In 1972 the Australian Arbitration Commission finally made a ruling that confirmed equal work for equal pay, which required that women performing the same level of work be paid at the same level as men. Despite this legislation, women in Australia, like their counterparts around the world continue to find themselves in a subordinate position to men.
The oppression that women experience has been justified by conservatives as merely a reflection of the biological superiority of men. However, while men have been in a dominant position to women for thousands of years, this "superiority" is a reflection of social and economic factors, rather than biological ones.
More importantly, the oppression of women by men has not always existed but instead is a consequence of the transformations that human society underwent with the emergence of social classes.
Early society
Archaeological and anthropological evidence drawn from pre-class societies indicate that humans once organised collectively based on clan groups that shared the product of their combined labour.
Exploitation was never the basis of the survival and prosperity of the earliest peoples. Society was organised communally. Resources, along with hardships, were shared equally by all.
Typically, different tasks and roles within the group were assigned according to age and gender, but this was not exploitative and each person was indispensable to the group's survival as a whole.
The emergence of class society was made possible as a result of the neolithic revolution, where domesticated cattle were used to plough fields to grow grains. The use of a plough significantly increased the productivity of labour and allowed an individual to produce enough food not only for themselves but for others.
As it was men who had generally been involved in capturing and domesticating cattle, it was men who were at the centre of the emerging agricultural developments. As a result, food surpluses that individual men could generate led to the disintergration of the old clan groups. Family groupings dominated by men emerged as a consequence.
The word family is derived from the Latin words famulus (which means household slave) and familia (the totality of slaves belonging to any one man). Within the new family system, women were demoted to a subordinate status.
Reproducing labour — giving birth to the next generation of workers and feeding, clothing and caring for their husbands — increasingly became women's major economic contribution. Caring for the young and elderly was an important social contribution carried out within the family.
The development of the family unit coincided with women's historic dispossession.
Violence
The current system is incapable of dealing with the problems women face. This can be seen dramatically in the state's response, or lack thereof, towards domestic violence.
In a recent survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from women all around Australia, 19% of women had encountered harassment and 17% of women had experienced sexual violence from an intimate partner. In a 1999 study, 60% of female homicide victims died at the hands of their intimate partner.
According to Amnesty International, although the government in 2007 made an election commitment to produce and fund a comprehensive National Plan of Action to address violence against women, "the draft plan is now three months behind schedule, and is at risk of remaining unfinished in this term".
But it's not only violence that stands in the way of women's liberation. The goal of equal pay across the board is still to be reached and women still don't have control over their bodies. Women also make up most of the world's poor and refugees.
Despite the gains of the women's liberation movement, women continue to perform most of the housework — effectively working a double shift, one at their place of work and one in the home.
This suits the profit margins of the capitalists, if female domestic labour was paid its real worth in the same manner as wage labour, the cost would be more than $320 billion every year.
The continued oppression of women is essential to the maintenance of capitalist society. In turn, capitalist society, through its control of the media end education system, actively reproduces and legitimises the exploitation and oppression of women.
Writing in 1884, Fredrick Engels argued that a first step in the liberation of women was financial liberation through access to employment outside the family.
The second, decisive, step is the replacement of the nuclear family as an economic unit within society, requiring the socialisation of all activities currently confined to the home including feeding, clothing and caring for members of the family.
Class oppression, women's oppression
Because the oppression of women is historically intertwined with the division of society into classes, this oppression can only be eradicated with the abolition of private ownership of the means of production.
That is, there can be no true women's liberation without socialist revolution. Yet at the same time, socialist revolution is impossible without women's liberation.
It is not sufficient to simply put off the struggle for women's liberation until after the achievement of socialism.
In fighting against every instance of oppression we strive to build the confidence of working women and their supporters to advance the struggle for a socially just and equitable world.
Sexism is one of the strongest divide-and-conquer strategies of the ruling class, pitting working class men and women against one another, therefore distracting them from the real unifying issues. Racism and homophobia play the same role.
Resistance organises and continues to fight against sexism and women's oppression in all its forms. Because, not only have we not reached equality, the gains of the second wave feminist movement are under attack. Basic rights of free childcare and education are not met, neither are those for full control over reproductive rights.