The thousands of people who took to the streets around Australia for International Women's Day showed that feminism is still very relevant to many people. KAMALA EMANUEL spoke with KAREN FRY, ANGELA HATFIELD and CHERYL WALSH about what feminism means to them as young women and how they think feminist demands can be achieved. All three are active in the Newcastle branch of the socialist youth organisation, Resistance.
Question: What does feminism mean to you?
Karen: It means not accepting the myth that women have achieved equality. It's about being in favour of equal pay for women because there are still wage differences for women and men, recognising the need for more child-care and women's refuges, opposing the sexist imagery that's everywhere, and challenging the assumptions that women are stupid or that we have to look "feminine".
It's also about fighting back, and recognising that you have to defend the rights that have already been won. Being a feminist is a positive thing. It's about being in favour of women's rights.
Cheryl: A lot of people have a negative response to the term. They think feminists are a bunch of whingers, and that the things that women want are unfounded.
Angela: The sort of sentiments that Cheryl is referring to are part of the backlash against women's rights, attempts to reinforce the myth that women shouldn't fight for their rights.
Question: How does inequality affect women?
Cheryl: The establishment media presents us with images of an "ideal woman" that is unattainable — not everybody can have this slim, attractive beautiful body. Another stereotype is women as housewives. I think it's pretty appalling that women are still earning less than men, even when they work in the same area.
Karen: The rise of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia can be attributed, in a great part, to the sexist stereotypes of the perfect body. The toll these distorted body images exact from women is frightening. In the US alone, 150,000 women die every year from eating disorders.
Question: Why are women oppressed?
Karen: It's to do with the current social structure that is based on inequality and exploitation. It produces not just sexism, but racism as well. It's about the exploitation of the majority in the interests of a very rich elite.
Angela: It's because we live in a capitalist society. One way of maximising profits is to privatise things that should be a collective responsibility. The care of the old, the sick and the young becomes the private responsibility of individual families, which translates into the responsibility of individual women. That means women have to be convinced that their value is found in fulfilling their "traditional gender roles", so it's hardly surprising that the establishment pushes the ideology that a woman's place is in the home.
A lot of the other elements of sexism stem from this secondary place that women occupy. There's a whole ideology backing up domestic violence, lower wages for women, women being viewed as sex objects and so on.
Question: Do you think this situation can change and how?
Karen: I think it can. In the '60s and '70s the women's liberation movement won a lot of important victories which showed that it is possible for women and men to unite in campaigns to fight inequality. Even if we don't win every campaign, we can be sure that if we don't fight we lose.
Cheryl: There have been moves towards equality already, and people's attitudes have changed. But there are still old prejudices and stereotypes that need to change, for example in schools and in the way people are portrayed in the media and elsewhere.
Karen: At the same time, if we constrain ourselves to attempting reforms within the system we're not going to see real liberation for women. The profit system thrives on oppression, and while it grants concessions at one point in time, it can always take them back again.
Angela: This is why we need a strong movement to fight for women's rights. We need campaigns for access to free abortion on demand, 24 hour child-care, access to non-traditional jobs, opposing enterprise bargaining (which has on the whole been bad for women), adequate funding for women's refuges and women's health centres, and a whole range of things.
It was the mass campaigns of the 1970s women's movement that won abortion reforms, equal pay legislation, liberalisation of divorce laws and so on. We need to re-initiate such campaigns with demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, and get as many people as possible involved.
Karen: Given that there are lots of forms of oppression under capitalism, which include oppression of Aboriginal people and migrants, and the exploitation of working people, it's important for the women's movement to link up with others. We need to support the overall struggle to eradicate the joint cause of oppression. Ultimately we need to struggle for a new kind of society.
Question: What role can men play?
Karen: Anyone who supports women's rights and the fight for women's liberation should be able to get involved in campaigns. Ultimately it's in men's interests too because without a fighting women's movement, we're never going to achieve socialism, which is the key to the liberation of all people.