stability.
What they don't explain is that domestic violence in capitalist societies is neither an anomaly nor, usually, the result of pathologies in individual families or men. It is a direct result of the family system that our rulers are so intent on promoting.
The institutionalisation of separate and different roles for men and women — he as primary "breadwinner" and she as unpaid house-worker and supplementary wage worker — is the basis for violence against women.
It is not just that this sexual division of labour leaves women with fewer resources to prevent or escape violent situations. The family system also grinds psychological subordination into women, who are taught to believe that their most important functions are as wives and mothers; these functions are deemed "secondary" in a society in which worth and importance are measured in dollars. Reinforcing women's resulting low self-esteem and self-confidence, men too are taught to think of women as subordinates, "helpers" and sex objects.
These attitudes, created and maintained by women's economic dependence on men, are the real "fabric of society". For women, this means discrimination, exploitation and violence. For the ruling class, it means profits — lower ("supplementary") wages for women workers and less expenditure on child-care, aged care and other social services.
The only way to counter the pro-family, anti-women's rights rhetoric is to campaign around demands for more and better public child-care and aged care services; for more accommodation options for women and young people; for more educational opportunities for women; for increased pensions and benefits; and for better wages and conditions for all working people, especially women.
In Australia today, to struggle against violence against women is to struggle against the Howard government's whole economic and social agenda.
By Lisa Macdonald